Dark City

A film movement, German Expressionism happened in 1919-1926, after the World War I.
The filmmakers start to apply the human emotion and sexuality in the movement to express their modern art. The films' themes in German Expressionism are the revolt, self-analysis, madness and primitive, sexual savagery. The concept of the films is to present the true essence of people and things into visible form to make the film be more realistic and familiar to the audiences.

German Expressionism is far different from Surrealism. Surrealism present the content which let the audiences find the hidden message from unconsciousness but the German Expression is not. German Expression aligned with the terms of narrative, set and mise-en-scene. This film movement has different critics in the different era since the interpretations vary. Some viewed German explore the mental issue on the brink of madness, obsessed with death and fatality and ready to encompass fascism.( Hayward, 2013) (Kracauer, 1992 & to some extend Eisner, 1969), and others viewed the films as an attempt to escape even into horror from a dreadful effect of the economic crisis and inflation (Manuell and Fraenkel, 1971).

The German expressionist film has unique style such as diagonal camera angle, distorted body image and the setting with incongruous but Gothic at the same time. The lighting will have a very high contrast between light and dark (also known as chiaroscuro) to create the dramatic shadows. In the elements of the mise-en-scene, actors' performance has a very important role as the actors' body is as much a producer of meaning on that particular scene. In German expressionism, the filmmakers start to concern about the cinematic equipment with technology hence one of the technique in editing which is called 'montage' has been created and impacted on German films in the mid-1920s.

Dark city is an America neo-noir science fiction film in 1988 and directed by Alex Proyas. The story starts with a naked man lying in a bathtub and he noticed that he is in a hotel room with a female half-naked dead body. He is suffering from lost memories and suddenly receives a phone call from Dr. Schereber who asks him to escape from a chasing by a group of unknown men (known as strangers). The man realized his name was John Murdoch from his lost wallet. In the journey of finding his memories and escaping from the unknown men and police force, he actually found out he got a mind power which is called 'tuning' and the Strangers also possess. In every 12am, people will fall asleep and the strangers will rebuild the whole city while Dr. Schereber will change people's memory by injected new memory for them. Murdoch finally able to investigated the whole city actually is a space habitat and controlled by the force field which operated by the Strangers. The purpose of the Strangers to build this city is to investigate how to get the human 'soul' for them. At the end of the story, Murdoch uses his tuning and new memory to defeat all the Strangers and control the whole city. Murdoch meets his wife Emma on a pier but she already injected a new memory and new identity as Anna. They plan to walk to the Shell Beach and start their new relationship.

The main element of German expressionism can be found in Dark City is self-analysis. John Murdoch suffering from memory loss in the hotel and desperate to know who is him. He realizes his name was J. Murdoch from the hotel registration book and he is non-stop questioning himself what is his full name. When he met Dr. Schereber. he asking his true identity and leads his anger approached until shows his tuning power. Next, the lighting of the whole film is dark and with high contrast visual. This lighting effect will provide a sense of mystery to the audience and able to enhances the investigation nature of the film. The Strangers try to kill Murdoch as they are worry Murdoch tuning power is too powerful and might lead a threat for them. The weapon they use to kill Murdoch is a knife and this is a primitive sexual savagery behavior. The mise-en-scene of the film is surrounded with gothic and stylized buildings. Distorted bodies occur on the Strangers as they actually are aliens but they appears in a human form.

In conclusion, the film movements in the different generation have built today's film industry. We still can see today's film with the concept of German Expressionism. The technique and knowledge are very important to every filmmaker as a guideline to produce a great film with originality principal but aligns with the creativity by a new concept.

Paranorman

ParaNorman, an American 3D stop-motion animated horror-comedy film which directed by Sam Fell and Chris Butler and released on 2012. This is the first animation movie I enjoyed in Film Studied tutorial class and the film has different genres such as Comedy, Horror, Action, and Melodrama.
In previous blog post, I've posted about how to categorize film genre by Rick Altman's theory which is the Semantic and Syntactic theory.

