Action research

 What's action?

An action film is defined as a film that focuses on featuring exciting physical action, special effects, and stunts. Action films tend to focus on the protagonists fight to overcome the obstacle presented, or the opposition in the film. Most action films are built around the idea of having two sides, the good and the evil. When this is followed, we usually see a lot of action build up on both sides, toward each other. 

To make these scenes happen chases, fights, shootouts, and explosions are usually incorporated. These actions tend to excite the story and the amp up viewers, as its not something that is seen everyday. They are also actions that can't be done or done well by just an average person, this brings a captivating look to the character being portrayed. Without fighting scenes, action films wouldn't be as appealing to watch because they would feel slow. Explosions and stunts can bring unexpected elements to intensify the film and progress the story. 

                                  

Ex: In Captain America: Civil War, multiple fight scenes, like the one

 above are used to create the tension and argument between the team itself. 

Production Techniques: 

What's normally paired with action films is a lot of energetic capture use with the camera. For instance, handheld movement is usually used to create a 'raw' fighting scene, and add on chaos as well as exaggeration. Other techniques are closeups, which helps define characters and what they feel when breaking down big flashy scenes. An example is a post fight scene, paired with a close up, this would really allow us to understand what the character took away from the win or loss and add some realism with emotions after seeing such an intense and rapid climax. 

Wide shots are used frequently in the beginning of action films to establish where we begin the journey, they are also seen when we transition into new settings that have high importance. Panning is another big technique, it works well with fights and stunts that need to go right to left, or up to down (vice-versa). Finally, tracking shots are seen effectively in action films, because of the suspense they build when something big is coming, like when characters are about to stunt off a building. The run to the ledge would be such a eagerly anticipated moment for the viewers, asking themselves if the character will jump or not? The tracking shot allows this to happen and provides the stretch smoothly.  

                                         Ex: In The Hunger Games (2012), we see a tracking shot 

                                         used to start off the big scene in the arena of all the 

                                         characters running to the cornucopia for weapons, initializing

                                         all the fights.

Marketing: 

To hype these types of productions up and get people interested, the most commonly used marketing strategies are the use of social media, and trailers. Trailers work especially well with action films because of their past faced, quick editing with flashy colors. It portrays the action film really well because of how similarly the film is structured to the trailer. The trailer is very enticing and usually gains a lot of viewers. Trailers also use clips that represent the film well, and give a very basic outline of the plot, this helps viewers decided if they are provoked in seeing the film or not. 

Social media on the other hand, is a rather new technique of marketing. With the huge increase in social media use from our generation, marketing has expanded to be on Instagram, Facebook, and even TikTok. Majority of action films are usually targeted towards young adults and teenagers, hence social media would be the best option for the marketing because most teens and young adults use social media a lot. Promoting a film on social media can also incorporate trends to boost a post, and connect better with the target audience by relating to them and what the consume on social media. By using popular hashtags, trending audios, or captions that use Gen-z terms, it can help capture teenagers and young adults more on socials. 

Twisters: 

I've never seen this film before, but its been recommended to me and I would love to watch it. This action films story is about three friends who are competing against other storm chasers to cover deadly major storms in Oklahoma. This movie is very different from most with its unique filming style. It used Go pro's to film most of the scenes, this added on to the action aspect of Twisters because it gave the same effect as a handheld camera, but in a versatile way. The plot of following big dangerous storms is also very action-packed and stimulating, it seems so fun but so scary all at the same time. The highs and lows are all portrayed raw and realistically, as many people in the real world are real storm chasers. 

Ex: A shot from one of the Go pro's on set, 

about to begin filming a scene.

Black Widow: 

This marvel film is one of my favorites, it follows Natasha Romanoff (a.k.a. Black Widow) specifically. It shares some background information on her childhood, and shows her bond with her sister. It mainly dives into some deeper things that have developed her character, and darker ties within her past. This movie uses shootout scenes, shaky camera movement, and intensity. When we see the shootout scene of Natasha in the red room, its very important in connecting her past to all her new adventures and actions. Before this we didn't know much about her and her past. Scenes like these really elevate the emotions of the whole thing tied together, including us viewers. It brings excitement, and an almost anxious feeling, because of the on the edge intensity these films hold. To intensify the realistic aspect of her world, the shaky camera looks handheld for many scenes, especially fights, and powerful scenes. 

                                           Ex: Black widow in the red room. 

