Whiplash Film Analysis

At a young age of eight, David Fincher’s passion for cinema grew when he saw the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Born in 1962 Denver, Colorado, David Fincher moved to Ashland, Oregon in his teens, where he graduated from Ashland High School. Much of his time here, he directed plays, designed sets, and managed lighting after school. Until one summer, he and a friend attended the Berkley Film Institute’s summer program, where he hoped to learn film as a true art form but instead learned only the technical production. Either way he was happy to engage is this and as his early film industry career started, he was a production assistant at his local television news station. Years went by as he directed propaganda films then moving on to becoming a well-known music director before his first movie feature debut Aliens 3 in 1992. However, the American director David Fincher didn’t become a modern 21st century visionary until his creation of the film Se7en (1995). The huge success after this film started Fincher’s popularity in the film industry. From there he continued to make ironic movies we know today, such as: Fight Club (1999), Zodiac (2007), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), The Social Network (2010), Gone Girl, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

The Crash Reel is a documentary that was created in 2013 and directed by Lucy Walker. It covers the life of Kevin Pearce, a legendary snowboarder. The documentary focuses on the life changing accident that occurred to Kevin in Park City, Utah while training for the Olympics trials. The feature shows Kevin’s life and his recovery process after the horrifying incident. In the film, we see Kevin battle for his life with the support from his family and friends.

Bart Layton built this doc not from one perspective, but from a collection of them. Some stories, like “The Imposter” need a panoptic approach to connect the audience to the film. The themes of manipulation, identity and love are the main themes conveyed by Layton. These themes are communicated through sounds and visual imagery.

Newsies, a classic musical based on the late 1800’s is a very entertaining and family friendly musical-- except for the few profane words. On a cloudy, partially rainy saturday morning, I laid out on the couch and watched the movie from the comfort of my own home. I was hesitant to watch this movie because I am not much of a musical person. About midway through I found myself at the edge of my seat hypnotized by the movie. As the movie drew to an end, I was completely sucked in and waited for something more. The movie I so dreadfully did not want to watch became something I did not want to end.  In this movie the director and composer correlated their scenes and music perfectly together to touch the thoughts and emotions of the audience watching.

My gut reaction to hearing a film about wheelchair rugby was one of pity. I thought that as soon as I saw the players I would feel sorry for them not being able to play the sport the “right” way, or the traditional way. My unconscious bias towards disabled people seemed hard-wired into my brain. I was expecting less of them athletically but after sitting through the 88-minute documentary on wheelchair rugby I was proven wrong in the best way possible.

Smashed is a dramatic movie about a woman’s struggle with alcoholism and her journey to sobriety that included many accomplishments and setbacks. The main character, Kate Hannah, decides her lifestyle of partying, excessive drinking, and bad decisions needs a change after vomiting in front of her classroom of young children while experiencing a hangover. Instead of admitting the truth about her drinking problem, she decides to lie to her students and coworkers, telling them she is pregnant. The principal at her school, Dave, finds out about her lie, and reveals he has been sober for over a year after attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. He invites her to join him at a meeting, and Kate decides to go and repeatedly attend. Kate

but it's happening. This film highly impacts the vulnerability and unsure senses that these teens have. As the teachers could care less about what's going on in their kids love lives, the kids mostly think of it as the center of their life at the time. A level of maturity and irresponsibility come in with these thoughts and priorities.

The creation and consumption of films are a common favorite pastime for many people and have been for hundreds of years, but while some films can seem deceptively simple, many elements go into creating a scene, much less an entire movie. Directors use these elements which include, but are not limited to style, mood, composition and special effects to create a product that we often don’t acknowledge without looking deeper into the film. These components together are called Mise en Scène (Ebert). Of course, film can be enjoyed leisurely but there are so many more aspects of film to be explored and analyzed such as the composition of camera movement, lighting, color, sounds and music. In this case, I chose to analyze the “Redrum” scene from the renowned film, The Shining directed by Stanley Kubrick. In this scene, Danny Torrence, a five year old boy wanders around his mother’s room with a knife in hand, muttering the word “Redrum” over and over again before scrawling it across the door. I feel that a lot of this scene’s mood and style relies heavily on the camera work of the scene, the lighting and colors, and the music incorporated into the segment.

