No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men is a 2007 American neo-western film- adapted from Cormac McCarthy's novel , No Country for Old Men reached 'best film of the year' the film has won four Oscars. The plot and story-line follows of a man who has gone out hunting, who has stumbled and come across a drug-deal, got caught up in the drug-scandal and to save his life, he kills the drug men who try to kill him for intruding; the hunter- Llewelyn takes the drug money of $2 million, delivering us into the film. 

The trailer for the film is very effective, it uses a lot of scene cuts, to add suspense, the non-diegetic sound is very sharp and loud furthering the add of a thriller theme, and in adding suspense. On Youtube alone, the trailer has 3 million hits, titled as being 'awesome'. The target audience that the trailer leads us to believe it is aimed at are people who enjoy action, guns, explosions and blood; the film more-over aims towards the older, middle-aged men. This is because the title talks about men, and more older men in general, also the majority of men like all of them main themes just mentioned, and the title itself having the word 'men' in, draws the men in, as it applies to them, which leads men to think that the film could potentially relate to them in a particular way.

The film is a typical cat-and-mouse hunt, with the main lead Llewelyn Moss, after finding the $2million, is being perused by not only the cops (Ed Tom Bell) but also a psychopathic killer, Anton Chigurh. Set in 1980's West Texas, all three men manage to cross-eachovers path, with Anton and Ed Tom trying to pursue Lleweyn for either to kill, and the $2million. Repeated themes and ideas of the film are of fate and circumstance, which can be seen in different scenarios and parts of the film.  

The opening of the film is set in the Texas desert, it makes us feel like the characters are alone, and everything is isolated. The costumes are made to look like everything is realistic, giving us the sense that the film is real or very realistic, heightening our feelings and emotions towards the film. The sound used in the opening included diagetic sound and non-diagetic. The diagetic sound is all realistic and natural sounds-includding sounds of the desert, a rattlesnake to set the mood and setting and show how realistic the film is. The non-diagetic sound includes unrealisitc sounds and narrative of a sherrif talking about how times are different and how he just had to put a man to death for murdering a 14 year old girl just because the murderer felt he 'had to kill', this links in with the opening because the main villain is being arrested for whatever reason showing to us that we aware that this man is a villan/antagonist, however we do not see his face suggesting the man is a mystery.

Anton Chighurh is the villan/antogonist of the film/novel. He is regarded as a ruthless, psychotic murderer, he is a hired hitman who kills even if it isn't in his contract to kill someone, he shows little emotion or compassion and wears black clothes and a strange dated hairstyle suggesting he doesn't conform to society's standards and has a theme of strangeness and mystery about him. His overall character is based mainly on his actions as he has little dialogue furthering his theme of mystery; his actions tend to be of killing people, however he is seen as compassionate when he offers the man in the gas station a toss of the coin, probably for life or death. 

Micro Feature- Lighting

Lighting plays an important part in filming, lighting is significant to portray certain emotions or feelings the characters may be feeling, the theme or atmosphere of the certain given scene or how us, as the audience should feel or respond to the given scene. 

 
There are different types of lighting techniques, all used in different and various ways to convey the specialised element that they are used to portray; such as: Key Light- Key Light is used to show contrast between the character and the background, it is a common lighting technique.
Backlight- This particular lighting technique is used to show an unknown character or mystery behind a character, can also be used to make a silhouette of someone; used mainly for horror or upsetting scenes/filming. 
Filler Light-This type of lighting is featured first in the given video embedded,it is used to signify the character and centre all attention on to the character, drawing away from any other characters, or the background or scene of context.
Underlighting- A technique used to show mystery about a person, the light is shone from below and it is hard to make out the character's face, used in horror and to create a scary impression of the face.
Top Lighting: This is where the source of lighting is coming from above, it is used to remove shadows and make the set seem bright i.e the sun is shinning.
Low Key Lighting: Highlights the contours of an object or person, can be used to add suspense or alienate the characters.
High Key Lighting: Used to suggest a happy elated mood present, this is done by reducing the lighting ratio present; it also is free from shadows and makes the characters look flawless. 

