FINAL

Those who wish to heal, find, and share themselves must step outside of the boundaries set by society and create themselves through revelations and the utilization of resources that surround them.

Seven Pounds

In Seven Pounds, Ben Thomas is face with a daunting internal guilt. He feels that he owes a debt to society and must give himself to redeem himself. He helps to save seven people’s lives to replace the seven he killed. Throughout the story he must struggle through his painful memories and his love for Emily Posa. To redeem himself Thomas gives parts of his body to people in need but first he makes sure the people he donates to are good hearted. “He’s punishing you. How is he punishing you?” (Seven Pounds). Thomas probably doesn’t think of himself as a righteous man and he doesn’t believe he deserved to survive the accident. Now he is making sure that the people he’s donating to are deserving of his gift. Thomas is helping other people because he believes it is literally impossible to fix his. “In seven days, God created the world. And in seven seconds, I shattered mine” (Seven Pounds). Thomas had a perfect life until the car accident. After that, he lost everything and is forced into a life of guilt. Because he can’t fix his own life, he decides to improve other people’s lives. “I haven’t felt like this in a really long time” (Seven Pounds). Thomas brings life to Posa and shares a feeling with her because they’ve both gone through a lot. He improves her life not only emotionally but physically as well when he gives his life to save Posa with a heart transplant. Even in a time of deep depression, Thomas is able to find empathy for his society because he feels responsible for his actions. Thomas does want to heal his metaphorical wounds from the car accident. He can only do this by healing others and filling up the hole he dug when the accident happened.

PressPausePlay

                In PressPausePlay, new technology is proven to allow more people to have access to music and artistic creation. The new technology lets users easily create, publish, and share art. This lets the artists have a false sense of impact on society because they can share anything on the internet. They believe they can make a change on current culture with their art. "Slap up their early stuff on Facebook. On YouTube. It would get lost. It would get lost in the ocean of garbage" (PressPausePlay). As Keen describes, there is so much information on the internet that an artist’s chance of becoming noticed becomes extremely slim. The reason so many people swarm the internet with their art is because of new technology. Talent isn’t even a necessity when creating music anymore. “A big difference is that around that time you had to be around 30, 35, know people, and have a little bit of money to be able to record stuff” (PressPausePlay). Robyn elaborates on how in older times the artist created themselves whereas now people can easily buy their own recording equipment and make songs electronically without any musical theory or talent. There are few exceptions of artists who become famous or successful with such an overflow of other artists. Olafur Arnalds is an artist who became known through technology. He electronically creates classical music with computer software. “It was not some years of preparation. It was just a few months” (PressPausePlay). Arnalds explains how he quickly became famous without much musical knowledge and how simple technology had made it for him to spread his work. In rare cases, internet sensations may become famous. Most of the time, good artists are self-created and work to get where they are without the help of too much technology. Putting art on the internet makes it lose its special properties and becomes engulfed by other artist’s work. An artist on the internet is the same as a grain of sand on a beach.

Media

                If one wishes to heal themselves and find answers in life they must step out into the world with their arms open. Contrary to belief one must go experience the world instead of looking within themselves to fix their problems. In Media(Krznaric Lecture), Krznaric elaborates on how the human race must become more connected through empathy to function as a society and as individuals. “…empathy is the way to revolutionize our own philosophies of lives, to become more outrospective, and to create the revolution of human relationships that I think we so desperately need” (Media). To become healthy as a society, people must become more connected so cultural struggles can be understood by everyone. Krznaric has interesting ideas on how to help the realization of these struggles. "It’s not about dusty exhibits, but an experiential and conversational public space where there is a human library where you can pick out people for conversations" (Media). This idea of a museum could help people to find their place in society, learn about other cultural struggles, and perhaps share some of their struggles with other people.  The key to a better society of “enlightened” people is empathy. “Of course, empathy is more popular today as a concept than at any point in its history” (Media). American society holds great empathetic potential. The feeling of being closer as a nation would greatly increase if American society would try to understand each other instead of fighting. It is a society’s duty to take care of itself collectively and this will only be achieved when people realize each other’s struggles and acquire empathy.

