Film Coursework Research
Whilst researching for my film coursework as part of the Annotated Catalogue task, I found a very interesting video on You Tube called behind the scenes of Disney which contains a range of rare footage and images of the works of the animators and artists using live reference models. It is amazing especially to see the actual traditional way of animation and how the films are put together and the incredible similarity between the actors to the characters.
Below are the names of each model who contributed to bringing Disney’s animations to life:
Marge Champion – Model for Snow White (and a bit of Dopey)
Eddie Collins – Happy’s Dance Sequence (also modeled for Dopey)
William Phipps – Model for Prince Charming
Helene Stanley – Model for Cinderella, Anita and Aurora/Sleeping Beauty
Ed Kemmer – Model for Prince Phillip
Eleanor Audley – Voice and Model for Lady Tremaine and Maleficent
Kathryn Beaumont – Voice and Model for Alice and Wendy Darling
Bobby Driscoll – Voice and Model for Peter Pan
Roland Dupree – Flying and Action Model for Peter Pan
Hans Conreid – Voice and Model for George Darling and Captain Hook
Margaret Kerry – Model for Tinkerbell and the red-haired Mermaid
Sherri Stoner – Model for Ariel
As well as this i discovered a brilliant Disney website which has a variety of different resources ranging from other sites to Magazines and Books. A good example that i found via this was ‘The illusion of life: Disney Animation.
http://corporate.disney.go.com/careers/walt_disney_animation_studios_resources.html
I think this has provided a big use to me as i can find everything relating to my topic easily. it is all in one place and has been categorized according to its media type just like what i have been told to do for my own catalogue.
Film Coursework- Final Proposal
Finally after much consideration of how much information i could find on my initial ideas for the coursework, i have decided to change my focus film and replace it with ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ therefore changing ‘The Jungle Book for ‘Peter Pan’. This is because i feel that i could research into quite a lot of things relating to Snow White rather than the Jungle Book and is a film that i haven’t seen properly. Overall my final proposal for the film coursework is:
An investigation into the development of animated technology in Walt Disney films, from 1930 to 2010.
Snow White and the seven Dwarfs (1937, Dir. William Cottrell, USA) – Focus Film
Peter Pan (1953, Dir. Clyde Geronimi & Wilfred Jackson, USA)
The Lion King (1994, Dir. Roger Allers & Rob Minkoff, USA)
Tangled (2010, Dir. Nathan Greno & Byron Howard, USA)
Charlie St’ Cloud Film Review
Another film available on the Sky Premier channel was the emotional supernatural drama ‘Charlie St’ Cloud’ starring heart throb Zac Efron and Amanda Crew. I wanted to see this film for quite a long time since it was released to buy in stores so it instantly appealed to me. The film is an adaptation of the 2004 novel ‘The death and life of Charlie St’ Cloud’ written by Ben Sherwood. It is about a young man called Charlie St’ Cloud who whilst was taking care of his younger brother was involved in a car accident where he was unfortunately killed. Charlie is absolutely distraught and becuase of this dropped his sailing scholarship at a college to work at the local cemetery where he is buried. Since the funeral and his supposed death in the ambulance Charlie has been given the gift of seeing his deceased brother and therefore fulfill the promise of practicing with him to play baseball everyday at sunset, but when a new love interest is in trouble he must choose between saving a life and losing the connection with his brother.
I really enjoyed this film even if i did shed a tear for most of it due to the depressing themes and the relationships between the main characters which also seemed to have an emotional effect on the spectator.
Film Coursework Research- The Lion King and The Jungle Book
For the Film Coursework the other choices i had made in relation to Technology and Disney was ‘The jungle Book’ and ‘The Lion King’. The main characters of these films are made up of mostly animals such as Baloo the bear and Simba, a lion.
The Lion King is a 1994 American animated feature film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation. Released to theaters on June 15, 1994 by Walt Disney Pictures, it is the 32nd film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics and is again one of my favourites.
The Jungle Book is a 1967 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. Released on October 18, 1967, it is the 19th animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. Like all Disney films there are some popular songs that it is most recognised for such as the ‘Circle of Life’ and ‘The Bare Necessities’
Because they are animals apart from ‘Mowgli’ the creators don’t find a lot of inspiration like they do with people. In Peter Pan the actor who does the voice of the character actually looks like the animation due to his pixie like features and Tinker bell based on a 50’s pin up.
