Rufus's Film Blog

 Tim Burton is well known for his unique style of film. He has directed many films such as Edward scissor and Beetle Juice. His style is easily distinguishable from others. People have compared his work to gothic horror, as he uses dark colours and often presents the characters as very pale. Burton's work often comes across as childish and playful but changes to reveal darker more sinister undertones as the film goes on. Tim often casts Johnny Depp, as he describes him as having "good expressions and eyes that tell a tale". Depp has appeared in many Burton films, including Edward Scissor Hands, Sleepy Hollow, and  Sweeny Todd. All of Tim's films possess an overly exaggerated and often 'cartoonish' style to emphasise goth features. The mise-en-scene of the film is often dark and the props are overly detailed leading to a playful yet sinister atmosphere. The performance of the characters is often also over exaggerated leading to a once again innocent yet dark to...

The story is of a 10 year old boy called John.  The film starts with John waking in a panic, in a dark room. He knows he had a nightmare, but he can't remember what it was. He looks at the clock, it reads 2am. The house is silent and very cold. John thinks this is strange, as even though its winter his two parents always have the heating on. Deciding to get a drink and see his parents, John gets up and walks down the long staircase down to his kitchen. when he gets there the door is wide open, and a gust of cold air blows into his face. Once again, John thinks this is odd as his parents always shut the kitchen door at night. But he put it down to them being forgetful. Entering the kitchen a cold chill run down his spine. Both his parents sat there eating, and when John cleared his throat, they both stared at him with featureless faces. John wakes with a start, realising it was just a bad dream, but when he enters the kitchen for the second time, the exact same events unfold. I chos...

In terms of editing, Rick's bar sequence does a great job of portraying Casablanca as a sleazy place. The film makers could have taken the route of showing Casablanca and Ricks' bar to be a bad place by giving us 10 minutes of story and dialogue before. However through one shot of the outside of Rick's bar, the audience already begins to get a picture of Casablanca's environment. A search light shines on Rick's, whilst a door closes so no light shines inside. This symbolises the crime and distrust in the city, but also tells us that Ricks is a place where criminals go, as the search light shines across it, looking for them, but they are safe in Rick's. There isn't much editing in Casablanca's bar scene, just slow moving shots that follow the pattern of moving left right left right. The camera also zooms in at characters who are talking and main characters. The mise-en-scene of the sequence is vital to the scenes atmosphere. The background characters are ...

 In the short film "High Maintenance" there are two plot twists. The first twist occurs when the wife gets up from eating her food and turns her husband off through a switch on the back of his neck. This plot twist is unexpected as there are no prior hints to firmly say he was a robot. Even though he acts slightly robotic, little eye contact, no facial emotions, we don't actually believe that he is a robot, just an annoyed husband. The film's title also gives us no hint to its genre, leaving the audience surprised when we realise it's a robot themed film.