Psycho

Psycho is a 1960 Alfred Hitchcock film starring Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin and Janet Leigh. At first the film starts with Vera Miles (Marion Crane) who tries to escape with running off with &40,000 of her bosses money, the audience is led to believe that the film will be about a runaway of a woman who may potentially be the psycho. However, a huge twist is taken when the Marion is killed while staying at a motel by 'the mother' of the man- Anthony Perkins (Norman Bates) in the shower, leading the the ever famous 'shower scene' in film history.
Marion's death comes from no-where, after chatting with Norman on arriving at the inn, he asks her for dinner, however we can hear (diegetic) him having a 'conversation' with his mother who frowns and disregards Marion and other unknown girls, Norman apologizes for his mother not allowing her to eat with them in their house, however he brings her some food to eat and talk with him in his study. Norman's study is crucial to the mise-en-scene, and topic of conversation. The room includes stuffed birds of prey such as owls along with portraits of naked women; it is not fact but it leads us to suspect what kind of character Norman may be, one of a perving and dominating individual that likes to stalk vulnerable woman.
Coming back to the shower scene analysis shows that it marks as a terrorising moment in horror history at the time, as today in cinema and film we are given the gore, the violence and nothing is really left for us to imagine what happens as we see all the terror on screen, however the horror genre in the 60's was fairly new and for the audience to imagine what happens to Marion in the shower scene is as terrorising as their imagination sees it, which we can try to relate to as being something scary or terrorising, but being the children of today that we are, and seeing movies of our age and the media, we are given all the gore so nothing is left to the imagination, and we believe that our movies and horror films are more scary.
The amazing twist comes at the end of the film where it is reveled that the mother who kills Marion and the private investigator is Norman himself (the Psycho) where it comes apparent as Norman's psychological analysis revels that he has taken on his mums personality and his own,  where Norman likes and crushes on girls such as Marion his brain believes that his mother is jealous of the girl and because his 'mother' part of his brain is jealous she kills them,  more than your average personality disorder.
The Mcmuffin plays a part (being that the money), unknown to Norman it is buried with Marion in the swamp, in which when his 'mother' kills Marion, as an audience it is at this point still unknown that Norman actually hosts two personalities, and as the money is buried with Marion, it shows us how incredibly sneaky a macguffin can be in hiding itself as a 'macguffin', at the beginning we believe that the money is the main crucial element of story line, however as the killings start, it is unconsciously made aware to us that the money was all along a mcguffin, a crucial piece of the film that is credit to Hitchcock's amazing work, even in today's day and age where we are seen as naive and arrogant to earlier film and media work, you cannot deny the work that Hitchcock has produced in terms like Psycho. 

North by North West

North By NorthWest is a 1959 American thriller spy film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason. 

The plot and storyline of North by Northwest is that a innocent wrongly accused man-called  Roger O. Thornhill (played by Carry Grant), is actually a New York advertising executive who quickly into the movie is wrongly accused of being a spy under the name 'George Kaplan' and he is constantly being pursued by a mysterious group of men with intentions to kill Roger, who they believe to be the 'spy'. 