Glory road is a film based on the 1966 Texas Miners, the first all-black NCAA Championship winning basketball team. When the coach, Don Haskins decided to recruit players based purely on ability, and not race. With the purpose of telling the story of the Texas Miners, their experiences and lives leading up to, and becoming the NCAA Champions. At the forefront of this movie are racial issues which we know were rife at the time throughout America. The relationship between sport and psychology is not abundantly clear in this film. I believe, however that, that is because the film was not made for that purpose, as a documentary or article may have. The film was made for the purpose of entertainment, and to tell the story of the Texas Miner -Which it effectively does. In saying that, being a sport psychology student and after critically watching and examining the film, I was also clearly able to see many psychological concepts and issues woven throughout the film, there relationship to sport, and the effects it had on the Texas Miners, and their Championship winning team.

The cinematography of this film features numerous close-ups of its adolescent protagonists as well as point-of-view shots acquired predominantly from their perspective, thus making the viewers position themselves firmly on the boys’ side of

Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash (2014) follows Andrew Neiman, a fame-driven drummer joins the studio band at a prestigious music school, Shaffer Conservatory where he is acquainted with the manipulative and vigorous Terence Fletcher who pushes him to his limits. The salient themes of volatile and manipulative student-teacher relationship, overcoming adversity and relentless pursuit of perfection are accentuated through cinematic techniques such as mise-en-scène, cinematography, and sound design and editing. The scene which exemplifies these themes are when Andrew Neiman is competing against two drummers, Ryan Connolly and Carl Tanner, to “earn the part” of becoming the main drummer of a jazz composition called Caravan (1936) composed by Duke Ellington.

This in-depth film analysis will identify and deliberate the heterogeneous elements of film and how they are utilised to develop and elaborate empathy for Katniss Everdeen, the main protagonist in Gary Ross’s critically acclaimed film The Hunger Games (2012). Modern day films generally use a variety of technical elements that are specifically designed to intrigue, captivate and convey emotion to the audience. These elements are known as camera, acting, mise-en-scene, editing, lighting and sound (C.A.M.E.L.S.). In particular, this film analysis will delineate how these components are employed in Ross’s The Hunger Games to develop empathy for Katniss Everdeen, during the scene of the annual ‘reaping’

If Jo Jones never threw a cymbal at Charlie Parker’s head, would he have ever become Birdman? Similarly, if Terence Fletcher never pushed Andrew Neiman beyond his breaking point in Damien Chazelle’s breakthrough film, Whiplash, would Neiman have been able to rip an awe-inspiring, fully improvised five minute drum solo that rivals the works of Buddy Rich himself at the end of the song “Caravan,” that he performs at the conclusion of the movie? Questions such as these form the fundamental basis of Chazelle’s first big screen, block-buster success. Throughout the film, the young and passionate protagonist, Andrew Neiman, shows an uninhibited sense of determination and ambition as a first year music student at the Shaffer Conservatory, a fictional

Spirited Away is an Oscar award winning, 2001 animated film from Japan, written, directed, and animated by Hayao Miyazaki (IMDb: Spirited Away). The story follows Chihiro, A young girl who is dealing with separation from family, tradition, and self-identity. Studio Ghibli films often have younger protagonists in their films, but in an interview with Miyazaki commented that “[he] felt [Japan] only offered such things as crushes and romance to 10-year-old girls” and that “ [Studio Ghibli] has not made a film for 10-year-old girls, who are in their first stage of adolescence” (Miyazaki 2001). Here, Miyazaki is signifying the lack of, what he sees to be, a proper presentation of a tweenaged girl. Miyazaki refrains from making the main plotline

The importance of music in movies is highly regarded for manipulating the viewer’s emotions and helping them immerse into the story. Music is one of the prime elements in cinema. Without it a movie would feel dull and unexciting. There are three elements in a movie: one is acting, the second is picture, and the third one is music. It is a holy trinity; if incomplete, there would be a lack of sensation and excitement. Both acting and picture can stand independently from one another, but music is the one that makes the movie memorable.