I have not seen many of Wes Anderson's films, only Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), but his aesthetics and style are very recognizable, including in his newest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel. Ralph Fiennes plays the estranged M. Gustave, the owner of The Grand Budapest Hotel, who is launched into a tidal wave of circumstances when his wealthy, older lover is suddenly killed. The story is an interesting one, revolving not around M. Gustave, who is the subject of the story, but rather around his lobby boy, the intuitive Zero Moustafa, who assists his friend and boss in discovering the reasons behind the woman's death. Interestingly, this plot is contained within a flashback, where an author visits The Grand Budapest Hotel and meets Zero Moustafa in his old age, now the owner of the great establishment. Zero tells his story to the writer, who in turn writes a book on the man. However, this story line is also a flashback. This story of the writer meeting Zero, is the writer’s flashback, remembering the time he visited The Grand Budapest Hotel and met Zero Moustafa. Surprisingly however, this is also a flashback, making there three consecutive flashbacks within the film. The true original story of The Grand Budapest Hotel is about a girl, who visits a monument to the author, and begins to read a book by the writer entitled The Grand Budapest Hotel. This collection of stories that interlace with each other provides the audience with an introspective look at the story of The Grand Budapest Hotel within the fictional country of Zubrowka.

What interests me about the cinematography and style in the films by Wes Anderson that I've seen are his blocking and the theater style sets which he creates. Look at this shot from The Grand Budapest Hotel:

Here we see a typical shot of the front of the hotel, but the shot looks less cinematic and more theatrical. The backdrop of the hotel that gives the setting of the scene, provides a 2 dimensional background. We can also see the army patrols entering from “stage right” and army vehicle positioned against the backdrop. The subjects of the shot are the two main characters in the “Mendel's” vehicle, who are put directly in the middle of the shot up in front. Usually, the director would abide by the “Rule of Thirds”, and position the subject on the right or left of the frame; however Anderson decides to position them in the middle, with their setting surrounding them. If we were to see this same set up on the stage, rather than on the big screen, it would look natural. However, because the shot is in a cinema format, is seems slightly askew, and lends a characteristic to Wes Anderson’s mise en scene. Shots similar to this were used extensively throughout the film to provide establishing shots for different scenes.

Let’s look at another shot from The Grand Budapest Hotel that alludes to the styles which Wes Anderson utilizes in most of his films:

Here we see The Grand Budapest Hotel sitting atop a mountain majestically, looking out at the village below. The shot is obviously not actual size, seeing as how getting a building of that size with that exact perfect setup atop a mountain would be nearly impossible. This is enhanced with the style of the shot, showing an extensive amount of pastel undertones that are not typical in real life, but rather in paintings. Wes Anderson clues us into one of his usual styles: his continuous attempt to paint a picture on the screen for his viewers. 

This is included in some of his shots. Take a look at this shot:

This shot shows M. Gustave upon hearing that his older lover has been murdered, fleeing into the hotel. Typically in a film, when a character decides to flee from the authorities, he is immediately chased by those he is fleeing from. However, as is usual with a Wes Anderson film, M. Gustave runs, while the rest of the characters in the scene remain in their positions. Aside from providing a taste of comedy in the film, this scene shows the painting style that Wes Anderson tries to convey in his cinematography. By minimizing the movement of characters and props in the scene, he makes the audience focus on the positioning and blocking of his shots simultaneously with the action in the scene, making each frame more picturesque. 

The shots in The Grand Budapest Hotel were the best part of the film, and are the signature of the Wes Anderson cinematic style. His craft with storytelling also shine through as a strong point of the film, keeping the audience intrigued and guessing. Another strength of the film was its cast, which included Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori as Zero, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Saoirse Ronan, Jeff Goldblum, Edward Norton and Jude Law, and many other well known names. Wes Anderson has been known to use many actors in consecutive productions, which was again displayed in cameo roles for this film, including a short part for Bill Murray. 

The film is a great one and definitely one you should take the time to see, especially if you enjoy the films that Wes Anderson typically creates. The Grand Budapest Hotel presents a quirky, visually beautiful, plot twisting comedy that focuses on the story of a young lobby boy. Wes Anderson was fully able to flex his cinematic strength with The Grand Budapest Hotel.

The digital age has revolutionized many different markets, making more advanced products with better efficiency than ever before. Film is a powerful example of this truth. At the turn of the millennium, filmmakers were beginning to test the digital forms of cinema, and developed progressive programs and products to enhance the viewing experience for audiences. A forerunner of this movement was the famous director, Peter Jackson.