Original Poster
Original Theatrical release poster
Coursework focus film Research
Original Film Poster
Mostly all of my film coursework relies particularly on research so I have decided to post some of the research i have found about my focus film ‘Peter Pan’ which is one of Disney’s earliest creations from the 1950s and the 14th film in the Walt Disney animated classics series.
Peter Pan is the final Disney animated feature released through RKO before Walt Disney’s founding of his own distribution company, Buena Vista Distribution, later in 1953 after the film was released. Peter Pan is also the final Disney film in which all nine members of Disney’s Nine Old Men worked together as directing animators. The film was entered into the 1953 Cannes Film Festival. A sequel titled Return to Never Land and a prequel titled Tinker Bell were released in 2002 and 2008 respectively.
Peter Pan is a well-known magical children’s story based on the character written by Scottish novelist and playwright J M Barrie. It has been adapted in many ways such as for Theaters, Books and of course TV and Films. The story follows the young boy (who never grew up) who one evening goes to the Darling house with his fairy Tinker bell to find his shadow of which he previously left there before. He then meets the three main children Wendy, John and Michael, teaches them how to fly and takes them on an adventure to Never Land. Throughout the story they all encounter the usual characters both good and unpleasant such as Captain Hook and the Pirates, The Lost Boys, and Tiger Lily and the Indian tribe. This is clearly one of my favourite Disney films due to all the typical fantasy characters that children simply love and they appeal to many age groups and both genders. I also personally adore Tinker bell even though she is always presented as an incredibly moody character and jealous of Wendy. i will continue to be a fan of her prequel films even though i am 17 years old!
sources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pan_(1953_film)
Here is the original trailer released for VHS. You can definitely see how the technology has changed compared to the much recent Disney films such as Tangled. The Picture quality is far more sharper and clear where as Peter Pan is quite grainy but the colours are very strong which sometimes bleeds into the character so you can’t see that well. Then DVDs got introduced where you can purchase them on a better copy with restored sound and so on. However for the 50’s, the film was considered as outstanding since Snow White.
Film Series
A Film Series is a collection of related films in succession and can range from 2 to an incredible 21 films. In Movies the sequel continues the story and is seen with the same characters and settings. There are many name formats, usually they have unrelated titles such as the well known vampire series ‘Twilight’ and its sequel being ‘New Moon’ or the film has the same title but a number just added to the end. For example the new release of Disney’s Cars 2. ‘Harry Potter’ is commercially the most popular and successful film series made from a series of 7 novels by Author J.K Rowling, following a fantasy genre aimed at children and Teenagers. Others are ‘Star Wars’ , ‘Lord of the Rings’, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ and for the more younger audiences ‘High School Musical’ and ‘Ice Age’. My Favourite is and always will be Harry Potter becuase i have grown up with it in the last 10 years but i guess I’m warming to the idea of Twilight now due to it being a quite lot different and containing a mix of more modern themes and Romance.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
On the 20th July 2011 all my friends and i decided to see the highly anticipated and latest Harry Potter film at the Cinema using our Orange Wednesday tickets. Marking an end to an era we all decided to dress up in the school uniform and whilst in the cinema we received quite a few odd looks. However it was very fun and the film was amazing!
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 is a epic fantasy film directed by David Yates. It is the eighth and final installment of the series and continues the story of Harry and his best friends search for the last of Voldemort’s lost horcruxes, the magical items responsible for his immortality therefore with these they are able to destroy them and finally the dark wizard once and for all.
Overall being a big Harry Potter fan i was mostly effected by it being the end and some scenes even caused me to shed a tear or two. Despite the serious themes it possessed such as death, betrayal and friendship there were also some elements of humor such as when Neville Longbottom and Professor McGonagall are discussing a quick battle strategy after Voldemort is seen destroying the shield that everyone helped to put around Hogwarts. The teacher says to Neville to blow up a part of the school to stop the death eaters from getting in and he replies ‘Are you really giving us permission to do this?’ ‘Yes, Longbottom’ ‘Blow it up, Boom!’ he then says in a funny voice ‘BOOM!’ . The other part was when Mr Filch comes running in shouting ‘Students out of bed! Students out of bed!’ and McGonagall says ‘They are supposed to be out of bed, you blithering idiot!’ I thought that this was very amusing as Filch is seen doing this in the other films and is quite stupid at times. Neville is then all of a sudden a character that everyone is beginning to love and is seen as being quite excited of blowing up the school when he was the character that wanted to stick to the rules making us feel quite affectionate towards him. Professor McGonagall was probably my favourite character along with Neville as she was seen getting involved with the battle and she even came out with some good one liners that seemed to make the whole of the audience laugh.
