Highlights from my 210 films of research

Earlier this week I reached my 400th film rating on Flixster; mainly as a result of all the film research I did for my graduation project over the past year (I've watched 210 films in 365 days)...
To mark this random milestone, and to counter all the negative reviews I tend to write, I thought I'd list some of the films that I can either critique positively or that were not great films but which still influenced my graduation project.
I've arranged some of the films by director (at the top of the list), and the rest are arranged by year of release.

Quentin Tarantino:
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Kill Bill v1 (2003)

Jean-Luc Godard:
A bout de Souffle / Breathless (1959)
Une Femme Est Une Femme / A Woman Is A Woman (1961)
Bande a Part (1964)
Pierrot Le Fou (1965)
Weekend (1967)

Alfred Hitchcock:
Rebecca (1940)
Rope (1948)
Strangers On A Train (1951)
Vertigo (1958)
Psycho (1960)

Tim Burton:
Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Big Fish (2003)
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005)

James Bond films:
Dr No (1962) Directed by Terence Young
Live And Let Die (1973) Directed by Guy Hamilton
Moonraker (1979) Directed by Lewis Gilbert
Octopussy (1983) Directed by John Glen
Casino Royale (2006) Directed by Martin Campbell

David Lynch:
Eraserhead (1977)
Blue Velvet (1986)
Mulholland Drive (2001)

Other films:
Bringing Up Baby (1938) Directed by Howard Hawks
The Spiral Staircase (1945) Directed by Robert Siodmak
Singin' In The Rain (1952) Directed by Stanley Donen/Gene Kelly
House On Haunted Hill (1959) Directed by William Castle
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) Directed by John Ford
Bonnie & Clyde (1967) Directed by Arthur Penn
The Amityville Horror (1979) Directed by Stuart Rosenberg
Cape Fear (1991) Directed by Martin Scorsese
The Shawshank Redemption (1994) Directed by Frank Darabont
Lola Rennt / Run Lola Run (1998) Directed by Tom Tykwer
Saving Private Ryan (1998) Directed by Steven Spielberg
American Beauty (1999) Directed by Sam Mendes
Memento (2000) Directed by Christopher Nolan
Vanilla Sky (2001) Directed by Cameron Crowe
Final Destination 2 (2003) Directed by David R. Ellis
Lost In Translation (2003) Directed by Sofia Coppola
Monster (2003) Directed by Patty Jenkins
Million Dollar Baby (2004) Directed by Clint Eastwood
13 Tzameti (2005) Directed by Géla Babluani
Lords of Dogtown (2005) Directed by Catherine Hardwicke
Saw 2 (2005) Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman
Final Destination 3 (2006) Directed by James Wong
The Departed (2006) Directed by Martin Scorsese
El Orfanato / The Orphanage (2007) Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona
This Is England (2007) Directed by Shane Meadows
Planet Terror (2007) Directed by Robert Rodriguez

Influences part 12: RKO Radio Pictures & Film Noir

One of the Big 5 from Hollywood's Golden Age, RKO is responsible for classics like King Kong, Citizen Kane, and Bringing Up Baby (all of which I have only just seen in the past few weeks)... However this post will not focus on those classic films because RKO's biggest influence on my work is their Film Noir.

I first became interested in the Film Noir genre after seeing Robert Rodriguez & Frank Miller's Sin City in 2005.
The first classic Film Noir that I watched was Stranger On The Third Floor over a year ago, and deciding that the genre has a really intriguing style, I have since wanted to create a film in a similar style. As Film Noir is associated with dark, suspenseful stories, and my graduation film has a suspense story set within a spooky/dark mansion, I thought it would be suitable for my graduation film this year.

