Minutes

April 24, 2002

At the beginning of class Peter talked about Three Penny… again.

Afterwards, the Secretary came into the class and administered course evaluations.

Presentations followed shortly thereafter.

The following is a list of who presented and their topics.

Ryan Spring

Ryan’s presentation was on the film The Princess and the Warrior, by Tom Tykwer. The focus of his presentation dealt heavily with the themes of the film. In particular, how these themes are showcased and emphasized through lighting and color. The first theme was “The attraction of opposites”. This was shown light appearing to push the characters away. Also, differences in skin tone were discussed. The second theme presented was “Insanity” and how no one is safe from insanity. Side-lighting was used to present a yin-yang of the characters and also the lightening effect further described how everybody is affected. The final theme was “Fate and Coincidence” which was depicted in the film through static lighting.

Heather Hopkins

Heather talked about narrative and descriptive film music for her presentation. She explained how music can be used to set the mood of a film, trigger an emotional response from the viewer, to portray feelings, and to hide technical aspects of the film (mistakes, to create flow or pace). Descriptive film music was described as being used to provide parallelism to the story (“Mickey Mousing”) and as a counterpoint to the action to allow for a sense of irony. Non-diegetic and diegetic music were discussed. Non-diagetic music is made specifically for the film. Heather showed a clip from Vertigo to further emphasize her point.

Michelle Wilson

Michelle presented on the differences between the American and foreign versions of The Vanishing. Specifically plot differences and pacing were different. The Dutch version ends with the main character waking up in a coffin, while the American version has a “Hollywood” ending that has the girlfriend saving the day. Also, she felt that in the American version tension was lost due to the “Obvious” music score. Overall, she felt the Dutch version was more expository and focused on the element of obsession.

Lenore Chandler

Lenore took a look a Neo-Nazi films. She compared the German film The Inheritors and the American American History X. She discussed how American History X appeared to be more about violence and reformation. The film shows random acts of violence and attacks on a grocery store and of rage. The German film was more political and the joining the nazi-party was more about earning money than hate. Both films show how young, impressionable people are targeted.

Caroline Aichouni

Caroline compared the French La Cage Aux Folles with the American version The Birdcage. Caroline talked about how both films tackle the themes of morality, gender, and family. She also pointed out how John Wayne was spoken of as the ultimate male role model in each film. She discussed how there was really not much of a difference between the two versions other than that the French version was made in the 70’s and the American version was made in the 90’s. This being said the French version was much more of a gamble to get produced.

Ashley Novasad

Ashley presented on the films of Tom Tykwer. She talked about how his films The Princess and the Warrior, Winter Sleepers, and Run Lola Run played with time and the music used. In accordance to the time factor she discussed how Lola describes the same story three times in 90 min., how the fall in Winter Sleepers outlasts time, and how in The Princess and the Warrior the amount of time spent under the truck is unclear. Ashley went on to talk about how the music in Run Lola Run is techno and frantic in order to keep the pace of the film brisk and how Winter Sleepers and The Princess and the Warrior both only contained on clear music sequence. Ashley showed the opening credits of Winter Sleepers to show how the music set the mood for the film.