Formal Film Study: James Cameron

I chose to research director James Cameron for my formal film studies project. James Cameron has won many awards and Oscars in his career, has been married 5 times and is known for his love of special effects. For the 3 movies I watched some of his most popular films including the award winning Avatar, famous Terminator 2, and the not so heard of Ghosts of the Abyss. They were not all related, however they were from different eras and they were some of his big films, so that is why I chose them. For the most part of this post I will be referring to Terminator and Avatar, because Ghosts was so diferent from the others. What I mean by this is that Ghosts was a documentary and was underwater for the most part, providing almost no action scenes or similarities to the others. The reason I chose James Cameron is because I had only seen a few of his movies up until recently when I began to take an interest in his love for action movies. Terminator movies are often regarded as some of the most popular old time action movies and especially Arnold's most famous appearances/roles. In fact the phrase, "come with me if you want to live," which is referenced in many other movies and even by people is from the series. After hearing all of this about them I knew I had to watch at least one of them. Judgement day wasn't the one I chose for any specific reason, it was just the only one that was on Netflix... Avatar I had seen when it first came out in theaters, but never really paid much attention to it or tempered anything from it until we watched it in class, which made me want to finish watching it agian. Ghosts of the Abyss was not a good choice and was random, which would soon prove to be brutal to watch.  

James Cameron is known for his special effects, however that wasn't the first thing I noticed while observing these films. The first thing I noticed was the amount of fast changing scenes the occur in all 3 movies. There is a particular scene in Terminator 2 where Arnald and the mom and boy are driving away from the T110 terminator and the camera changes so quickly from the point of view of the car, the point of viewe of the bad guy, the car itself, and the bad guy from an omniscient perspective. Whether this is due to the action sequences, or personal preferences I do not know, but it was consistent in all 3 movies (rarely in Ghosts.) One explanation is that the fast changing scenes make fighting look more realistic because the punch could look like it was real if the camera changes views just as someone makes contact. This was present in Avatar as well almsot everyone there was fist fighting, however sines Avatar was filmed a lot more recently, they used green screen effects for most of the creatures and deaths/explosions. For example, people dying from arrows seemed to be a common thing in the movie and over repeated sound effects from Star Wars were used almost constantly. Another thing that seemed to be hinted by the conflict between man and machine is that Cameron had some strange affection basing his movies on the struggle of rapid growing technology. Terminator 2 was about how during WW3, the entire world was destroyed by nukes set off by a computer program created and then robots took over the world while a few survivors from a military group know as the resistance. When the robots send a terminator to kill the leader of the resistance in the past, so does he to try and stop the robots from winning the war. In Avatar, it talks about how we get the technology to travel through space/take the form of aliens and attempt to take over and destroy the peaceful aliens' home world of pandora. This movie also Is based on a war between human controlled robots (this time reversed) and people (or Navi aliens), who start off seeming like the bad guys, but by halfway through the movie you realize are the good guys.  The movie that stood out the most was Ghosts of the Abyss because it was different than any of the other films. It was more of a documentary and it was all underwater filming. The movie was based on exploring the wreck of the titanic for no apprent reason other than that James Cameron also had a strange interest/hobby in deep sea diving? The movie is documentary like and had a strange ending about 911, I dont know why it was necesary.

1935 Film Project

We chose to do Bonnie and Clyde for our project because Bonnie and Clyde were just killed in 1934 so it would still be fresh in everyone's mind. We then chose Warner Brothers for our studio because they made a lot of gangster movies at the time. James Cagney was chosen as Clyde because he and Jean Harlow (who we chose for Bonnie) had worked well together in a movie called Public Enemy. The director, William A. Wellman was reputable director at the time so we decided to use him as well. We decided go with black and white because it was popular at the time, awards were still given for black and white movies only and 1 color movie because color was still considered experimental at the time. In conclusion, all of the choices we chose were for a reason and had something to do with the time period, nothing was random.

MYST Post 1: The Hunger Games

     I recently watched the Hunger Games, which was a movie I was long overdue to see, and I have to say it was a lot better than I thought. *Spoiler Alert* The plot involves a young girl named Katniss who volunteers to take her younger sisters place in an event that takes place once a year called the hunger games. After struggling to impress the heads of the games, she receives the highest score out of all the other competitors the day before the event begins. She is then dropped off in a large forested arena with 23 other kids to fight to the death, most of which die immediately. Death after death things begin to look up for Katniss until she realizes she might have to kill her friend from the same district as her. They are then informed that there can be two winners, as long as they are from the same district. After killing all the other kids, they are regretfully informed that the rule has been changed again and that there can only be one winner. Neither of them could live without the other so they decide to kill themselves with cyanide like berries. The heads then stop them just as they are about to ingest them and tell them they both won.*End Spoiler* The movie was directed by Gary Ross who also directed Pleasantville, a movie I saw back in 7th grade.
  
     Most of the shots are done in away to show the intensity of what the main characters are doing. what else is very interesting is its use of colors to depict mood. For example, the first 30 minutes of the movie take place in District 12, the poor miners district, and it is composed of almost all black, white and grey colors. However, the lavish capital city is full of different colors and so are the people.

    *Spoiler Alert* One of my favorite scenes is where Katniss and Peeta are about to kill themselves at the end of the movie.  The use of light and shadow bring out all of the hard edges of the characters. The thing that makes this scene so great is that it uses all close ups. In fact the camera almost never shows anything but close ups of people. The music is almost enough by itself to evoke tragedy. I believe this is the most powerfully scene in the movie because it shows just how much talent Ross has in his directing.

Film Intro Survey

What is the first movie that really made a strong impression on you?
Bugs Life when I was little, that movie scared the heck out of me.

3-4 of your favorite generes?
Comedy, Action/ adventure, Mystery/ Thriller

3-4 of your least favorite generes?
Romance, Romantic Comedy, Silent

5 Favorite films?
Unkown, the Knowing, Saw II, Hangover, Dark Knight Rises

3 characteristics of what you consider to be a good movie?
Funny or intense, no cheesey lines, great acting

5 least favorite movies?

Let's go to prison, Spider-Man, rouge river, wizard of oz, sharknado

3 characteristics of a bad movie?

Cheesy love interests, over dramatic acting, bad effects, poorly written script

Favorite directors?

Christopher Nolan, George Lucas, James Cameron, Stephen Spielberg

Favorite actors?

Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, Harrison Ford, Robert Downey Jr., Marky Mark Wahlberg

3 films important for others to see?

The Dark Knight, Avatar, Goodfellas

Oldest favorite film?

The goodfellas

Best movie that's been released in the past 2 years?

Fast and Furious 6 and Hangover III

5 movies I need to go see?

This is the end, World War Z, American Hustle, Beer fest, 22 jump street