Bollywood Musical

Bollywood films are mostly musicals, and are expected to contain catchy music in the form of song-and-dance numbers woven into the script. A film's success often depends on the quality of such musical numbers. Indeed, a film's music is often released before the movie itself and helps increase the audience.

Indian audiences expect full value for their money, with a good entertainer generally referred to as paisa vasool, (literally, "money's worth"). Songs and dances, love triangles, comedy and dare-devil thrills are all mixed up in a three-hour-long extravaganza with an intermission. Such movies are called masala films, after the Hindi word for a spice mixture. Like masalas, these movies are a mixture of many things such as action, comedy, romance and so on. Most films have heroes who are able to fight off villains all by themselves.

Melodrama and romance are common ingredients to Bollywood films. Pictured Achhut Kanya (1936)

Bollywood plots have tended to be melodramatic. They frequently employ formulaic ingredients such as star-crossed lovers and angry parents, love triangles, family ties, sacrifice, corrupt politicians, kidnappers, conniving villains, courtesans with hearts of gold, long-lost relatives and siblings separated by fate, dramatic reversals of fortune, and convenient coincidences.

There have always been Indian films with more artistic aims and more sophisticated stories, both inside and outside the Bollywood tradition (see Parallel Cinema). They often lost out at the box office to movies with more mass appeal. Bollywood conventions are changing, however. A large Indian diaspora in English speaking countries, and increased Western influence at home, have nudged Bollywood films closer to Hollywood models.

Bollywood dancers

Film Pitch

              

Film Title: “Black Friday”

Writer: Manuel Denegri

Logline: The story of a boy that he has bad luck the whole day.

Intended audience demographic: Fourteen year-old people.

Suggested time slot: The whole day (morning, daytime, late night, etc.)

Episode length: Maximum of 5 minutes.

Genre: Black comedy.

What are we going to do: A short film of 5 minutes about a boy that wakes up one day of school and he has all the day bad luck (we are going to film all the bad experiences that he suffers that day) and when night he wakes up and realize it’s a dream so he looks to the clock and he was being late to school so he stands up and all the things that happened in the dream will really happen.

Where are we going to film: In St. George’s College and Honorio’s house.

Why are we doing this film: For an IB project of Film Studies.

What do we need: All the necessary things for making the film, for example cameras, lights, software and computer for edit.

Production Journal 1

The first class we divided into groups until we get into a group of 3 (Manuel Denegri, Honorio Oleksuk and me, Giuliana Brun).

Then we organized the rolls of each of us: Manuel is the writer and director, Honorio is the editor, and I'm the camarographer.

We started discussing the genre of our clip and we decided horror-drama.

The problem we had to afford was the theme of the clip. First we decided to do a kidnap of a rich girl but Honorio didn't like it, so then he proposed an idea of a murder of a boy after a soccer match but me and Manuel didn't like it and we continued thinking until Manuel had an idea about doing the film about a boy that has bad luck a day since he wakes up until he goes to sleep.

Brad Pitt vs Marlboro Man

Brad Pitt has actually 2 children and he is too close to them, he love them and carry of them a lot. This can  be represented in:

He spend his time playing in a park with his children and enjoying all the time with them. He makes sure that every morning his children have fresh fruit for the breakfast, what represents that he wants a good and healthy life for them.
In Se7en we can see this personality of family lifestyle and nice with his wife and his dogs (can be represented like "children"). Differing to him we have Somerset that he is more cold, he don't have family neither wife and he has guns and other police stuff what represent the traditional masculinity.

By the other hand we have the Marlboro Man: a traditional masculine stereotype, who has strength, courage, virility, the triumph, competition, security, and he don't shows affection. For example:

This image represents, in terms of publicity, that Marlboro is for strong man that is very masculine as he is a cowboy that is pulling out the fence, so it makes the audience believe that if they smoke Marlboro they are very masculine.

Seven - Working towards A Textual Analysis

Characters representation: Contrast between Freeman and Mills - young and old. This is shown at the end with Mill fall.

1.  Genre:
- Thriller
- Mystery
- Horror
- Cop Drama

It can be said that Se7en is a crime genre because it's about all the murders that a serial killer does and the detectives and policemen chase him.
On the other hand, it's also a thriller film that contains horror and neo-noir elements because, for example, there is always lack of lighting, shadows and some grey and dark lights, adding to it the rain that it's always present, creates a feeling of coldness. Also in the setting, for example, that there is always laberints and other places in which the audience can feel the enclosing and presure that the character is suffering - clausytophobic (element of setting are conventional in thriller and horror). The film has always diagetic sounds and background music that creates suspense and tense.
Mystery, because the film plays a game with the audience - there are twists and turns before we find out the truth plot.
Finally, the cop drama because the stock characters old and young partners put together.

Noir Conventions in Seven

Elements of Film Noir:

Setting: Decayed, unknown and dirty city in which it's always raining.
Angles: There is a distortion of angles, close-ups, dutch angles

Sound: Diagetic street scream, noises and rain all the time. It creates the audience emphathy.

Characters: Two ditective (irresponsable, uninterested officers that don't care about their work), seven victims and their family.

Lighting: Heavy use of shades and low lighting. Only natural ambient light (no artificial light) except the flashlights and television.

Colours: Blue-ish grey in the Police station, forensics laboratory. Suggests the technological environment, but also cold and unfeeling world of the film.

Sound 2: Non-diagetic: music, heavy use of low key chords, violing low.

Inclusion of gore, crudety

close-up

Pulp Fiction - Textual Analysis

Pulp Fiction is a 1994 American crime and gangster film directed by Quentin Tarantino.
In the drug scene the plot is about drugs and piercings in which Jody, Fabienne and Vincent are having a strange, alternative and rebellious dialogue about piercings related with sex and provocation (sexual pleasure) while Lance is preparing the different drugs for selling it to Vincent.
Vega is a drug dependent and in this scene he has lots of close-ups and the camera follows him.
It can be said that the three caracters that were in the house (except for Vincent) don't fit in the society as Jody has 18 piercings and Lance is a drug dealer, what is not common.
In this scene there are some still shots in which there are many close-ups in faces (when talking about piercings and when Vincent is in the car injecting himself drugs) and in the drugs on the bed. There are also extreme-close ups in the syringe and the preparation of drugs; low shot showing the reflection in the mirror of  Vincent and Lance (bedroom of drug dealer);medium-close up in Vincent when he is counting his money sitting in a chair with "hippie" stuff arround him.
The scene creates a feeling of being "flying away" because of the effects of the drugs by the provocative background music (dream-like guitars); there is lack of lighting, with shadows (Vincent in his car - "dark world" because of drugs), highliting with close-ups and light in the drugs and it's preparation, and there are dark colours, white and red; slow motions when Vincent is riding the car, "drugs effect" creating a feeling of "drug tentation" , there is also slow movement when he is inyecting himself; close-ups in faces and drugs (preparations, inyections, etc.); dutch angle shots and alternative when the boys are talking about the different characteristics of the drugs and the camera is in a low angle showing the bed, Vincent, half part of Lance and the other half reflected in the mirror.
In my opinion, Tarantino tries to persuade the audience to consume drugs and that they are good because it shows in the whole movie the relaxing and pleasure effects that the drugs create