Run Lola Run

Run Lola Run is a german film which tells the story of one event 3 times , however the action and end result changes each time. The film has many aspects similar to a formalist film, however many of the situations are more realistic or could happen. For example the fact that Minner has got himself in with bad people and the situation with Lola's parents are both realistic situations. The setting is also realistic, it's not distorted or in an unusual place like many formalist films, its recognizable as a modern day city.  Much of the lighting is also realistic except there is a running theme of the colour red which is highlighted where possible, e.g. Lola's bright red hair, the red ambulance, red telephone, and the red money bag. Also in the trailer for it, half way through there is a sequence of flashing clips between Lola and mug like shots of people against a red background and ends on the red telephone. The most obvious use of red is the tinted lighting in the dream sequences in between each repetition, i think they emphasize the red in the mise en scene because it connotes danger and there is a running theme of danger in the film. The telephone is the beginning of the danger when Lola starts of on her task to get 100,000 marks and the red bag of money is at the point when Manni gets run over. 

The film does in fact use a variety of formalist elements within the camerawork, editing and narrative. It has a formalist narrative in which it repeats a sequence of her getting one hundred thousand pounds in 20 minutes 3 times until it reaches a good outcome.  Each time there are small changes in what happens to her and this effects the people around her. I think the way they show snap-shots of peoples life's is formalist because its incorporating other stories through an unrealistic form. Another formalist form that is used is the use of animation in the beginning credits and the beginning of each repetition of the story.  

The editing of the camera work is done to give the film a quick pace but it also makes it look very formalist. They use many jump cuts between birds eye-views and extreme close ups and the beginning shot  zooms in from the sky and tracks into Lola's bedroom.  The beginning of the film is shot from a low point of view in a faded out crowd, which i think uses a more advanced version of the distorted background element of German expressionism. It fades out the background so that you can see only the peoples body's (apart from in the extreme close up of the police mans face), which is similar to the use of shadows in German Expressionism. 

Overall I would consider Run Lola Run to be written and produced as a formalist film as the narrative and setting are exaggerated forms of realism in which the camerawork and editing creates a surreal atmosphere because of the repetition of the sequence 3 times.

The Moving Man Final Cut

Today we finally saw the complete cut of our footage.  From seeing the uncut footage of The Moving Man I was expecting something some what different from the final cut. I found many aspects had been improved by the style of editing and addition of sound.  Previously to editing I did not like the use of the lighter green lighting, but in the final cut they cut it out and used the darker colours which created a more sinister tone. The tone however was slightly ruined by the adding of titles which said things like 'tee hee' and 'what do you think i'm doing'.  One aspect I really liked was the sound. I thought the use of creepy classical music really worked with the tone of the film and expressed a sadness about the character, showing his loneliness as all he had was a dog but even that seemed unreal because it was not in the form of a dog.

The Moving Man

This week we've began to create a formalist film called The Moving Man, which was influenced by The cabinet of Dr Caligari. We'd been looking at formalism and realism and had to create a formalist film to show our understanding of the genre. To make it easier we allocated everyone parts e.g. mise en scene, camerawork, editing, sound and lighting. I took mise en scene along with Amber and Olivia. At first we wanted to use a mannequin to represent the man but were not able to find one. Our next idea was slightly easier; we decided to use a man in a mask. This gave our film an abstract and unreal element. Also the mask we choose was of a creepy looking old man who had facial features similar to the faces of those in The cabinet of Dr Caligari. As homework we had to bring in any props for the film, i brought in the mask and some large monster feet. I also brought in a selection of ties because another of our ideas was to have the man wearing one of the ties and everytime he moved it would move to a different position. However once he (or i should say she) was in costume it became a sort of inconvinent extra which would provoke all sorts of filming problems.

The film was created by turning a normal acivity of walking a dog into an abstract form. We did this by using different objects to represent the dog. First we used a Knight (chess peice) which looks quite similar to a dog and then moved onto using more abstract forms e.g. a flipper and a doll. In the rough cut we used darkness to cover up the man moving. I think the doll worked really well because we used the lighting to make it scare the audience. At this point the lights went off and when they came back on it was a close up of the creepy mask stroking the doll.

For my film my main work on the mise en scene will not be on the clothing and props but the landscapes and positioning of things unlike our film. However I can use this as a practice run for my film, which will help me be mire organized next time. 

Hi, Becca Stewart here.
I'm creating a blog as a sort of diary for my Moving Image AS level. We're using them to record a production diary on what we do for the AS. Hopefully this will turn out alright.

See you next time
Becca
xxx