With his down-the-rabbit-hole approach to design and obsessive attention to detail, Wes Anderson, writer, director and auteur, is best known for his highly stylized movies. His extremely visual, nostalgic worlds give meaning to the stories in his films, contrary to popular critical beliefs that he values style over substance. Through an analysis of his work, I plan to show that design can instead, give substance to style.
Wes Anderson started making Super 8 films and writing plays during his childhood. Anderson’s parents, Melver and Texas Anne Anderson, divorced when Wes was young. He describes the event as “the most crucial event of my brothers and my growing up.” (IMDB) Anderson didn’t major in film, but instead graduated with a B.A. in philosophy in 1992 from the University of Texas at Austin. His filmography includes eight feature length films and five shorts, all of which have similar themes on childhood, discontentment in life, alienation, longing, and elitism. His films have all been described using a seemly set list of adjectives. See “quirky”, “whimsical” and “twee” in the closest dictionary. Regardless, his style never comes without purpose.
Anderson builds all of his worlds from the ground up. Each one is a microcosm: a miniature version of humanity. Freelance film critic Calum Marsh once said that “people tend to talk about Wes Anderson movies as if they were toys — dioramas, playsets, miniatures. They do have a certain handmade quality, in the way they've been assembled and furnished, but it's more than that. I think it has something do with the way their component parts and pieces seem so meticulously and painstakingly put together, organized, and orchestrated as if by a very dedicated child.” (Marsh). Anderson p...
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...rand Budapest Hotel." The Dissolve. N.p., 14 Mar. 2014. Web. 12 May 2014.
Emerson, Jim. "Moonrise Kingdom: Wes Anderson's Miniatures."RogerEbert.com. N.p., 24 June 2012. Web. 12 May 2014.
Hoffman, Ashley. "PAPERMAG: The Amazing Backstories Behind 10 Memorable Props." PAPERMAG: The Amazing Backstories Behind 10 Memorable Props. Paper, 10 Mar. 2014. Web. 15 May 2014.
Jones, Alice. "The Best Props in Hollywood: Wes Anderson." The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, 1 Mar. 2014. Web. 15 May 2014.
Marchant, Beth. "Inhabiting Wes Anderson’s World of Color in The Grand Budapest Hotel." Studio Daily. N.p., 26 Mar. 2014. Web. 12 May 2014.
Marsh, Calum. "The Evolution of Wes Anderson." Esquire. N.p., 5 Mar. 2014. Web. 10 Mar. 2014.
Murphy, Mekado. "You Can Look, but You Can’t Check In." The New York Times. The New York Times, 01 Mar. 2014. Web. 12 May 2014.
Kevin Smith has make the grueling trek from an unknown, extremely low-budget filmmaker to a well known and respected filmmaker thanks to the help of his vision to stick to the basics. His films are about normal, middle class life adding elements of humor, drugs, and the daily struggle of blue-collar workers.
Eckstein, Arthur. “The Hollywood Ten in History & Memory.” Film History. 2004. Web. 16 Jan.
Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
In cinema, lighting, blocking and panning drastically influence what an audience will notice and take away from a scene. Orson Welles’s 1941 Citizen Kane has numerous examples of effectively using these aspects within mise-en-scène, cinematography and editing to portray the importance of specific events and items in the film. The scene where Kane writes and then publishes his “Declaration of Principles” (37:42-39:42) in the New York Daily Inquirer after buying them focuses on important elements of the film, aiding the audience by combining lighting, blocking and panning to define significant roles and objects that further the movie as a whole.
Indisputably, Tim Burton has one of the world’s most distinct styles when regarding film directing. His tone, mood, diction, imagery, organization, syntax, and point of view within his films sets him apart from other renowned directors. Burton’s style can be easily depicted in two of his most highly esteemed and critically acclaimed films, Edward Scissorhands and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Burton ingeniously incorporates effective cinematic techniques to convey a poignant underlying message to the audience. Such cinematic techniques are in the lighting and editing technique categories. High key and low key relationships plus editing variations evinces the director’s elaborate style. He utilizes these cinematic techniques to establish tone mood, and imagery in the films.
Postmodern film directors such as Ridley Scott, Woody Allen, Quentin Tarantino, The Coen Brothers, David Lynch, Christopher Nolan and others, make films that are often highly original, by reproducing the very popular mood of anxiety, fear, uncertainty and cynicism that reflects in the general society.
Bordwell David and Thompson, Kristen. Film Art: An Introduction. 8th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008.
Think about your favorite movie. When watching that movie, was there anything about the style of the movie that makes it your favorite? Have you ever thought about why that movie is just so darn good? The answer is because of the the Auteur. An Auteur is the artists behind the movie. They have and individual style and control over all elements of production, which make their movies exclusively unique. If you could put a finger on who the director of a movie is without even seeing the whole film, then the person that made the movie is most likely an auteur director. They have a unique stamp on each of their movies. This essay will be covering Martin Scorsese, you will soon find out that he is one of the best auteur directors in the film industry. This paper will include, but is not limited to two of his movies, Good Fellas, and The Wolf of Wall Street. We will also cover the details on what makes Martin Scorsese's movies unique, such as the common themes, recurring motifs, and filming practices found in their work. Then on
Stanley, Robert H. The Movie Idiom: Film as a Popular Art Form. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 2011. Print
Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. 5th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997.
John Gibbs and Douglas Pye (2005) Style and meaning : studies in the detailed analysis of film. Engalnd: Manchester University Press, pp 42-52.
Ondaatje, M. (2004). The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
...both suggested that lighting and the style of chiaroscuro is probably the single most important element of cinematic Expressionism. However Dietrich Scheunemann disagrees claiming that many of the first films to claim to be expressionist pieces are simply not, and no amount of lighting will make them so. Scheunemann criticises the cinematography of the film 'The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari' stating that it is distinctively unimpressive He instead suggests that it is through the curved walls, oblique windows, slanting doors and strange radical patterns on the floor that the film establishes it's nightmarish atmosphere. In light of Schunemann's views on the visual representation of Expressionism, I hope to analyse the impact Expressionism had on other genres and how contemporary filmmaker Tim Burton has evolved these visual techniques to relate to a modern day audience.
Barsam, Richard. Looking at Movies An Introduction to Film, Second Edition (Set with DVD). New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Print.
“Entertainment has to come hand in hand with a little bit of medicine, some people go to the movies to be reminded that everything’s okay. I don’t make those kinds of movies. That, to me, is a lie. Everything’s not okay.” - David Fincher. David Fincher is the director that I am choosing to homage for a number of reasons. I personally find his movies to be some of the deepest, most well made, and beautiful films in recent memory. However it is Fincher’s take on story telling and filmmaking in general that causes me to admire his films so much. This quote exemplifies that, and is something that I whole-heartedly agree with. I am and have always been extremely opinionated and open about my views on the world and I believe that artists have a responsibility to do what they can with their art to help improve the culture that they are helping to create. In this paper I will try to outline exactly how Fincher creates the masterpieces that he does and what I can take from that and apply to my films.