Media on a Budget

I was reading news articles on Wired News when I came across this article on a movie that is being released tomorrow, called MirrorMask. It mentions how the movie was made on a budget of only four million dollars using over-the-counter software. It really drives home the message just how important and effective what we're learning in the DMA program is.

After reading about MirrorMask and watching the trailer, I'm quite eager to see it. It reminds me of a 21st century version of Labyrinth, which makes sense seeing as how it's coming out of Henson studios. This time, though, the heroine is saving the kingdom instead of her baby brother, and there is no David Bowie in tripped-out hair or obnoxiously tight pants. IMDB has a little bit more concise information on the film, for those of you annoyed by Huntington's horrible internet bandwidth.

Oh, and Neil Gaiman co-wrote it.

Writing and Media for Children

"Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it is to be young." --Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

In his essay on Three Ways of Writing for Children, C.S. Lewis stated that for an author to write good children's literature, he must in essence be able to place himself into the child's point of view. He emphasized that this does not mean giving children what you perceive to be what they want. In such a case, not only is this perception dependent on your own view, but it also lacks the passion that would be put into the work had you picked a topic you felt strongly drawn toward. The key, Lewis says, is first determining whether children's literature is the best genre for your idea, then literally looking at your idea through a child's eyes and determining what they think of it. Additionally, Lewis emphasizes not to make the language or topic condescending, for children are serious people, as well.

This concept can very easily be applied to digital media. Part of the plight of today's television shows is that they either dumb things down (a la "Boohbah") or deal with serious topics inappropriately. I liked the approach taken by A.C.T., from what I gathered from the article. They realize that, though children are often capable of understanding much more than we give them credit for, television is simply not the place to discuss certain things. Though they advocate programming that broadens a child's horizon, they know a line must be drawn after a point. It's important to educate children, but some of that education needs to be reserved for the parent alone.

Lewis also speaks about how many adults think it unwise to let a child escape into a fantasy world, because they might begin to think of it as real life. He discredits this, saying that the danger often lies when fiction becomes so close to reality that children are unable to distingush one from the other. This is why I recommended to my mother (to no avail) to allow my young-teenaged siblings to read the Harry Potter series. I find the series a delight, an inspiration to a child's imagination, where good is clearly defined and continually conquers over evil. Unfortunately, most Christians write off the series because they declare that the books encourage children to practice witchcraft, or seek a power within themselves. In reality the books are loaded with Christian parables of love, sacrifice, and morality. Christians argue that the hero practices witchcraft, but most of the same group of Christians also find the character Merlin in Disney's The Sword and the Stone amusing and the movie worthwhile entertainment for their children.

Little Dog Turpie was a film that I thought a good example of fantasy that adults may think too dark for children. In the film, three very sinister-looking creatures sneak up, wanting to eat the little dog's mistress. He barks to alert his master, who grumpily comes out and cuts his tail off for disturbing his sleep. Turpie continues to bark even as his master continues to cut off his legs, then finally takes out an axe and removes his head from his torso. In this telling, the story sounds quite inappropriate for children, but the dog is still alive with his body parts severed almost as though he were a piece of machinery, and is in fact "put back together" at the end, driving home the idea of fantasy being removed from real life.

Speaking as an older sister, however, I would not want my second youngest sister, Maggie, watching this film. Maggie is a worrier, and would be lamenting the unjust punishment of the little dog and having nightmares about the creepy figures long after she watched the film. Maggie's worrying tendencies are a good example of how parents need to use their discretion with all films, and take C.S. Lewis's approach of looking at the work through the eyes of an individual child--their child, in such a case. For some children, fantasy is a lot closer to reality than adults may think.

Escaping the Cliched

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:8)

Yesterday in class we watched four films: Loyalty, Ash Sunday, Baby Got Book, and Gay Boyfriend. Though Baby Got Book and Gay Boyfriend were the hot button films, Ash Sunday by Corrie Francis was so incredibly beautiful, profound, and yet not blatant in its message so that it stuck with me even after debating the merits—or lack thereof—of said hot button films.

