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James Griffin

American Cinema

Dr. Malone

12/11/23

Final Portfolio Review

This year has been a blast in the classroom. Learning about the time and effort put in to movie making is absolutely fascinating. When making my movie reviews it helped me stay  fresh and memorise the concepts we learned in class. In addition to this, there were similarities and differences between my movie reviews and my production project. Some similarities I saw during the process of these two assignments were that I improved my writing skills in a film sense and I drew connections between how I described the course material in both the movie reviews and production project. The video produced in both, had to be similar for it to be a good video. To produce a good video, there needs to be good lighting and you need to be animated throughout. I found myself doing this in both situations and that’s how I can see a connection between the two. One difference I did notice was that the production project had to be a lot more specific due to the fact that we had to analyse only one scene, whereas in the movie reviews we had to analyse the whole entire film. My production skills have most definitely improved, before I took this class I had no clue how to  produce a well put together film. I never realised how important lighting and sound is when producing a video or film. This adds a more clear picture and its easier to understand and hear. These skills have made me come a long way in my producing skills. As the producer of my movie vlogs and the production project the most important thing when producing these is making sure that I identify the types of shots and angles. No matter what assignment it is, I make sure to state these things because it’s important to know why these shots and angles are significant. I really got to understand why these shots are important. I would say in my opinion I reached my goals in the class. One of my main goals was to have a better understanding of why certain things happen in the film world. Such as the reason why the angles are chosen or how the producer implements a tone. These goals were reached while doing these projects along with the material learned in class. The most important concept that I learned in class was identifying a location to film a vlog in. You have to make sure the background complements what you are doing in the vlog’s. For example, going outside and having a background of palm trees would be a good idea when vlogging a movie review about a tropical island. If I took this course again, I would have put more effort into my filmmaking process and double checked that I covered all the concepts we learned in class into my assignments.

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Heroes/Villains

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Production Project.

James Griffin

Cinema

12/9/23

Dr. Malone

Production Product

This project was a technical breakdown video. Meaning I had to breakdown a scene from a movie and talk about shots, angles, movements, etc. I instantly knew to pick “Wolf of  Wall Street” because of the shots and angles of Jordan Beltfort’s success. One of the goals I had for this project was to analyze how the shots and angles affected the viewers experience during the film. The significance of this project was to enhance my understanding of how scenes can be analyzed to a great extent. 

I selected this particular project because I knew in my mind that this movie would fit  perfectly in this project. During class when we had discussions about certain shots, angles, or evene if it was just talking about movies, it motivated me to actually see these things in movies and understand what they are. So now when I watch movies, I don’t only watch it for the plot, but I also watch it for how well the director produced the movie. Such as how well the lighting is and the types of shots that are being produced. Personally this way of watching more movies is more intriguing rather than just watching it to watch it. Some may say that it’s too much to think about when watching a movie, although when you have the knowledge about film like I got from this class, it’s hard to miss when the directors create a masterpiece of film. During the project, It was a little bit hard to navigate popups on the screen, the commentary was a breeze, since I have seen this movie before and know backgrounds. One of the biggest challenges I faced during this project was to specify a one certain scene that popped out. This movie is very well produced, hence why it was very difficult for me to narrow down a particular scene to break down from the movie. Some skills I learned by deep diving into this project were analyzing a scene, and editing videos. These skills are very important to have for future projects and assessments. A certain lesson that I learned that stood out to me was that when analyzing a scene, you can’t just state the facts because anyone could see the facts. Instead what is necessary to have a good production project is to explain why it matters to the audience or the narrative. Adding thesee pieces really gets the  reader to understand what is going on and why it means something more. This project reminds me of another project I did in high school, which I think helped me in the process of this project. We had to analyze a book and the pictures in it and explain what the colors of the picture meant. This relation helped a great deal when I was working on my project. This project made me come a long way and defintely helped me learn a few things. My appreciation for this genre of cinema is greatly enhanced. Watching movies on my own now is such a new and exciting experience, hence everything this class has taught me. My knowledge for this will be put to good use, as watching movies is a hobby of mine. Having this knowledge about cinema is critical because when watching movies I can point out to others what type of shots and angles are being produced in the movie. And even if they don’t appreciate it or don’t understand it, I will and will always appreciate the fact that I know more to the movies than just sitting there and watching the film just solely for the plot. The project really changed how I feel about the cinema world. It showed me why everything is so important in the cinema world.

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movie review. 3

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Movie Vlog 4

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PART 2:

My brother is 23 months younger than me and for most of our lives we both shared the same friends for the most part. Although we moved around a bunch as kids, we still managed to have the same friends everywhere we moved. My brother (John) and I travel a lot with our family, hence living in europe. Since we travel a bunch together, we have to go on lots of flights, which means we need to occupy ourselves with something. That something is movies. We usually pick out and download the same movies and watch them at the same time throughout the duration of the flight. I asked my brother to name some movies that he thought I loved when we were around 16. The list he put was “Game Night”, “Benchwarmers”, and  “Batman”. Of course he guessed that I wrote down “Game Night”. This movie was special to us both because I vividly remember the time that we watched this for the first time together. Some of the memories that we have together during this movie is us eating our food while we watched the show. I remember pausing it at the same time so one of us could go to the bathroom so that nobody was ahead of each other in the movie. 

