Stylistic Ideas

Just been looking through a few films for ideas or how they did things that we want to do.

First film is 300, which basically seems to over-expose loads of the shots, so a lot of the background, foreground, or even parts of the actors are very white. They also seem to have some crazy high contrast ratios/really intense S curves.


Next there's old wilson from Castaway, as an example of how to add personality to an inanimate object (Archie...). Just a couple different shots of him that i mentioned before, how he starts off as really clean and plain and boring and through Tom Hanks customising him, he gains a whole personality of his own.

Collateral I really liked because it takes two characters and completley isolates them. It seems to achieve this partially through the music used, but also through the way a lot of the film is shot with objects obscuring the actors faces (reflections on the window in the first shot, or part of the cab in the second). It was also shot almost entirley on digital rather than film, to achieve a cold look. All face shots are also done at high zoom, to give a narrow depth of field.

Lastly, there's the trippy feel from Fear and Loathing. Apart from all the drugs used, they seem to achieve this partially through using an old film look, but also through using loads of dutch angles on the camera. I cant take screen shots of it, but the camera also bounces around a lot, as though its not mounted on anything. Similar to 300, they seem to use really high saturation and bright back-lighting.


Quite a few more movie stills up on the photobucket site here.