Soon after I began writing the new darker/suspense story for my graduation film in November 2008, I found a 9-disc RKO Ultimate Film Noir Collection boxset in the shops, and despite knowing of only one film, I thought that the boxset would be useful research so I decided to buy it... Here are some of my favoured films from the boxset:

Out Of The Past (AKA Build My Gallows High)

Double Indemnity

The Big Steal (coloured version)

The Blue Dahlia

The Killers


Much like the work of Alfred Hitchcock, these Film Noir classics have greatly assisted in developing my graduation film. While Hitchcock's most notable influence on my work is the suspense element, I think that RKO's Film Noir work has most notably influenced the intriguing shot compositions and striking black and white aesthetics of the storyboards for my graduation film. Thanks to the RKO classics I am also strongly considering the use of an opening credit sequence rather than a closing credit sequence (which is now standard practice today); but the credit format will not be decided for a few months yet...

Influences part 11: Alfred Hitchcock

Doesn't this image look similar to the paintings of Edward Hopper? (See my earlier post about the influence of Hopper on my work).

The most obvious influence with Hitchcock's films on my graduation film is the suspense element that he is famed for. I have been interested in creating a suspense film since I started 3rd Year, but it was a long time before I considered writing such a story for my graduation film (roughly two months into my 4th Year, after having spent 5 months prior to that working on a different story)! But anyway, here I am (at last) with a suspense element in my graduation film, and I'm now much more enthusiastic about trying to pull it off.
In the last 6 months I have watched 14 Hitchcock films as influential research for developing the suspense element of my graduation film, as well as almost 100 other films for alternative research purposes. While the suspense element is what Hitchcock is famed for, there is no single/specific element that creates the suspense - it is built up with effective use of several elements together - and that is what I will try to focus on here...


Setting:
Hitchcock films are regularly set within common locations that either seem typical of any town in a Western country (for example within the town centre, library, church, motel, seaside resort), or in real-life locations that are well known (like San Francisco, Quebec, Mount Rushmore, Albert Hall). This gives the film a familiarity within which the audience does not expect crime or murder to happen, making the audience realise that such events could easily happen anywhere - including their own friendly neighbourhood. This prospect terrifies the audience, and the terror makes the audience anxious to discover what has or may happen, therefore creating a lot of suspense.
I feel as though this element of Hitchcock's work is not as effective in today's society because we get access to horrific news from around the world instantly through TV and the Internet. This means that we now get regularly bombarded with news of murder and crime, so it feels commonplace in the 21st Century, and this reality of commonplace murder therefore lessens the impact that fictional stories about death can have on us... This does not mean that fictional stories will no longer affect us like they affected people when Hitchcock made his greatest films, but simply that the setting of Hitchcock's films is not as relevant to today's society.
For example, I do not think that a film about war set in a Western country like America or Britain would have much impact on kids in those countries today because kids hear about their war in Iraq on TV but have little idea of the impact that war would have on their life, whereas if you show the same film to an older generation who experienced the Second World War, I think it would have a much greater impact on them because they have a real understanding of the story.
It is not that for a fictional suspense film to be effective today it must tell a story relatable to everyday life and set within a typical location, rather it is that the story should seem realistic without already being commonplace in the media.

Characters:
Aside from the fact that Hitchcock's protagonists are often played by the glamorous people of Hollywood, the characters in his stories are usually living a believable life (eg: a common man wrongfully accused of crime, a woman on the run, or someone in the wrong place at the wrong time) which helps the audience to relate to and sympathise with their situation.
The audience's sympathy for the character makes them more emotionally involved in the story, and therefore heightens the audiences response to the situation arising within the film. This emotional connection to the film is a key component with any film genre because without it the audience is likely to have little involvement with the story, and they will probably not care much for what is happening, or have any interest in seeing the film again.

Shot composition:
Hitchcock uses a lot 1st or 2nd Person shots (from a human perspective like head-height) that are immediately relevant to the viewpoint of a character in the story. This places the audiences directly into the action, and involves us with what the characters on screen are doing within our proximity. This places us in the same situation as the characters, allowing us to more-or-less experience their life, and feel what they feel. This shot composition makes the story situation feel real to us, and heightens our emotional response to the story - increasing the suspense.
Along with the regular use of 1st or 2nd Person shots, Hitchcock also uses what I will call "suggestive angles" (shot from a non-human perspective like the far end of a tunnel or from the ceiling - a position not immediately relevant to a specific character in the story) that takes the audience away from the situation of the characters in the story, but hints at something nearby that could be dangerous for the characters. This tells the audience of a threat that the characters in the film are unaware of, but rather than spoil the surprise for the audience, it makes the audience anticipate the threatening action, which then allows the film director to play with where, when, and how this threat will take place. It may occur immediately, or will occur after many false starts, or may not happen at all.
Regardless of what happens after the audience sees such a shot, the audience's anticipation of threat creates a natural suspense in the imagination of the audience, but the director will often choose to play with this natural suspense, and the less predictable the director's decision is, the better the suspense may be - so long as the director does not make it too recurrent.

