Brandon's Blog

      I am really glad that I was able to be a part of this class. Coming into this class I had no prior experience or knowledge around film theory. I think that I can now walk away from this class with a deeper understanding around film.     One of the things I liked about this class was watching Breathless. I don't think that I would have ever watched this film if it wasn't for this class. While it may not be my favorite film ever, I think that it brought good conversations and learning points. Another one of my favorite parts of this class was the fascination projects. I thought that it was really cool to see what other class mates picked for their topic and then be able relate it to something we learned in class. I thought everyone's presentations were awesome and gave good explanations.      I can't believe that this class has come to an end so quick. I will miss coming to this class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It was cool ...

      Over this past weekend I went to one of my good friend's apartment with a couple of other friends to hangout and catch up. We decided to watch the movie, The Departed, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Vera Farmiga, Jack Nicholson, and Brad Pitt as one of the producers. I had never seen this movie before and I think it is one of the best crime dramas I have seen in a while. The movie keeps you on your toes the entire time and is very engaging. It keeps you guessing of what is going to happen to the main characters due to all the lying and back stabbing that is going on during the movie.      Near the end of the movie, it throws everything at you. At this point you don't know who to trust or believe and while you think the movie is about to end, it continues because more issues crop up while one problem is solved another is created.      While this movie is long (2h 31m), it still k...

      Even  though I did not get to finish the film,  Swiss Army Man, I did still enjoy it. The opening of the film was very different from what I've seen before. It starts out depressing and unsettling. A man named, Hank, is stranded on an island trying to kill himself before he sees another person wash up on shore. He tries to revive the man but fails to get any sort or pulse back. Hank leaves the man and goes back to trying to kill himself but sees the man jolting uncontrollably. Hank runs over to the man again and uses his bodily gases as a jet ski to escape the island. At this point I knew that this movie was some sort of comedy because it was too funny and bizarre to be taken seriously.      When they eventually make it to another island, Hank carries the man with as he explores the island for other survivors. Hank finds a cave and places the lifeless body on the ground. Hank begins to talk to himself and the body. Hank b...

  Chapter 3 Questions  1.  Cinema reinforces dominant ideology because there was a lack for counter-cinema. Hollywood would please the mainstream values and social behaviors rather than diversify the ideology. The most important theoretical tool for analyzing cinema's ideological function is through counter-cinema because it allows for a different perspective to be told. It also opens up for different theories to be explored and it diversifies the audience.     2.  Theorists stress the importance of developing a counter-cinema because it provides a oppositional style of film making. Jean Luc Godard is someone who amplified the views of counter-cinema. The text states that "his general distinction implies rudimentary binary logic, the implication being that it is possible to dismantle Hollywood by replacing its conventions with with a different set of conventions" (99). 3. Theorists draw attention to how groups are represented on film because there are certa...

    After watching the YouTube video on Giles Deleuze and Film Theory: "The Cinema Books", it was interesting to see the break down of movement-image and time-image. Movement-image is the time subordinate to action and movement as time-image is movement and action are subordinated to the flow of time. Movement-time is associated with classical Hollywood cinema, Soviet Montage, pre-war French, and German Cinemas as time-image is associated with Post-WWII European cinema, Italian Neo-Realism, and French New Wave.      An interesting point that was made was that image does not mean picture. Just because a picture has movement does not mean that it is a  movement-image. Deleuze says the image itself is the system of the relationships between its elements. To him it is not just a stand alone image it is more of a system that is interacting with our eyes and ears. The characters in films help play a role in this as well. Th...

    The fascination projects over the last few classes have been very enjoyable to listen to. I think it brought up some interesting conversations and made me also think about things I have never thought about before. I think the idea of promoting bad people in films and how it affects the viewer psychologically was an interesting topic.      One of the people that was brought up in the presentation was Jefferey Dahmer and the new series that is on Netflix about him. When this first came out people started to post a lot on TikTok about the new series and people were starting to become obsessed with the Jefferey Dahmer character and began to fall in love and act like him. There were a lot of people dressing up as him for Halloween or were just acting like him for fun. It is actually sad that people go this far and become fans of people who did horrible things.        Another example that is older but a lot of people did the...

      I had never scene the film Primer prior to the showing in class. I did see the trailer and it got my attention and I was very interested to watch in class. The opening of the film seems to start in the middle of something which threw me off. I think for a good majority of the film I was trying to figure out what was going on. I thought originally they were making some some sort of gravity machine in the garage because the object they were using was floating but I was completely wrong.      It wasn't until the end and the class  discussion until things started to make more sense. I really had no idea that there were body doubles let alone more than just one pair. I think the scene where the two main characters were in the field watching the storage units was a vital scene when they saw the body doubles.  The confusion that I am left with is how many body doubles are there? It seems like they go into the machine multip...

  Netflix trailer: https://youtu.be/qFqgmaO15x4       All Quiet on the Western Front was released on Netflix October 28, 2022. The war drama takes place in Germany during WW I and follows the main character Paul Baumer. Paul is 17 years old and decides to fight for his country with his friends. Paul and his friends are all excited to join the army but they all soon realize how terrifying war is.     First off, this film has great cinematography. The shots are very detailed and shows the gruesome elements that surrounded the soldiers. There is one shot that shows the complete destruction of what was once a forest but is now covered with bomb shells, trenches, and bodies. There are other scenes in the movie that showcase the peace and calm of snowfall on the other side of the battlegrounds where there is no war. I believe this was signifying how there was two complete opposite sides of the war and also signified how war can...

