Personal Film Criteria

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Personal Film Criteria There has always been a big place in my heart for films. An engaging film has always started with terrific acting and a meaningful story to tell. The actors and how they portray their characters are just as important as the story itself. It is important to look beyond the basic story in a film as the director and writers typically have a deeper theme or moral they are trying to convey. These things have always been known to me, but I’ve grown to look at films in a variety of different ways after attending this film studies class. When evaluating a film, I now look at a film’s cinematography, the way sound is used and the director’s approach to the film. Cinematography plays a very important piece in a how a film comes across to its intended audience. The director can choose to use close up shots to further deepen the audience’s understanding of what the character is feeling at a defining moment. Wide angle shots can be used to show as much of the film’s action during an all important car chase at the pinnacle moment of the film. Lighting effects can easily be overlooked, but can sometimes make the scene. When the two samurai warriors fight in the pouring rain with the light of the rain drops splashing around them, it the lighting and angles that make these types of scenes such great cinematic moments along with the atmospheric sound effects. The ways sound effects are used in a film are almost as important as what the audience sees on screen. In the beginning of the movie John Q for instance, a woman driving a car up a steep mountain road totally relaxed and listening to classical music. The music is timed with the moments of the film to help us understand what the woman’s mood is without making a single physical motion or speaking a single

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