Ceremony

                Some people become ill from emotionally impacting events. In Ceremony, Tayo is scarred from losing a close friend in a prisoner of war camp. Some of the deepest emotional wounds can be cured, but not by medicine. Tayo embarks on a journey to heal himself through connection through nature and storytelling. “I will tell you something about stories . . . They aren't just entertainment. Don't be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death” (Ceremony). Storytelling is one of the main factors in Tayo’s healing. Stories can relate to an individual’s life and teach lessons that help fight their illness. It is human nature to lose touch with nature eventually. They begin to lose a sense of connection to the Earth and that makes them sick. “Josiah said that only humans had to endure anything, because only humans resisted what they saw outside themselves” (Ceremony). Humans destroy and neglect nature, therefore they must endure the pain of separation with nature.  Many of Tayo’s friends never tried to recover from the war. They used alcohol to forget about the war and submerged themselves deeper into the illness and confusion. "They went off to the war...Bars served them booze, old white ladies on the street smiled at them. At Indians, remember that, because that's all they were. Indians...These Indians got treated the same as anyone...They were America the Beautiful too, this was the land of the free just like the teachers said in school. They had a uniform and they didn't look different no more" (Ceremony). If an individual doesn’t attempt to heal themselves, they spiral into an endless void of illness.

Craigslist Joe

                In Craigslist Joe, Joe Gamer steps outside the boundaries of a normal life and lives off of his community using only people on Craigslist. Gamer is testing the empathy and sense of community of modern society by using the resources available to him. “Some say we’ve lost the sense of community that used to carry us through tough times” (Craigslist Joe). As people become more involved in technology, they also can lose their sense of community. Gamer sets out on a journey and finds many adventures lie in his path. “Reality is far stranger than any fiction Hollywood can come up with” (Craigslist Joe). Gamer finds that even though sense of community seems to be completely gone, society still has empathy and unconditionally will heal its members. It is amazing that such an old community can still take care of its individuals. “It was truly inspiring, you know, just on humanity…to know that we can take care of each other” (Craigslist Joe). Gamer finds that even though our community has possibly lost some of its connectivity due to advances in technology and social media, its people can still take care of each other selflessly.

Seven Pounds Essay

An element that composes an empathetic society is the ability of the people to pay it forward. When destruction is brought to a community by an individual, they must compensate to correct their actions. If the individual who caused this damage doesn’t fix what they’ve done, the weight of guilt and self-hatred leads to mental deterioration. The person who has committed unscrupulous deeds against their society will go to drastic measures to find a solution to cleansing themselves, even if what they did was an accident. In the film Seven Pounds, a man named Ben Thomas inadvertently causes the deaths of seven people in a car crash. It becomes obvious that Thomas feels responsible for these people’s lives. He decides to give his life to repay his debt to society and radically change seven other people’s lives. Throughout the film, the full story as well as the struggles the characters endure is represented through mise-en-scene, and cinematography rather than through words. Filming techniques reveal a deeper meaning in the lives of all the characters and provide elements that convey emotions more efficiently to the audience.

Mise-en-scene helps to reveal truths about the character’s lives and qualities. Whenever a shot of Thomas is shown he is surrounded by darkness and “rotten colors”. In one of the first scenes, Thomas is at his beach house which is supposed to be a paradise as pictured in flashbacks with his wife. The darkness surrounding him shows his struggles and depression he faces. After getting off the insulting phone call with Ezra, Thomas lists off the names of the people he killed. “Ken Anderson, Nicole Anderson, Ally Anderson, Ed Rice, Steven Phillips, Monica Freeman, Sarah Jenson” (Seven Pounds). Immediately, Thomas’ remorse is revealed as he stands in a dark room full of boxes showing that the place holds torturing memories and no longer heals him. Later in the movie, Emily Posa, one of the people Thomas is planning to save, is having dinner with Thomas. She gives him clothes to change into because he is always in bland business suits. “Yeah, it’s pink” (Seven Pounds). Thomas isn’t used to wearing colorful clothes. When Posa gives the pink shirt to him it represents how she brings life to him and is the only thing that can heal him since the accident. When Thomas is in his bathroom and remembering the car accident the lighting shadows half of his face. “In seven days, God created the world. And in seven seconds, I shattered mine” (Seven Pounds). Thomas reflects on how he ruined his and seven other people’s world. The shadow covering half his face resembles the guilt and lack of feeling he endures. The light on the other side of his face shows the hope and urge to correct his mistake. Mise-en-scene helps the audience to realize characters feelings, understand symbolism, and mirror emotions felt by characters in the film.

