3 analysis

3 analysis for final major

3 analysis for final major

For my final major my film is about a guy on a trippy/hallucinogenic experience, so the three pieces of media I am going to be analysing for this project are going to be similar and have the same themes running through the videos as mine. I will be analysing these three pieces of media, there is also a short description of what they are:

Enter the Void – this is a film is set in Tokyo and is about a drug dealer who is interested in topics such as being resurrected when you die, when he is shot and still has drugs in his system he comes out of his body as a spirit, the film provides fanatic visuals all over the place and shows the man watching over all of the people he knows who are still alive, the film is extremely trippy, by this I mean that the film has a lot of moments where the audience doesn’t know what is going on, the whole colour scheme of all of the colours you can think of and the camera movements add to this.

Gaspar Noe's Enter The Void was one of his highest budgeted films, the film is about a drug dealer named Oscar and the sister Linda in Tokyo, the main character Oscar is very obsessed with being resurrected ad loves to bring up deep conversation about what happens to you after you die. The film is introduced with some clever camera work with the camera being placed behind Oscar's eyes portraying a through the eyes shot from Oscar's point of view, this is a very clever shot which expresses the camera work, and for a film which is very drug orientated and which shows him flying around as a spirit the director Gaspar Noe, who loves to be behind the camera wants to put us as the audience behind his eyes to experience his story and the emotions that him and the other characters contribute to the story, the audience feel an insight into Oscar’s life by being behind his eyes and the camera is done this way to present heavy realism, the blinking effects as well where a shutter is put over the camera to blink adds to this and makes the audience feel a lot of personification with the character . Another portrayal of how the camera work really contributes to this film is the first scene where Oscar gets high for the first time, using special effects and camera cranes the camera hooks onto the joint that he is smoking, flies into the air and around Oscar and then flies into a lot of visual colourful motion graphics which consist of smoke and kaleidascopic tour around his apartment, I think this is done as a teaser to the rest of the film in the aspect of Noe wanting the audience to come out of Oscar's body when he is taking the drugs.

The film as a whole is centralised around Oscar revisiting the people throughout his life and the editing is done so that there is cut scenes throughout him flying around and so that the cut scenes are so dramatic and emotional, these cut scenes really engage the viewers into the film and into his story because of the emotional content. An example of this is when the camera is flying through the city and through to all of the different people he revisited, the sound cuts off for about 0.2 seconds and you suddenly hear screams of a child and a car crash and a flashback of Linda and Oscar in the back of the car crying, the way that the sound is edited and the way that the colour correction is done, it really makes an audience feel emotional and passion throughout this film. Another more emotional example from an audience viewpoint is where you see a flashback cut scene of Oscar and Linda as kids, they are portrayed to be so innocent with the mise en scene of them sitting on a bed in an orphanage holding a teddy bear and hugging each other surrounded by toys, the toys present innocence and childhood which adds to the audience feeling more personification with this character. This is where the soft spoken child actors say to each other "don’t ever leave me" and "I wont", this theme runs throughout the film as the whole film to me seems like a recollection of these two characters’ lives as throughout the film you see different clips. Another emotional clip is where you see the two child actors playing a young Oscar and Linda getting dragged away from each other, the acting of the little girl playing Linda really emphasises the emotion in the scene, she screams and shakes when the adults are trying to drag her away, it presents the themes of being trapped and being not able to get out of a situation which ultimately represents the film as a whole as Oscar is watching over everyone but cannot seem to interact with everyone. Another emotional cut scene is where you see Oscar being happy with one of his friends that he has found his sister and found enough money to finally bring her over to Tokyo, this makes the audience react with a sheer gut feeling of happiness for the characters as they haven't seen each other for ages, and because the scenes that Oscar are in are mostly filmed through his eyes, the audience feels the exact same way as the character, we have to step into their shoes to experience family emotional drama. Even though the film is about a drug trip and is a big experimental Gaspar Noe mess, the emotion is prevailed throughout and is very powerful towards the audience.

The setting of a very rough and grimy part or Tokyo is really effective, this is because the film is very long and half of the film shows a camera flying around this part of Tokyo, revisiting the people that he said he would never leave and to make this as interesting as possible Gaspar Noe wanted to make the most visual brain child as possible. The setting for this film expresses rave culture shows an emphasis on the neon lights all around the city and also presents some trippy motion visuals to accompany the cut scenes, the mise en scene of this film makes the very long runtime of 160 minutes an extremely interesting film and part of this is due to the editing as well as the filming of the city using cranes and camera grips.

