Treatment

Two people lying on hospital beds wake up and remove the various medical equipment attatched to them. They look around, and leave the building. The streets are deserted, with cars abandoned. In the distance, there is someone dancing, a very peculiar dance. Shuffling. They begin to approach him, speaking out to him "Hey man, where all da people at?", when they are tackled out of the way behind a car. The man gives them the "low-down" of the situation, a zombie apocalypse has occured and one of the characteristics of them are they shuffle. Music starts blaring from nowhere, and the stranger forces them headphones to block the music, and weapons.
The two step up from their hiding place, and shuffle their way into the middle of the crowd, where they stop moving, and in slow motion reveal their masses of weapons, and start attacking all of them.
A montage ensues of the following action, showing them going overboard with the zombie killing, attacking innocent people, garbage cans, and even the stranger that helped them. Upon attacking the stranger, the two stand over his body, he asks "Who are you?" in his dying breath. They pull out their guns, and say "Blu Foo and Sky Red bitch" and fire, where it immediately cuts to black.
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Onions

"A moon wrapped in brown paper”
-Nisrene Kazimi on the topic of onions
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Party Rock Apocalypse

In a paragraph on your blog, comment on the following:
1. Party Rock Apocalypse - Genre: Zombie Dance
2. I wish to portray the idea of the dangers of conforming, symbolized with the dance style, "shuffling".
3. I want to make the audience first to find it enjoyable, but then be shocked at the twist in the video.
4. The audience needs to feel fear for the idea of following the herd mentality, and realize that the loss of independence is happening all around us
5. 2 people wake up in hospital, leave to find abandoned streets, rubbish everywhere, and one person shuffling. A person quickly pulls them aside, and gives them the lowdown of the situation. Music begins to play and people emerge from everywhere and begin dancing. When the music then progresses, they begin to get violent, and attack the two original characters, but they defend themselves and kill the majority before making an escape. It starts quite light heartedly, but then turns quite violent quickly.
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Frankenstein & Psycho

1. Describe

FRANKENSTEIN: In Frankenstein, the “bad guy” we are faced with is a physical monster, duly named “The Monster”. It is made from the parts of the deceased, and was deliberately made to look as distorted and un-human as possible by the director. He made The Monster wear clothes far too small for him and extremely heavy shoes to try to emphasise its largeness and obscurity.

PSYCHO: In Psycho, the “bad guy” we are faced with is a psychological monster, Norman Bates, who appears to be a normal person; until you find out he is a cross-dressing schizophrenic. This is a big difference from Frankenstein, as The Monster was shown to be hideous, whereas Norman Bates is shown to be a charming bachelor, who seduces Marion, and eventually kills her.

2. Explain
The idea of a monster within a horror film was used as a device to scare or frighten the audience, by showing them an inhuman creature with the ability to torment. Frankenstein’s monster, for example, was deliberately made to appear as inhuman as possible, via making him appear far taller than his surrounding characters, and equipping him with heavy shoes and extensive make-up. This idea is effective, as showing the audience something which they have never seen or experienced before, preferably something as opposite to them as possible, created uncertainty, and subsequently, fear. This had a lot of reflection to society within it, considering one of the most common fears in the world is the fear of the unknown, and so tapping into that caused the audience to react exactly as planned, to be afraid. With Psycho, for the majority of the film we are still left wondering who the killer is until the end, but the suspense and mysterious nature of the murder left us tentative.


3. Analyse

Since the first horror movie, the monster has evolved with the time. Although the general idea of the monster has not changed, a creature/person used to create fear, as seen from Frankenstein and Psycho, the way in which the monster is portrayed is quite different. As time progressed, the nature of the monster changed as the world changed and began to realise that things are not as they seem. It transitioned from a physical monster, in this case Frankenstein’s Monster, to a mental monster, Norman Bates. This evolution shows a lot about the society that we are living in; we do not need something to be visibly frightening to frighten us, more so we need something like a person, who could easily walk past without us sparing a second thought, who then reveals themselves as a monster themselves. In Frankenstein, the monster was the highlight of the film, as we saw the changing nature of a creature, essentially doomed from the start. This allowed us to show sympathy toward hideous creature, even though said creature accidentally kills several people. In Psycho however, we do not sympathise towards Norman Bates, even though he appears normal and human.
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Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (c) IV

PART 4:
    -Sound / Music

Sound is what we hear throughout the titles, and music is a medium of sound.

This is the music for the opening titles



The title sequence of this film is guided by it's music. Throughout the titles the dynamics of the music (pitch, tempo, style) change dramatically. Two noticable examples of this are:
  •  The bouncing red ball at the first segment, the music is orchestral trumpets, the notes being played staccato (distinguished and abrupt). This compliments the events on screen, as the ball is bouncing, and the music seems to have the same bouncing feel.
  • The contrast of the violins to the trumpets, the violins playing far more smoothly and giving the feeling of gliding, grazioso (gracefully) often when the paper plane is on screen.
The music of this title sequence is completely orchestral, predominantly brass and strings, each of which are used to contrast each other, and to contrast what is being shown. Each event on the screen is complimented by the background music, when upon reaching the segment containing the title, the music reaches its climax (18 seconds in), emphasising the importance of what the audience is seeing.

