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Home/ Y13 & Y12 IB Film/ Contents contributed and discussions participated by Edward Bradley

Contents contributed and discussions participated by Edward Bradley

Edward Bradley

Project MUSE - Dramatizing the Failure to Jump the Culture/Nature Gap: The Films of Pet... - 0 views

shared by Edward Bradley on 13 Nov 14 - No Cached
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    This does have The Draughtsman's Contract in it, but talks more about Peter Greenaway's films in general.
Edward Bradley

Peter Greenaway's Postmodern / Poststructuralist Cinema - Google Books - 2 views

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    Go to page 115 of this book.
Edward Bradley

Repulsion: Eye of the Storm - From the Current - The Criterion Collection - 1 views

  • Though her symptoms—excessive attachment to her sister, revulsion toward men and the concomitant rejection of “mature” sexuality, hesitancies about food—can all be found in any given textbook on psychopathological disorders, Polanski refuses to argue her condition in a Freudian key. Averse to embracing psychiatric dictates to explain human behavior, Polanski is more an observer than an analyst, and his face slap to the claims of the therapeutic could not be more blunt.
  • Since there is no past, Repulsion is filmmaking strictly in the present tense, as Polanski’s up-close camera invades the dark, cramped spaces Carol inhabits. She quickly transforms the apartment into a quasi tomb by closing the curtains and battening down the hatches, literally.
Edward Bradley

Knife in the Water - From the Current - The Criterion Collection - 2 views

  • obsessed not so much with the big issues of the day as with the quirks and backwaters of human nature.
  • It is an exercise in the Absurd and the surreal that suggests the hostility and suspicion with which outsiders can be regarded like the two men in the film who emerge from the sea carrying a large wardrobe. “I wanted to show a society,” said Polanski, “that rejects the non-conformist or anyone who is in its eyes afflicted with a moral or physical burden.” Two Men and a Wardrobe marks several other themes the director would continue to explore in future films––relationships between people, claustrophobia, scorn, deceit, violence, and humiliation.
    • Edward Bradley
       
      Focus of film involves psychological and personal issues.
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  • The solitude, or rather isolation, that envelops so much of Polanski’s early cinema is seen again in Knife in the Water. He told The New York Times Magazine in 1971: “What I like is a realistic situation where things don’t quite fit in. I like to begin with a mood, an atmosphere. I begin to people the atmosphere with characters. When I thought of Knife in the Water, I thought, first of the north of Poland where I used to sail and of a theme that wouldn’t involve large numbers of characters.” In Knife in the Water, the Polish lake district appears utterly uninhabited. Not a single other human being even slips into the frame. So, despite the immense skies and vast stretches of water, the three characters remain trapped in a hermetic, Sartrean huis clos.
  • Knife in the Water focused on the concept of non-conformity, on the subtle battles that erupt between the haves and have-nots. Most of the film’s witticisms are at the expense of the privileged, even pampered married couple, the prosperous “Establishment” in a Poland where most people were still struggling to cope with everyday poverty. More intriguingly, Polanski omits all reference to World War II, marking an escape from a past that obsessed Wajda and the somewhat older generation of Polish filmmakers. The youth in Knife in the Water (who Polanski considered playing himself) is a restless spirit, reluctant to accept orthodox habits, and his exit from the film, skipping nimbly away across the floating logs to the unknown promise of the mainland, confirms his survival instincts.
  • And at every turn, the weather dictates the fickle mood. The desolate horizons in every direction. The waters of the lake, now placid, now whipped into irritation. The glaring sun at noon. The milky light of a summer’s evening. The dark, ominous massing of clouds.
Edward Bradley

Knife in the Water - From the Current - The Criterion Collection - 1 views

  • After all the hardship endured in the making of my first film, the press showing was a disaster. The critics were determined to pan it. The members of Poland’s nomenklatura (communist establishment) were starting to get rich quickly at this period, and Knife was, among other things, an attack on privilege. Whether motivated by spite or political zeal, most critics vociferously demanded to know what the film was about. My “cosmopolitan” background was grist to their mill.
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    From Mr. Polanski's 1984 autobiography, Roman. Details the development of "Knife in the Water".
Edward Bradley

Sound Analysis - Uses and Gratifications - 1 views

    • Edward Bradley
       
      Copy this into your notes, and don't forget to cite it.
  • At the start of the clip of The Conversation (1974, d. Francis Ford Coppola), we hear, what seems to be, diagetic sound which is quite quiet. The reason for doing this is to create a Point-of-audition sound, where it seems as if we are intruding on the park and the scene. This is further emphasized with the jarring sound effect of the electronic static sound that is heard when the focus of the shot changes, which causes the audience to immediately pay attention to this sound. The purpose of this sound effect (Marwin K Kerner's Classification of film sound effects) is done to simulate reality. The sound effect here is called a hyper-real sound. This would also be linked in with the Point-of-audition sound, which gives the audience the impression that they are intruding on the park, similar to what the "protagonists" of this film are doing. The location sound of the scene (i.e. the talking and the shuffling of the feet) is done to create Walla or simply background noise. However, this walla not only has a role of creating verisimilitude, but to also block out the conversation between the two "antagonists," or the soundtrack shifts to the other conversations. This is shown at the start of the clip where the dialogue that we do hear constantly shifts until we hear the conversation between the antagonists (another example of hyper-real sound and point-of-audition sound). Furthermore, the music that we hear that is diagetic, or music from the park also adds to the sense of realism. This is shown when the heavy percussion based music of an african band blocks out the conversation between the antagonists, furthering the feeling of verisimilitude. 
  • Another area where the soundtrack is important is at the end of the clip, where the location sounds fade out, and a non-diagetic soundtrack starts to fade in. This classical piece has a slow tempo, which causes the audience to question what is going to happen next. Furthermore, the sudden rise in the loudness of this piece also foreshadows that an event is going to take place (linking it to the role of sound as a narrative device). 
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  • The conversation itself also mixes in with the Electronic static sound and the background noise. This link is done to further emphasize the Point-of-audition sound that we hear, so that the audience is further drawn into the film. This is reused when the subject of the shots change to the laser sound devices, with the sound channel linked directly to what is supposedly picked up by these very devices. This effect is called a semi-sync, where the sound that we hear is actually non-diagetic sound but is synced up to the video, giving the impression that it is diagetic sound. The conversation between the "antagonists" is also semi-synced, as the audio that we hear of their conversation is from the very devices that pick up what they are saying, again showing a link between the soundtrack and the visuals. 
    • Edward Bradley
       
      Copy this into your notes, and don't forget to cite it.
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