Wall-E

Wall-e is a beloved film by many and I believe that comes from its ability to get the audience to connect with main characters without the use of constant dialogue which is exactly why I felt it was important to watch for my research as I plan to not use much dialogue especially from my main character clive.

Wall-e is our main character who is a robot on earth whose job is to collect the trash and compress it into blocks, earth was abandoned by humans along time ago and while Wall-e is cleaning up after them, they have been on a cruise for over 700 years, Eve is Wall-e love interest who is dropped on earth to find plant life so earth can be repopulated, when she comes to earth she meets wall-e and they have a hostile greeting to begin with,but as they interact more they become closer, wall-e shows eve a plant he had found previously and she takes it and begin incubating it, this causes her to go dormant and is basically shut down, wall-e takes care of her through snow and storms until a ship comes and takes her, Wall-e doesnt understand whats happening so proceed to climb onto the ship to rescue her.

The ship is basically a hotel resort just more futuristic the human on the ship have lived the so long they are immobilised and travel on hover chairs and have robots do everything for them, When eve and wall-e are reunited they have to get the plant to the captain in order to repopulate earth, however we find out that a message from the president from 700years agos states that earth is uninhabitable and to never try too, this was before there was any sign of live on earth, auto pilot won't allow the captain to proceed to the protocol to repopulate earth. All works out in the end and wall-e and eve are back on earth however during their mission wall-e motherboard is broken and when eve changes it he completely forgots who eve is and proceeds to do what he was designed for…collecting trash, this is solved quickly as eve upset holds out her hand to hold wall-e like they saw in a tv clip previously wall-e holds her hand back and says her name and the movie ends.

The ship is basically a hotel resort just more futuristic the human on the ship have lived the so long they are immobilised and travel on hover chairs and have robots do everything for them, When eve and wall-e are reunited they have to get the plant to the captain in order to repopulate earth, however we find out that a message from the president from 700years ago states that earth is uninhabitable and to never try too, this was before there was any sign of live on earth, auto pilot won't allow the captain to proceed to the protocol to repopulate earth. All works out in the end and wall-e and eve are back on earth however during their mission wall-e motherboard is broken and when eve changes it he completely forgets who eve is and proceeds to do what he was designed for…collecting trash, this is solved quickly as eve upset holds out her hand to hold wall-e like they saw in a tv clip previously wall-e holds her hand back and says her name and the movie ends.

Throughout this film wall-e and Eve only communicate by saying each others names or through body language which exactly why I felt it was important to watch for my research, I was worried that the lack of dialogue in my short film my lead to misinterpretation or my audience not connecting to my characters, Wall-e connects it audience flawlessly without the use of constant dialogue and i wanted to see exactly how they did this.

The scene where Wall-e and Eve meet is the scene that sticks out the most for its ability to use body language as speech and still have the audience attached to the characters and their conversation. Watching this scene I know that in my film my character movements need to be very exaggerated like they are in this scene. For example in the beginning of this clip wall-e is showing Eve the bubble wrap, now in a film with dialogue the communication will probably go with Wall-e saying this is bubble wrap you can pop it, which really seems irrelevant dialogue, but in Wall-e wear it's just body language you can see the scene as a bonding moment, Wall-e Communicated to Eve by bringing the bubble wrap over- reaching it out to show eve and then looking at it and popping it and looking back up at eve.

Alot of the connection is often set with the expression of Wall-e eyes. His eyes will move depending on his emotion, when he's confused they are slanted, when in awe they rise which is a technique I will bring forward to my own production.

Love and Monsters

Love and Monsters is a sci-fi action movie set in an apocalyptic world where our main character Joel who is in his early twenties, goes on a journey from his bunker to find his long lost highschool sweetheart Amy who he had been communicating with over the radio. In the beginning of the film we are told that joe can fight, he always ends up freezing when face to face with a mutant creature but when he leaves his bunker to find Amy he meets a dog called boy who helps him on his journey, as well as two other survivors a 8 year old girl Minnow and her almost fatherly figure Clyde.

