Cinema Critiques
Number 1- Love Simon Ferris wheel
For my scene, I chose the Ferris wheel scene from the movie Love, Simon. The movie stars Nick Robinson as Simon, a high schooler with a picture perfect life. The only problem is that he's in the closet. He ends up finding someone else from his school who is in the closet and they started an online relationship.
This scene is the big culminating reveal of who the other person is. Simon is waiting to meet the person very publicly, on a Ferris wheel with the whole school watching. The first and second shots that are in the scene are straight on shots of the students at the school. The whole frame is completely filled and you can see all of the students. By setting up that scene that way, the cinematographers for the movie reflect the way that I am sure Simon is feeling. He's sitting there, waiting for someone who has yet to show up, with the entire school watching. Anybody that has ever put themselves out there like that knows that you are painfully aware of who is watching you at that moment. As soon as the person he is waiting for, Bram, shows up it all changes. The shot when he first arrives shows only peoples heads instead of their whole bodies and the next shot, a closeup of his torso, is only him. This choice shows a change in Simon's demeanor. When Bram shows up his focus changes completely. The one thing that he has been waiting for is finally there and he blocks everything else out. All that he can focus on is him. We see Bram walking up to the Ferris wheel from an angle showing the fair employee, which, combined with an insert shot of the students ensures that we don't forget that they are being watched. As soon as they are in the Ferris Wheel, the whole background is blurred, again bringing us back into their own private feelings The music during the beginning of this shot is very quiet as they slowly start to introduce themselves in person for the first time. The mood of the scene is romantic but both of them are still kind of on guard. The music fits this. The next bunch of shots are pretty simple, just alternating between over the shoulder shots with each of them. That said, as they become comfortable the music too changes in order to reflect this shift. I'm a really big fan of the next few shots. The insert shots of the students are uneventful but effective. That said, the shot of them going up in the ferris wheel is my favorite in the film. They are not talking, and their faces have almost no expression in them. It could very easily be a boring throaway shot but by having the camera follow the path of the ferris wheel while panning down instead of up, it keeps it interesting. There are then two kiss shots which I also think are done really well. The camera angle for the first one is two the side so, even though you are seeing all of Simon's face, you are also seeing most of Bram's. That makes sure that you can see the emotion in both of them as this huge moment in the film happens. Before the first kiss and before the second, there are insert shots of the students celebrating. While I felt like the earlier shots served only to break up the scene, these are important. The school had not always been supportive during the film and it's really important to see that they are now. Also in between the first and second kiss, you can now hear the crowd cheering, not just music. This makes sure that you don't forget that there is this new outpouring of support. The last few shots are really great. They show a second quick shot of another kiss from behind and then they pan away from them as they pull apart and show them at the top of the ferris wheel in a wide shot. This is a great way to end the scene because the top of the ferris wheel is a motif throughout the film.
Number 2- Minimalism documentary
For my documentary review, I chose to watch the documentary Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things. The documentary is a little mix and mash regarding what it is about, but the general theme of the film is speaking with people who have embraced a minimalist lifestyle. You learn through the film that this is an incredibly wide term. The film starts by following the creators of the website minimalist.com as they go around the country on a book tour promoting their new book. Also interviewed are multiple professors who are experts on what it means to be minimalist, and a number of individuals who not only have embraced the minimalist lifestyle, but have chosen to go out into different communities and try to spread their message. The minimalism that these people practices really ranges depending on who the person is. Joshua and Ryan, the writers of the book and the creators of the film, are very minimalist. They live with few possessions, old cars, and basic houses.The point that they make repeatedly throughout the film though is that minimalism definition is what it means to you. That is why other people interviewed as minimalists can have homes in the suburbs and nice cars, but still be practicing the values of minimalism.
As far as the cinematography goes in the documentary, I was really mixed on if I liked it or not. There was a lot of things that were done really well and a lot that I think could really have been improved on. The thing that I thought was done best in the film was the composition of their shots, in particular the rule of thirds. All of the shots, whether it was during one of their interviews or it was part of the B-Roll followed the rule of thirds to the t. All of the people who were being interviewed were looking out of the frame as they were being interviewed, and all of the B-Roll shots were framed into three very distinct quadrants, but they were all quadrants that were able to flow. It was so good in fact that there was one time where the rule was broken during an interview, and all the rest of the shots were done so well that it was extremely distracting when it happened. For what I didn’t like, I thought that the lighting really could have been improved. The issues with the lighting were at both ends of the spectrum. Some of the shots were way too dark. They weren’t dark to the point where you weren’t able to see what was happening, but they were dark enough so that it was bothersome; in my opinion that is much worse. The lights being too much really only came up in one persons interview, but this person was in a white room with natural and artificial lighting. It was so bright that it was almost impossible to look at. As far as the filmmaking itself, I thought that it needed some work. The film was B-Roll for the vast majority of it, which can be okay and is often necessary if the film is interview heavy, but this B-Roll was so boring. The video B-Roll was almost never anything more than people walking or generic shots of bustling department stores and television ads. The photography B-Roll, which there was a lot of, had no Ken Burns effect on it and almost never any music which made it very boring to look at. The fact that the film was so spread out, with some pieces about the filmmakers books and some pieces about minimalism in general, it made it hard to really get invested in any one aspect of the story as well.
I would not recommend this film to someone. It was an interesting concept with some well orchestrated shots, but all in all was not all that interesting. The content itself was, but the way that it was portrayed in the film was not. There was so much separation between scenes about the book store that it jumped from, at the beginning of the film, showing them at a random bookstore with three people to being at the today show at the end of the film. In between those two shots, there was really nothing about the book tour, just experts on minimalism speaking with music played on top. The music choice and the way that the shots were composed left you feeling like you were being preached to or yelled at, while at the same time constantly seeming like a closing sequence. Four or five times during the film I thought it was over when in fact I was nowhere close to being done. If minimalism is your passion, I can see how this film could be for you but for someone who only wants to learn about while enjoying a story it is not the right film.