This movie is special to my brother and I because we watched this together and others might not relate because they didn’t watch the movie with another person. Some of the conversations we had talking about this was about food. We vividly remember the flight attendant coming around during the movie and asking us what we wanted to eat.  We both got chicken but we found this funny because all we could think about was how bad it smelt during the movie. (GIFF) 

The film was literally about a game night.  Max always hosts a game night for his family and friends. This time was out of the ordinary when his brother Brooks comes into town and comes over for the game night. I can directly relate to this because at home, my  family always does a game night every wednesday. This movie is so special because it really demonstrates how good of a time it can be to spend quality time with not just your friends but your family as well. The movie really surprised me when the egg that they are after is in the basement of a mansion.  they end up getting away with the egg in their possession.

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James Griffin

Happy Feet (ages 3-4):

Happy Feet was released in 2006 which was directed by George Miller. This film was written by Warren Coleman and John Collee. Although there are no real actors in this film hence its a cartoon, there are actors that did voice overs for certain characters. These include Robin Williams, Elijah Wood, Brittany Murphy, Hugh Jackman, and Jeffery Garcia. Although these actors were not fully in the movie, their roles in this movie were very crucial to the fabulous plot. BOX OFFICE INFO ATTACHMENT***** .  I came into contact with this film when I was waiting for the bus after basketball practice and I saw a huge advertisement on the bus that was approaching. The ad was for the new movie “Happy Feet” that would come out a week later. My longest lasting memory from this movie is when Mumble is released from the zoo and goes back to Antartica. This movie was very interesting to me because I was little and found that penguins were one of my favorite animals. I grew out of this film later on in my life because it was a happy ending almost disney-like movie. As I grew older I started to like more action or sci-fi type movies. 

Moneyball (ages 8-9)

Moneyball was released in 2011 and was directed by Bennett Miller. The writers of this movie were Steven Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin, and Stan Chervin. BOX OFFICE ATTACHMENT*****. I came into contact with this film when my baseball coach when I was 8 introduced me to it. We were at the end of the year party and for “summer homework” we had to watch this film. When we got back from the summer we had a test on the film. This wasn’t really homework for me because I love baseball and watching it is entertaining for me so of course, I aced the quiz. The movie made me feel joy throughout the entire film. The moment that stood out to me was when the Athletics finished last in the league, but the lesson wasn’t about being the best team, it was about how to spend the right amount of money as a baseball franchise. Brad Pitt in the film successfully fails. This movie never really grew out of me because I still have a passion for baseball. This film impacted me on the baseball field because when it came down to it, my teammates and I would think about the film and it would motivate us to work harder and be more productive on the field. 

Captain America: Civil War (age 13)

This film was released in 2016 and directed by Anthony and Joe Russo. It was written by Christopher Markus, Stephen Mcfeely, and Joe Simon. IMMMAAAGEEEE. I came into contact with this film because my friend texted me after school asking to see the movie. I had watched marvel movies before but this is the first one where they all came together in one film and all fought each other. I thought this was very fascinating because they all fought good guys vs. good guys. My memories from this film is when Captain America and Iron Man have a huge fight scene. This stood out to me because they were two of my favorite characters and they were fighting each other. This will forever stick with me because I remember talking about this movie for days and even weeks after it to my friends and family. 

Game Night (Age 16)

This film was released in 2018 and was directed by John Francis Daley and Johnothan Goldstein. It was written by Mark Perex. IMAGEEEE. I found this film because I was home sick from school and I was scrolling through netflix and saw it. I didn’t think much of the film and wouldn’t have thought that this film would be one of my favorites. My favorite memory of the movie was when Jason Batemen’s brother (in the film) actually got kidnapped. Everybody else thought it was part of the game that they were playing. This was very funny to me and probably why it stuck to me. It also has a major plot twist at the end which helped as well. Although this was one of my favorites, I wouldn’t watch it again because of the plot twist. You can only watch this movie once for it to be good. This movie made me feel connected to the characters because my family just like his has game nights quite oftenThurber

Red Notice (age 18) 

This film was released in 2021 and was directed and written by Rawson Marshall Thurber. IMAGEEEEE. I found this film because I saw it on instagram and it stared Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds which are some of my favorite actors. The part of the film that stood out to me was when The Rock tricked Ryan Reynolds and actually stole the egg even though he was a CIA agent. This was again a major plot twist. I guess you could say that I am a sucker for the plot twist. I enjoyed this film throughout because there was always some type of action happening weather it was people shooting at each other or a big car or foot chase. This kept me locked into the movie the entirety of the movie. I never grew out of this movie as I watched it the other day.