Raging Bull

Title – Raging Bull

Year – 1980

Director – Martin Scorsese

Main actor – Robert De Niro

Genre – Biopic

Walking to the ring

Camera work: The camera height is kept at eye level to make the effect of “walking together with the character” and see the situation from his point of view. This able us to be not just as voyeur but also through the perspective of the protagonist. The distance is used here is medium-long shot and medium shot because we see human figures from knees and up and somewhere from waist and up. It makes us be more connected with the character and be involved in the situation. When we see figures more closer to viewers, we notice their feelings, emotions and gestures (everything that will be important to understand their characters). The movement of the camera reveal information in a dramatic way and emphasize continuously of time and space. 

Focus: Director used deep focus on this episode (all the frame is in focus), we clearly see settings and figures in the background as well as in the foreground, because they both important to be more engaged to viewers in what is happening.

Entrance to the ring

Lenses: I think there has been used 2 types of lenses like: normal, because we see in some parts of the scene, where people figure and space appear in normal human angle of view, also wide angle is used, because we see figures in foreground more larger than they really are, while figure in background seem proportionally small.

CU/MCU: The effect of those shots is to have more intimacy and focus on emotions of characters.

The fight

Camera angles and shot types: The director used huge variety of different angles and shots to give us opportunity see clearly emotions of boxers, understand the atmosphere there and what both characters feel: be involved and go through their feelings. There is worm’s eye angle is usually used to make the dominant of the shot and impulse between them. Also there is high angle, which able to see the fight from different positions and understand different power and level of boxers. I have noticed two shot that creates “bridge” between boxers.

End of the fight

Canted angle: There are two times when the canted angle is used in the scene. The first time we see an opponent in this angle. It is clearly his through his face expressions that he is tired and wants to finish the fight while the second time see the mains character’s body in that angle, which signifies of energy, that he has power and strength to win the fight.

Slow motion: The slow motion used in the part when the opponent says that he can not more continue the fight and gives up. It used to make the scene more dramatic (focused on face and reactions).

Celebration

Tilt shot: The tilt movement is used when the protagonist won the fight and stranded on the center on the ring with many people who were around him and also were cheerful. The tilt exaggerate the dimensions of the character. The boxer appeared more powerful and makes us happy that he won.

ECU: It makes significant of the part of the body and to grab our attention.

Camera angles: Eye level, low and warm’s eye angles are used. The effect are making the character dominant, powerful and strong. It has dramatic effect of winning. We feel that he won because he was more strong and prepared for the fight than the opponent.

Welcome to GREYpolis

On the media lesson we have watched a movie called “ Metropolis” by Fritz Lang. An interesting thing is that the movie is sooooo old (1926-27), therefore it is a silent film where the dialogs and speech we can just read. It was my first experience to watch such movies and I didn’t really enjoyed it, not because it is an old picture but it made me depress. We have watched just two different location from the movie and what happened there. As the movie is in genre si-fi, there is a robot in the film and alternative future is shown.

The first scene actually made me depressed because the director showed an antiutopia life with unhappy factory workers, who are working in underground. The music and light played a huge role in the atmosphere there.  The atmosphere was shown also by background designs, different settings, expression of people, their actions, clothes.  The people looked almost like slaves and grey vegetables. Not just people look exactly same but their houses too (grey skyscrapers). 

The second location is utopia life, where people are happy, rich, enjoy their lives and being free. There is huge contras between these parallel locations. The atmosphere there also is shown through bright light, face expressions, clothes, music and body language of people. I think the main idea is to show people ideology of two classes (upper and working class). While rich laughing and playing, poor dying and working.

The main protagonist of the movie is Freder, we understand it by camera effects.He is shown big in the mise en scene and through all movie we are watching at him and what he is doing. So, he is a rich man, who doesn’t now about existing of poor and unhappy people, we understand it from his clothes, actions and speach. He even doesn’t care about other people until one day, while he played in his garden, one women came with many poor children and showed them the life of rich Freder. After that moment his life completely changed: he saw workers, other side of the life. The woman also shown in particular way: poor dress, many poor children around her, camera considered on her face (more attention on eyes, because it tell us about her soul) to express her as a good and kind but poor woman.

I have watched it for the first and the last time!

Well… Today I watched a movie called “ Thelma and Louise”. 

The director is Ridley Scott. He is famous for his works like “Blade Runner”, ”Alien”, ”Prometheus” and my favorite “Gladiator”(I really recommend you watch it! You can skip to watch “Thelma and Louise” but “Gladiator” is much better and why it is better I will tell you in my next posts). 

Honestly say I have chosen the movie because of 2 simple reasons:

1 – I found it from the list of movies which we should watch for our media lessons. Also it was the first movie from the list;

2 – There was Prad Pitt!!! OMG he was sooooo amazing there, even he was more negative character.

It is quite an old film, which is made in 1991, therefore Brad was very young and there played so many famous american old school actors like Susan Sarandon, Greena Davis, Harvey Keitel and other.

Here are some reasons why I didn’t like the movie:

A.     I don’t like such genre like crime, because it involves police things (and why I don’t like police stuff I can not tell you. Sorry…)

B.     There were some ADULT moments, which make me uncomfortable to watch.

C.     As I don’t watch crime movies much, it was new experience for me. Also I want to add that I was very confused at the beginning because I thought it is comedy, as it started very positively (soft lights and positive music). There were some funny moments but not much. The ending was stressful for me.

D.    I feel that the ideology of the movie is feminism and that men are evil, they showed it through many scenes all the time. But it was necessary to open deep side of all characters.

It is very unfair to say that the movie is bad and wasting of time, juts because I didn’t enjoyed it. It is just my subjective opinion. Moreover, the film has many strengths, except Brad Pitt, like work of lights, music, sound, camera and acting. Actually, the story was also very entertaining and easy to follow. The movie got an “Oscar” in 1992 reasonably.

One big conclusion after watching the movie for myself is that I need to watch more different genres and be more objective.