Semantics: list of common traits and attitudes, bringing us to very much the visual aspect.
*Which means that mise-en-scene: lighting, costume and makeup, actor's performance and movements, setting and props become a building block of the genre.

Syntactic: a constitutive relationship.
*Able to define a genre through a structure with deeper meaning. For example conversation between actors, types of character, ideologies, etc.
Genre can be analysis and better understanding through combining these two components.

Nowadays, the genre is still important for audiences and filmmakers for categorizing, marketing purpose and even filmmaking guideline.

ParaNorman is about an 11 years old boy who able speaks to the ghosts and everyone around him treat he like a freak. However, Norman still finds a best friend named Neil, a fat boy who also always being bullied. One day, Norman's uncle, Mr. Prenderghast's spirit tells him to read a book beside Witch's old grave before sunset today to prevent the Witch's curse happen. However, Norman reads the book in the wrong venue and attracted five male and two female zombies chase after him and Alvin, a school bully. After few obstacles, Norman finally finds the truth of Witch's curse and he decided to solve the Witch's curse trouble which always repeat every year.

How to define ParaNorman as Action film?

Action film often requires high tempo, continuous high energy and a lot of physical stunts. The pace of editing will be fast and a lot of fast cuts with non-stop motion. They are few chasing scene appear in the film such as the zombies chase after Norman and Alvin but luckily Norman's sister Courtney, Neil and Neil's elder brother, Mitch is searching for Norman by driving. During the escape, they pass by a policewoman with high-speed driving. Hence, the chasing between car, zombies and police motorbike happens. Besides, the zombies have been attracted to go to the town where Norman lives. However, the people in the town do not afraid of the zombies even a little girl who very brave to fight against the zombies. In my opinion, maybe they are influenced by the modern technologies elements which often show violent and horror genre media contents. 

Next, Horror genre often makes audience frighten and panic. Although ParaNorman's horror element is not so strong but Horror is the main genre in this film since it appears zombies and witch which consider as unnatural horror subgenre. Horror film often in a terrifying, shocking finale, while captivating and entertaining us at the same time in a cathartic experience. In my opinion, the most exciting horror part in ParaNorman is when the zombies chase after Norman and Alvin until Mr. Prenderghast's house. This is because when Norman and Alvin are hiding from the zombies, I'm very nervous that they will be found by the zombies or safely escape from them. On top of that, the design of the zombies makes me feel uncomfortable as their limbs or ear will tear apart easily from their body. Mr. Joe stated that horror genre always creates a threat to normalcy, it always wants us to move apart from American Dream.

Comedy is a genre which totally different from the horror genre. The comedy genre humorously exaggerates the situation, the language, action, and characters. Comedies observe the deficiencies, foibles, and frustrations of life, providing merriment and a momentary escape from day-to-day life. They usually have happy endings, although the humor may have a serious or pessimistic side. In my opinion, the main character who able to bring comedy atmosphere to the audience is Neil. For me, he is a very cute fat boy who is very optimistic and cares about his friend. Every time he appears, he definitely will bring a smile to the audience. In the scene where Norman and his gang want to find the location of the Witch's graveyard in the town hall. They are very nervous to find and read a ton of book in the town hall but Neil is not panic at all. In worse, he just read the page number the book. After Norman reads a lot of books, Neil only completes his mission which is discovering the page number of the first book. He might not smart and with a good looking but I can refuse to fall in love with this character. His innocent brings a lot of funny moments in the film which able to release the tension in the film.

In conclusion, postmodernism has made the genre transform and expand in different key concept. For example, ParaNorman is one of the famous and success hybrid genre film. It blends two film genres together which is Horror and Comedy. The filmmakers often want to be creative and always want to break the rules however film must possess universal or general semantics.





Reference
Filmsite. N.p., 2016. Web. 22 June 2016. Retrieved from: http://www.filmsite.org/roadfilms.html

The Conjuring 2

'The Conjuring 2' released within a couple of days, my friends and I went to the cinema to watch this movie. This is the very first time I watched a horror movie in the cinema. Usually, I will hide under my blanket and 'enjoy' the horror movie in my room because I knew that the sound system and visual effect in the cinema are going to enhance the horror elements in the movie greatly.