Before going there separate ways Clyde and Minnow teach Joel everything he needs to know to survive. Joel ends up hallucinating after being forced to go into a river full of leeches, he passes out and wakes up at Amy’s base, he finds out that Amy had moved on but her partner had died a year ago, and she made it clear to Joel that she had moved on and wasn't the same person anymore, To Joel his romantic gesture to travel 7 days in a deathly world was wasted. Some other survivors from a yacht had came to Amy’s base, and had told the base that they were going to help them, however while contacting his base Joel is given some berries from the captain and to further inspection they were deadly, he rushes out to tell Amy only find her and her crew all drunk, things get worse as Joel is punched to a blackout and wakes up next to everyone tied up. In the end Amy, Boy and Joel win against a fight with the captain and his crew. Joel decides to leave to go help his Colony who is in trouble, when leaving him and Amy share a kiss goodbye for old times sakes but he leaves without his love.

I wanted to research Love and Monsters as its plot is incredibly similar to mine and I felt that I would learn alot about how to shoot the actual journey part of my film. Before watching love and Monsters I thought about having Clive my Sheepman go about this journey alone and not meeting anyone or interacting with many people on the way

however In love and Monster the meeting of others had a massive influence on not only the Joels Character development but also influenced the entertainment value of the movie, i feel that if Joel just went on his own the movie would get incredibly uninteresting. Having different characters on Joel's journey also ment we learnt a lot more about the world they lived in the hardships the characters had to go through and this was found out through their interactions with each other, especially when it came to late night camp fires when they would tell stories about their lives. I think the most valuable relationship is between Boy and Joel, as boy is a dog he obviously can't speak but the use of the dogs barks and body expressions act as speak and we watch as Joels and Boys Relationship get stronger throughout the film, this connection they have also connect the audience not only because cute dogs also catches the audience appeal but their battles together keeps the plot moving and interesting. I feel that having some sort of friend who Clive meets on the way even briefly will keep my audience engaged.

My main focus on watching this movie was how the journey was shot. At the very beginning we had a few over shoulder shots. Time was shown passes in some scenes by having joel walking through different locations but were shot from the same position in the sky, I really liked this technique however with my skill level and Budget I know this something I won't be able to achieve however I feel like I can still use the concept of shooting different locations from the same angle but just not from above. A very useful tip i learnt from this movie was when joel was poisoned by the leeches instead of having a scene of him being found and then taken to the camp we skip straight to the camp through Joel waking up their I feel I could do a similar thing with clive just falling asleep and waking up in a new location this will mean I can find a easier way to get clive from a-b when the journey is getting a slight bit repetitive.

The Proposal

Originally I had planned to watch Fantastic Mr Fox for my third similar media purely for its aesthetics, like I had mentioned in my video essay, however I felt it would be more beneficial for my project's development to look at a live action film with the similar style of aesthetics.

The Proposal is a short romance film set in a french restaurant, where our main characters Dan and Zoe are on a romantic date, Zoe has hidden a ring in a dessert in aim to propose to dan, and just as he finds the ring the restaurant is being robbed and they are held hostage. When the robbers come to Dan and Zoe's table they are told in french to give them their belongings, there's some confusing with the translation and dan gives the robber the ring, which Zoe believes he didnt see and wasn't asking for and Dan did this on purpose because he didn't want to get married. And while hiding under the table they find the truth about their relationship, all ends well when Dan proposes and the robber is shot dead by police.

The warm orange tones of this short film is what I would like to replicate in my short film, especially paired with the burgundy toned costumes and set which really sets a romantic tone overall. The warm tones are achieved by warm tungsten esk lighting but Im assuming its led as tungsten are on their way out of the industry. Like I said I really feel like the costumes add to the overall tone of the film, Zoe is wearing a Navy blue dress and dan is wearing a burgundy suit, this colour pallet paired with the warm lowkey lighting really sets a homey and soft feeling, these aesthetics really grabs the attention of the audience as it gives off a nostalgic feeling of romance. I feel like this colour pallet and lighting design is what I really want to incorporate into my project.