Cinematography is a basic element of filming that can show emotions or thoughts felt by characters, what the audience focuses on, and the overall reception of an image. Many shots of characters are taken close up to draw focus to their emotions. In Seven Pounds, this is very important to the film because of the intensity of the feelings felt by each character. In the shot when Thomas is trying to find out whether Stewart Goodman is a good person or not, the shot focuses on Inez, who is writing down information about Goodman on a paper. “He’s punishing you. How is he punishing you?” (Seven Pounds). After Thomas says this, the shot moves to a medium close-up on Inez to show her pain and sadness. She is so impacted by Goodman’s actions that she can’t even communicate and the focus on her instills a shocking and pitiful feeling in the audience. Later in the film, Thomas and Posa are in a bright, beautiful field with each other. The quality of the long shot captures everything important in the scene and conveys a warm, happy feeling. Posa expresses her feelings to Thomas. “I haven’t felt like this in a really long time” (Posa). The warm quality of the shot shows how two characters that represent death find love and happiness in each other despite their struggles that weigh them down. Also, the long shot captures nature and the tranquility of the space they are in to show peace, healing, and relaxation between Posa and Thomas. In another shot, Thomas remembers the accident and wakes up laying in his bed. The framing of the shot only includes his upper body and head to show his empty emotion. He looks shocked as he remembers the unfortunate day. A figure then rises behind Thomas outside of the depth of field and reaches a hand on to his face. The depth of field shifts to his wife but her face is still a bit blurred. This shows that she is currently a figment of his imagination and that Thomas is remembering his wife and obviously still misses her. The shot then shifts to an aerial shot of the bed and shows that Thomas is alone. This reveals Thomas’ manic depression and how his guilt is mentally deteriorating him. Cinematography is an excellent way to convey information to the audience indirectly and also can help the audience comprehend emotion better than words can.

Words are not the only way an idea can be expressed to others. In film, devices such as cinematography and mise-en-scene help to convey ideas. In fact, these basic film techniques can sometimes better explain concepts and emotions through visuals that indirectly connect with the viewer. In Seven Pounds, mise-en-scene is used mainly to expose the characters’ life, thoughts, and values. Cinematography is used to reveal emotions or thoughts felt by characters through framing mostly, what the audience focuses on through scaling, lighting, and focus, and the overall reception of an image. When mise-en-scene, cinematography, and editing are combined the artist can manipulate these devices to ultimately convey exactly what they want to. The artist can make the audience mirror feelings, understand a character’s life, and build bonds with characters. Without these film techniques, only words would be left to explain feelings, thoughts, and events. This would make the audience lose its connectivity with the entire film. Filming devices are truly what make a film stylistic and intriguing. The entire structure of a well-developed film relies on devices, such as mise-en-scene and cinematography, which conveys deep messages to the audience to help them connect and understand the character’s lives, thoughts, and emotions.

Mise-en-scene & Cinematography

In AMC's The Walking Dead, many examples of mise-en-scene and cinematography are incorporated into scenes to create a mood or feeling that is conveyed to the audience. The way atmosphere is represented directs the way a film is read. An environment in a film can be altered by decor, lighting, space, costume, and acting. In the The Walking Dead, all of these aspects play into the image of a realistic apocalyptic world. The Decor in the TV series reminds the audience of the values that were cherished in pre-apocalyptic times.

 The dead family that Michonne finds reminds her and the audience of her life before the zombie infections. The girls laying on the bed recall family values and the pink resembles carelessness. These are values that are no longer present in the post-apocalyptic world. Lighting can reveal much about a situation or character and perhaps even foreshadow an event. In this scene, low key lighting reveals much about the Governor.

The shadow caused by the low key lighting reveals the lack of humanity the Governor has. The shadow is on the same side of his face as his eye-patch. When he was stabbed in the eye he snapped and lost his sense of community and humanity. The brightness on the right side of his face brings attention to his wide open eye. This shows his pent up hatred and insanity. Space greatly affects how the audience reads the film. Utilization of space can shove reality right in the audiences face or leave them completely confused depending on the directors intent. Essentially, this ties together moods and relationships between elements in the world the characters must live in. In the beginning of the series a famous shot of Rick riding into Atlanta on his horse reveals the entirety of the situation he missed out on because he was healing in the hospital.

This example of deep space helps show Rick's bravery and how chaotic the outbreak of the invasion was. There are literally no cars entering the city so through reasoning, the city is a terrible situation because of its population density. This shot also projects the new abandoned world and its lack of civilization and order. The costumes in the show also refer to these qualities of the apocalyptic world. Through out the show the characters clothes become more ragged and stained.