Another thing which is interested and can be brought back to auteur theory is Gaspar Noe's expression of drug use and drug culture, with presenting the themes of the DMT trip and Oscar's interest as coming back as an entity that watches over the people that you love and care for. The main expression of drug use y Gaspar Noe is extremely negative, this is because he shows scenes such as Oscar dying, he shows Oscar as an entity which cannot escape his spiritual being, by presenting this he is expressing his views towards drug use and his views are extremely negative, also what I talked about earlier about having some deep, upsetting and incredibly emotional scenes in between the Oscar not escaping his spiritual self supports this evidence.

A$ap Rocky – L$D music video – this music video takes its inspirations from Gaspar Noe’s enter the void, by this I mean they visit the same locations seen in the movie and the style of flying around in the sky is seen, this is an example of intertextuality. The video and its lyrics come from rapper A$AP rocky, where he takes a twist on the meaning of LSD and explains it as Love, sex, dreams, the video shows him walking around Tokyo high with a girl so his take on it is that being in a relationship is like being on LSD.

Although the title of LSD suggests drug culture, the abbreviation in this song stands for Love, sex, dreams, which you can see a lot of in the lyrical content as the song is purely about love and romance. Even though you don’t see drug use in the music video as often as you see it in Enter The Void, it represents what its like to be on a trip, you see him walking through a Japanese city with flashing lights behind him which have been edited to be a main focus point in the video, you also see him walking into a Japanese bar/night club, here are lots of lights and the colour correction and grading has been done so that there are lots of flashing lights and strobes all the time as he is walking through these situations, the fact that he is always with a girl could connote the fact that being in love is like being on LSD. The video is based on first person and third person which are strong connotations of drug use as the camera is following their trippy movements all of the time, the camera work is very clever in portraying A$AP Rocky being high, the pan to the right and left as well as the cameras pointing towards the sky and towards lights with fast paced transitions takes intertextuality from Enter The Void but also gives the feeling of being on drugs.

One of the main target audiences for this music video is fans on hip hop, gangster rap and other hip hop related genres and fans of other rappers such as Jay-z, Kendrick Lamar and Drake, but some secondary and tertiary target audiences could be people who have been on drugs such as LSD and DMT who are now clean of it or are trying to battle their addiction of it, there is one scene of drug use at the beginning where Rocky is smoking and similarly to Enter The Void, the camera movement flies with the smoke, and as you see A$ap rocky having fun throughout Tokyo with his girlfriend I would have to say that this music video somewhat glamourizes drug use, this is only because of the happy flashing lights and the fact that nothing negative happens to Rocky which is out of his control throughout the music video. According to Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model of media, the dominant reading of this music video would be that it is a fun music video which shows A$AP Rocky being in love with someone whereas the oppositional reading would show that this music video is promoting a positive image of drug use.

Towards the end of the music video A$AP Rocky is standing ion top of a balcony with the girl he's been walking around Tokyo with, this could be seen as a homage to Enter The Void, soon after this the music stops and the girl fades into the air, this also supports my theory that A$ap Rocky isn't actually talking about drugs in the lyrics to the music video but he is actually talking about the pure emotional connection that he has with this girl and the sadness he has when she is taken away from him, this scene as well as a lot of other scenes can all be seen as a homage to Enter The Void. “I watched that film, and at the end of the day, we wanted to do something that was inspired, that paid homage to it without taking from that storyline or that plot.” said Rocky when talking about this music video and the influences behind it, so mainly the themes run around love sex dreams and not the actual drug.

Trainspotting – this film is about a group of friends who are addicted to heroin and other drugs, in the end the main character goes in for a big heist with his friends and then rips them all off in the biggest scam in history.

The Trainspotting title sequence and opening scene plays a big part in why this film is such a drug induced film, the sequence is all live action except from animated captions which are used throughout main character Renton’s commentary of the sequence as well as animation stops the scene focuses on a character and shows an animated name tag to introduce them all, it uses an orange colour scheme aa well as the whole title sequence being black and white. Renton who is the main character played by Ewan Mcgregor with his commentary over the scenes really sets an atmosphere to the start of the film and sets up an enigma for the audience, as the sequence progresses the scene is set in a merciless Edinburgh where him and his friends Spud, Sick Boy, Tommy, Begbie and Swanney are caught up in the thriving drug scene and are addicted, the film is about the struggles of Renton and his friends trying to reach sobriety and the consequences they face when stuck in different situations. The sequence talks about choosing life and the harsh reality of his story, it can also be argued that the connotations of choose life and all of the materialistic items he chooses to talk about could be a Renton making the most of what hes got and passing on his beliefs.

