Nat Marx

May 13, 2012

Elements of Film 

French New Wave Cinema

The Beginning and Background:

French New Wave Cinema began as a result of many different factors. World War II brought economic hardships within France which brought hostility against the standards of society.   Beginning in the 1950’s and gaining momentum in the 1960’s, the French New Wave film style was born.  Many call French New Wave films as examples of European Art Cinema.  The film movement was never formally organized but was linked by a rejection of classical cinematic form, standardized Hollywood, and a focus on idealized youth.  Most of these directors were born in the 1930's and grew up in Paris, they were easily able to relate the experiences and hostilities that existed within youth culture and manifested the real lives of French youth through fashion, urban professional life, and all night parties.   These young directors sought to create a unique form of filmmaking that would thoroughly become a part of the social and active period of the 1960’s.  Many directors engaged their work with the oscial and political upheavals of the time, making radical experiments in editing, visual style, filming, and narrative as an overall break with the conservative status quo.  

Shot from the film Jules and Jim by Francois Truffaut

Cahiers du Cinema (Notebook of Cinema)

The Cahiers du Cinema began as a French film magazine.  This magazine would become the basis for the new cinematic forms and theories that would become a part of the French New Wave Cinema filmmaking approach.  Many of the editors for this influential magazine would go on to become famous directors of the French New Wave such as Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Cabrol and Francois Truffaut.  The Cahiers du Cinema is still a magazine in distribution today and continues to influence the filmmaking process.  

1961 issue of Cahiers du Cinema

Auteur Theory (Author Theory)

The Auteur Theory came to be known as the manifesto of the principles that are associated with the French New Wave cinema.  Francois Truffaut came up with the theory during his time working as an editor for the Cahiers du Cinema.  The Auteur Theory holds the belief that a directors creative vision holds precedent within the filmmaking process. The auteur theory furthermore believes that a film should reflect the directors personal vision.  These directors believed that they had a personal message to get across to the viewing masses.  The future directors within the Cahiers du Cinema understood that moviemaking had become a massive industrial process where due to many factors the vision of the piece was becoming misconstrued. These directors using the Auteur theory sought to bring the filmmaking process back in the hands of the director.  Although the auteur theory seems to be an obvious point within films and the filmmaking process today, it was an explosive revolution in the process of reevaluating the process of filmmaking.  

Filmmaking Techniques

In the context of social and economic troubles of a post-World War II France, filmmakers sought low-budget alternatives to the usual production methods. Using portable equipment and requiring little or no set up time, the New Wave way of filmmaking presented a documentary type style of filmmaking. The films exhibited direct sounds on film stock that required less light. Filming techniques included fragmented, discontinuous editing, and long takes. The movies featured unprecedented methods such as long tracking shots, jump cuts, and mis en scene.  Due to the fact that most shots were filmed in one long take, directors were able to use jump cuts to create new and interesting ways of creating dialogue within the films and reasserting the director’s creative control.  Many films were shot outside on location due to economic concerns but eventually would become synonymous with French New Wave directors artistic style.  

Director Francois Truffaut experimenting with film style.

Narrative Style

French New Wave directors sought to revolutionize the narrative style of cinema The New Wave directors did not want to hold your hand through each scene, directing you emotion by emotion, through a fixed narrative.  These directors wanted to break up the experience, to make it exciting, and to jolt the viewer out of complacent viewing, they attempted to make the viewers think about their own lives, thoughts and emotions as well. Dialogue within these films was mean to be as realistic as possible. Expressing the truth is the utmost importance. The object of the narratives was not simply to entertain, but also to sincerely communicate.  

Breathless (1959)

One of the most famous French New Wave films, Breathless, by director Jean-Luc Godard and starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, used all of the cinematic points to create a timeless French New Wave film.  The story tells of a young and impressionable car thief who models himself after Humphrey Bogart.  He meets a beautiful American girl and they begin a complex relationship that becomes confronted as the police begin searching for them and leaves the viewer through an exciting story that you truly do not know what will happen next.  The films trailer uses the form of unique narrative style to tell the background of the story and many of the shots are done outdoors in broad sunlight.  Furthermore the story revolves around two youthful and energetic young people who are trying to make sense in a world that is constantly changing around them.  

Final Exam

By Tyler Doepker

1)      “Citizen Kane” is one of the most influential films ever made. Discuss this statement.

Citizen Kane was Welles’ first film; he was 25 years old. The fact that a person was able to create a film at the age 25 is an impressive feat by itself. However, Welles took it further and created a film that is still considered the best film ever made even 70 years later. Without that influencing the judgement, Welles layered many techniques together. He carefully thought about everything in the movie that happened; he produced, co-wrote, chose cast and crew, did the soundtrack and editing, and played the lead role. With the soundtrack he often created his own sounds with his knowledge from the radio industry.  With the editing he used multiple techniques in one shot scene. He used a lot of deep focus shots along with a spot light to create a larger depth perception and make the set seem much larger than it was. He thought that as the producer he was in charge of lighting for each shot, which he was more than capable of doing with his experience in theatre. So, for every shot he did the lighting and the cinematographer would just work with what Welles had done. In addition to this, he brought back different techniques with moving cameras and boom shots that had almost vanished since the silent film days. Even the multiple narration style that he used to tell the story had never really been done before. Most films that are released  will excel at one aspect of the film making process; Citizen Kane on the other hand excelled in every aspect, and in some cases he invented whole new aspects of film making.

