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Theme

Theme = Emotion = Audience Connection

Theme is not a one-word explanation like ‘Happiness’, as it doesn’t tell much about the film.

For instance, the movie that captured our hearts and made me into a sobbing mess in the theaters: Inside Out

The overall theme for the movie is :

‘Sadness is required to make Joy better’

Having a good theme would not only make emotional connections with your audience better, but also the message stays rooted in the audience’s mind after the movie.

A Theme = The Controlling Idea = The Message

The controlling idea is that everything (Dialogue + Scene +Props tie down to 1 idea.)

It is also essential that the Theme of the movie/film CANNOT have Conflicting Themes! For instance, Riley in the movie Inside Out cannot talk about politics in the film because it has 0 relevance to the theme of the film and that it will confuse the viewers. Thus it is important that when setting the theme for a film, we ought to revise the circle above to ensure that our themes and subthemes in the film are not conflicting.

Another example is used to figure out the theme of the local film during lesson:

Singapore Dreaming (and yes… the entire film is available on YouTube YES~)

The themes the class has contributed for this film is :

  • Limbo of common folks to be the elites
  • The pursuit of wealth + success (Paper Chase)
  • Gender Roles in Asian context (specifically Singapore)
  • Negativity is transmittable
  • The need for upward social mobility
  • Ego is what breaks relationships.

What are other ways for us to present our themes for films?

  1. Through Characters, it embodies the theme.
  2. Motifs
  3. Dialogues
  4. Setting

Using Characters- Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Windows

Using characters, this film illustrates the urban relationship behind closed doors. The main character sees the real bitterness of his neighbors through his own window.

Theme?

You will not know how person feels or think on the inside, and the exterior image they show you may be just a façade to hide their true feelings and emotions.

Choice of music in this film also shows the theme of this film, which evokes fragility & loneliness exhibited by characters in this film.

Using Motifs – Saving Private Ryan

In the film, there is a scene where the colonel was directing his troop towards his map as to where Ryan can be found. In the midst of explaining, the compass in his hand was shaking. The soldiers looked at the colonel’s hand and gave him a warm smile before the proceeded to look for Ryan.

The motif in this film is the Compass.

The colonel was nervous about the search or was suffering from physical injury from the war, but still insisted to search for Ryan with his entire troop. In the process, there was this conflicting moral ambiguity he was battling. The shaking compass was a motif to show the moral compass of the colonel along with the troops.

Theme?

Is it worth giving up the entire forest for a single tree?

Yit Ling, Clara and I (Group mates for Final project in Sem 1 <3) went to watch The Silence of the Lambs afterwards to try to apply what we have learnt during lesson, and sieve out the themes involves in this movie.

Themes?

>Repression from misogynist in a “male job”
>Women can handle male dominated jobs as well
>Hard work pays off
> Good things goes to those who fight for it 

Hence, a Theme is consistent throughout a movie and it sets the overarching story of the entire movie; the lesson learnt at the end of the movie.

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First week of Semester 2~ *Inhales Exhales* I can already smell the assignements piling in already… LETS GO~

Stories and Your Identity

For today’s class, Ru Yi taught us what makes a good story.

Finding your own voice.

  1. Stories you care about
  2. To boot:
  • The kind of stories you are best qualifies to tell
  • The kinds of character that particularly attracts you.
  • The situations you find especially intriguing
  • A journal to record them all ( Words, Dialogues that attracts you etc.)

And then Ru Yi showed us a video of novelist, Chimamanda Adichie‘s speech : The Danger of a single story.

After watching listening to her speech, I have learnt that as a child, she created stories based on what she was exposed to in American books; in which she has no first hand experience of as a Nigerian child. For instance, eating apples in winter and drinking ginger beer. As a child she was vulnerable and impressionable. Soon, she changed and started writing about things she recognizes on first hand. She then realized that many of us including herself then that media’s portrayal of people and their single story kind of forms what a specific group of a person ought to look like, this has resulted in what they have become to the rest.

So the overall point that I have extracted from this video is…

“Don’t make ‘One Story’ be the ‘Only Story’.”

In order for a good story to be created, we need to have characters that are impressionable. Hence there is a need to define the need of your characters.

  1. POV (What the character’s believes in)
  2. Attitude (Intellectual Decision)
  3. Behavior / Mentality (The way in which a person behaves in response to a particular situation)

Hence, I watched Kill Bill Volume I for the first time, and had a go at dissecting the main character: The Bride (and yes she wasn’t given a name, they bleeped her name when mentioned in the film by other characters)

Here is the trailer for the movie! 🙂

*Spoilers alert

scanThis is the dissection of ‘The Bride’ in Kill Bill Volume I I have attempted in. 🙂

I have learnt that character dissection is very important because it helps the character in the movie to connect with the audience in terms of familiarity and evoke a feeling to care for the character. This enhances the plot of the film.