Hollywood Case Study

Pre Production and Production

-Alice and Wonderland is a 2010 fantasy adventure film direted by Tim Burton and writen by Linda Woolverton. It is an extention film of the Lewis Carol films Alice and Wonderland and 'Through the looking glass'. The film uses a teqnique of combining live action and animation.

-The film as a range of popular actors that are well known for being in other successful scenes, Jonny Depp who is one of the main charactors plays Tarrant Hightopp the Mad Hattar. Anne Hathaway another well know actor who plays the Queen of hearts. Matt Lucas who plays tweedle dum and tweedle dee who makes a very good charactor after being mixed with animation.

Top Gun .. High Concept Film

Use of extended montages

Top gun has one of the most popular soundtracks in movies. It was released in 1986 by Columbia records along with the film itself. It reached the number 1 spot on the Billboard for top pop albums for five weeks. They include the oscar winning songs 'take my breath away' and 'dangerzone'. The film uses these hit songs to enhance scenes showing different emotions and help them show veiwers how the actors are feeling. The song Danger Zone gets played as non diegetic music when the boys are getting in the plane. The title itself reflects on the scene saying that its dangerous. Also it shows the charactors must be feeling scared as they are in danger. The song 'Take my breath away' gets played when there is a romance scene between the charactors Maverick and Charlie. This songs sets the mood and makes makes it different from most of other scenes that include action. This sound track and film help promote each-other.

'Post-generic' Filmmaking

Top Gun is a Hybrid genre film, this means it includes a range of different genres in it and appeals to different target audiences. The genres that are indulged in this film are romance, this is because there is romance between two of the main characters Maverick and Charlie. It follows there relationship building up and all there 'ups an downs'. Drama is also a genre in this film as there is loads of different stories happening. Also all the flying is counted as drama and can also be included as an action genre because of all the flying, and shooting as-well.

Design Reflects advertising styles.

Posters and other advertisements for this film are simple but effective as top gun is a high concept film. For example the DVD cover for this film has an image of Maverick and Charlie onw hich are two of the main characters and a plain underneath with the title below them. This is very simple along with the tag line which was ' up there was the best of the best' .

Fargo Film Reveiw

The film 'Fargo' was a thriller produced in 1996 set in Fargo North Dakota. The film is about a car salesman who hires two men to kidnap his wife for $80,000 which leads to serious murders involving some of the main charactors.

The film first starts of with Jerry who is the cars salesmen in a bar with two other men, the lighting of this particular scene is very dark and dim using little lighting in the background of the charactors. As they are disscusing a plan to kidnap his wife and make a deal on splitting money they receive the use of the pub and dark lighting gives the expression that something bad is going on and shows a bad atmosphere in the room.
When the two men that Jerry hired kidnap his wife and drive away its set at night time in the dark, this makes the scene more dramatic. It also shows them driving down very empty narrow roads with nobody else around. Shortly after they leave police cars drive behind them which looked good in the dark as all you can see is the flashing lights shown in the mirror of the car.

As the film is set in Fargo it's snowing there all the time and every scene that s shown on the film shows snow it its scenery. When lots of murders happens it makes the film more exciting to watch as it makes the police hard to find them as there is alot of open land and roads covered in snow.

Sound in this film is used based around the setting. At the beginning of the film when they are sat in the pub you can mainly here the 3 charactors speaking but also hear the people slightly in the background. When the women is being kidnaped aswell all you can hear is her screaming, there is no non-diegetic sound added in the background to add more effect which is what normally happen in other films. When they are driving away it is also queit and u can faintly hear the engine of the car and the women making noises in the boot of the car.

Basically throughout the film when the main events happen there is no music added in the background to make the scenes more effective and more enjoyable to watch. i do not understand this as the film is called itself a thriller although when events happen they dont look scary or grusome because it only uses diegetic music in the scenes. If the film did use added music i think that film would be better and have a much higher rate.

Leon Film Reveiw.

The film Leon direceted by french director Luc Besson was set in New Yorks City Little Italy This gets shown in the opening scene were the camera shot zooms into a road sign saying 'little italy'. The story bases around a 12 year old little girl named matilda and a hitman who refers himself to a 'cleaner' called Leon. Throughout the film you gradually see the two charactors relationship develop as the pair start to bond. A building in one of the main busy streets were Leon lives is were the film is mainly based on showing all the action and drama. The city itself is very busy full of loads of people, which is a good place to set the film as there would be a range of buildings and other places to hide as Leon is a hitman. Also the reason that the buidling they live in is flat because its a way of the two charactors to meet as they live down the hall way from eachother.

The lighting used in the film changes depending on what mood the scene is based on. For example when the charactors are walking through New York its normal daylight, showing a happy, normal mood. Then if Leon is on one of his missions the mood changes and the lighting goes dark and gloomy showing that he is up to no good doing something that he shouldnt. There is also a few sopt lights shown in defferent scenes focusing on Leon when hes hiding from some one or about to jump out at someone.

This few uses very unusual props that got me and other veiwers thinking what they are meant for. The main prop used in this film is a house plant that Leon as that he prefers to at the beginning of his film as his best friend , he takes it everywere with him and brings it in the house at night to clean and puts it outside on the window ledge every morning without fail. You see him even take it to the hotel that he stays at over a period of days. However at the end of the film a scene shows Leon planting the plant which shows freedom and that he has more in life now then just his 'bestfriend'. Another prop used was 'milk' it showed Leon drinking this all the time and showed him making Matilda drink it aswell, im not really sure why milk was used as it didnt really get explained.

The music used in this film varies from which mood the scene is based around. For example if the cahractors are in a good happy mood the music would be joyful, or if something bad and mischeif is happening then the music turns to mysterious slow music. Most of the music used is non-diegetic however there is also some diegetic music used aswell.

There are many different camera shots and angles used throughout the film, as Leon is a hitman showing Matilda how she can be one, they stand at the top of many building showing long shots of the rest of the city and below them on the streets. There is also close up of the charactors faces when there showing a certain expression so that the veiwer can really tell how there feeling without saying anything. It also shows a shot from looking through the gun before Matilda shots someone running. This shows that she was looking at the person from her point of veiw.

Overall i found this film very enjoyable to watch. Its the first time ive seen it but i would defitntly reccomend it to a friend and would watch it again myself. I liekd watching the two charactors relationship develop and also Leons feelings come out gradually as before he didnt show any emotion .

:) :)