For example, Hershel started out as a man on a ranch who held traditional values close and protected "walkers" who he still considered friends and family members. His clothes were completely clean and his beard was shaven. As he realizes that the world is changed and goes through many survival experiences, his clothes become worn out and his beard and hair are unkempt. This shows how the environment changed a very faithful man into a survivor. Much of the show is based off drama through acting. Emotional ties make up the base of the show and eventually lead to the biggest events in the show. Acting also reveals elements about each character and intensifies the audiences feelings about those characters.

Lizzie is a character who is perceived by the audience as a psycho because of the way she acts. She is seen in multiple scenes playing with walkers like they are her friends. She also feeds zombies rats at the jail which attracted more of them. Eventually, she kills her sister because she believes she will come back and will be "ok". Lizzie's acting reveals her as a character and shows how she is an outcast because despite how long she has been in the apocalypse, she still doesn't understand that zombies want to eat her.

Cinematography is the composure of a shot and the elements in it. These change how the film is received by the audience and can create suspense, confusion, awe, and other moods. Aspects of cinematography include quality, framing, scale, and movement. Quality is the balance of light and dark, the focus, relation of foreground and background etc. This helps create an appropriate setting for the film, quality is essential because it creates the feel of a shot.

In the scene where Rick kills Tomas, there are perfect examples of quality that create an image that causes surprise in the audience. The colors in the shot are all bland colors to create less vivid scene.The focus is on the man in the back more than Thomas and Rick to show his surprise at Rick's actions. The lighting is on the characters and is darker on the right side of the screen to show evil vs. good. Framing is the way the camera is positioned to a character or scene and how the camera acts in relation to that object. This can create suspense, chaos, dizziness, confusion, connections to the character's feelings, unawareness, and any other elements the director intends.

This shot's framing helps to focus on two important things. It is zoomed only on the door and on Meryl's face to show Meryl's fear of the situation he is in. He is in pain because he is stuck and trying to escape a zombie horde. Scaling can show the environment a character is in and even instill feelings in the characters. A great example of this is when Michonne enters the Governor's layer.

Multiple shots show Michonne in a room with the Governor's walker daughter. Most of the shots are medium close-ups. There are also many severed heads in tanks and the room itself is very small. This puts Michonne in a claustrophobic environment especially with the Governor right outside the door. The audience feels what Michonne is feeling due to the scaling of the shots in this scene. Movement is another great aspect of filming that often is used in action shots, dynamic shots, or even to suggest a stalker in the premises.

In this scene, the camera movement pans from the sword the Governor is pulling away from Hershel's neck to Rick standing on the other side of the fence. This is a hand held camera scene because it seems to be from the Governor's view. This brings hope to the audience as they see both the sword being pulled away and Rick's reaction.  This hope is then squandered when the Governor executes Hershel. This shows how a simple shot with camera movement can make a scene much more dramatic and unpredictable.

     In Falling slowly from the movie Once, the director tried to capture a day to day experience into one video. The genre of the video is a narrative showing the love story between the two actors. Throughout the film the director uses a good amount of rhythm editing to go along with how simple but powerful the song is. For example, when the two hop onto a motorcycle and drive away, the chorus o the song gets louder and quicker. The rhythm editing is an effective tool for the video and enhances the song. The Diegesis of the video is based on hope. Both actors are in a state of their life's where they sing "take this sinking boat and point it home, we still have time" (Falling Slowly). At this point in the song, both actors are falling for each other and find a sense of hope that it will work out. Mise en scene is all about the setting the lighting and everything in the scene. When they sing "raise your hopeful voice you have a choice you've made it last" (Falling Slowly). At this point the scene shows the guy looking out into the ocean and finding a sense of belonging, with the beautiful ocean, and also shows how distant he is to his love and the beauty of it. This video unfortunately has a sad ending, bu gives the viewer much hope.
     In the video the director shows a focus on the girl to show her vulnerable state. its dangerous for her to fall in love with him because she has a family and a husband prior to meeting the guy she falls in love with. When the guy sings "Falling slowly sing your melody I'll sing a long"(Falling Slowy). The shot of the guy towards the ending of the video wants to spend the rest of his life with the girl, but as the shot shows a close or of the guys face the viewer can infer that the love of his life is gone. The scene at the end of the video shows how the girl stays with her husband and child because she knew that she had to stay with them. "Words fall through me and always fooled me and I can't react"(Falling Slowly). This part of the song shows the conclusion shot and also how they will always love each other even though they will never see each other again. In the video, i could not find any flash back or flash forwards besides the concluding scene, that does jump forward in time. The main idea of the video is that love is a powerful feeling, and hope will make the love grow stronger.