Roger is confronted by two men in suits that take Roger to their bosses house, who takes Roger up to his study/work room and believes Roger is this spy that they so believe him to be, Roger is interrogated and supplied with evidence by his interrogator (valerian) who have been apparently tracking the spies every move. After denying and astounded by what Roger has been charged of, Valerian tells his right hand man to 'get rid' of 'Thornhill', Roger is forced to drink an alcoholic substance, and wakes up in a car, which he has been placed in, about to drive off a cliff. Roger intoxicated manages to get a hold of the wheel, realising that it was going to look like a drunken suicide, he drives away and is then again pursued by the right hand men not realising he was going to be able to drive away. From there on out, Roger tries to hold an investigation with the police as to why these men feel Roger is someone who he believes himself not to be, in which even the police and his own mother conclude that Roger is in the wrong, finding no evidence of the night before where Roger was apparently trying to be killed. A bit later on Roger is talking with a man named Townsends with who Roger believes he can get help from, but however unsuspectedly and unnoticed stabs Townsends in the back with a throwing knife, making it look like Roger stabbed the man to the oblivious people around him, Roger is now wanted for from the police, going on the run from the police and his killers. From there on out, the film looks at how Roger is trying to be pursued by his killers, until he meets a woman on a train Eve (Eva Marie) who trusts and 'helps' Roger  hide from the police on this train by hiding him in her room on the train, Roger and Eve end up having some romance, but Eve hands a note to a mysterious man later on in the night, making up suspect her character. Eve has set up a meeting with Roger and Kaplan which may help Roger resolve all of this false identity, when Roger arrives at the place he has a short and strange conversation with a man who is 'waiting for the bus', suspicious as he just left from a car to get on a bus, Roger believes this man to be Kaplan however nothing comes from the small talk conversation and as soon as the bus leaves the deserted setting, a crop duster comes out from nowhere and tries to kill Roger, narrowingly missing his death by tricking the killer airmen to fly into a long truck. Suspicion arrives for Roger as he later realises that Eve has tricked him and is working for the men trying to kill Roger, he manages to track her down at an art collectors ceremony where she is with the men trying to kill Roger, Roger goes up to the two and manages to get Valian to think that Eve slept with Roger so she may not be on Valians side and he starts to suspect her (takes his hand away from her) with what Eve angrily tries to slap Roger, but Valian tries to get his henchmen ready for when Roger leaves to kill him. Roger makes a fool of himself by joining in with the bidding in which the people get upset and the police is called, (form of escape for Roger) and tells them how he is the murderer that apparently killed Townsend earlier on so he is furthered from his pursuers. However Townsend is driven and taken to a Professor (Leo G. Carrol). The Professor come clean and tells Roger that obviously this Kaplan does not exist, and that this whole false identity and creation of this fake spy was invented to distract Vandamm from the real government agent: Eve. Realising this, Roger still pretends that he is the spy, in order to protect Eve's identity. The next day, Roger meets to pose as Kaplan to negotiate Vandamm's offer to turn over Eve for the spy-Roger, Eve walks in and Roger confronts Eve about this whole facade in which Eve tells Roger to step back or she will shoot, in which she does and drives away. The Professor takes Thornhill to the forest and Thornhill gets out of the 'ambulance' as the shots fired were blanks. However, Eve says her goodbyes and tells of how she must fly away with Vandamm as to blow this all over, Thornhill tells  the Professor he is to go after Eve, although the professor tries to stop Roger. 

At Vandamm's house, the two men inside the house tell of how suspicion is arrised when Eve's gun was found with blanks. Realising this, Roger finds a way to communicate with Eve, upstairs that the two men suspicious of her and they are planning to kill her. A plane is waiting to land for Eve and the two men, but realising they plan to kill her, Eve tries to pull out all the stops to try and not board the plane. In the end, Eve does not board the plane and escapes down the mountains with Roger, while the two men are trying to climb down after them, they manage to fall to their deaths; the professor and help come at perfect timing to save Roger and Eve.

Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock was an English film director and producer from Leytonstone, Essex. Hitchcock is one of the most key elemental people looked at in film. Born 13 August 1899 and died 29 April 1980, Hitchcock was known as 'The Master Of Suspense', he pioneered many techniques in suspense and psychological thriller genres of movie. Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films during his career, most with a twist ending, which was more like a 'trademark' of Hitchcock as he liked to always produce something different and exciting for his audience. Hitchcock was seen as 'one of the best movie producer and directors of all time' quoted by the Daily Mail, with exceptionally brilliant films such as Psycho in 1960, The Birds and North by Northwest. Hitchcock was always described as struggling with his weight, which is a reason for why he was rejected from military service in the first world war, he also had a fear or dislike towards policeman, where in his films he sometimes likes to portray policeman as wrongly accusing the wrong people or using harsh treatment, his fear was brought on when he was sent to be 'taught a lesson' by his father by being locked behind the cell bars for 5 minutes for behaving badly and to treat him a lesson.

Hitchcock moved to Hollywood in 1939, and became a U.S citizen in 1955,  when working in Hollywood he was working along a producer by the name of Selznick (during 1940s) who he described as very hard to work with, however being in America and a well known American country this is where Hitchcock really was known and became more popular with the American audience, and producing films from romantic comedy to courtroom drama.

