Extract Essay

Luca Guerra Montes

April, 24 2020 

                 “24”

The main theme of the extract of the movie “24” is equality among men and women and this is shown by a female and a male actor competing against each other. While the girl keeps a calm and serious attitude, the man gets angrier and ends up outbursting. Thanks to some film techniques the female character is shown to be just as vicious and determined as the male, which supports the overarching theme of the movie.

Since the very first scene, it is possible to see that the female remains calm even though the situation keeps getting more and more intense. The director wants to build tension and to achieve his goal he uses diegetic sound for the scene in which the male character walks in the room. For the scene of the interrogation, the technique of zooming in is used. This helps create suspension and emphasizes the importance of this moment. Indeed, while we would expect the suspect to break down and not be able to sustain the interrogation, it is the interrogator who is not able to hold it in and keep calm. 

Moving on, the voices play a very important role. They not only show the true personality of the characters, but they also help convey the central theme. Men and women should be treated equally because, just like the female character shows us in this extract, females are just as capable as men and therefore, deserve equal treatments. In this scene, the female actually shows superiority by remaining calm and not letting the angry man get to her. Furthermore, the viewer is also able to see the reaction and expression of the two characters during their dialogue in real time thanks to the shot-reverse shots technique that the director uses.

Moreover, in the scene where the man is getting closer to the woman’s face, the director uses a cutaway and the scene changes to the people viewing the interrogation. It is possible to see terror, fear, and panik in their faces which means that the way the man is acting is wrong and things should be going differently. However, even if those watching the interrogation show fear, the woman who is being interrogated still remains calm and the close-up technique shows that perfectly, by focusing on her impassive facial expression. Once again, this choice helped the director convey the message that there isn’t a real difference between males and females when it comes to skills.

Finally, acting has a huge impact on the theme of the extract because if the woman being interrogated was a man, the theme would be nonexisting. Another huge factor is the way the director uses the lighting in this extract, it helps send the message to the audience and it also helps the viewers understand how intense this scene is, making the viewers feel the tension in the conference room. Despite the tension in the room, the woman remains very calm, while the man loses his temper showing how it relates to the original theme.

Overall, the extract 24 conveys the important message of equality between males and females through multiple filming techniques and also through the dialogue between the two characters. The girl shows multiple times that she is more than capable to compete against a man. The director uses tone, camera movements, and sounds to support the main theme and help the audience understand it.  

Final Movie

Working on this project was a very stressful part of the year for me. I had to manage a lot of work that was going on in the class but also in the other classes I had. I am a senior in high school and seeing all my friends being a little less serious about school and seeing the classes with a lot of missing students due to seniorities, was affecting me too. But I knew that I needed to be responsible and take care of my school stuff and come to school and devote my time to school work like this project. I honestly thought that our group was going to do just fine for this project because we all already worked together and we knew each other, but it turned out to be a lot harder than I thought. We started having arguments since the first moment, we didn't agree with the idea for our film, we each had different ideas and when me and another group member finally agreed on one idea, the other group member wasn't okay with it. We had to change it, but again the same situation happened so we just decided to make another one. They always say that the third time is a charm, and luckily, this time it was. We went on with this idea and we started story boarding but none of us are good artists so it took us a while. We split the work evenly and a day before everything on the story board was due Camilo and I were done with our part but the other group member wasn't so we decided to take her part and do it for her. We got everything we had to do done, but this created some tension inside our team and it wasn't good at all because we were just getting started with the film. We weren't happy with the fact that we had to do extra work just because the other group member didn't do the part she was supposed to do, but this is what friends and group members are for so we covered her work without a lot of complaining. As time passed, the tension went down and we all started working together and peacefully again. I think that coming to this solution had a huge impact on the outcome of our final product, because we all know that when you work in a happy, safe, and friendly environment the work will be a lot better than if you were to work in a tense environment. I really liked and I was very proud of how the film came out because it is a well filmed movie that also has a nice story time. I also really liked how although some tension was created during the time of this project we were all mature enough to let it go and focus on the work while keeping our calm and staying friends. I was very sad that this was the last time working with anyone that was part of this class due to the Coronavirus outbreak, but all that is important right now is being safe and healthy, and wait until everything that is happening goes back to normal as soon as possible.
If the video isn't working please click on the following link: https://youtu.be/eY150zp3uDU

Music Video

Working on the music video was a lot different than working on the commercial video. I had a new group for this project and this time all of the participants worked and did their part for the video. this was my favourite part of the year because I got to work with my friends and we did a music video which was very fun to make and very interesting. I learned a lot in the making of this project, I got more familiar with the editing process and I realised how complicated it is. Before I thought it was just putting the two videos but it is a lot more than that, first off you need to see if there is any details that need to be fixed in the shot because you are the last person to see the shots before it becomes an actual video. I rewatched every shot very carefully and we had to reshoot some scenes because they looked disorganised. once I had every shot and they were all right I had to put them together and find the perfect transition for each part. I had a lot of fun looking for transitions because I wanted to make sure that I was going to pick the right one. Once I was done with that I had to add the song to the video and I had to pick what I thought the best part of the song would be a good match for the video.
The editing process took me about a day or two and I honestly thought it was going to take me a lot longer because I am not very familiar with computers and editing apps like iMovie. This app turned out to be very easy to use, I watched some videos on how to use the app and it made it easier for me to become more familiar with it. After I was done with the video the whole group watched it and gave their honest opinions on how it looked and what could be fixed. We all noticed that some of my transitions weren't as good as I thought so I reedited the video and fixed the little mistakes until there were none.  I was very happy about how the video came out and I also was very proud of myself and my group because we each contributed equally to the project and it showed it in the results of the video.
If the video isn't working please click on the following link: https://youtu.be/jYtIydWTiFU

Commercial Video

When we started working on the Commercial project, personally I was a little worried as it was my first big project for this class. We had some limitations with this project, for example we weren't allowed to leave the school campus for this project, we weren't allowed to have watermarks, meaning that we couldn't have a logo or prints going over our video. We also had a very strict dress code imposed by our teacher and this made it harder for our group to all wear the same colour clothes so that we would look more professional for the video. Our idea for the project was to do an anti-vaping educational commercial because we thought that since we had to be on campus and vaping is a big issues in our educational system the two events were related to each other. A goal for our commercial was also to bring up the problems vaping causes and how teenagers nowadays are addicted to it. When we started drawing our story board we had to change some of the ideas we came up with because we didn't have the equipment to do it. We wanted to have our opening scene and establishing shot as a drone shot, meaning recording the school with a drone. Unfortunately, the drone that we thought of using, wasn't working and it needed some reparations. Once we were done story boarding and planning everything out we signed out a camera, a tripod, and an SD card. We had some problems setting up the camera on the tripod because we were missing a piece and it took us a while to figure that out. In my group we had four participants and at the beginning of the project we were all cooperating with each other, but unfortunately one of our group members got very sick and she wasn't able to help us with the majority of the work. This created some tension and panic in our group because some of us thought that it was too hard to shoot with only three people. Luckily we had one of our friends that took the class a couple years ago, help us record some of the scenes. After we were done filming our group member that was still sick and stuck at home helped us with the editing process. This cleared the air in between our group and we were all done with the commercial. I was glad I had those hard working people in my group, and because we all worked hard things went very well.
If the video ins't working please click on the following link: https://youtu.be/nVivwg7tRko