Other action films:

                                                                        Lift (2024)

  

Venom (2018)

Dune: Part One (2021)

Civil War (2024)

Martin (2024)

Blog post- Representation

 One of my favorite shows ever since I was younger, is "A series of unfortunate events". It's a three season show on Netflix, the two main characters I chose to analyze are, Violet Baudelaire, and Count Olaf. Most of the scenes with Violet in them are shot with the usage of three-point lighting, it shows her kind and fun personality that we see used in the show along with her creativity to escape tricky situations. When Count Olaf is on screen we see the opposite, its often a darker sense over all with the lighting, and at times it is a low key lighting that represents him, because of all the trouble and harm he causes to the Boundaries whenever he shows up, with a new plan.

The locations in the show change often, as we followed the siblings on a never-ending escape from Count Olaf. Locations of any type would be used, from beaches to lumbermills, to circuses. Without the variety of locations in the show we would not be able to really understand how far they went to try and get away from Count Olaf, which is the plot being developed. The props paired with the scenes held a drastic importance to developing the background story of the Baudelaire family. Without the iconic spyglass from the secret organization the story wouldn’t be able to nurture the connection it did between the Baudelaire siblings and their deceased parents. Klaus (Violets brother) held on to the spyglass tightly whenever and wherever they were, never letting Count Olaf take what was the last of Klaus’s memories of his parents.

Furthermore, the usage of costume design on Violet often is associated with outfits that are very put together and have neat pastels. An iconic hairpiece of hers is her ribbon she uses to tie her hair up whenever she has a bright idea or needs to think of a plan. This creates a signal for us viewers, that whenever we see her pull out her ribbon, we know she is onto something. Most of the plot resides back to escaping from Count Olaf, and often the escapes are hard to plan. Violet uses her creativity and partners with her siblings to always make it out. For the costumes of Count Olaf, we rarely see him as ‘Count Olaf’ but more as a poorly disguised man. His costumes include doctor scrubs, a tracksuit, a ringmaster outfit, and more. He is seen from a perspective of never being put together, and often has hair going everywhere, untamed. It ties in to show his madman like mind, and almost scares you which is how the siblings feel. His disguise outfits are purposefully not good at covering his true identity, this is done to show that only the siblings are usually able to catch the fact that its him.

Tying back to the spy glass prop, we see a detailed eye on it. Which represents the secret organization the parents of the Boundaries where in. We also see this same eye on Count Olaf's left ankle, as a tattoo. The makeup behind this choice is because it ties Count Olaf into the organization, which he used to be a part of. It opens the story more and gives a deeper explanation to how he knows the children, and why he is after them, and their fortune. Overall, the show “A Series Of Unfortunate Events”, is able to develop its plot and emotions through the way they display their scenes on our screens.The eye on the spyglass. 

Count Olaf's ringmaster disguise. 

Violet Baudelaire tying her hair with her ribbon. 

Sound Film Blog

 Throughout our sound lectures I learned about how much sound adds to clips and a film overall. Intense sounds increase stimulation in scenes and make things stand out. This can be really helpful in stronger plots like a murder story, or horror film. The directions for this project were to create a film on a black screen only using sound effects and foleys. Four foleys had to be used, and a separate video showing the making of those foley sounds must be included. In the submission we also had to add in 2-3 screenshots of our editing timeline as a proof. A total of seven words could be used in the project (instrumental music was allowed). Me and my partner's approach during the brainstorming period was that we came up with the idea of making our film about going to a nail salon. Many sounds are around you when you are at the salon, so we chose that as our scenario. We made our planning on a word document, and we dissected each scene into multiple sound effects and added in some small conversation between the nail technician and the customer. Our outline of sounds helped us by being like a checklist, since we did some sounds at school and some at home, it helped us stay organized so we could get all the sounds recorded and into one file before editing. I used iMovie for my editing, on my phone. Overall, I think our films weak point was having certain sounds be hard to understand because of how quite they are. For example, the sound effect of brushing on the first coat of nail polish was hard to make, but by using the bristles of a makeup brush we made it as best as we could. To improve upon this, we could use scenes with stronger sounds so effects can be heard more clearly. Our stronger points in this film are our blending of sounds, an example being the mix of the customer initially walking in, music playing and the customer searching through the bottles for a color. It set the scene well and helped bring in a small conversation and started off the appointment. 

JonesMarquez_soundscape_per1.MOV