Reservoir Dogs

Reservoir Dogs has often been seen as a prominent film in terms of on-screen violence, and was the 1992 debut film of director and writer Quentin Tarantino. This film was produced in the United States, and it was completed with a US$1.2 million as a budget. It portrays what happens before and after a botched jewel heist, but not the heist itself; this occurs because he wanted the movie to be about something that is not seen and that he wanted it to "play with a real-time clock as opposed to a movie clock ticking". It incorporates many themes and aesthetics that have become Tarantino's hallmarks: violent crime, pop culture references, memorable dialogue, profuse profanity, and a nonlinear storyline. The film has become a classic of independent film and a cult hit. It was named "Greatest Independent Film of all Time" by Empire. Reservoir Dogs was generally well received and the cast was praised by many critics.

In this five minute scene we can see a group of men dressed in suit, talking about unimportant issues, such as the song ‘Like a Virgin’. It is practically always the same, as it gives the audience a short and confusing introduction, showing the main characters interacting with each other.

To begin with, we can see very few camera distances, angles and movements. First of all, the distance maintains always the same, with a steady medium close up, varying only once as it becomes a mid shot due to the fact that one of the characters stands up. The angle of the scene is medium angle all the time, because it shows the characters from an eye-level shot; it shows subjects as we would expect to see them in real life, and is considered a fairly neutral shot. Only in one stage of the scene there is a low angle shot which lasts for a very short time, and it focuses the leader of the group. This is made this way so the viewers can understand or maybe perceive that the role of that character is probably one of the most important ones. Finally, it is clear that the camera is being held by a tripod, as it pans around the table (where the men are talking) very steadily, keeping the angle and distance constant. After a while, it stops turning around and keeps completely still, filming only the characters which are speaking at that time.

The editing isn’t really used; it is pretty slow-pasted throughout it (taking into account that it is an action movie). The amount of times that there is a cut during the five minutes of it isn’t that high considering the genre; just 36 times. The scene is composed by a camera being constantly rotated through the table with the sitting men, and near the end it reaches a certain point in which there is constant shot reverse shot, focusing the characters which speak. The style of editing is of continuity, which is good as it helps the audience to keep focused on the subject or issue, not at all distracting.

In this scene, the sound used is mostly diegetic, generally referring to the narrative elements of a film (such as spoken dialogue, other sounds, action) that appear in, are shown, or naturally originate within the content of the film frame. The opposite is non-diegetic elements; such as sounds (e.g., background music, the musical score, a voice-over, or other sounds). This example is only used at the beginning, with the voice-over of a character while the credits are being shown. As I’ve just said, the diegetic sound is mainly always used due to the fact that the characters are speaking to each other continuously through the scene; it is a spoken dialogue between them. This use of dialogue chosen by Tarantino is interesting because there is no way the audience can fully understand what the actors are talking about due to the fact that it doesn’t follow a sequence or a certain structure. We can see this when the movie begins with someone talking about the song ‘Just Like A Virgin’, and there is no previous act that helps the viewer comprehend why this is being said.

Finally, the mise-en-scène of the scene is set in a coffee shop, with many posters hanging from the walls, a fan going round (doing the same movement as the camera), a lot of costumers in the store, a slightly bright lighting and a few windows. All main characters are visible and obvious because they are all wearing a suit (except two which then will be the ones who don’t participate in the crime scene), but even so they are all sitting in the same table. It’s lengthy and uninterrupted sequences shot in real-time are often cited as examples of mise-en-scène.

In conclusion, this scene is very easy and useful to analyze due to the fact that it doesn’t have many complex cinematographic examples. It is slow pasted, which helps to analyze it, and its meaning must be one of the hardest things to evaluate because of its non-linear structure that Tarantino gave to it.

German Expressionism

"Expressionism" is a theory of theatric direction in which subjective feeling, rather than objective observation, is represented symbolically in form (shape, colour, contrast) and subject matter. Expressionism is a symbolic representation of the director's state of mind, rather than of events, places, or things. In Germany, it developed into an anguished style which tended to explore the darker sides of the psyche.

German expressionist films were prevalent in the 1920’s. These films were united by highly stylized visuals, strange asymmetrical camera angles, atmospheric lighting, non diegetic sounds and harsh contrasts between dark and light. Shadows and silhouettes were an important feature of expressionism, to the extent that they were actually painted on to the sets in some movies.

Many directors were able to use these techniques in their own style, creating tension, fear, excitement and intense feelings in the audience throughout the movie or specific scenes.

Its purpose was to deepen the audience’s interaction with the film, combining technology and imaginative filming techniques in order to intensify the illusion of reality. The Expressionists supplanted reality with myth and fantasy in order to liberate visual perception from the other senses.

The Expressionists practically reinvented the look of film with innovative and unusual editing rhythms (it was very hard to follow the plot due to this fact), respectively distorted sets, exaggerated gestures, weird or different camera angles and the famous “camera unchained” (a new technique that allowed the camera to move within the scene, vastly increasing the accessibility of the character’s subjective point of view). The Expressionists developed new habits of seeing, new ways to interpret the way people relate to social living and self-identification.

The themes of Expressionism were integrated into later films of the 1920s and 1930s, resulting in an artistic control over the placement of scenery, light (it was mainly dark during the whole film), and shadow to enhance the mood of a film. Two genres that were especially influenced by Expressionism were the horror film and film noir.

Amongst the best remembered are films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Weiner, 1920), Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922), Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) and Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927).

In conclusion, no other film genre of the 1920's was as innovative and influential as German Expressionism. It opened the world's eyes to the possibilities of filmmaking, and where an audience could be taken. It was very much a product of its time, and so flourished and declined in that 10 year period of social and economic change. But its influence lives on in terms of production aesthetics and audience-driven production decisions. Simply put, modern films would not be the same if it was not for the ground breaking achievement of German Expressionist cinema.