Timing:
A basic film will be shot at a leisurely pace, but in order to create suspense the pacing will fluctuate more often. For example the pacing may slow right down to calm the atmosphere only for a sudden change to dramatically alter the story - creating a fright. The pacing may get quicker and build up to a frantic climax, or it may just steadily fluctuate to keep the audience guessing.
There are various rules commonly adopted by directors, but the key is to allow for change and not to be predictable or for the pace to be drastically off. As a general rule in relation to suspenseful moments, shots will slow down and there will be few cuts, so that the audience gets sucked right into the moment and is constantly expecting a sudden change to scare them.


Through the work of Hitchcock I have learnt a lot about pacing my film and shot composition, which has greatly assisted in developing the suspense elements of my graduation film.
There are a couple of things in my film that could be identified as being influenced by his work, but hopefully my eclectic range of other influences will make it more than just seem like an imitation of the Master of Suspense - because that is not what I have been aiming for.

To conclude, saying as I have barely referenced Hithcock's work in this post, here are some of my favourite Hitchcock films:
Vertigo,
North By Northwest,
I Confess,
Strangers On A Train,
Dial M For Murder,
Rear Window,
The Trouble With Harry
ROPE.

And here is a great website with lots of images from all of Hitchcock's films:
1000 Frames of Hitchcock

Influences part 5: Aki Kaurismäki

- He's a Finnish auteur filmmaker,
- He has an absurd/dead-pan sense of humour,
- And his films have New Wave elements...
How could I not like Aki Kaurismäki!?

I started watching films by Aki Kaurismäki in December 2008 because I wanted to make my graduation film in Finnish.
Why in Finnish you ask?
I dislike Scottish accents in the media, whereas I have grown up hearing lots of great Finnish racing drivers giving interviews on TV and I have always loved their accent, so that is my reason for using Finnish voices rather than French, German, English (or anything more "predictable").
I originally used Kaurismäki's films to check what Finnish dialgoue sounds like on film, but I found his work to be really interesting so I have continued to borrow his films from the college library on a near-weekly basis so that I can watch them all (I've currently seen about 8 of the available 12).

Below are some short reviews about some of the films I've seen so far:

Calamari Union (1985) follows a group of 15 strange men (14 of them are called Frank!) as they try to make their way to the mythical land of Eira. It is full of silly little things (perfectly suited to my sense of filmic humour) that, for me, make it such a delight to experience... It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I'd strongly recommend it just for the absurdity of it all!


Hamlet Goes Business (1987) is loosely based upon Shakespeare's Hamlet, but it also features a Swedish mafia trying to corner Finland's rubber duckie market! That story premise sounds fantastic, unfortunately it didn't live up to my high hopes.


Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989) is a ridiculous road movie about a 9-piece polka band with trademark foot-long pompadour hairstyles and long pointy shoes, that decide to leave the tundra to try making the big-time as a rock n roll band in America. This is perhaps his most commercial film, and for this reason is perhaps the easiest for general audiences to get into, but other than the absurdity of the band, I do not think it does the director justice. I would describe this film as This Is Spinal Tap meets The Blues Brothers translated by Borat...


Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana (1994) focuses on a roadtrip across Finland between a coffee addict and a vodka addict accompanied by two foreign women trying to reach Estonia. I would describe it as a minimalist New Wave film (having little in the way of dialogue or action), but it was really captivating! (I thought that one of the protagonsits was like a Finnish version of John Travolta in Pulp Fiction - which further enhanced the comedy element!)


