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My Thoughts on the Class

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Overall, I enjoyed the class. I originally took the class as an elective because I took a lit and film class in high school and thought that it would be similar. This class focused more on the film and cultural impact that the film had while the class in high school focused on comparing books and films. The material regarding film and filmmaking were very similar so this class was too difficult for me. Going into the class I had prior knowledge about shots, angles, sound, and other filmmaking techniques. The movies in this class were very different from the other class, which I enjoyed. They were movies that I would have probably never gone and seen on my own, so this class exposed me to different types of movies. I would say that my favorite movie we watched besides Cars would either be Get Out or Jaws. I liked Get Out because it was probably the most modern film that we watched in class. The plot was interesting and intense in a good way. It did have a somewhat fear factor to it, whi...
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My Thoughts on Cars

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Cars is an animated film that was released in 2006 by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. The film takes place in a world where everyone and everything is an automobile. It follows an arrogant rookie racer Lightning McQueen, who is about to have the biggest race of his lifetime. Lighting McQueen, Chicks Hicks, and Strip Weathers all tie the last race for the Piston Cup, so the racing comity decides to have a final race winner takes all styles in California in a week. Lighting McQueen and Chicks Hicks are competing for sponsorship from Dinco, the biggest racing company, who are losing their current car Strip Weathers after the final race. Lighting McQueen wants to be the first to California to try and get the sponsorship, so he tells his driver to drive through the night. They both end up falling asleep and Lighting McQueen falls out the back of the car and ends up in a small town called Radiator Springs. He ends up destroying the road and is sentenced to fix the road. All...
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My Thoughts on Moonlight

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 Barry Jenkins' 2016 film Moonlight is a coming-of-age film that follows the life of a homosexual black man named Chiron. It has a unique style, where it broke his life up into three chapters. The first chapter is titled Little and takes place when he is a kid. He meets Juan, a drug dealer, when he is running away from other kids who are chasing him and calling him names. In the first chapter, Juan acts as a father figure for Chiron as he often runs away from his house to go to Juan's house. Juan has a roommate Terresa who is somewhat of a mother figure for Chiron. Later in the chapter, we find out that Chiron's mom is a drug addict. Chapter two follows Chiron when he is a teenager. He still is dealing with bullies and his drug-addicted mother. He spends the night at Teresa's house because his mom told him he had to leave the house for the night. It seems that he would often go to Juan and Terresa's house while growing up. We find out that Juan died and seems like C...
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Jaws Scene Study

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 One scene that stuck out to me was the get out of the water scene. This is after the first shark attack, and no one really knew about the shark. Everyone is in the water and Chief Brody is very focused on the water to see if the shark is at the beach. A group of kids go into and then all of a sudden the shark attacks a kid and blood emerges in the water, which puts the beach into a panic. Everyone runs out of the water and then it turns out the shark killed a kid.  There were a few moments in this scene that stood out to me. There are a few shots where people are talking to Brody, but he seems to ignore them. They are just in his way of watching the waters. These types of shots sort of represent all the obstacles in the way of Brody trying to make the beaches safe such as the mayor not closing the beach, Brody's fear of the water, etc. It just seems as if he has so much in his way. The unique camera angle helped to add some suspense because the audience had a feeling tha...
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My Thoughts on Jaws

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The 1975 thriller Jaws was directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the 1974 novel by Peter Benchley. It stars Roy Scheider as Brody, the chief of police, Richard Dreyfuss who plays Hooper, a marine biologist, and Robert Shaw who plays Quint, a shark hunter. The film begins with some college kids on a beach on Amity Island at night and a girl decides to go swimming. While swimming, the girl gets attacked and eaten by a shark. The next morning the police find the body and send the body to the morgue to find out what happened. They find out she was attacked by a shark, so Brody tries to shut down the beaches until they can deal with the shark. The mayor says he can't because the town realizes on the beaches for money and the 4th of July is coming up. Another shark attack happens, but this time a little boy dies. This causes panic in the town, but the mayor tells them not to worry. The boy's mom puts up a flyer giving anyone $3,000 for catching the shark. The fishermen flood the oc...
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My Thoughts on Swiss Army Man

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Swiss Army Man is a comedy/drama film that was written and directed by Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan. The movie stars Paul Dano as Hank and Daniel Radcliffe as Manny. The film opens with Hank stranded on an island about to take his own life but sees a body that washed up on shore. Hank goes over to the body and the body starts to fart. Hank then uses the farts to ride the body like a jet ski to reach another island. Hank then carries the body around the island to try and find a way home. They reach a shelter where the body comes back to life but knows nothing. Hank gives him the name Manny and starts to tell him about everything. By teaching Manny things about the world and having Manny experience different emotions and events, Manny gains "abilities" such as being able to shoot things out of his mouth and use his body like an axe. Throughout their time in the wilderness, Hank has Manny live out some of the events that have happened in Hank's life to try and motivate M...
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The Reality of Making a Short Film

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The genre of our group's short film was Western. As a group, we were trying to think of ideas when picking a genre and ended up with Western. We thought that this wouldn't be too difficult of a genre to do as we could do a typical Western stand-off. We went through a somewhat typical process when making a short film. Once we had our genre and a general idea of what we wanted to do, we did some research and found some scenes that were similar to what we wanted to do. We then created a rough storyboard of what we were going to do and drew what some of the scenes looked like. After that, we planned when and where we were going to shoot the film. We obviously weren't able to shoot in a desert or use guns, so we improvised and used the room on res rec 3rd floor and used our hands as guns. We then met as a group and filmed all the scenes in one meeting time, which was very convenient. After that, we spent the next day or so editing the clips together and adding some music/sound e...
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