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Monday, January 14, 2019

Advanced Film Studies, Kurosawa

In our last unit of Ollywood, we found out about the principal components of a film after creation: altering, scoring, and enhancements. So as to comprehend the significance of these components, our class broke down a few visuals showing how altering structures film, how music score sets the mood and the enhancements of special effects. For my propelled investigations of Kurosawa, I was entering during the time spent concluding my capstone. I led my very own Field Experience to YouMedia as an incredible method to use their space for equipment and editing software. Making this film I needed to set an alternate tone from my past tasks, I dove into the aesthetic and make importance into what I place inside the frame. The greatest challenge I faced during this unit must be the detail of sound. I deliberately put myself where I needed to mess around with sound, I needed to feel the befuddled energy I felt the first occasion when I snapped a photo with the camera, and the first time I had made a complicated effect on Adobe Premier and have that equivalent feeling with sound. It wouldn't have been an Akira Kurosawa study without the opportunity to watch his films. For the last unit, I watched Kurosawa last film titled Dreams. Dreams was altogether something new for Akira Kurosawa specifically his editing process. Akira expressed that altering had dependably been so natural for him, he would take an hour toward the finish of each scene that was shot and alter it on the spot. That was unquestionably not the situation for his last film made in the 90s when altering programming started to incorporate shading evaluation and CGI. I took motivation from Kurosawa's exploratory expressive decision by creating something other than what's expected from my typical style. ROLL THE CLIPP!

White Noise (2018)

pg-13 | 7min 44sec | coming of age | 27 January 2019 (USA) |







Director: Genesis Andrade

Writer: Genesis Andrade \ improv.

Stars: Ayana Sterling & Genesis Andrade

Description:  
White Noise follows a girl as she disengages herself from her feelings when shes faced with a significant other she obscures her battle of self-control by concentrating on time.


Annotated Bibliography

  1. Dreams. Dir. Akira Kurosawa. DVD. Warner Bros. (United States) Toho (Japan), 1990

Dreams is a 1990 Japanese-American magical realism film of eight vignettes written and directed by Akira Kurosawa. It was inspired by actual dreams that Kurosawa claimed to have had repeatedly. This film has influenced the purpose of White noise. Kurosawa implements a compilation of shorts that share a common thread of focusing on Humanity. He does this by utilizing a wide shot all through the young man's voyage as it underlines on the on the truth of the fantasy. This led me to believe the audience empathy would focus on the world than the emotions of the fundamental character. I pursued this idea by excluding the audience perception of the main character and including her surroundings inside the frame in order for the audience to build their perception of her by themselves.

  1. Kurosawa, Akira, and Akira Kurosawa, and Akira Kurosawa. Seven Samurai: and other screenplays. London: Faber and Faber, 1992.

This book holds the screenplays of three films directed and written by Kurosawa. Ikiru (1952) recounts the excruciating story of a Japanese government employee dealing with seniority and passing. In Seven Samurai (1954) the occupants of a little Japanese town utilize a wandering group of samurai to shield them. In Throne of Blood (1957), in view of "Macbeth," a samurai is urged by his significant other to slaughter his master. I utilized this book for a presentation I conducted to have the students annotate the script as I show the scenes of Throne of Blood.

  1. Kurosawa, Akira, and Bert Cardullo. Akira Kurosawa: interviews. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2019.

This book holds several interviews that quote Akira Kurosawa's. I was so interested in getting this book because there are nearly any interviews with Kurosawa on the internet. I wanted to learn more about Kurosawa as a person by reading the way he answers to question so this was a very enjoyable read.   

  1. Prince, Stephen. The warrior's camera: the cinema of Akira Kurosawa. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1999.

This book discusses Stephen Prince study of Kurosawa's films. Prince discusses how Kurosawa had influenced well known Hollywood directors some being, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and George Lucas. Most importantly it talks about Kurosawa's visual symbolism that touches on the post-war Japan dynamic systems. I used this passage to understand the easternized influences in western culture.

  1. Wilde. Dir. Brian Gilbert. 1997. https://youtu.be/l4x3ADf0eBo. 9 May. 2009 <https://youtu.be/bcIClng5K94>.
Wild is a documentary on Oscar Wilde touching on his complex creations and sexuality. Wild had discussed a specific quote that stuck to me, “Does Life Mimic Art or Does Art Mimic Life”. As I looked into what it means for art to mimic life or life to mimic art I had seen it as anti-design v.s modernism. This brought the question of art taking its shape or art being modified. I then compared this to the irony of the film Dreams and how it builds collective dreams into reality. Which I then used as inspiration on forming my scenes.

  1. Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro. Kurosawa: film studies and Japanese cinema. Durham: Duke University Press, 2019.

Yoshimoto starts off mentioning Kurosawa's films immense impact on the way the Japanese have viewed themselves as a nation and on the way the West has viewed Japan. Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto definitively analyzes Kurosawa’s entire body of work, from 1943’s Sanshiro Sugata to 1993’s Madadayo. Yamashita then argues the tension Akira had stirred with his works. He discussed the “problematic” image Kurosawa portrays and the effects that have on japan's image and the West image on Japan. Yamashita then analyses the cliches of Japan's social-cultural and Institutional dilemmas being shown in every piece of Akira’s work. He then goes to reflect on the larger issue of Japanese film history by seeing the recurring negative patterns of national and cultural identity. Although Yoshimoto had strong opinions towards the works of Akira he acknowledges Kurosawa achievements. The biggest reason I read this was because I wanted to. I wanted to get a different perspective on Akira's work and the negative effect his films had caused towards the “partnership” of Japan and America.

In conclusion, this has been one of the most influential experiences that changed me in many different ways. The feeling I got when I read articles, books, and videos about Akira Kurosawa forming eastern and western cultures had made me love film even more. I had really enjoyed the internal investigation as it led me to absorb the external investigation more profoundly. By knowing the history I was able to pinpoint Kurosawa's metaphorical stylistic choices and build better analyses. I was always the type of person who learned more on hands-on experiences to perform an understatement of a subject it was very interesting how I had felt otherwise in my Independent Study. I've never felt so driven to learn more about the history of anything! ever! but having the opportunity to dive into my passion in an annotative lens changed the way I see myself as a leaner. I can only really thank Brent for allowing me to have me in his class again and work with my discoveries along the way. 

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