I was surprised that quite a few people did not recognize the symbolism of the Holy Spirit as a flame (or “tongue of fire,” to quote Acts). Though she doesn’t realize it at first, the woman in Ash Sunday is trapped in a small white box—an imitation of real life. Once she realizes her predicament, she tries fervently to escape the confines of her box, but is unable. Shortly, a flame comes along and tries to help her out of her box, but it is only after she does her part to meet the flame that the flame consumes her and her box. She becomes a part of the real world, finally able to experience its beauty, and to bring the beauty to others who are yet trapped in an imitation of life.

The whole idea of “Christian art” interests me greatly, and Ash Sunday was the perfect example of how to make artwork “Christian” without a big cross in the middle or people praying righteously with saintly auras about their heads—following the “religious impulse”, as Flannery O’Connor stated in Novelist and Believer. Professor Leeper mentioned that the people who most markedly appreciated the film were not religious scholars, but artists, many of whom did not share the same religious viewpoint as Corrie Francis. This is because the film is appealing on more than an intellectual level. As O’Connor said, “The virtues of art, like the virtues of faith, are such that they reach beyond the limitations of the intellect, beyond any mere theory that a writer may entertain.”

Drying Up the Soul

Max: First time in L.A?
Vincent: No. Tell you the truth, whenever I'm here I can't wait to leave. It's too sprawled out, disconnected. You know? That's me. You like it?
Max: It's my home.
Vincent: 17 million people. This has got to be the fifth biggest economy in the world and nobody knows each other. I read about this guy who gets on the MTA here, dies.
Max: Oh.
Vincent: Six hours he's riding the subway before anybody notices his corpse doing laps around L.A., people on and off sitting next to him. Nobody notices.

Okay, here we go. I've been a bit nervous about this, so I kept putting off blogging in favor of getting a great insight to post, but then there is always the delete button if I hate what I write.

In class the other day, Professor Leeper talked about how the visual composition of a scene in a film can suggest certain responses and emotions better than (metaphorically) grabbing the viewer by the shirt collar and telling him or her to feel a certain way. He spoke about filming a scene so that it would have the appearance of being cramped, or suffocating, or something of the like, to cause the viewer to feel as if their soul had dried up. He noted that this was obviously more effective than having one character lament to another, "Gee, my soul feels dried up." However, one should not completely discount the obvious. Perhaps then, a good movie is like Shakespeare: the more intellectual levels it appeals to, the wider a group the work as a whole will appeal to.

One of the movies that came to my mind during this discussion was the movie Collateral, starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx. I recalled noting the artistry of the shots in this film when I first viewed it. Since the movie is rated R (for violence and language), I had to get my screen captures off of Google Images instead of finding someone who owned it and getting the specific screen capture that I had in mind. The screen capture to the right is a good example of a typical shot in the film, though not the one I wanted.

Cruise's character plays Vincent, a hitman-for-hire who disrupts Max's (Foxx) boring, taxicab-driver life when Max takes him on as a passenger, little knowing the havoc that will resultingly ensue. The quote at the top of this entry is taken from the movie. Vincent talks about how, in large cities, nobody notices or cares what happens to the people around him or her. I thought that the way the scenes were shot in the movie reinforced the idea of being alone in a crowd in a huge, cold city. Many close-ups of Vincent tended to show him visually "cut off" from other people in the shot. The shot that I had wanted to show that exemplified this was of Vincent in the back seat and Max in the front seat of the taxi. The shot is quite obviously bisected by the a support for the grate that divides the front seat from the back seat, and it even cuts partly through the view of Vincent. The movie also seemed to favor greys and blues for shots, which seemed to emphasize the coldness of a big city.

Although quotes like the one at the top of the article made the desired emotion of loneliness and coldness in Collateral a bit more apparant, these emotions were most effectively drawn by the artistry of the shots. The implicit suggestions made through the composition of a scene was ultimately more effective.