King Kong
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| Fig. 1 |
King KongOne of the most inspirational movies was directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. Six hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars was spent to create ‘King Kong’ and successfully made over two million dollars. Although this movie is old, this movie is an inspiration to many directors as they have been reproducing the filmmaking the film an evolution as we can see how animating has improved in years.
The director Carl Denham has to finish a movie in Skull Island. For that to happen he decided to look for an actress which was Ann Darrow. When they reached skull island they find out that a giant gorilla living among with the savages who falls in love with Ann. After trying to capture ‘King Kong’ they brought him to New York where the gorilla escapes and gets shot down.
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| Fig. 2 |
The animating was beautiful then and is still beautiful now because they used different materials to intelligently combine realism with surrealism. "The movie plunders every trick in the book to create its illusions, using live action, back projection, stop-motion animation, miniatures, models, matte paintings and sleight-of-hand" (R Ebert 2002). The Scene of the Dinosaur and King Kong fighting is one of the most memorable moments as you are able to see a little of the ‘stop-motion’ used to create the animation since occasionally does not move fluently having a little stamina in its movement or fight. The mice-en-scene was an interesting thing to look at in the film, this showed a big contrast representing the hierarchy. The island for example; people wearing feathers or rags, there are no clear paths, everything made out of wood or stems whilst people from New York have buildings and roads everything opposite from the island. The mise-en-scene made the characters and the island look completely different as if they walked into a different dimension.
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| Fig. 3 |
There are several action scenes in this film, however, what makes the action interesting and sometimes slightly intense to watch is the soundtrack composed by Max Steiner. The pace of the melody quickens every time King Kong is in an entangled situation. Max Steiner was also able to show a diminutive contrast between peace and disturbance as. Danny Elfman (film music composer) says Max Steiner’s music is a "Language of a narrative, meaning the music is telling the story"(Quickflick 2015). Agreeing with ‘Elfman,’ because listening to only the music with ought the pictures you are able to hear the emotion the music is expressing.
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| Fig. 4 |
This movie is seen as a racist and sexist film but at the time was culturally suitable at the time. For example, women were described in the film; as not being helpful, a damsel in distress and weak. Racism was also clearly and symbolically shown for example, "Kong’s disastrous escape in New York symbolic of the perceived “disaster” of granting black people in the U.S. true freedom" (B Zeba 2017). Some would say that the chains on King Kong represented the slave trade and him falling in love with her an “interracial relationship” that will never work.
References:
Video
Quickflick -
2015- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjafElSJO-Y
Bibliography
Illustration
Fig 2-
https://videoartlex.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/miniature-rear-projection.jpg
Fig 1-
http://posterspast.com/artscape/Posters_Past/cGraphics/akinkon-G.jpg
Fig 3-
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimfQSyakeNb53z9OlgGiqx5LqWcrs8DFPdumPTa8jDCDAckilxNYXSh6Zod3MRvbXNmAW25TxfRVKdyARNXqFdKyFHiB5zwpWNAimg57cLQ5AzrnKpwxzZZo8niz5v5GxEZtUN229dQmk/s1600/KingKong_059Pyxurz.jpg
Hi Divine,
ReplyDeleteYou have touched on some of the important themes within this film, and have used relevant images - however, it is good practice to link the images to your writing, so that the reader knows what they are looking at. In Figure 2 for example, it is clear to you and me that these images are examples of how the special effects were created, but if your reader knows nothing about these techniques, they will need a bit of guidance. So in your writing, you could say something like, 'The backgrounds were painted on seperate layers of glass to give depth to the scene, as seen in Figure 2'.
After your quote, you just need the surname and the year, not the initial too, and the bibliography is arranged alphabetically, by authors' surnames.