The Man Without a Past (2002) opens with a man getting ruthlessly attacked as he sleeps on a park bench, he then goes through the film without any memories and making new friends with the poor whilst living in a cargo container and falling in love with a woman from the Salvation Army.
Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 98% rating, while Metacritic classifies it as deserving Universal Acclaim.



Related websites:
An in-depth biography at Virtual Finland

The Guardian interview, January 2003: 'I am a lousy film-maker'

Director info & DVD reviews at http://www.moviemail-online.co.uk/film/dvd/The-Aki-Kaurismaki-Collection-Vol-1/?tag=5|80

Film stills for Shadows In Paradise (1986)

Film stills for Ariel (1988)

Film stills for The Match Factory Girl (1990)

Film stills for The Man Without A Past (2002)

Film stills for Lights In The Dusk (2006)

Influences part 4: Jean-Luc Godard

Continuing on from yesterdays post about Tarantino and Godard, today I will mention some of the elements from various Godard films that are of interest to me, and that I tried to incorporate into my graduation film.

Within A Bout de Souffle (1959) the most notable experimental feature is the jump cut (1:50-1:58) , and it is probably the most important feature from Godard's work that has had an influence on my graduation film.

In Bande a Part (1964) Godard created several quirky set-pieces that are rather experimental but which also add a playful charm to the overall film, such as a 'minutes silence' in a loud cafe. I find these quirky features to be really rewarding but they seem to be missing from most modern films, so I would like to try incorporating similar things into my own film work.
Despite these wonderful quirky features, Anna Karina's beguiling performance as the naive Odile is for me the defining feature of Bande a Part. I always lose myself within Karina's youthful charm (even after however many repeat viewings).... And if I could capture just a tiny proportion of the essence of her performance for my own films then I would be a happy chappy!

I really like the futuristic styling in Alphaville (1965), but my favourite feature is one long continuous shot (2:39-4:39) as the camera follows the protagonist as he walks up to the reception and registers, enters two side-by-side glass elevators (one used by the cameraman, the other by the protagonist), goes up a few floors, out the elevators, along long corridors and around several corners, then up to a door. The whole sequence lasts 2 minutes, but the setting makes this shot feel natural and justified - whereas it would look terrible in a different type of film.
Godard plays with these drawn-out single shots throughout Weekend (1967) - where shots regularly run for at least 5 minutes, and a couple drag on for up to 14 minutes! Alfred Hitchcock even tried to film all 77 minutes of ROPE as if it were one continuous shot! I always find this style of shot quite amusing, and I tried incorporating it into my graduation film, but I did not have a shot suitable for this style - so wherever I tried it the shot would look really monotonous and just destroyed any excitement in my story.

Of all the elements in my graduation film so far, it is the jump cuts that I have found most intriguing. There are some scenes in my film where the quick dramatic montage style of jump cuts is not suitable for the nature of my story, but with conservative use of the jump cut I think it will be really effective.


Here are some links about Godard:
Extensive information regarding Jean-Luc Godard at Senses of Cinema

Article in The Guardian, August 2008: One Big Act

Article in The New York Times, August 1985: SCREEN: 'DETECTIVE,' BY JEAN-LUC GODARD

Influences part 3: Quentin Tarantino

I am really surprised by how much my artistic interests have developed over the course of my studies at eca. Three years ago I knew very few artists and artworks from outside American/British mainstream culture, and I had little enthusiasm for learning about anything different from what I was already aware of.
These days my artistic interests have changed drastically, so much so that I now find little of interest in American/British culture, and very few of my artistic interest are from American or British contemporary culture. It has got to the point where I now have no problem with criticising the work of Pixar (whom I considered almost God-like in 1st and 2nd Year), and I no longer worry about having to sit through an old, black and white, poor quality, foreign film that I've never heard of. It is perhaps unexpected then that Quentin Tarantino is such an influence on me, but here is why...

Tarantino successfully combined his own interest in elements of cultural cinema (like Film Noir, B-Movies, and French New Wave) with modern mainstream Hollywood, and he ended up producing highly individual films that motivated me to learn about different forms of cinema. He is therefore most responsible for my eclectic range of film influences.
Pulp Fiction in particular is his most important film to me because it sparked my interest in cultural cinema. The film is best known for the non-linear timeline that intertwines so many contrasting characters, but as is noted in the director's commentary, Pulp Fiction owes an awful lot to various films from the past. During the directors commentary Tarantino regularly relates so many interesting elements of his film to the work of French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard.


