Ryan's Blog

'Tumble Dry Low': Analysis 'Tumble Dry Low' is a short film, directed by Jefferson Stein, that deals with the subject of loss. The only two characters featured in the film are a father and his young daughter, both living in a trailer somewhere in East Texas. The film deals with its subject matter in a touching and respectful way, and has helped provide inspiration for certain scenes within our film, from a tonal perspective.  The film opens with an establishing shot of a trailer in the woods, making it immediately clear to the audience where the family lives, and where the entirety of the film will take place. We are then introduced to the young girl, as we see her painting a picture, although it is initially unclear what the picture is. Her father enters the trailer, noticing his daughter's painting and saying: "Dammit Sarah." He lifts up the picture and we get a close-up shot of it. It is a stick figure painting of a family, clearly featuring ...

'The Fly' Analysis: Narrative Theory 'The Fly' is a short film that was uploaded to Short of the Week in 2015. The film focuses on the getaway driver for a bank robbery, whose paranoia manifests in the form of obsessively trying to kill a fly that is bothering him in the car, as he waits for his team to return from the bank. The film only really features two of Propp's seven character types; the hero, in the form of the getaway driver, and the villain (the fly). The film does fit Todorov's 5 stages of conventional narrative. The film begins at a state of equilibrium, with the characters entering the bank as the driver waits calmly. There is then a disruption of the equilibrium as the fly appears in the car. There is a recognition of this disruption as the driver becomes agitated. Next, we get an attempt to repair this as the lead character tries to kill the fly. However, the reinstatement of the equilibrium does not come with the conventio...

'Wings of Desire' Analysis and Inspiration for Our Film 'Wings of Desire' is a German fantasy film directed by Wim Wenders, and was released in 1987. The film is set in Berlin and follows a group of angels, all of which are seemingly invisible to the living population within the city, as they follow and attempt to help any inhabitant of the city who may be in distress. The film follows one angel in particular, Damiel, who falls in love with a human girl and decides that he wants to become human himself so that he can be with her, and experience regular human sensory pleasures, such as the enjoyment of food. This film has been somewhat of an inspiration during the writing process for our film, 'River', as it features a human-like figure being tasked with helping others by a higher power. In this film it is an angel helping and guiding the people of his allocated city. However, in our film the lead character is Charon, a popular figure in Greek mythology, who...

Early Script and Directorial Ideas For our A2 Media Studies project, we took a number of weeks to come up with a general idea for the film. Our film will depict 'The Ferryman', a mythical being (from ancient Greek mythology) who transports people, from this world, into the afterlife. However, our film will depict him as an ordinary man, living in Belfast, tasked with transporting the dead to the afterlife, as his day job. The other lead character in the film will be a recently deceased young man, who will have to be taken to the afterlife by The Ferryman. Both I (as the director), and our screenwriter, were tasked with coming up with the initial ideas for the film; trying to come up with the idea for our other lead character, how the dialogue will be written, as well as outlining different shots that will be used, dependent on the dynamic between the two lead characters. Throughout this task, the characterisation of the two leads was of prime importance. We watched many ...

Background Information on The Ferryman For one of the lead characters in our film, 'River', we have chosen a prominent figure from Greek mythology, The Ferryman. Charon (or Kharon), in Greek mythology, is known as 'the ferryman of Hades', who carries the souls of the recently deceased across the rivers of Styx and Acheron, that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. An obolus or danake coin was usually placed in the mouth of the dead person, in order to pay Charon for the passage. Many authors state that those who did not pay the fee, or those whose bodies were unburied, were forced to roam the shores for roughly one hundred years. He is depicted in ancient Greek art as an ugly, bearded man with a crooked nose. Dante Alighieri, in 'Divine Comedy', described Charon using Virgil's depiction in 'Aeneid 6'. Dante depicts him as having eyes of fire. He also appears elsewhere as a mean-spirited and gaunt old man, or as a winged de...

Evolution of ideas for our A2 short film: Before we came to a final idea, we went through some other options we were considering. At first, we wanted to make something darker to what we did last year. With a darker atmosphere, we could create a better mise en scene which would generate a much more interesting image. Creating a darker atmosphere would give us more experience in filmmaking as we would tackle different and new ideas in all areas of production.   THE INITIAL IDEAS We wanted to create a film around a character that was mute. This brought up many ideas as to how the character would perceive and communicate with the world around him. The character was going to use sign language to communicate and the story was centred around his school life. We went through many different interpretations of this idea, such as a love story and comedy but we ended up going with a thriller.   The thriller version of the film about a mute character was the most ex...