Skip to main content

Auteur and Apocolypse now

 Coppola's creative signature always seems to create a powerful narrative, and its almost inevitable. We can see examples of this from, Apocalypse now, The Godfather trilogy and The conversation. 

One of the tricks that Francis Coppola uses to create the sense of 'inascapable fate' is a technique called 'waiting the dolly'

Francis stated in an interview that in the studio when he did film he would use this technique by using every sandbag in the studio and would lay them on the dolly as they did slow push-ins. This added an inertia to the camera movement and this also gave a great sense of gravity to the slow push-in shot. It give the shot a real sense of 'fate' when coming to an conclusion.A dolly movement is markedly different from handheld because it contains none of the camera operator’s small movements, their sense of humanity. This is neither good nor bad but is, rather, a stylistic choice on the part of the director. Some films use handheld movement to a great effect — Coppola isn’t one of them.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Narrative forms

Question - evaluate how successfully your film develops one of the key narratives listed? The film 'portal' develops a narrative by the elements of mystery, character development and the twist it holds at the end of the film. Throughout the film the surroundings and actions of the main character is used to create a narrative where there is a huge twist at the end of the film this twist occurs when their is a reversal of fortune for the main character where as we start to find out that she is in a simulation as the character begins to think she has escaped the 'prison' but in fact she is trapped in a simulation, however certain audiences may have realised this when during the film you can see a barcode on her neck and the fact that the main weapon, the portal gun is seen to just appear out of no where. This narrative is effective because it gives the audience a sense of confusion as this twist adds on top of the mystery of that fact why the woman was in the room overall.
Post a Comment
Read more
Narrative Feature  protagonist - what information do we find out? How is it conveyed?  Example Unusually, we don’t see the protagonist’s face until the dream section… and then we aren’t sure if this is her, as we’ve only seen her shadow and fragmented body parts: hands, sandalled feet and eye. Creates mystery from the start. What can we tell about her from the first 5 mins?  My Example What can we tell about her from the first 5 mins?   Narrative feature Establishing other characters - what information do we find out? How is it conveyed?  Example The cloaked, mirror-faced figure is dressed similarly to the protagonist. Is this a dream reflection of her? There are also doubles of the protagonist - or are they the same person? The only other character is the male lover that awakens (or does he?). His behaviour is tender, suggesting intimacy. My Example Are all of the characters actually fragmented reflections of just one Narrative feature Establishing location ...
Post a Comment
Read more
APOCALYPSE NOW  OPENING SCENE Apocalypse Now  is a 1979 American epic war film directed, produced and co-written by Francis Ford Coppola. It stars Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms, Laurence Fishburne, Harrison Ford, and Dennis Hopper. The film is a  metaphor  for a journey into the self and shows how the self, in the face of war, darkens beyond recognition. As they move upriver, Willard and the PBR crew become more agitated and separated from reality. Each experiences his own kind of mental breakdown. The opening scene is a very important factor of the film. AS it mainly show the effect war has on the main hero Willard CINEMATOGROPHY -Opening scene of willard, his face is upside down. This shows the fact that his life is 'upside down' and the fact that his face is shown next to a vehicle of war (a helicopter), it suggests that war has made his life 'upside down' -These layers of different images is shown by the te...
Post a Comment
Read more