Wednesday, 20 January 2010

Hollywood Shorts

Its tradition for short Hollywood film directors to create short films for a minimal period gaining experience until they are ready to produce bigger budget mainstream films earning more more and becoming famous.

In the previous post about Avant garde, I mentioned Maya Deren. She was passionate about experimental films and creating art using film. She was strongly against stereotypical Hollywood regarding mainstream and profits etc.
Throughout the 1940s and 50s, Deren attacked Hollywood for its artistic, political and economic monopoly over American cinema. She stated, “I make my pictures for what Hollywood spends on lipstick,” and observed that Hollywood “has been a major obstacle to the definition and development of motion pictures as a creative fine-art form.” She set herself in opposition to the Hollywood film industry’s standards and practices.

Martin Scorsese followed the Hollywood tradition by creating short films as a student and from that experience he is now an extremely successful feature film director. He has created several blockbuster films including Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas.

The Big Shave was an introduction to Scorsese talent, the short film seems normal with a man shaving at first however as the film goes on the shaving becomes increasingly graphic and shocking for an audience. It was made in 1967 and the film is set in one location, a bathroom. Creative shots are used to show the extent of the damage the man is doing to himself.

The background music is very effective as it is quite casual and relaxing which opposes the visuals on screen. I believe that the camera shots are very detailed and hard hitting, I feel that the shot of the sink is effective because of it repetitive use for e.g. we look at the sink at the beginning and its clean and normal however towards the end there are pools of blood.
















































Referencing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Deren

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g5Y_RUDUE0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Shave

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