April 24th Pans Labyrinth

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1. What is this movie personally telling or teaching you? What is the film’s ending trying to personally convey to you? 

In my opinion, Pan’s Labyrinth was about disobeying the person or thing more in power of you in order to do what is right. The movie taught the message that if this was done correctly then it would pay off in the end. Ofelia decides to disobey the reign of her cruel and evil father and mother. She simply does as she wishes in hopes to obtain her wish of becoming a princess in parts of the movie, for example, and she does it no matter what it takes. The ending of the film, I think, is trying to say that everything may not be as it necessarily seems. To support this, in one of the end scenes we see a faun. This faun disappears when shifted to the parents POV. This suggests that the whole fantasy world was in Ofelia's mind. 

2. Watches and time: What is the symbolism and backstory to Captain Vidal’s watch? Why is it an important plot device?

Captain Vidal’s watch at first glance seems to be nothing of symbol or interest, but with further examination we see otherwise. When looking at it closer, we see that the watch represents the want of rule and power that Captain Vidal has. It represents that he will do whatever it takes to get his way or have control over everything and anyone else. As well as the broken gears in the watch represent Captain Vidal’s death and loss of any sort of power. The watch stands as an important plot device because it strongly relates to the movie's message. The watch, as stated before, represents Captain Vidal’s death along with the death of a form of evil. This relates to the message of Pan’s Labyrinth because it shows that if you try enough and listen to your own mind, then good can and will overrun evil.

pans labyrinth 55 minute

Is this a typical Hollywood movie? Discuss.

In my opinion, as of as far as 55 minutes of the film it is as far off from a typical Hollywood film that would be seen in this day and age. First of all, the movie the use of color gradient in different ways with both warmer orange color masks, and cool blues at other times where fear or eeriness is meant to be created for the viewer, while oranges are used for more excitement or anxiety at other parts of the film with warmer color gradient. Also, Pan's Labyrinth was made to be more of a fantasy drama but ended up having many horror aspects to it, the main aspect being the pale man monster.

What are the conventions of a Hollywood film? How is this one similar/ different.

Pan's Labyrinth shares many of the same conventions that are met with other typical Hollywood films. Most Hollywood films consist of conventions such as appropriate sounds. The sounds match the environment even if the sound is directly being shown in the shot. For example, if a drop of water was heard in a dark cave in the shot but we didn't see the drop of water in the shot, this is appropriate sounding to fit certain environments and settings. We see this convention in Pan's Labyrinth. Another similar convention seen in both the movie and a typical Hollywood film is lighting and costuming. In a typical Hollywood fantasy film costuming is very odd and the same thing matches with the colored lighting, often being a greenish or yellow color. In Pan's Labyrinth the color is blue and orange primarily, which is one huge difference i saw from a typical fantasy Hollywood movie. However, I was not surprised to see the obscure and out of the ordinary costuming of the fantasy world's creatures in Pan's Labyrinth.

pans labyrinth

Pan's Labyrinth is most likely about a girl who gets injured and ends up finding her away into a mystery realm. In this realm there is going to be horrific monsters with a very dark and eerie setting that creates thrill and suspense. It also makes the viewer feel very paranoid, fitting the film into the horror genre. The themes I am expecting from Pan's Labyrinth are Fascism and very rebellious characters who go against the crowd. The color gradients will most likely make the protagonists feel very small along with the camera angles which will make them seem much smaller and less significant than the villains and environment of the protagonist.

Meet and Subvert Film

When filming the video, although it is a silent film, I used a boom pole and shotgun mic to record most of the audio, as I was the sound designer. I also created music for the end of the film as the outro music. When making the film my group used a variety of different shot types in order to make the film feel more realistic, such as the tracking shot, and  the drone shots. As far as editing goes, it played an enormous role in this film. I used an unrealistic variation of colors in random scenes to make the whole environment seem more druggy and out of normal mindset, as the film is meant to simulate an illegal drug deal.

I feel there was definitely many of both successes and failures in the meet and subvert film. The shot types were well thought out and overall very successful as far as execution goes. For failures though, the main issue that really killed the film was the settings chosen. There were many more options that probably would have made the film much more smooth and overall a lot better because of sound issues in certain locations (mainly outside of the dome). Also many of shots could have been closer up which would have made the films plot much easier to follow. Lastly, the costuming should have been more consistent. 

Sound designer evidence:

Slow Motion

FPS or Frames Per Second are tracked by how "fast" the camera can record. Slow Mo is also what you would call this, the more frames per second, the slower.

Art

FiNAL FILM