Braveheart: Violence

Not only can special effects and barrels of fake blood effect the violence in any scene in a movie but the camera and different angles can as well. Braveheart is a very bloody and violent film which depicts war, treason, assassination, beheading, etc.. Most of the violence in the film is very explicit. Filling the whole shot with gore. However there is also implicit violence. For instance the ending scene when William Wallace is sentenced to a painful death for treason. The scene shows mostly his face and other parts of his body that isn't the area where his innards are becoming his outards, or whatever is going on; you can let your imagination run wild. There are hints as to what's happening such as William Wallace's expressions, close up shots of his face, the reactions of the crowd, wide shots of the people watching, his friends, and mid shots of those few friends watching from the crowd. When they decide to behead him you don't see his face but his hand clutching onto the wedding band his dead wife made. Then you see the axe begin to fall, you then hear the sound of the axe hitting something and William Wallace's hand going limp and the band fall from it. This is a good example of the versatility of a crafty camera man's imagination.

In-Camera Edits

The in-camera edits were great. Many people did well with not being able to make formal edits to their pieces of work. I feel as though the downfall to any, including Bryan's and my, in camera edit is the number of shots taken. Due to the time-stops we had to re-shoot several scenes and there were still parts in our 'short' where the frame froze a moment before the next began. The length of some shots could have been reduced however some of those lengthy shots were done purposefully. Epic as it was, our in-camera edit could definitely use some work. I enjoyed the simplicity of the shots although some pans and zooms may have helped. I would actually like to take the in-camera edit and edit it on a computer to make it better. I am certainly excited for our other projects and I'm hoping to make an equally epic documentary.

Lethal Weapon 2

In the movie Lethal Weapon 2 there are many different scenes full of action but there's a scene specifically that stuck out. In the movie Danny Glover, Sgt. Murtaugh, Gets stuck on a toilet because the men he and Sgt. Riggs, his partner Mel Gibson, are investigating rig his toilet to explode when he gets off of it and he realizes it before its too late. Due to the confines of the bathroom many of the shots taken during this scene are medium and close shots. The scene however cuts to his yard outside the house after the fire department, police department, news studios, and friends are called to deal with Murtaughs predicament. In this part of the scene the camera moves through the large crowd of people showing the abundance of chaos as the people fear for Murtaugh's life, and basically run around like chickens with their heads cut off.

Alien

I recently watched the movie Alien. The shots taken in the movie are confined to the the storyline. Most of the movie takes place in a futuristic spaceship. The halls and corridors of this spaceship are not very wide nor very long. Therefore most most of the movie consists of middle shots and close-ups. Though this can confine the movie it is done very well to make it the classic sci-fi horror movie that scared our parents and grandparents in the late 1970's and early '80's. The closeness of the shots gives the viewer a feel of what the confines of the spaceship might feel like; claustrophobic in some cases. This view also helps make it more suspenseful since you can see less of what's happening but have a feeling of what's to come. Overall the shots in the movie are done well whether or not the alien looks like a man in a suit, which it doesn't!, and some of the lines are corny.