As the Fandom Princess possessed a plethora of magical artifacts, as mentioned, she loved to spend time in her chambers, watching moving pictures flash across her enchanted television. On this enchanted item, she would watch a majority of videos that her various fandoms made for her (some even running as long as two hours). But the Princess never minded. Instead, she sat and happily watched them all, with Ghost curled up neatly beside her on the bed, howling at the things he liked, and growling at the things he didn’t.So, this week is probably my favorite out of all the weeks in this semester. Why, you may ask? Because it’s all about MOVIES! AHH! In case some of y’all don’t know, in addition to writing about fictional fairy tale worlds and reading constantly (life of an English major), I absolutely adore movies! In fact, my ultimate life goal is to be a screenwriter, after I make it big as a young adult novelist, of course.

That being said, this week is just my cup of tea! The first thing we were required to do was look over some movie cinematography techniques. A lot of this was common knowledge to me for a few reasons: 1 — I love movies and over the years have picked up some of the terminology and techniques on my own. 2 — I’m in a film studies class this semester where we have already learned about most of this stuff! Totally cool that I got to do some of the analyzing on my own this week! I love it so far.

Anyway, so, the first thing we had to do was watch a few videos to familiarize ourselves with movie techniques. I decided to watch this video on Tarantino’s specific style, an amazing director who has directed classics such as Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, and, more recently, Django: Unchained. The second video I decided to watch was one on Star Wars goofs. A great video that reminds all aspiring filmmakers about continuity in films. Thirdly, I watched the video on camera angles, which is super important because, as the video states, camera angles can make or break a movie!

In addition to looking over some of the techniques, we also had to analyze a film clip! I looked through all of those long lists of possible clips to watch, and although I wanted to watch them all (which made me then want to stop doing homework and find the movies online to watch) I finally settled on watching the Construct Scene from one of my personal favorite’s, The Matrix. We had to watch the clip three times, and each time had to pay attention to a specific aspect. Here is what I noticed with each viewing:

First time: Watching this without sound allowed for me to pay more attention to the camera movement and angles. I noticed how the camera was constantly moving in the beginning, swiveling out from a close up on Neo’s face and then swirling around him and Morpheus. There were some cool things the directors did with the camera, such as not showing the chairs in the construct until after the camera swivels back around to Neo, as well as the use of having close up shots on objects and then zooming out to show the bigger picture. The contrast between the white background in the beginning of the clip and the dark colors of clothing and props also was interesting to note.

Second time: This time, I merely listened to the clip. I noticed that there was no background noise in the beginning (something that is called non-diegetic) and the only sound that is heard for the first couple of seconds is the dialogue between the characters. The story is told through the dialogue, with the pacing and tonal inflections being perfect to set the mood of the story. The non-diegetic (not able to be heard by the characters in the movie, but by the audience) music (the score) comes in and it is dark and eerie, with the sound effects of loud thunder and lightning and a heart thumping.

Third time: With the third time when I was able to watch the whole thing all together, I noticed exactly how well everything fit together. The sound and the action on screen works together so fluidly that the story of the Matrix is told in a believable and intense way, which further engages the audience.

I think that all the techniques used make this scene even more intense, which the directors do well with the entire movie. It adds dynamic and passion to the scenes, making it engaging and interesting.