Once Apon A Time In The West

Once Upon a Time in the West.

A spaghetti western film was released in 1968. We are first shown a desolate train station in the middle of Arizona. It was made by Sergio Leone.
The first scene is set in a lonely train station when a conductor is writing on the blackboard, where the sound of chalk can be heard, scrapping. As he looks up he can see a huge figure in the doorway, a slow pan up the body and the sound of the door creaking make the character look powerful and mysterious. To our next shot we are made certain as a black cowboy is in the doorway. An eerily silence creates tension as 3 other cowboys are in all of the exits. The icon of a black cow boy is very unusual as is making a statement that’s no only that the situations is weird but the presents of a African American man.

Digetic and Non Digetic sounds: Digetic sound is what is actually happening e.g. Doors creaking birds signing.
Non Digetic: Is sound that has been placed over the top to add emphasis e.g. Violin strum add tension.

Both type of these sound are used in the film.
Chalk Scraping on the black board, this show the area is eerie and quiet, the sound of chalk send shivers all over the body and something is not right about the sound this can add tension or make the audience unstable about whats going to happen.
Footsteps: The footsteps have been amplified to show the potential to what this character can do, this make the first impression of the character a powerful and methodical by the rate of his steps.

Non Digetic: In the opening sequence there’s no non-Digetic sound.

Final Cut part 2

After have a second go on final cut i have learnt to develop certain skills.

For example How to capture the film, instead of setting in and out points, setting the capture mode to 32khz DV pal, and just captureing different scenes remaining it and caputure more. Its a time consumming proces but is worth it as its a way of overlooking all of the footage you have captured.

Adding clips to the time line if they don't play you have to render then by pressing command R. THis allows the fottage to be played.

To add a title in the preview box (mmiddle ) on the bottom right hand corner there is an icon press that and edit you texts.

No country for old men.

No Country for old men was released in 2007 and directed by the Cohen brothers. I was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won four, including Best Picture. The scene is set in west Texas in the 1980’s. There are some fabulous establishing shot of the desolate scenes of the landscape, here is no sound which creates the tension as a sense of mystery is involved.

The next scene is of a man being arrested by a police officer and being placed in the car. The Officer is a very stereotypical, as he has aviators which is a type of symbolism. This man is very vague to the audience and causes us to be assuming this man is very suspicious, we are then shown a phone call from the arresting officer to the sheriff about a oxygen cylinder confiscated of this man. In the back ground of this phone call.
The man is taking his hands from behind his back and walking to the officer. The strange man is next strangling the policeman with his handcuffs and the last shot of this scene is off the feet of the strangled police man with just the black skid marks of the soles of his shoes.

This opening scene is an amazing tone to start on, the range of shots used and how they create a mood so quickly is incredible.

Thriller Films

A thriller film is defined as a suspenseful adventure story, play or movie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thriller_(genre

A thriller movie is something with action, amazing story line and original. However thrillers have also become rather repetitive. For example watch the Knowing with Nicholas Cage. Had a very good story line and had me hooked, had amazing graphics as the plane crashed, but then as you were about to be given the final answer to the last date on the page, a load of aliens take his son and they survive and he's left on the earth crying and the whole world dies. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448011/

However films such as the Dark Knight with the last Heath Ledger, even though its been made several times, this film has been made its own by an amazing story line and amazing acting.

Other films: Pulp Fiction, The Matrix , Hotel Rwanda and The Terminator.

http://www.imdb.com/chart/thriller

Final Cut

Final Cut is a video editing software that allows you to edit and manipulate video captured on DV tapes. This software is very versatile as you are able to create lots of ways suited to an individuals preferred way of editing.

DV is a very consuming way of capturing video but its very easy to use. A second of DV video will consume 3.6MB of memory. A second is also known as 24 frames, there are 24 pictures for every second used in shooting. The buttons J,K,and L are used for certain tasks. J rewinds, K Pauses and L fast forwards. By pressing them more than once increases the rate. The space bar allows to pause and play.

The layout of final cut is very easy to navigate around, in the top left there is a box where the footage which is imported is stored. In here you can create BINS which is a folder which makes searching for clips very easy. Moving to the middle box on the top of the page is the preview box. This allows clips to be dragged in there and played. Either Frame by frame, fast forwarding, rewinding and pausing. The final box on the top right is the time line player. Along the bottom of the screen is a time line, clips can be dragged from the preview box to the time line. The time line player is basically the preview of the edited clips together.