Wednesday, August 25, 2010

My Visual Style

               Due to the fact that I am a painting minor and because I love to paint all the time most of my visual style is inspired from artists that I aspire to paint like. Here are a couple of my favorites.

                                                       Chuck Close:
"Self-portrait"
"Emma"

  Chuck close is a source of a lot of inspiration for me. His early works of hyper realism is something I aspire to do in my film making. The paintings are as large as a person and visually engage the viewer with their eyes. I aspire to capture the audiences attention similarly in my film making through close ups that engage the viewer. "Emma" is a work that is much like my visual style in painting by using blocks of color to compose a vivid image.

                                                       Lucian Freud:
 


















Freud's use of color to show the interaction of light and skin inspires me to set  scenes in which light affects the mood and tone through it's interaction with the characters. His use of  color and framing is something I would like to reference in my films to create intense moods through lighting.











Random Like:


Opening Scene 28 Weeks Later from Nick Vasutin on Vimeo.
Say what you will about zombie movies but this movie has one of my favorite tracking shots. I love the shot at 4:00 where the main character is running on the left side of the screen while the people chasing him pull in closer from the background on the right. Awesome shot!


Almost as great as the finale of the 400 Blows with the one minute tracking shot....



                                                           Dolls:
I like the visual style in this film because it balances the characters in the film with an almost fantastical background. This film, through it's visual style, pushes to represent these characters in the film almost as dolls on a stage playing out the drama of there relationships. This can be seen very plainly in shots from the beginning and the end of the film where the dolls are dress almost identical to the characters.

















This use of imagery and visual style is used well in this scene where the characters move through a wooded area. This shot is meant to show beauty but I believe that it is also meant to built the feeling of tension and isolation as these characters never talk to each other for almost 15 mins. I like the shots in this film because they help build emotion in the film very well. The acting in this film is not great and the themes can be overpowering but it will pull on your emotional strings through long beautiful shots.


 





(The sound is off is it is just better to turn off the volume. The music does help make this movie but the sound is off by about a minute. So it's hard to bear)

Sunday, August 22, 2010

10 Favorite Films +1

1.Casablanca
2.Breakfast at Tiffany's
3.Life is Beautiful
4.The General

 5.The Breakfast Club

6.Scent of a Woman

7.The Killing Fields

8.The Pianist

9.Delicatessen

10.Band of Outsiders

(11.) The 400 Blows