The first film that was watched was called ‘Hard Labour’ and was about a Croatian woman living and working in British house, but has been having sex with the Man. She then gets pregnant the same time the wife gets pregnant and lies that the father is away. She is forced to get an abortion and blackmails the husband to not do anything to her otherwise she’ll tell his wife what is going on. At the end she runs away with the couples’s baby and takes the train.
I feel that the narrative was simple. This is as it got straight to the point and didn’t waste time. The narrative was also similar to many British soaps likes Eastenders so I was used to seeing it storylines like it. I feel like the ending was unexpected but a good ending because it made the film a little bit better. However there was some times that I lost track due to boredom and watching the same type of storyline before.
There was a lack of dialogue which made me concentrate on the shots. The shots were very simple and typical and nothing excited me about them and I couldn’t take anything from it.
What I feel I can take from this film to make my own movie is that I can take a common and simple idea but change it into something better and exciting by a good and unexpected ending.
Stripes
Strips is a film about a trespasser who breaks into a mans house that he remembers used to bully him when he was a kid in Secondary school and wants to remind him about all the misery and sorrow he put him through and wants to take revenge.
The narrative for this film I feel was very good as I wanted to watch on to see what would happen. Every time the intruder was talking I wanted to hear the other mans response and see what was going to happen to him. However I did feel it was a bit predictable as I knew the intruder was going to do something to the man for pay back. The ending of the film was effective because although I had guessed that the intruder was going to harm the man, the director didn’t actually show it but heard it through OFF SCREEN.
Another reason for why I liked the storyline was because it changed the perceptions of the protagonist to an antagonist and back to a protagonist again. This is when he gets tired to a chair his an protagonist and then when the intruder tells him all the things he did to him the audience see him in a different light(antagonist) and then when the man is going to slash his face you feel a bit of sympathy for him.
Dialogue was used throughout the film, while in mine it can’t be used so I can’t gain much from that and it lacked a range of shots. If the narrative wasn’t interesting the film would have been boring.
However the opening sequence was very good and I really liked it due to the lighting and objects used. A mixture of high and low key lighting was used to show a kettle boiling and a close up of the stream coming out. This may of represented the situation that was going on and about to happen.
What I could take from this film is connotation of the opening shot when portraying the boiling kettle to the narrative. Also how the narrative of a story can change the overall look as it was all filmed in the same room.
Job Street
This film was about a group of recently arrived illegal immigrants who all stay at a street waiting to be picked up by men to work at a factory. They get taken one by one and the last one is a black African who is fooled and then gets beating up in a racial attack but manages to escape after stabbing the man in the leg. He then begins to get scared and stays outside by himself in the pouring rain. He goes home and runs back and later beats up his friend not knowing who it is due to he didn’t see him and is scared.
The narrative of the film was complicated due too many things were happening and so didn’t understand everything.
The shots were typical and basic and there wasn’t one that fascinated me. A positive from this film is that it may appeal to emotional people.
To be honest I don’t know what I may take from this film because nothing excited me.
The first time it hits
The first time it hits is about a boy meets girl relationship and ends in the boys accidently hitting the girl in the face and then runs off. It is set in an inside car park.
The film was weird at the start but turned out to be funny which was what it aimed to be as it was a comedy. The narrative made sense and was a typical boy meets girl, she is sitting down and he’s on his skateboard and hits her in the head by mistake as he is trying to show of his moves.
I knew the film was a comedy at the end when the girl character opened her eyes and winked after being hit because most of the time the person will get up and chase the guy that hit her. The negatives about the film were that from the opening to the middle I didn’t really know what was going on.Editing and the shots used were creative and very intelligent. The pace of the editing was very fast which matched the narrative of the film telling a story of cool fun teens and also matched the non digetic music which was a punk rock song. The director used a wide range of shots from close-ups to low angles and pans.
As dialogue was not used at all there is a lot I could take from the film especially the wide range of shot types and narrative. The fact the film made me laugh made it a success because in order for a comedy to be successful it has to bring the humor out and be funny.
Ice Cream Dream
This film was about a young girl who loves working with her father in the Ice cream van. Her father is worried that she isn’t making friends and encourages her to go out of the house more often to socialize. She has day dreams of herself telling her that no one wants to play with her as well as another herself saying they do. She wants to play with a boy who is always riding his scooter but afraid to ask. She has a dream and this boosts her confidence the following day. At the end when she is about to go with her dad in the ice cream van she decides to leave and finally makes friends with the local children.
I personal found the narrative too cheesy and a happily ever after type of fairytale. It was a type of film
marketed at children. However there was something I liked about it as I still wanted to carry on watching
it. The film was simple but there was a part that I didn’t think needed to be included when the girls mum and dad were talking about money and the mortgage because children are not going to be interested and will not even understand.
The camera work was very basic and nothing special, but there was a particular camera movement I liked which was a tracking shot moving towards her and all the other characters (children) moving aside. I liked this shot because it created some type of excitement as we couldn’t see her at first until every character moved out of the way.
What I learnt from this film was that you can take a simple story idea and transform it into something special through the likes of narrative and camera movements.
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