Jackson was set to direct the lesser known film Heavenly Creatures in 1993, while he was still unknown to the common citizen, and was looking for a company to create his visual effects in post-production. Having produced most of Heavenly Creatures in New Zealand, and unable to find a suitable company to accomplish this task, Jackson decided that he would establish his own visual effects company in his home of Wellington, New Zealand. Weta Digital was created in 1993, and has become one of the most successful visual effects companies in film history.

Weta Digital and Jackson’s impact on the growing digital film industry was minimal at first; that is, until 2001. Peter Jackson was given the rights to the famous Lord of the Rings book trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien in 1997 and he immediately began to devote his time to creating his masterpiece. When The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was released in 2001, using Weta Digital for the visual effects in post-production, it was applauded and praised for its groundbreaking digital effects. One program in particular that the company created solely for The Fellowship of the Ring, was MASSIVE, or Multiple Agent Simulation System in Virtual Environment, which selected a group of characters on the screen and replicated them to make the screen appear filled with extras. This strategy was mainly used for the large scale battle sequences in which thousands of warriors were depicted; a feat that is nearly impossible to achieve with real people.

Weta Digital received an Oscar for Visual Effects for their achievements in The Fellowship of the Ring, and received two more for the sequels The Two Towers (2002) and The Return of the King (2003) the following two years. This success made Weta Digital the most influential visual effects company of the digital filmmaking age, and showed that digital filmmaking could legitimately create epics on scales that were previously unimaginable. Peter Jackson’s vision and spark led a digital revolution in the world of cinema.

Weta Digital and Peter Jackson did not take a break with their influential moves on the digital film industry. In 2005 they created yet another epic, King Kong, a replica of the 1933 adventure film of the same name. The main character of this film is a massive ape who scales buildings and fights dinosaurs, so the visual effects were to be heavily relied upon throughout the story. Weta Digital and Jackson were determined to make King Kong as realistic as possible, and to do so required the creation of numerous new programs and software. Given that he was an ape, the visual effects team at Weta decided to animate every single strand of hair, resulting in 460 billion single strands of hair in King Kong’s animation. They also were able to create the software CityBot, which allowed for the visual effects team to create the New York cityscape which King Kong famously scales. These sets of software are what led to the Academy to select Weta Digital for their fourth Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

Weta was not finished with their powerful visual effects skills after King Kong. The digital film industry was becoming flooded with more and more artists wanting to create masterpieces with digital technology and CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) was becoming increasingly popular. In 2009, Weta Digital decided to again revolutionize digital visual effects, by helping to create Avatar (James Cameron). Seeing that CGI was becoming the standard for VFX in cinema, Weta decided to expand the technique, by creating an entire world using CGI technology. The world within the film Avatar became famous and James Cameron was praised for his vision and complete utilization of CGI technology, but the team with Weta Digital were the people capable of carrying out Cameron’s vision. Weta Digital was awarded their fifth Oscar for Visual Effects with the release of Avatar, and once again proved themselves to be one of the most competitive VFX companies on the market.

Weta Digital was named after one of the largest insects in the world which inhabits New Zealand, and is a perfect name for the VFX company, as it accurately represents the impact that Weta has made on the digital revolution in the film industry. Weta Digital is still working hard today, creating productions such as The Hobbit (Peter Jackson, 2013) trilogy and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (Matt Reeves, 2014). For Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Rupert Wyatt, 2012) they reinvented motion capture technology so that the crew would be able to shoot certain scenes on location. This is just a further example of how Weta Digital continues to make impacts on the film industry.

Be sure to check out their films when they are released in theaters, including Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (Matt Reeves, 2014), which premieres on July 11, 2014.

by Mark Young

Even though we entered spring only two weeks ago today, we are already seeing the first screenings of the “Summer Blockbusters.”  It seems to me that the summer blockbuster season stretches earlier into spring every year.  Starting with the film Jaws in 1975 late June became the unofficial starting point for the summer’s biggest movies.  Memorial Day weekend soon took over as the official start of the blockbuster movie season with the release of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989.  And since 2008 with the release of Iron Man, the first weekend in May has been the beginning of the big budget releases.  Yet, now it seems that before studying for finals even begins the cinemas are calling to young adults around the world, “Delay studying, come to the midnight showing of –insert name of any summer movie--.”  So as a tribute to the start of the blockbuster season and because I love the Superhero genre, I would like to invite you to analyze Captain America: The Winter Soldier with me.

Now the validity of the Superhero movie as its own genre has often been contended.  But my colleague Michael has already defended that topic in another article which you can read here: The Superhero Film: A Credible Genre?  Here we will treat the superhero movie as its own genre because of the special circumstances that superhero films bring to analysis.  If you have not seen the Captain America trailers yet please take a moment to watch this one below.

