POST 8: TIM BURTON: A biography

                                          Tim Burton

Fill in the gaps in this biography of Tim Burton

Tim Burton was born in 1958, in the city of Burbank, California.

He remains without question one of the most original film maker working in cinema today.

 Indeed, his talent and originality have kept him at the top of the profession where he occupies a very special place, somewhere between the mainstream and the avant-garde, in that region of cinema occupied by artists which worldview is not unconventional that it attains popular appeal.

In 1989, Tim Burton directed the hugely known Batman which, although his least personal film, was one of the most popular movies of all time and gave him unprecedented success in Hollywood, considering the originality and adventurousness of his previous films (for example Beetlejuice in 1988).

Edward Scissorhands (1990), another hit, saw him at the peak of his directing powers and established a fruitful working collaboration/partnership with actor Johnny Depp who played in his 2005 film version of Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and who became one of his most esteemed partner since their first film together.

In 1992, Batman Returns was a way darker film than the original, a reflection of how much cinematographic freedom Tim Burton had won (producers Warner Bros were reputedly unhappy with the final result).

And even if Ed Wood (1994), his loving tribute to the life and work of the legendary ‘Worst Director of All Time’ Edward D. Wood, Jr., was a box-office disaster, it got some of the best critics of Burton’s career.

In fact, Tim Burton is known/famous both for his dark, quirky-themed movies like Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, or Dark Shadows (2012) and for blockbusters such as Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Batman, Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland (2010), one of his most successful films, which became the fifth highest grossing films of all times.

Burton has produced 18 feature films as of 2014, and has released 12 as of 2012  (among which the very nice Christmas tale called The  Nightmare Before Christmas in 1993).

All in all, Tim Burton’s films consistently challenge the spectator’s expectations, push forward the principles of filmmaking and bring to life previously unthinkable characters (like Edward Scissorhands).

Taken as a whole, his work is based on the confrontation between the fantastic and the horror, and the consequences of these two worlds intermingling.

Big Fish, Burton’s 2003 effort, is no different. And ___, somehow, it is not really the

_________.

On the surface, it would appear to have all the aspects of a classic Burton film: a magic screenplay, fairy-tale characters, flights of imagination, forces of nature (as well as the supernatural), far-fetched situations and vastly imaginative visual style and imagery. The movie is, in fact, fully packed with fanciful episodes that it begins to feel like a loose adaptation of The Odyssey, told from the mouth of an aging character named Ed Bloom, a story-teller and dreamer who sees the world with beautiful eyes.

                                                                        

 

                                                                  

POST 15: How to Write a Screenplay: Script & Screenwriting Tips

Screenplay

OVERBLACK

MUSIC SOUNDTRACK

The first notes of the song begins. (15')

FADE IN

EXT. STREET SIDEWALK-OVERCAST/CLOUDY DAY

A broken coffee cup is on the ground.

CAMERA ZOOMS BACKWARD enough to see the background.

MUSIC SOUNDTRACK

The vocals start. (15'x2)

                                                             

CAMERA FRAMES a crumpled newspaper being blown down the street away. A pair of feet come into view, step on a piece of gum.

CAMERA ZOOMS BACKWARD to show the man in a FULL SHOT walking down the street with his head bent.

The street gets darker thanks to a SLOW FADE OUT

[Special effect]

INT. LIVING ROOM-DAY AFTERNOON 

A man in the background is lip-synching lines 6 and 7 of the song, while a couple is having an argument on the foreground, around a coffee cup. The man gets up abruptly and throws the coffee cup violently. He sweeps the coffee cup off the table, while he's standing, the cup ends up broken in pieces.

ZOOM FORWARD on the radio transistor, followed by a PAN SHOT to the right, to focus on the couple shaking hands. The man puts on his coat.

CUT TO:

EXT.-STREET-DAY

BLACK, which is the man's coat seen from the back. The man starts walking and passes by a stray dog that starts whining. Both of them stare at each other with an imploring look in their eyes.

MUSIC SOUNDTRACK

Chorus

  

CUT TO:

EXT. STREET-NIGHT

HIGH-ANGLE SHOT of the man walking alone in a dimly-lit street (turning his back to the camera?).