Mise-en-scene

Mise-En-Scene




Mise-en-scene is the settings, makeup, costume, props, physical expressions that help set the scene and themes surrounding the film, it is physical attributes; there are five elements of Mise-en-scene.
Mise-en-Scene is a french term that basically translates to 'everything we can see in the scene'. Although Mise-en-scene looks at props, expressions, colour etc, it only accounts for things that are seen, so camera angles and sound does not contribute to Mise-en-scene.


Mise-en-scene is very important as it is subtle underlying themes that appear for the audience to uncover, to give meaning and more depth to the plot or story of whatever it is they are watching, the mise-en-scene may be as complicated as becoming something very hard to analyse or it may be something that is handed to you on a plate figuratively speaking.


The five elements of mise-en-scene:

1. Settings and props
2. Costume, hair and make-up
3. Facial and body expressions
4. Lighting and colour
5. Positioning of characters 

Micro Feature- Sound

There are two types of sound used in film; Non-Diegetic and Diegetic. Diegetic sound is sound that the audience can hear and the characters can hear also; normally Diegetic sound can be radios, conversation between characters, Diegetic is any sound that can be heard by the characters and us as an audience. Non-Diegetic sound is sound that only we can hear, this can come under songs being played over the film to set the theme such as narrative and voice overs.
External and Internal sound is Diegetic, it means if the sound we all can hear is either coming from a particular place in the scene that we can all see which is internal, and external is a sound that we can all hear but is not in the scene, i.e people sitting in a living room and the door bell rings from the hallway. A soundbridge is used to go from one scene to another, so when i.e a kettle is whistling away in another room, the person in the current scene will hear this external sound, go to the kettle to (make the tea) and that is the definition of a sound bridge; a sound that leads from one particular set of a scene  to another.

Micro Features- Cinematography

Cinematography is film photography, it is motion picture photography; in the film and media industry it is a job done by Cinamatographists and it looks at the developments and processes of the film with as well the shooting of the film. 

In Cinematography there is a range of meanings and ranges  of terms in Cinematography, such as Shot types and camera movements.

There a wide range of different shot types, such as: Hand-held shot or POV Point of view shot: This is a particular shot that shows the characters have control over what you see, the actions and thoughts the characters may have, and normally meaning you see what they see and the 'truth' of the filming (regards to the storyline) giving a sense of realism. Extreme close-up: Conveys an emotion or feeling a character is feeling and how insecure or vulnerable they might be. Medium close-up and Close-up: Draws the attention onto a particular person, pays attention to body language, what their wearing, mainly focuses on one person but can include other people. High Angle makes someone appear vulnerable or weak, shows them of a lower authority or status. Low Angle is a shot in contrast to High Angle shot that makes someone appear powerful and strong. Eye-level Shot is a shot that gives us the impression the shot is taken at the same angle as us so that our face is parallel to ours, normally makes the effect that the character is taking to us directly. Over the Shoulder is a type of shot that is typically used when two characters are having a conversation, and it can also be used to show a essence of mystery about a character as we do not always see their face in this particular shot. Long Shot wants you to pay particular attention to what a person is doing, their entire body language and to familiarise yourself with this character. Wide Shot wants you as the audience to pay particular attention to the background, normally to 'set the scene'. Pan Shot is a shot that rotates horizontally around the set to help set a theme such as a slow pan would give us the impression something scary would happen and jump out at the camera where-as a quick pan may just be used to jump from one particular element of the story to another, a pan is also used to show the background. Tilt Shot moves vertically, it conveys that something may of happened to a character such as being knocked out and fallen down, and to move to a next scene because of that, it can also convey something bad happening in the film. Tracking Shot tracks the movements of a character, (normally the protagonist) it shows us what the character may be like, and gives us an 'insight' as to the characters life and what they like to do, it is also used in the beginning of film to show that the tracker is the main character in the filming. Crane Shot a crane shot shows the depth a character can have about them, also used for special effects and cranes are normally used to help film the shot, a crane shot can also show a big group of people or crowd. In films like 'Western High Moon' the crane slowly backs away and rises showing how alone the character is. Aerial Shot is shot from a helicopter or even plane to give a birds eye view of a place, normally setting the location of the film, even can convey a feeling of flying. Two Shot shows two characters in a scene and looks closely and focuses on the relationship between the two characters and what they say to each over.

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