“How valuable has ideological analysis been in developing your understanding of the themes of your chosen films?” In order to explore various themes, filmmakers often utilise cinema to spread their ideologies to the different forms of audiences. These can be drastically different depending on the circumstances under which a film is made. An example of this can be seen in the differences between Beasts Of The Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin, 2012) and La La Land (Damien Chazelle, 2016). As an independently made film, Beasts Of The Southern Wild (Zeitlin, 2012) is more free to explore the ideologies ..read more

Question – “How far do your chosen films demonstrate the importance of visual and soundtrack cues in influencing spectator response?” Intro: One of the most important aspects of film is Spectatorship through the way that the messages of individual filmmakers and their films are interpreted. Over time, various film theorists and film critics have developed various beliefs on how audiences interact with films. Audience: Many theorists believe that there are two central ways for audiences to interpret films through the belief of whether they watch films actively or passively. Theories surrounding ..read more

Question – “How valuable has ideological analysis been in developing your understanding of the themes of your chosen films?” Intro: In order to explore various themes, filmmakers often utilise cinema to spread their ideologies to the different forms of audiences. These can be drastically different depending on the circumstances under which a film is made. An example of this can be seen in the differences between Beasts Of The Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin, 2012) and La La Land (Damien Chazelle, 2016). Beasts Of The Southern Wild intro: As an independently made film, Beasts Of The Southern Wild ..read more

The Death Of Stalin (Armando Iannucci, 2017) is based around a satirical retelling of the days following Stalin’s death in the USSR (and thus historical accuracy was not a priority to the director). Steve Buscemi stars as the future Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev during the rapid grab for power between the remaining politicians in the following days. Despite overlooking, condensing or disregarding various elements of the historical events, the director still decided to give the audience some form of historical context to the events of the film. In the first and last scene, white text is used ..read more

Context: La La Land (Damien Chazelle, 2016) was a film released as part of Contemporary Hollywood and initially shown at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival on 31st August 2016 before being released to mainstream audiences in December of the same year. In contrast to independent cinema, Contemporary Hollywood only forms roughly 30% of American films per year. Despite this, they are able to receive much higher budgets and bring in more money through their box office runs (with this film having a budget of $30 million and making $449.3 million) through their ability to spend substantial ..read more

Context: Despite the fact that Independent films making up over 70% of the American films with an average of 500 films a year, the split between box office revenue is still less than films created by studios (with an example that Independent films made up 41.7% of revenue for American Cinema in 2012 with $4.5 billion although it has often lower in the past) as they often rely on word of mouth to be advertised and thus are less likely to be viewed by the masses outside of events like film festivals due to the amounts that advertising cost. To compensate for this, most films created by independe ..read more

The version of Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) I most recently watched was The Final Cut released in 2007. In the (once) distant future of 2019, Humanity has created robots known as Replicants to act as a labour force. After an incident, Blade Runners become responsible for hunting down Replicants for retirement/destruction. Once 6 Replicants arrive on Earth, former Blade Runner Rick Deckard (played by Harrison Ford) is tasked with tracking and destroying them. The film’s themes and symbolism were extremely fascinating to me, even more so than in its sequel. Through the split of perspective ..read more

La La Land (Damien Chazelle, 2016) is a musical romance film following a pair of artists – a pianist (played by Ryan Gosling) and an actress (played by Emma Stone) – trying to achieve their dreams and quickly falling in love and driving each other further in their pursuits of happiness in their careers. As a mainstream American film, its story has vague influences from the Golden Age of Hollywood, specifically in its ending where the characters once again accept their feelings for each other for a final time before going their separate ways which is slightly reminiscent of the concept of the c ..read more

Beasts Of The Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin, 2012) is a film following a child in a small community called The Bathtub as she deals with an alcoholic father and the threat of climate change. Towards the end of the film, the child – called Hushpuppy – sets out to find her mother and is able to come to terms with the fact that her father is dying. While initially watching the film, I found it enjoyable although certain aspects did negatively effect my opinions of it such as not seeing the value of the scenes involving Aurochs breaking out of blocks of ice and charging across the planet. At various ..read more

Spectatorship is a modern film theory based on the various ways that people react to mass media and whether they do so actively or passively. Active spectators of media often use it as ways to explore concepts such as personal identity on an individual basis in what is known as the Uses and Gratification model. By contrast, the Hypodermic Syringe Model is based on the belief that wide spread audiences react to films as a mass of similar views that blindly accept any of messages or themes put forward to them within the media they consume. However, one of the major flaws within this model is tha ..read more