The sequence talks about choosing life and the harsh reality of his story, he talks about what stereotypical life is like within Scotland, like in L.A confidential opening sequence Renton is advertising a lifestyle, advertising a perfect reality although due to a lot of swearing and an angry raging tone of voice the audience can tell that he is angry and something is not quite right with what he is talking about. The title sequence opens with Ewan Mcgregor’s character Renton with another man running away from two men in black suits, this builds up suspense and given the audience an enigma code as we do not know what they are running from or who they are. The setting for the scene looks like an old town centre in Scotland due to the mise-en-scene of shops, stone walls and concrete walls, vintage clothes and vintage cars appearing in the scene, this could be a reveal of a target audience of C1, C2 or D on the JINCAR scale or a primarily Scottish audience because they may be able to relate to the setting. The next scene shows Renton being hit by a car and then getting back up again and laughing through the windscreen in a medium shot, this as well as the close up tracking shot of him running could show symbolism of him being invincible and on top of the world due to the drugs he may be on at this point.

The last positive thing Renton says in the whole sequence is “choose your future, choose life”, when he falls down he says “but why would I want to do a thing like that, I chose something else, and the reasons, well there are no reasons, who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin”. This line that he says represents a lot of things, it could represent that all of the things he mentioned “compact disc players, low cholesterol, stuffing your face with junk food” are all just materialistic and useless items or concepts that you don’t need if you’ve got heroin, this is where we see the introduction to the coping mechanisms throughout the group of friends start to grow and start to inhabit.

Throughout the film they talk about getting clean and the effects of drugs as well as Scotland's national identity which ultimately audiences could be watching this for. A main scene which represents the two is where Renton is by a pub and a voiceover from him talks about how heroin makes you constipated and he walks into a toilet called "the worst toilet in Scotland", this could be seen as a representation of Scotland overall, another thing which supports this is the other characters always slagging off Scotland with the recurring theme of "Being Scottish Is Shite". When he walks into this toilet it is the most disgusting place on earth and the way the mise en scene is done is fantastic, there is human fasces all over the floor, graffiti everywhere, no doors on the toilets, in the end he climbs in the toilet with a lot of disgusting human waste over flowing into it, he swims down the toilet and then swims upwards when you see him in a blue, hypnotic ocean scene, the water looks extremely clean and he has lots of space to swim around, this could be a representation of being clean off of the drugs for a few days.

Overall in this film ultimately director Danny Boyle gives an extremely negative view of drug use in the end, this is due to a few scenes, there is an extremely emotional scene where you see one of their friends babies die, this is because they are being extremely irresponsible for leaving the baby unattended for days whilst they do heroin, the mise en scene of this scene where they have nothing in the house they all share, graffiti over the walls, as well as abandoned objects all over the house, the acting of the mum who's baby has just died, the mum is crying and screaming all over the house whilst the other people are also feeling the emotions of it. The editing techniques used also adds to the feeling of the film being a drug centred film, for example the scene where there is a medium shot of Renton falling over in his house the film is colour graded/colour corrected so that there is the scene looks more orangey brown and dark feel, this presents a more grimy feel to the scene and makes the audience feel one with the room. When it is coming to the end of the title sequence the camera in a tracking close up shot tracks a green wall which says “welcome to mother superior on it” which could mean anything, it could have semiotic meanings that the drugs are the people in the houses superior or he house in itself is the superior. The baby scene also comes up in one of the negative scenes of the trip for main character Renton, this scene shows him on a bed being lectured by his parents about how he needs to stay in and he can't escape from this bed no matter how hard he tries, this features the same theme from Enter The Void with the themes of not being able to escape from the situation he is being in, also with the themes of flashbacks from his life being brought up. Later on in this scene you see the baby crawling on the ceiling and the harrowing close up shot of the babies head being completely turned around 360 degrees adds to the crazy emotional part of this scene.

These three analysis of films and music videos that use drug use and show harrowing scenes of people on drug trips has helped me bring my idea forward a bit more, I am going to use some editing techniques used in the films and music videos presented to make my music video seem as trippy as possible, the acting I have seen has also helped me as a director to film my music video. These three media examples have given me a lot of inspiration which is brilliant, it will help me create a treatment and a storyline as well as all of the other technical equipment involved in a shoot like this. I am also going to look into hypnosis and strobing in broadcasting because this will help me create a suitable video for people who suffer with photosensitive epilepsy.