A Knights Tale

       The body of work I have chosen to recommend for this weeks assignment is A Knight's Tale, written and directed by Brian Helgeland. I feel like this film is worth discussing because of its storytelling and use of time period.

      I find myself constantly fascinated by this film, enough that it has made its way to become one of my all time favorite movies. Don't get me wrong, the story itself is extremely cookie cutter. It's a pretty cut-and-dry underdog story with a feel good end that pretty much works for any audience. Yet, despite it's simple outlook, it has a strange way of throwing a wrench in the works. For a fairly simple story set deep into the middle ages, it has extremely modern music.

     Modern music in a historic setting is not exactly ground breaking in the film industry, but the difference is with A Knights Tale, the modern music is all diegetic, it takes place within the cannon of the story. The film starts with audiences chanting "We will rock you" at a joust match. This is just the first of many similar scenes in which medieval characters interact with modern music. This diegetic use of modern music is something I haven't seen in any other film yet. I think this kind of direction in a movie is fun and exciting and I would love to see more of it in other films.

Since I cannot legally link to the full movie, I have attached a link to the film trailer on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH6U5y086hw

Asterios Polyp

This read was far more interesting that I thought it would be at first. I didn't like that art style, or the colors used, or even the main character from the beginning. I found them dull and irritating. However, I am glad that I didn't give up on Asterios then. This graphic narrative is one that I believe readers have to invest in. It might take some time, but in the end it will be worth the while.

The main thing that really got my attention about Asterios Polyp were the extremely multifaceted characters. No character was straight forward, stereotypical, or plain in any way. Each character seemed to grow and change in the readers eye as the story rolled onwards. Take Ursula Major, for example. She could be many things; a loud mouth mother doing nothing at home while her husband works, an empty headed broad who is too focused on superstitions, or even a woman who is just too focussed on her own work to be concerned about her family. However, she is none of those. Despite all the stereotypes one could make of her, she thoughtfully defies them as a character, proving to be more thought provoking and loving than anyone could expect at a first glance. That to me, is how to write a character well, and Asterios Polyp does that time and time again with much of the other characters in the story.

This, and many more reasons like the metaphors in art style and the thought provoking story line is why I believe more people should read this. As far as graphic novels go, this has to be one of the best most thought provoking narratives I've read yet.

Effects of the photo

The effects of this photo of Donal Trump can vary complete depending on the views and experiences of the audience. One may see...

•         A business man in a sharp pressed suit
•        A showman who makes big gestures
•         Someone speaking passionately
•        A Politician over exaggerating
•        He is making an ugly face
•        He has a bad spray tan, weird hair
•        He seems abrasive
•        He takes up most of the space in the image, making him seem impressive, larger than life

This is just one image of this man out of thousands. I tried to choose this picture in a way that could be spun against him, for him, or just generally neutral toward Trump and his campaign. I think that the viewer will see what they want to see from this image.

Media Today

        

           

On the subject of media, I find myself strangely set apart from what I feel most people believe. I constantly see posters and artwork and similar types of works discussing how media today is poisoning society. We are so involved in our phones in our social medias that we don't even notice our neighbors. That social media is making us forget how to think and we can no longer see the world for what it is. I believe that all of these things are simply untrue.

If you paused for a minute and looked at media without only looking at the few bad things that may come up, you would see that there are so many amazing things it can do for people! For once thing, in recent years we have seen a major rise in crowd funding and charity work through donation type websites that bring help to even the smallest of causes, like, say, helping pay for a local college students expensive school supplies. People are helping each other to do things they might not have been capable of without the help of the media.

For me personally, I also believe that communication is a hug benefit and the main reason media is beneficial to our modern life style. Some cynics may see people on a bus, absorbed into their phones and hardly noticing anyone around them. The could have a chat with a stranger, but they are instead sucked into the digital world. What the viewer doesn't see is that this person might just be having a conversation with a relative they rarely get to see, or someone they love and need to talk to. I myself am this kind of person. Not only am I in a committed long distance relationship. but my father is also all the way across the world in Shanghai, China. With differences in time zones and varying schedules, I don't always have a choice in when I can talk to my loved ones. This does not make me, or anyone else, obsessed or addicted to media.

Voice of the Autheur

I don't think I have ever thought to focus on a directors works specifically enough to think about who the director is, so this assignment is a first for me. In fact, I find I hardly ever think about the director much in the first place. So much emphasis is put on the actors and their characters, it can sometimes be hard to remember that there is in fact a director behind it at all. This assignment was actually a refreshing change in thought for me.

