Blog assignment 1A: Who influences me as a creative person?

One thing that I most enjoy doing in life is watching movies.  Any movie will do with me and I’m not one who would usually discriminate against directors or actors.  However one director that I admire greatly is Danny Boyle.  You may know him from his movies 28 Days Later, Sunshine, and Trainspotting.  These three movies happen to be some of my favorites and in creating these these films he has used several of the binary terms that we have discussed in our Media and the Creative Process class.  It is because of his use of these things in his films and the great way that his films are presented that make me like them so much.  I strive to be able to make movies like his sometime in the future.  One example of his use of these terms is in this clip of the movie 28 Days Later.  This clip is a good example of Tension and Release.  This is when the director takes something familiar, adds something different and then returns to the familiar.  Frank becomes angry because when they arrive at the army base they find that there is nothing there.  In his anger he hits a scaffolding that drops a single drop of blood into his eye, thus infecting him with the rage virus.  The next few moments become very hectic.  He yells at his daughter to stay away from him as he transforms into a monster.  Then Selena begins to yell at Jim to kill him and tension builds and builds as Jim approaches the homicidal monster that Frank has now transformed into.  Then the release finally comes.  Several soldiers come out of the forrest and kill Frank.  This ends all of the tension and returns everything to normal.  Another term that is used in the movie Trainspotting is Contrast and Affinity.  This means that it explores the similarities(affinity) and differences(contrast) between things within the work.  This clip shows the similarities and differences between the heroin addicts that are shooting up in a Scottish apartment.  Everyone in the apartment awakes to the same thing, a woman crying and yelling hysterically about something that no one had found out about.  They all get up from their spots on the ground and go over to a room and see that the woman’s baby had died while they were all just laying there on the ground getting high for days.  This is where a contrast in the characters comes in.  They all go into the room and stare down into the child’s crib.  All except for the woman who is walking quickly from room to room crying still.  Sick boy, who is actually the child’s father begins to cry and yells for someone to say something about what has happened.  Renton who is the narrator of the story stands there thinking about how bad this all was and about how they had finally found out who was the child’s real father.  Spud simply stares into the crib blankly and is unable to say anything.  This is where the affinity of the characters is displayed.  Renton finally follows Sick Boy’s orders and breaks his silence to say “I’m cooking up.”  He exits the room and starts to prepare a dose of heroin for himself.  Seeing what he is doing the woman stops her crying and sits down next to him for a dose of her own and the others all follow in his example.  The only one who does not follow is Sick Boy who stays near the crib crying.  This shows the contrast that while the others think that drugs are the most important thing, he can see that they have done something truly horrible by letting this child die while under their care. The third set of terms that are seen in one of his movies are Active and Didactic.  These two terms have to do with the theme or meaning of the work.  Active means that the audience can make up their own minds as to what is happening in the story.  Didactic means that the writer or director tells the audience what is happening in the story.  This clip from his movie Sunshine demonstrates the use of these very well.  The ship that they are piloting towards the sun is running out of oxygen and Kappa is checking the computer to make sure that they will all be able to make it their to perform their duties.  Upon doing so he finds that there is one extra crew member than there should be and that the identity of this crew member is unknown.  This is an example of an active theme.  Neither the audience or the characters know who this new person is and that leads the audience to make their own assumptions as to who this person will be and what he is doing on the ship.  Kappa goes to the observation room to seek out this person.  He finds that he is the captain of the last ship that had been sent to the sun and that he was responsible not just for their ship breaking but also the deaths of all of the other crew members.  This is the didactic part of the theme where you learn exactly who this person is and what he is doing on their ship.