Thursday, March 20, 2008

Kurosawa

The primary trait of Kurosawa's directing that I decided to observe and analyze was his use of sound and music. Kurosawa fancied using no-diagetic sound in order to achieve his emotional responses and mood differences by the sound. Ran is a very good example, in the first battle scene at the third castle, Kurosawa decides not to use the sounds of dying and clashing metal, instead he decides to utilize a softer, dramatic score in order to achieve a hazy like mood, a type of "dazed and confused", if you will.
Also in Stray Dog, he uses music in the black market scene. He articulates the repetitiveness of the scene and the emotions of the young detective by putting a light but rushing musical score in the backround of the scene in the black market.
This is also present in Yojimbo, a light dancy tune is played in the street scenes as almost a comical feel is achieved when the samurai is just kinda walking and doing his thing in order to take advantage of the two warring groups.

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Black Hawk Down

Black Hawk was probably my favorite of the 3 films that we watched for the Ridley Scott director study. This is probably accredited to the modern-day warfare and military aspect of the story and the setting of the conflict.
The first thing I noticed was the non-diagetic sound, alot of music was used during this film that wasn't necessarily a score or strictly instrumental. As an example, when the black hawk helicopters were taking off voodoo child came on and played throughout the sequence on the way to the Bacqueratt market.
Scott also used a fire-hosing camera technique (handheld), to enhance the effect of chaos and stress on the soldiers.