Digital Filmmaking - Term break
07/09/2019
Heyman, D., McIntosh, S., & Tarantino, Q. (2019). Once upon a time... in hollywood [Motion picture]. United States: Sony Pictures.
Last night, I went to see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood at the Reading Cinemas in Invercargill, before I leave for some down time at my home in Timaru. It's cheaper to go and see a movie in cinemas in Invercargill ($12) than Timaru ($14-16).
SPOILER ALERT
It's a superb film that continues to show Tarantino's upmost respect and obsession with film history. While it's a respectful homage to 1960's Hollywood cinema, it also carries tonal references to his other films; Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and Inglorious Basterds.
Tonal references
Pulp Fiction - Subtle transitions between characters at different locations set during the same day
Reservoir Dogs - Rick Dalton's (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) car is the same car that Mr Blonde uses.
Jackie Brown - Production design of airport terminal
Inglorious Basterds - The climax where history is altered to an over-the-top extent (Manson Family members killed just before the Tate murders) and a scene where Dalton is in a movie where he kills a group of Nazis with a flamethrower. Style of narration and exploration of film history is almost done to the same extent.
One original element that Tarantino does offer in this film is where he distorts the story between the film and the film that is being made in the film, and as a result, it becomes the film. Nothing is done to differentiate between the two. Conventionally, it would have different colouring or aspect ratios.
However, it does do that with other shows and films being made as part of the film.
Even if the black and white TV shows being made in the film was shot on film, it still looks too pristine and clean for that television era and potentially not enough film grain.
It was perfect VFX compositing where Ricky is in the movie, The Great Escape, instead of Steve McQueen and this effort is reminiscent of Forrest Gump.
Al Pacino's character always make clear in one scene on what film print he saw films or TV serials on e.g. 35mm, 16mm
Tarantino continues his trademark style in this film by having long discussions in two-shot camera framing, popular music from the 1960's (this was used more to set the era and atmosphere of 1960's America, different to his other films), and having a focus on a woman's feet.
I like how Tarantino's frequent stuntwoman, Zoe Bell is in the film as a New Zealand Hollywood filmmaker. However, being a New Zealand film history nerd I would make this choice more creative than historically accurate since New Zealand filmmakers didn't direct in Hollywood until at least the early 1980's. I do think how her character's relationship with Kurt Russell's character is meant to be somewhat a reference to Tarantino's film, Death Proof, which is a film that features both actors.
The scene where Dalton improvises in a scene seems like a callback to how DiCaprio improvises in a scene in Django Unchained.
I believe the primary theme of this film is self-worth because the film focuses a lot on Dalton's dilemma and conflict on his worth as an actor and whether he is becoming a has-been, and having to resort to perform in a film genre that he despises. He believes that eventually meeting his next door neighbors, Roman Polanski or Sharon Tate will lead him to being a bigger star since Polanski was a successful filmmaker, having directed Rosemary's Baby just a year prior. He eventually achieves a satisfactory self-worth by being complimented for brilliant use of improvised acting on-set from both his child co-star and director, and being finally invited into Polanski and Tate's mansion.
Tarantino manages to make a scene still unsettling and tense by only using cinematography and not worrying about adding music, sound, or colour grading, in order to set the tone or atmosphere of the scene and location. It's unsettling because you as the audience don't know whether Spahn (the ranch owner) is dead or really sleeping, that a member of the Manson Family could kill him at any point, or whether Booth will leave the commune alive.
10/09/2019
I had been thinking about to get around the packaging for the stuff that the protagonist looks down at in the interior of the dairy with keeping in mind what Patrick said about filming with trademark signage around. I think when it comes top packaging, I could just have a low angle of the protagonist with just the packaging out of focus and in the foreground.
https://yellow.co.nz/invercargill-area/dairies?=true&map-view=open
https://whitepages.co.nz/white-all/dairies/invercargill-area/1/
I searched through online, particularly in search of a dairies that is not a busy road. the problem is because the roads look big and wide in Invercargill, something that like is hard to come by. I do think The Pantry is a potentially good place to film the dairy scenes. Some of the places I would need to have a look in person since the streetview image capture is from nine years and I don't know for certain what has changed at those dairies or even if they are still in business, despite still listed in the Yellow Pages and White Pages.
I managed to get the changes done from the end of last week put into a final draft screenplay on Celtx. I now just need to send it away to the actors already cast.
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