The first aspect I like is that this trailer shows Captain America’s struggle to relate to the modern world.  A lot has changed in 70 years and we are asking a man with pre-World War II values to embrace the modern ways we choose to defend our country.  I feel this film and its predecessors accurately portray Cap as the dream soldier we all hope our fighting men are: honorable, brave, and selfless.  Captain America exemplifies all of these while still keeping a persona of innocence.  As my nephew said, “Captain America isn’t like other Superheroes.  He is 100% good.” 

In Cap’s struggle to relate to the modern world he is finding himself butting heads with many of his new bosses.  He finds the modern methods of a militarized intelligence agency unsettling, but it also causes him to question if the country that he loves is still the same country in which he lives.  Cap wants to do the right thing but being raised in a different time has given him a different perspective on what the “right thing” means.  This struggle also clearly draws parallels to the modern military political atmosphere in America.  And it is asking important socio-political questions that are on the frontline of our culture’s topics.  Questions like, is preparing great military might an action motivated by freedom or fear?  Is it wrong to take pre-emptive strikes when no crime has been committed?  How do we protective ourselves and still maintain true American freedom?

Finally, this film is bringing both Cap’s personal and professional struggles to a head by giving him a threat that could redefine the way he views the world.  It addresses the questions.  Will he be completely changed into going along with the fear he protests? And will he be able to maintain the purity of what he fights for: truth and justice?  I know that this film will be full of many action sequences and stunning visuals that we have all come to know and love.  However, it also has the opportunity to be an incredibly smart film and tackle some big topics.  I personally hope it does both.

So, let me know what you hope to get out of this film.  Do you think it will be as smart as the preview led us to believe?  How different will Cap be at the end of this film?  Share your thoughts and analysis in the comment section below.  And as always thank you for reading.

Last week I wrote a director profile on three-time Academy Award winner James Cameron. This week, I’m going behind the scenes on one of Cameron’s most successful films---Aliens. Aliens, the sequel to Ridley Scott’s box office hit horror film Alien, ramped up the action from the first film, turning the film into an action/adventure film rather than a horror picture. Among the aliens used in the second installment, the Queen Alien was by far the most impressive creature.

For the most part, the crew was able to reuse the creature designs from the first Alien film. The alien in the first film  was (for most scenes) a seven-foot man in an intricately designed alien costume. For close-up shots (ex: the head of the alien), an animatronic was used. This method was reused for some scenes in Aliens. However, in this sequel, the Queen alien was significantly larger than the other aliens (about twice as tall). As a result, a new design would have to be implemented (Aliens Special Edition Blu-Ray).

A number of techniques ended up being used to create the Queen alien. A crane was used to stabilize the main body of the creature. The head and neck of the alien was hydraulically controlled. Creature effects coordinator Tom Woodruff, Jr. stated, “As simple as it was at the time, it was very effective. We had hydraulic lines that ran from the neck controls to a little support stand that literally had steering wheels on it to crank the Queen’s head around. That whole process was new and exciting to see on something of that size.” The crew ended up using the hydraulic method for other parts of the alien as well, with the body, tilt, and turn being accomplished this way (Aliens Special Edition Blu-Ray).

Other body parts of the alien, such as the legs, utilized the puppeteer method. Another creature effects coordinator commented, “Her legs are puppeted externally by puppeteers, rods, etc that would move her legs.” Specific parts of the Queen’s face, such as the lips, jaw, and tongue were controlled by cables that allowed complete movement. Ultimately, 14-16 operators were needed to make the Queen alien completely mobile. The producer of the film, Gale Hurd, noted, “She was huge, she weighed a lot, and to choreograph the movements of the Queen with the two people that were creating her movements was always a challenge and did eat up quite a bit of production time. On the other hand, we got every shot that we needed within our shooting schedule, which remained on budget and on schedule” (Aliens Special Edition Blu-Ray).

So as you can see, a lot of behind-the-scenes hard work and time went in to making the terrifying Queen alien you see in the final cut of the film. Much creativity and various methods for movement were necessary to make the alien look as realistically as possible. In the end, Aliens, raised the bar even higher for special effects in films.

Written by Anthony Watkins


WORKS CITED
Aliens. Screenplay by James Cameron. Dir. James Cameron. Prod. Gale Anne Hurd. 1986. Special Edition Blu-Ray. Twentieth Century Fox, 1986.