    Something that I have always been fascinated by growing up and still am are war movies. I have always been interested in history, especially American history growing up. I remember watching war movies with my dad on the History channel. Some of my favorite war movies are Saving Private Ryan, Hacksaw Ridge, American Sniper, and Lone Survivor.      The movies showcase the unpleasant and horrifying things that have and can happen in war. It also shows how civilians and soldiers are affected in the moment and when the war is over. Now that I have learned more about psychoanalysis in this class I think that it could be interesting to look at some of these films from a psychoanalytical point of view. Within these films the characters and people are tasked with some difficult decisions. As a viewer it makes you think of what you would do in their position because there are moral and ethical situa...

    The term scopophilia refers to the male gaze of Hollywood which objectifies women into mere objects to be looked at. The male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world, from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents women as sexual objects.      In class we discussed the male gaze from the reading and how it has played a role in many films. Before going into this discussion, I had a little bit of knowledge about the male gaze from a marketing stand point since I am a marketing minor. However, in marketing it isn't called the male gaze it is called sex appeal and they have some similarities. In one of my marketing classes we discussed how advertisements tend to sexualize and objectify women specifically. An advertisement that we discussed in that class was the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's commercial where they use half naked women to pose with a burger. This makes no sense because what do...

    "La Jetee" is a unique film that only uses still images and narration to tell a story. "La Jetee" is a film that gives the illusion of time travel. It also showcases the idea of how movement of the film can be perceived by the characters and the audience. While the characters in this film are trapped in time the audience views them as being still on screen. This is an interesting way to tell a story without movement in each scene.     Relating this film to what we have read, this can be seen as a counter-cinema piece as it is uniquely different from what mainstream Hollywood was. The film is different because it uses still photos to tell a story. It was regarded more as a photo novel. While it uses still images this does not mean it takes away from the film aspect of telling a story with editing. This film also relates in some aspects to Eisenstein's Soviet montage theory. This theory is about how films rely heavily on edit...

     Counter-cinema developed around the 1960s. It rose to the occasion to bring light to the fact that Hollywood was directed towards a certain audience and didn't cater to everyone or every genre. Counter-cinema is not a single concept. It addresses many genres, script writings, camera angles, race and culture aspects, and gender ideologies. Counter-cinema focuses on a wider audience and emphasizes minorities.      Peter Wollen as described in the reading "drew a schematic distinction between the "deadly sins" of mainstream Hollywood cinema and the "cardinal virtues" of his proposed counter-cinema (p. 99)." I am not entirely sure what this means but I think the idea Wollen is trying to get at is Hollywood at one point was too mainstream and and becoming more of a "brain wash". Wollen further said in the this chapter that it is possible to dismantle Hollywood by replacing its conventions with a different set of conventions. This is an intere...

 https://frenchculture.org/events/9921-breathless     This week during class we watched "Breathless" directed by Jean Luc Godard. This film had many surprising and questionable actions by the main character Michel. The first scene begins with him calling himself an "asshole" and we see later why he calls himself that. From the start of the film we see Michel steal cars and kill a cop. Michel's actions do not stop there as he steals money from one of his girlfriends and would leave restaurants without paying.      The scene that shocked me the most was Michel's reaction to Patricia saying that she is pregnant. Michel responded quickly by telling her she needs to be careful and that it definitely isn't his. Michel's treatment of women, especially Patricia, is uncalled for and makes for cringey moments.      There was one scene where it reminded me of a Bonnie and Clyde where they steal the car from t...

  https://www.flickr.com/photos/psychpics/3428948856     A couple weeks ago in class we discussed Hugo Munsterberg and his philosophy behind photoplay. There was also a great YouTube video that better explains the theory of photoplay and how it can play a key role on how an audience may see something. Something that stood out to me during the video was the psychological answer and the aesthetic answer. The psychological answer, is the mental functioning of the cinema spectator and is distinct from that of the theater spectator. The aesthetic answer, is the aesthetic properties and techniques of the cinema are distinct from that of the theater.      After watching through the second act of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, I would say that this film used aesthetics to make certain shots look the way it did. One of the more repetitive  techniques used in this film was the darkening of the sides to create a focus on...

       The first chapter discusses many different topics and theories but the one topics that stood out to me was techniques to construct "socially useful art objects-objects that would enhance everyday life" (Art into Life 169). A group of artists came together and created a movement known as constructivism and their slogan was "art into life".      I found this segment of the chapter to be interesting because it seems to me that artists wanted to enhance their work to make it more appealing or entertaining. It seems that they wanted art to be a part of peoples everyday life without forcing people to consume their work. When reading this part of the chapter the first thing that came to mind was Wallace and Gromit. Wallace and Gromit is a claymation that involves characters made from clay and are placed differently in each shot to create a film. It is a unique way of displaying artwork while also making multiple films from these clay cha...

Hello, I am Brandon Szabo and I am a senior double majoring in interactive media studies and journalism & media communications with a double minor in marketing and graphic design. I have been around North Central College for a long time as both my parents and sister attended North Central College. I have grown up in Naperville my entire life and have seen the changes it has gone through. Growing up I enjoyed being active and hanging out with the neighborhood kids. I played many different sports but I narrowed it down to soccer, basketball and rugby. I ultimately decided to focus on soccer my last two years in high school and was recruited to play at North Central College.  Before starting my first year at North Central College I applied to be a part of the sports information team. Some of the tasks I have are stat keeping, writing articles and making graphics. As my junior year started I wasn't enjoying soccer as much as I did before. I started to enjoy working and wanted to de...