It was clearly great to see some of the cast from the previous movies come together and i liked that a beloved character that we don’t see that much of got a chance to shine rather then staying in the background. I felt that it was a really powerful and emotional ending to a magical series.
Real footage films
In the past i have watched a few films involving a character filming a situation themselves therefore as the spectator we are looking through the camera lens and experiencing it . They also sometimes make it seem true due to the actors realistic performances and usually the beginning and end credits include some kind of commentary or explanation. Examples of these sort of movies are Paranormal Activity, Clover field, Quarantine and ‘The Forth Kind’. I have noticed that they are all based on the supernatural and Horror Genre using lots of darkness, low key lighting, scary sound effects or even silence and tense music. The lack of light in these mean that we have to concentrate to be able to see what is going on and make you expect that with the silence contributing to it that someone or something will pop up on screen suddenly causing you to scream and make you jump. I find that particularly unpleasant and is usually seen behind a cushion!
This weekend with a group of friends we all decided to view ‘The Forth Kind’ starring Milla Jovich. The film seems to be based on actual events occurring in Nome, Alaska in 2000 where disappearances had been happening, in which psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler uses hypnosis to uncover memories from her patients of alien abduction, and finds evidence suggesting that she may have been abducted as well. The film has two components—dramatization, in which professional actors portray the individuals involved, and video footage to show the actual victims undergoing hypnosis. At some points in the film, the actual and dramatized footage is presented alongside each other in split-screen. At the end of the film the actress appears on the screen explaining that we should make up our own decisions which involves the audience and then a write up is shown at the end to read what happened to Dr Abigail and about the events. I thought the film was a little strange and it definitely made me jump a few times although out of curiosity i tried to research it but like other real footage films, the footage isn’t actually real and the people in the ‘actual’ filming are real actors. However i was impressed by how the film represented the shaky, static camera filming.
Film Coursework
Over the past couple of weeks i have been working on my Film Coursework based on an area of interest such as a star or performer and Technology. I decided that as a big Disney fan i was going to research the development of technology in the chosen films Peter Pan, Jungle Book, The Lion King and 2010’s Tangled whilst also mentioning Snow White. The reason i chose these are i have started with the oldest creation from the 1930’s and 50’s and then ended with the most recent plus i found quite a lot of information around the Internet and in books relating to these films and the technology. These were for example a couple of really good paperbacks, i managed to find on Amazon and have a sneak peak at. ‘The Mouse Machine: Disney & Technology’ and ‘Designing Disney’ I think this will really help my research as they include a lot of media terminology increasing my knowledge plus the author offers a ‘broader cultural perspective of Disney’ and his use of technology.
Letters to Juliet Film Review
Quite a while ago, one weekend i decided to view a film that was available to me via the Sky Premier Channel called ‘Letters to Juliet’. It is a 2010 Romantic Comedy starring Amanda Seyfried, Christopher Egan and Vanessa Redgrave. The film was inspired by a non-fiction book by Lise Friedman and Ceil Friedman, which chronicles the phenomenon of letter writing to Shakespeare’s most famous romantic heroine.
Sophie is a budding young journalist who decides to take a pre-wedding honeymoon with her fiancé to Verona in Italy where she embarks on an adventure of finding ‘Juliet’s House’ whilst sightseeing and therefore a 50 year old letter that was hidden in the wall. She decides to write back, leading her to meet Claire, the woman who had written the letter and her high status but handsome Grandson, Charlie. Much to his dismay the trio go to find Claire’s long lost love.
I really enjoyed this film due to the humorous portrayal of the ‘posh’ English culture and accent by Christopher Egan and the difference between the American language .For example when Sophie discovers that Claire had received her letter and that she is in Italy, she says’ Oh my god, thats awesome!’ Charlie replies ‘I don’t know what you have just said there, but it was a bit weird you put both, Oh my god and awesome in the same sentence’. I also like how his character is so sarcastic which made me laugh. As a female viewer the genre obviously appealed to me and the tension between the two characters showed that something was going to happen to them, also making the spectator feel a bit concerned for the fiancé.
I felt that the soundtrack they used such as Taylor Swift’s Love story was appropriate due to the song lyrics including the names Romeo and Juliet.
Overall the film was really good and the plot was interesting concluding with the usual happy ending. This then encouraged me to recommend it to my family and friends.
Shanice Butler A2 Film Studies 