Godard is responsible for several of those random quotes that I heard during 1st and 2nd Year at eca such as "film is the truth at 25 times a second" and "of course a film should have a beginning, middle, and end, but not neccesarily in that order", yet I never cared about who Godard was or what he did until hearing about him so often through Tarantino.
After spending part of the summer holidays in 2007 watching my Tarantino DVD box set, I began 3rd Year at eca with a strong desire to see some of the French New Wave films by Godard. My first Godard film was Bande a Part (1964) and I fell in love with it almost instantly (coincidentally, Tarantino named his production company, Band Apart, after Godard's film). Thanks to Tarantino's interest in the work of Godard and the extensive DVD collection in the eca library, Godard is now one my own most influential directors.
These two directors are responsible for the many other cultural films that I am now interested in, and I owe several design elements of my graduation film to the works of Tarantino and Godard.

If only I could get a dance sequence into my film...


Notes:
- Quentin Tarantino's debut film, Reservoir Dogs (1991), "loudly announced Tarantino as a talent to be reckoned with and remains one of the most important films ever made" (Reservoir Dogs DVD sleeve notes, 2004). And he has since directed Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill volume 1 & 2, and Deathproof.
- Jean-Luc Godard's debut film, A Bout de Souffle - AKA Breathless - (1959), "spearheaded the French New Wave of film making, recognised as one of the most stylish and influential movements in cinema" (A Bout de Souffle DVD sleeve notes, 2000). Other notable Godard films include Bande a Part, Weekend, and Alphaville (Aki Kaurismaki, another of my most influential directors, named his own production company, Villealfa, after this Godard film).

Influences

Here is a list of my artistic influences from various art disciplines. (The list will grow as my own work develops over time).
I aim to write about the work of each artist and highlight how they influence me so that readers can learn more about my influences, and hopefully gain something from this.
So that readers can easily access more information about any of the artists listed, I have linked most of the artists' names to either the blog post that I have already written about their work, or to an appropriate website that showcases their work...

FROM ANIMATION:
- The animation department at ECA
- Piotr Dumala
- Aleksandr Petrov
- Yuri Nortsein - watch video on YouTube
- Michael Dudok de Wit - see work at ACME Filmworks.com
- Aleksandra Korejwo - her website
- Caroline Leaf - her website
- Paul Bush - his website
- Pixar - their website
- Aardman - their website
- Hanna-Barbera - read Wikipedia article
- The Fleischer Brothers - read Wikipedia article
- Walt Disney - read Wikipedia article

FROM FILM:
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Jean-Luc Godard
- Aki Kaurismäki
- Quentin Tarantino
- Tim Burton
- David Lynch - read Wikipedia article
- Martin Scorsese - read Wikipedia article
- Michel Gondry - see work at Partizan.com
- Nicolas Provost - his website
- French New Wave film theories - read Wikipedia article
- RKO Radio Pictures & Film Noir

FROM PAINTING:
- Edward Hopper
- Berthe Morisot
- Vincent Van Gogh
- Paul Cezanne
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir
- Claude Monet
- Mary Cassatt - see work at MaryCassatt.org
- Rembrandt
- Vermeer
- Gil Elvgren
- J.D. Fergusson
- Camille Pissarro
- Wassily Kandinsky
- Pablo Picasso
- Banksy - his website

FROM ILLUSTRATION:
- Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
- Arthur Rackham
- Edward Gorey
- Gustave Dore
- Frank Miller
- Tim Sale - his website
- Rene Gruau
- Zina Saunders

FROM PHOTOGRAPHY:
- Thomas Allen
- Henri Cartier Bresson

MISC:
- Romanticism
- Art Deco
- Art Nouveau
- Gothic art
- Expressionism
- Music videos - blog post 1
- Music videos - blog post 2
- TV adverts - blog post 1