The two examples distinguish how the director has thought of every minor detail, so much as to syncronise the bouncing of the red ball with the strikes of the trumpet, and the plane with the violins. This causes the viewers to somewhat forget that what they are seeing and hearing are two different thing, but instead to feel as though they are actually in a world where flying planes are powered by violins. The repetition of the two main styles of the music, staccato and grazioso, causes the different segments, however random they may be, to feel connected somehow. The director has done this to allow the audience to follow each segment and understand what is happening in each, along with individual sound effects being overlaid to point out the important aspects of each segment, e.g. the bouncing red ball landing on the trumpet valves, with each impact having its own emphasised non-diegetic sound.


This is effective, as in many titles that do not include dialogue, it is easy to lose focus or get lost in the chaos on screen, though this is not the case here. We are shown each cast / crew member's name, but we do not lose the momentum that is sustained in the music and sound. The audience is captivated, the music placing them into a trance, so to speak, where they are completely focussed on the action on the screen, whilst still being able to acknowledge the cast / crew names.

Music is a key element throughout the film, with Molly Mahoney being a composer. The soundtrack consists mainly of orchestral music, similar to this title sequence, with the same contrast of staccato and grazioso dynamics, used to connect each of the music pieces together. This links the film together without detracting from the plot.
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Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (c) III

PART 3:

    -Colour

Colour is the visual perception of something when our eye looks at it, and in Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium, there is an extremely large amount of it. The screen is often full of colours of all kinds, usually bright, pastel colours, with many recurring patterns and styles, like zebra print. Examples of this are:
  • A simple plain red ball surrounded by black starts the titles, which then unfolds into the rest of the titles, which shows that things are not always as they appear, how a little ball can be so much more. This idea is referenced to later in the film, where Molly Mahoney is given a block of wood, but beneath its plain exterior, it is magical and recovers Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium back to it's original state after it throws a "temper tantrum"
  •  Black and white zebra print, surrounded by colour, contrasting that as things may in fact be black and white, with imagination it can be anything, which is shown when Henry Weston, an accountant, first encounters the toy shop, he calls it "just a toy store", whereas later in he realises that it actually is magical.

The ideas above are effective in the way that they take such a simple component of a title sequence, colour, but put meaning behind it. The way that the director has included such a broad use of colour allows the audience to relate to one of the main themes within the film, adults overcoming the expectations of them and being able to relate to their "inner child", by showing such a spectrum of colour and allowing older viewers to remenisce on childhood where they were "allowed" to have such an imagination, and not be expected to be the mature authoritave figure for once. 

I believe that the director has used this not only to appeal to the younger audience, by making it appear magical, but to allow the parents or older viewers to have the same feeling of involvement, like they are a part of the whole magical atmosphere, and allow them to get an understanding of the following film. Many other films will design their content on one target audience, e.g. adult, or youth, but in providing such a variety of colour and style, these titles have the opportunity to appeal to a much broader range of viewers.

Many other Family Fantasy genre films will involve bright rich colours, e.g. Nanny McPhee, but these movies seem to stick to a more defined pallette, in Nanny McPhee's case, darker toned earthly colours, dark blues, greens, browns, etc. But in MMWE, there seems to be no limit to the colours used. This may contribute to the movie's success and appeal toward audiences of all ages.


 In Helm's film, Stranger than Fiction, we are shown a colour pallette very different to MMWE, using realistic colours to create the sense of reality, natural colours, which contrasts to MMWE, where the aim was to make it as unrealistic as possible, to add to the magical feel of the film.
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Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (c) II

PART 2:
    -Camera Movement / Transitions

Camera Movement is the path that the camera takes or the way it transforms itself to change the shot, and Transitions are the way that two scenes are connected.

As briefly mentioned in the previous post, the titles of this amazing film are separated into segments, each lasting around 6 seconds. Each of these contain no camera movement, until the transition, where the following segment is brought to the screen via something related to the previous.
E.g. 
  • The first segment is of a red bouncing ball, which, once it has stopped moving, turns into the transition to the next segment, with the camera zooming in, with the ball now suddenly containing the contents of the next segment
  • The end of the fourth segment is a purple block travelling down a conveyor belt, and once more blocks start to appear, the screen is covered, and is the basis of the fifth segment. The fifth segment ends by the coloured blocks returning from where they came, and revealing a new part of the title.
The idea that each segment is made from the last, shows that everything is linked, and everything has a purpose, which is a theme within the film. The constant changing of the screen creates momentum and excitement, and each segment and transition being uniquely different creates the feeling that the titles are special, magical so to speak, which engulfs the audience in the magical atmosphere which is prominent throughout the film, before the film has even begun.


The second example shows the idea of the scene being formed in front of our eyes, and I believe that this is extremely effective, and that director did this deliberately. The reason that I believe this is so effective is that, as an audience, it can sometimes feel as if "we are doing all of the work", constantly attempting to keep up with everything being shown to us, but in this title sequence, each segment is deconstructed and reconstructed for us, as if we aren't watching it, we are being presented it. The following picture is an animated example of one of these transitions. To view it, please click on it.


This style of transition is different to Helm’s other work, with Stranger than Fiction having very sharp cuts, as opposed to the very smooth, fluid transitions that we are shown in MMWE. I believe this is due to the genre of the two films. Stranger than Fiction is a fantasy like MMWE, but not aimed for children, whereas one of the main audiences for MMWE is families and youth.

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