FADE OUT, credits.

POST 8 BIS: "My" thriller: Psycho, by Alfred Hitchcock.

The trailer.

The very famous shower scene, heart of the movie and probably one of the best movie scene ever made in the history of cinema.

Psycho is a movie made by the english Alfred Hitchcock released in 1960, one of the world's best film director. Hitchcock was very known for his very good thrillers and remains today as the father of many film techniques very new for his time and which made his thrillers even more "scary". Psycho is probably the most known of his movies because of the very shocking scenes in it (for the time) and for Anthony Hopkins remarquable performance.

The story is about Marion Crane, a young secretary who works in a bank and is having an affair with a man. She needs money to get away with the man she loves and one day, after work, she steels in the bank she works in a whole lot of money. Pretending to be sick, she goes home early and runs away by car. A policeman arrests her for sleeping in the car and thinking about her weird behaviour, follows her. At night, she arrives in a very strange motel in the middle of nowhere, hidden from everything, where nobody lives except the owner, Norman Bates, and his strange mother. She checks in, and while taking a shower, a very strange silhouet comes in and kills her with a knife. This scene is typical for a thriller: there is a very nerve-racking music, a horrifying scream, blood and it is very slow but also fast at the same time. We don't see the face of the killer wich is even more scary. After that scene, a privet detective and Marion's sister arrive at the motel to look for her. During the whole movie and until the end, we don't know who the killer is even though we guess it a little bit, but the end is so horrible and shocking that it bloodcurls you because you do not except that at all.

POST 8: WITNESS AS A THRILLER

From the blog: http://bethrigby.blogspot.com.es/2011/01/section-one-thriller-genre.html

DEFINITION: These are types of films known to promote intense excitement, suspense, a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, anxiety, and nerve-wracking tension. Thriller and suspense films are virtually synonymous and interchangeable categorizations, with similar characteristics and features.

There are some Thriller sub-genres:

Legal Thriller: eg- A Few Good Men
Disaster Thriller: eg- The Day After Tomorrow 
Psychological Thriller: eg- The Talented Mr. Ripley 
Medical Thriller: eg- The Experiment
Religious Thriller: eg- The Da Vinci Code 
Crime Thriller: eg - Silence of the Lambs

Techno Thriller: eg- The Matrix  

Primary elements of  the Thriller as a genre	Witness as a thriller Illustration in the film
1.Central protagonist   The protagonist faces death, it can be his own or someone else's.	John Book faces his own death when he gets shot in the undergroud parking lot. he also faces the death of his partner, when Carter gets killed. Samuel also faces death when he is in the bathroom and then when he has become an eyewitness.
2.Force/s of antagonism ... must initially be clever and/or stronger than the protagonist.	At first the dirty cops are more powerfull because they are in a higher positions (Schaeffer is John's boss/higher up) and then John is alone and isolated in the Amish community were he is vulnerable.
3.Main storyline For the protagonist it is either a quest or the character who cannot be put down(=defeated)	John's quest consists in finding the killer and uncovering the corruption ring. He also wants to avenge Carter's death.
4.Main plotline The main plotline focuses on a mystery that must be solved.	The mistery John has to solve is obiously the motive behind the murder of the police man.
5.Narrative construction It is dominated by the protagonist's point of view.	The beginning of the film is only concerned with the Amish and their lifestyle. But then when learn about Carter's death through John's point of view, so as we see Rachel and Samuel through his eyes mostly.
6.Action and characters They must be credibly realistic/natural in their representation on screen.	The Amish way of live is very credibly depicted through, for instance, the way they are dress, the barn-raising, the cow-milking, Rachel's sponge bath, or like when Elaine describes John...
7.Major themes ... are the desire for justice and the morality of individuals.	John takes justice in his own hands in order to avenge his murdered colleage. The Amish as a whole embody the highest degree of morality.
8.Small but significant aspect ... is the presence of innocence in what is seen as an essentially corrupt world.	The whole Amish community embodyinnocence because their values are basically pure. On the other hand the corruption inside the police represents the corruption of the modern world.