I chose to focus on three works by Sofia Coppola. I had previously seen her work in Marie Antoinette, a movie I had sought on my own, and quite enjoyed. This gave me a basis of thought for the next two films of hers I watched, which were Somewhere and The Bling ring. I tried to pick films that seemed varied from the synopsis so I could get a better read on who she was as a writer.

From that moment a theme became abundantly clear. Even from looking at the descriptions of the movies you can see the main idea she is getting at. In each of the films I watched, there was the idea that being rich and famous was not everything in life. In Somewhere, an actor searches for himself after spending more time with his daughter. In Bling Ring, teenagers get carried away trying to gain the life and luxury of the rich and famous. They all pretty much had this common theme; it's not all it's choked up to be.

Another observation I had was that in all of the movies I watched there was a kind of jarring, unclear and somewhat melancholy ending. In Marie Antionette, she is forced to leave her home, and is eventually killed as we know because of the unrest in France. It is such a contrast to many of the other parts of the film. I believe Coppola wrote these somewhat unsatisfying endings in a way that complimented her theme very well. Not only is being rich and famous not all it's choked up to be, but it also doesn't just get better to have a perfect happy ending.

Director of a manuscript

    For this assignment I read the manuscript for the film Heavenly Creatures directed by Peter Jackson. The manuscript was strongly based around a murder by two young girls in nineteen fifties New Zealand. Having been ti New Zealand this past summer, I had heard about the film from people I stayed with, and seen a couple seconds of footage from the film. I had also read up a bit on the story behind the actual murder, but never the film.

If I were to make this film, I would like to focus on being the director of photography. The manuscript contained so much colorful dialogue and thought through the two protagonists. It also had such varying moods in the writing that being able to show these emotions through the lens of the camera is essential.

As Director of Photography, I would focus mainly on color keys of shots, and specifically pushing moods and tones through color. The characters in this story often talk about how life is better, more colorful, more perfect when they are together. It would not be hard to show this by simply bringing highly saturated colors into every scene that contained them both, and then having the shots with them separated be very monotone. In this way I believe the movie would be very clear in it's meaning and story telling. These were two young girls who couldn't stand to be apart and didn't like their home life, and that needs to be shown to push the film along.

Dream into a Movie and Real life experience

       The dream begins in a train station. It is bright, immaculately clean, a extremely colorful. The station is eerily empty. "I", the viewer, am standing waiting for the train. I do not look like my normal self, but in the context i understand that this is me. I stand in silence, watching the large central clock of the station lobby. suddenly the train rushes in, blowing my hair and clothes around me.
      Once I'm on the train, I can see the world outside the station. It is lush and green, a beautiful view of nature. Out on the horizon, it becomes obvious that this is a different planet. The sky has a golden tint with several moons and planetary rings visibly in the sky.
The train takes me to a golden building, much bigger than the train station. It seems to take up the space of a whole city. A library. Inside there are thousands upon millions of books, more than a person could imagine. It is filled with people and books floating through the air, ladders to high shelves that go hundreds of feet in the air move on their own. There is a small amount of chatter in the air but otherwise it is calmly quiet.
      I know already that this isn't a normal library. I sit down and open the first book in front of me, it has a thick blue green color with gold bands. Immediately after I have opened the cover I am transported into the book. I am the main character, a young girl with twelve foot wings sprouting out of my back. I am a thief in a world where superpowers and mutations exist, and those who have them are persecuted. As the books story and the characters life get dangerously scary, I find myself wanting to leave the book, but I cannot. The worlds within the books have become sentient, and are trapping people within them. I do what I think would happen in the book, changing the plot to my own ideas as I go. The only way I can get out is by completing the plot of the book. I live out this story I am stuck in. Once I have completed the plot, I am thrown out into my own "normal body" again, but it feels wrong. I feel like I am that character now and I can't go back to who I was.

I am outside on a spring afternoon. Birds chirp quietly in the distance, and leaves flutter down gently from the trees. The flowers on all of the trees and bushes have just peaked with blossoms. Fuchsia and golden trumpet tree blossoms paint the concrete in hues of pink and yellow. There are also several flower beds in bloom; they hug the bases of massive aged oak trees and decorate artistic statues.
A gentle breeze flows through my hair. It is cool, but not cold or uncomfortable. The Spanish moss hanging from the old oak tree above me sway delicately in the wind.
All of my surrounding seem to be completely calm. Even the cars that pass by a quiet and almost rhythmic.
This is the kind of place where I could lay out on the grass with all the clovers and flowers and stare up at the sky, making shapes from clouds. I used to do that so much as a kid, but I'm to busy for that kind of imagination anymore.