This assignment required a lot of thought, and I liked it. We were to “select scenes from 3-5 movies. These scenes should represent scenes that changed your life or made some sort of dramatic, traumatic, lasting, or emotional impact on you. When you have selected those scenes, create a video that shows the scenes and includes audio/video of you describing what it is about the scene that made a significant impact on you, what you are fond of about the scenes, what scares you, what you remember thinking when you were a child, etc.”
The three movie movies that I chose my clips, are also a few of my favorite movies:
* A WARNING: the last few moments of this clip contain graphic material (i.e. blood). Viewer discretion is advised.
The Truman Show changed my life in that it made me very paranoid for a very long time. I used to think that there was a pretty good chance that someone was always watching me. It was kind of embarrassing, but I know that it made me alter some of my behaviors (I can’t remember what I was doing at 8 years old… maybe picking my nose or something). I felt like I could relate a lot to Truman (the protagonist), because he was afraid of going out onto the water on boats. I was afraid of this when I was little, because of this one time I was in a boat on a lake that tipped over. It wasn’t that big of a deal because we were right next to the dock, and the water was not super deep, but I was fairly young (around 5, I believe), but I remember being afraid to go on the boat after this happened. In hindsight, as a teenager and watching this movie, I related to it differently. I thought that it was wild and wrong to do this to a person, as it takes so much of a person’s life away. I felt sad for Truman, and wondered how he would survive not living in his bubble, and knowing that millions of people had watched his every move his entire life. This final clip, with him finally getting his life back, made me feel incredibly happy.
Pleasantville is a movie like a painting. The black and white with just a few things of color seemed almost magical. I remember spending so much time wondering how they accomplished this effect. This scene, where David (Tobey Maguire), was putting makeup on the mother was also fascinating, as I didn’t understand how they got the makeup to do that. The context of this scene was also important, because it shows how sad it would be to feel pressured to completely fit into the expectations that our culture and society place on us… and then I remember that plenty of people experience that today. The liberation that color symbolizes in this film just made sense to me as a child. My mom is an artist, and to see art serving as a symbol of expression and breaking away from the rules made me feel so glad, and made me feel like my mother was a genius (to see what she preached exemplified on something I saw on TV). I loved that art was so powerful, and how self-conscious the mother was of showing her color. This scene made me realize that it is important for your wellbeing to embrace things that make you happy and make you feel alive.
The Royal Tenenbaums is one of my favorite movies in the whole world. In high school, one of my best friends and I would watch this movie any night we were bored and didn’t know what to do, because there were so many details, it was so entertaining, and because the way it was filmed is very aesthetically pleasing. This scene is intense. The song is intense. Together, you get a very captivating scene that is itself a piece of art. The fact that this was a suicide scene was itself something that makes it stick with you. It was filmed beautifully, with different shots worked into the clip (Margot, Mordecai, the razor blade..) made it so mesmerizing and dramatic. I can’t help but feel overwhelmed with emotion anytime I hear the song “Needle in the Hay” by Elliot Smith, because of this scene. It was the first time I watched a movie and felt that emotionally overcome, and I think partially had to do with how perfect the audio and the video fit in with each other.
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