            Without a doubt, one of cinema’s most unique genres is the musical film, which primarily utilizes song and dance routines to advance the narrative. Considering the inherent theatricality of the musical film, more often than not, these movies tend to be adapted from the stage to the screen. With that said, the musical film intrinsically contains some very unique challenges regarding its presentation. Whereas the musical film tends to benefit from an already well-established fan base, at times the magic of the musical can become inextricably tied to the stage, making its representation on the screen unbearably camp. Moreover, given its stagy nature, it is quite common for the musical to embrace a very escapist vision of reality, which further complicates its ability to garner significant acclamation from critics when adapted to film. Nevertheless, given the additional freedoms offered by the medium of film, musicals on the screen tend to achieve higher standards of production through the inclusion of lavish sets and locations that would be impractical or impossible to duplicate on the stage.

            In regards to the history of the musical film genre, its origins can be traced back to the advent of sound in motion pictures. For obvious reasons, the musical film genre’s dependence on sound kept it from emerging earlier, but with the official launch of synchronized sound in film, the genre prospered as the primary showcase for what the inclusion of sound meant for the future of film. This direction was pioneered with Warner Brothers’ groundbreaking release of The Jazz Singer (Crosland, 1927), which featured seven songs and a few lines of screen dialogue (Dirks). Realizing the ramifications of the sound revolution, other major film studios followed suit and began to release their own musicals, which typically ended up being rather crude due to various technical limitations. However, with the release of MGM’s first full-length musical, The Broadway Melody (Beaumont, 1929), which ended up winning an Academy Award for Best Picture (the first musical and sound film to do so), the musical film proved its worth to the history of cinema.

            With the dawn of the 1930s, the “Golden Age of the Musical” began (Dirks). In fact, Hollywood released over one hundred musical films in 1930 alone, which included The Vagabond King (Berger and Lubitsch), The Rogue Song (Barrymore and Roach), Whoopee! (Freeland), King of Jazz (Murray Anderson and Fejös), and many more. The oversaturation of musical films from the 1930s ultimately tired viewers though, especially since this era coincided with the height of the Great Depression. Given viewers’ lack of interest for the musical film, the genre began to experience a commercial decline over the next few years. Moreover, since the public had come to associate the early use of color with musicals, the popularity of color productions likewise declined.

            However, with Warner Brothers’ acquisition of choreographer Busby Berkeley, the musical genre was revived again (Dirks). This was perhaps most apparent in his work with 42nd Street (Bacon, 1933), which featured impressive production numbers and enjoyed critical success. Hollywood’s “classical era of the musical film” remained popular up until the late 1940s and 1950s, at which point a production unit at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer headed by Arthur Freed began to transition away from the approach embraced by old-fashioned musical films, to a structure that gave his directors and choreographers free rein and furthered the boundaries of musical films. Starting with Meet Me in St. Louis (Minnelli, 1944), the Freed unit began producing some of the most popular films of the genre, which included Easter Parade (Walters, 1948), An American in Paris (Minnelli, 1951), and Singin’ in the Rain (Kelly and Donen, 1952).

            Through the 1960s and onward, the adaptation of stage material for the screen remained the predominant trend in Hollywood, partly due to its enormous success upfront. In fact, West Side Story (Robbins and Wise, 1961), My Fair Lady (Cukor, 1964), The Sound of Music (Wise, 1965), and Oliver! (Reed, 1968) were all adapted from Broadway hits and each won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Over the next several years, the popularity of the musical film waxed and waned, finding success in films such as Saturday Night Fever (Badham, 1977), Grease (Kleiser, 1978), and Footloose (Ross, 1984).

            With the arrival of the early 1990s, one of the more successful modern-day musical movements emerged: Disney’s animated musical blockbusters. Under this movement, Disney films such as The Little Mermaid (Clements and Musker, 1989), Beauty and the Beast (Trousdale and Wise, 1991), Aladdin (Clements and Musker, 1992), and The Lion King (Allers and Minkoff, 1994) were released in rapid succession, amassing an enormous fan base. Although the animated musical film has become a popular route for the genre in recent years, the success of films like Chicago (Marshall, 2002), Rent (Columbus, 2005), Sweeney Todd (Burton, 2007), and Les Misérables (Hooper, 2012) seems to indicate that large scale, live action musical productions are still very much relevant to film today. In addition, although the musical film characteristically contains certain elements reminiscent of theater that can be a bit difficult to translate to the screen, such hurdles are definitely not insurmountable and without a doubt, the medium of film can actually enable musicals to make use of settings and situations that could not possibly be replicated on the stage. With that said, although musical films can teeter on the verge of being too camp at times, if properly executed, such films can be extraordinarily well done and quite deserving of critical acclamation.

Works Cited

Dirks, Tim, ed. "Musicals – Dance Films." Filmsite. <http://www.filmsite.org/musicalfilms.html>.