Critical Incident Technique

to control their gaze, allowing it be dictated by a third-party. As the tension rises between the characters so does this tension with how the shot is created by exploring this somewhat unusual portrayal of power dynamics. The shift in this film technique as compared to the opening scene also creates tension and adds to the film’s notion of participation and spectatorship. Where as in the first scene the viewer can get a sense of participating in the proceedings, this scene relegates the viewer…

Though Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future is extremely successful in being a fun, blockbuster film, it does a very job in how it crafts the relationships between specific characters. Though Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is facing a struggle to get back home, there’s another struggle occurring in the movie between his father, George (Crispin Glover), and town bully, Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson). By tracing their acting and relative staging of these two in certain shots, a narrative between them…

On the surface, Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014) is a horror film that uses a mythical monster to torture an already broken family. It presents the creature as a monster that one could picture originating from Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Kent introduces the idea of the Babadook monster through a twisted children’s pop-up book. In keeping with the tropes of the horror film genre, the book appears on Samuels Vanek’s (Noah Wiseman) shelf from an unknown place. When Amelia Vanek (Essie Davis) tries to…

The use of excessive STEM will not increase our knowledge, but it will prepare us and possibly our educational system. In We Can’t All Be Math Nerds and Science Geeks, Fareed Zakaria uses statistics, rhetorical questions, and hyperboles to convey how society is obsessed with STEM; he argues about how intricate it’ll be for America to be creative. Zakaria’s position is strong, and the strength of his argument is persuasive because of the rhetorical devices he applies to express his opinion about…

Danger in Tradition In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, a village prepares for their annual tradition of the lottery in which the townsfolk stone a person to death. The ritual was originally conducted to bring a bountiful harvest of corn, however, the meaning behind the sacrifice seemed to fade out while the tradition itself persisted. As surprising as it may seem, one can see instances of blindly followed tradition in today’s society: trick-or-treating on Halloween, blowing out the candles on…

The “Sea Rose” How do the sea and a beautiful rose combine together? Both of these items are majestic things and can show love and beauty. In Hilda Doolittle’s, “Sea Rose” published in 1916, shows readers the interaction between a sea and a rose and displays this by the use of extraordinary imagery and two different symbolisms. Today, many women do not realize the beauty they contain. Not only do women not realize this, but also many other people don’t believe that women have the capability…

LITERARY TERMS Word: motif Definition: A recurring image, word, phrase, action, idea, object, or situation used throughout a work, unifying the work by tying the current situation to previous ones, or new ideas to the theme. Quote: “I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go? I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all…

In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film, Vertigo, certain shots have a certain compositional symmetry and balance to them that helps draw our attention, as viewers, to individual characters, namely that of Madeleine Elster/Judy Barton, portrayed by Kim Novak (because she has these two roles, I will be referring to her actual name when making reference to her). Various balanced shots in the film use Novak as a literally dividing figure, creating a down-the-line symmetry. By looking at these shots one by…

Learning information on the Limón release and suspension technique and Doris Humphrey’s fall and recovery technique, I was able to implement this into the modern dance course. I allowed my body to give into gravity, but also remembering the use of breath and musicality. I gained knowledge on the changes in history of ballet from the beginning…

Editing is one of the most unappreciated aspects of films. Many people don’t know who the editors are on their favorite movies. Even though editing is the glue that holds a movie together. Editing possesses the ability to make a movie good or bad. In cases like Batman vs Superman for instance, editing can be a major flaw, whereas in Mad Max:Fury Road it can be a major strength. In North By Northwest, the editing is a major strength of the film. Hitchcock uses editing to manipulate the viewer’s…