During watching the movie, I actually screamed in the cinema. But luckily my friend's screaming was louder than mine. Undeniably, this is a great movie and I enjoyed it a lot although it was very scary!

'The conjuring 2' is a supernatural horror film which directed by one of my favorite directors, James Wan.
The story is about a poor single family with four children, the Hodgson family suffering from a series of paranormal events in their haunted house. Ed and Lorraine Warren, husband and wife and also paranormal investigators approach to the family and try to solve the paranormal problems.

I like the mise-en-scene in this movie.
The setting of the film is in London with a time frame around 70's. I love the old street in London during the winter season. Through the movie, I saw a lot of vintage props, for examples the spin dial phone, black and white television and the remote control with the big buttons. From the setting, we can confirm the Hodgson Family is a poor family because their house is old and shabby. The furniture in the house is worn and there is a scene which the single mother Peggy, goes to the basement with her friend to do the laundry. Unfortunately, the washing machine has broken down. This makes me sad because they actually living in a very bad condition.
We can see a huge contrast between Warren couple's house condition if compared to Hodgson's.
Warren's house have complete and outstanding furniture plus the house is decorated with a lot of flora which able to make the house's environment become more friendly and warm.

Costume and make-up often able to enhance the appearance of the actors. To show the destitute of the Hodgson Family, the characters often wear the clothes with not much of design and all of them are in dull color. Unlike Warren couple, Ed is often wearing a hoodie with fashion design which is still popular in our decade while Lorraine often wearing Western women suit with elegant design. Make-up works very well on Janet, the second oldest child in Hodgson family. Janet always possessed by the old man spirit, Bill Wilkins. Wilkins is the previous owner of the house, he often possesses Janet's body to communicate with others. In the beginning, Janet is a beautiful and energetic young girl however she becomes weaker and exhausted after haunted by the ghost spirit. The make-up makes Janet's face pale and dark circles lies under her eyes to show Janet is extremely tired and depress.

Lighting plays an important role in a film. Low-key illumination usually applied in the horror films as it able to create stronger contrast and darker shadows. Low-key illumination makes the horror scenes become full of mystery and danger. For example, Billy, the youngest child in Hodgson family go downstair during the midnight to have a drink. The darkness in the house makes the audience feel nervous and curious whether Billy will get harm or return to his room safely. When Billy on his way returns to his room, he accidentally steps on his toy fire trucks. After that, he kicks the fire trucks into an Indian tent then return to his room and prepare for sleep. The tent suppose have nobody inside of it but the fire trucks actually moves by itself and enters into Billy's room. The darkness in the tent makes the audience unable to look into it and it creates mystery and horror element in that scene as we are curious what is in the tent.

In my opinion, a success film which able to make audiences enjoy and get into it, the enhancement of the films by sound effect cannot be ignored. To increase the horrific of the evil figures in 'The Conjuring 2' such as Crooked man, Bill Wilkins and Valak (the nun), their voice and screaming are creepy and stunning. Especially when Wilkins talks through Janet's body, the pitch of the voice is low and it makes the environment become more creepy and makes people shocking since Janet is just a little girl but with an old man voice. Valak, the nun does not have a dialog but her anger able to express via her roar especially the scene in Act three, Lorraine try to rescue Ed and Janet but Valak tries to stop her. I think that the scariest scene is Ed and Peggy go down to the basement and try to fix the washing machine. Ed found out that the washing machine has no problem but the pipe has blocked. Ed tries to fix the pipe which located in the middle of the flooded basement. At the moment Ed is fixing the pipe, Peggy sees some blurred spirit figure behind Ed. The background music enhances the nervous phenomena, and the jump scare works very well when the sound effect combine with the Wilkins who hides in the water and pulls Peggy into water. Sometimes, I'm confusing I was scared by the paranormal in the film or just the sound effects. I believed that a horror film is just a nothing if without the sound effect or background music.