2)      What had Orson Welles done in his first 23 years of life to warrant the Hollywood Film Industry offering complete creative control to a first time filmmaker?
When Welles was 15, he left school and went to Europe. He made his way to the Gate Theatre in Dublin and claimed to be a big Broadway star. His bluff worked in a manner of speaking; the director did not believe him but they were impressed enough to give him a chance. Three years later, he returned back to America and toured with Katherine Cornell, performing in many Shakespeare plays. By the time he was twenty years old he was already considered to be a prodigy. In 1935, New York producer John Housman joined the two and was a major part of their shows. In 1937, Welles and Houseman started the Mercury Theatre. It was pretty shaky financially and Welles was keeping it afloat with the money he was making from radio. He was the one who scared all of America in 1938 with his “War of the Worlds” story he told on air. In 1939 Mercury Theatre when bankrupt, Welles plan was to go to Hollywood and make some quick cash to revive his theatre.
 

3)      Pick an extended scene or sequence from “Citizen Kane” and discuss the storytelling technique by analyzing and combination of its component parts (direction, writing, performance, cinematography, production design, art direction, editing, sound, score, ect).
The scene I am going to analyze is the campaign speech. The scene itself is significant because it was right before things start to go wrong for him. The fact that he still has everything going for him in this scene made the lighting more bright and vibrant, as the film goes on and he starts to lose things the lighting gets progressively darker. He does not say much of anything during the speech, he makes a couple jokes, and he makes a few references to the working man. At the end of the speech was the only time he makes any indication of what he will do as governor, and that was to put his opponent Boss Jim Gettys in jail. I think Welles plays the part very well in this scene. He has great stage presence, there is not much movement going on, but his gestures and body language are as if he is actually talking to a full stadium, when in fact the audience was added in with special effects. The set for this scene was a stage and then there were separate shots of people in private booths. If you watch closely, they never show any faces in the general audience, it is either close-ups of the people in the booths or a shot of just the people on stage. There were a lot of moving camera shots during this scene, they would start from further away with a view of the entire stadium and then progressively zoom in until Kane was the only one in frame. In total there were 16 separate shots that made up this scene.

Film Final: Documentary Film

Caitlin Greene

May 9, 2012

Elements of Film

The Documentary Film

            Documentary filmmaking can be an extremely powerful tool in forwarding thoughts, opinions, passions and causes.  Documentaries are all about filming reality in a way that allows others to be able to project themselves into the lives and stories and others and see a world they might not have seen otherwise.  A good documentary can change one’s life and thinking forever; it can cause someone to find a life passion; it can ignite a passion for a social cause that in turn changes the world.  Documentaries are an important art and the elements that go into the film are what make it powerful.  A good documenter knows what questions to ask, what shots are important and what music score will make each scene as powerful as possible.  In this paper I will outline some of these elements that go into making a great documentary and the ways in which documenters utilize these elements.

            The first aspect of a documentary that we will explore is the knowledge of the documenter in what shots the movie will need to be the most powerful and the determination to get these shots no matter the cost.  Getting the right shots for a documentary involves both determination and luck.  In many cases documenters stumble upon brilliant shots that could not be planned.  Raw emotion cannot be planned and that is what makes it strong.  Powerful shots are sometimes happenstance but determination is a big part of what gets shots that are needed for these movies.  Often times the stories being told are stories that are not approved on by the subjects and therefore an amount of risk goes into the filming of the most shocking and powerful shots.  Documenters must have vigor for their film that gives them the resolve to take the risk to get the shots that will ignite the passion into the audience.  Without this determination the film cannot excite the audience in the way that is needed to make the film a success.   

In the documentary The Cove, the shot that makes the entire movie and made it the powerful movie it was took months of preparation and planning.  This movie dealt with the dolphin trade in Japan, and because the money from the dolphins is such a large part of the economy of very powerful people it would be a difficult task for the documenters to get a shot of the hidden and protected cove in which the mass slaughter of dolphin was taking place.  The makers of the movie knew the consequences they faced if they were caught filming the cove but their determination and resolve pushed them to get this powerful shot.  The crew snuck into the guarded, fenced off area in the dead of night and planted cameras all around the perimeter of the cove as well as underwater cameras and audio.  These cameras caught the first ever video of the slaughter that was taking place in this cove every year.  The shots of the blood red water and panicked dolphin trashing around desperately trying to escape their immanent fate tightens the skin and sends chills down your spine.  A shot like this could never had happened if the crew were not determined to bring this cause to the public no matter the consequences.  This shot alone got the attention of millions and furthered the cause of stopping the dolphin trade around the world.

The Cove

            In contrast the film Knuckle was a story stumbled onto by the director, Ian Palmer.  This documentary is a powerful story of two travelling Irish clans that are in a bitter feud that has been furthered by generations of bare-knuckle street fights.  Palmer’s discovery of this story was purely happenstance when a friend of his offered him a job filming the wedding of a Quinn McDonagh.  Palmer heard of the feud for the first time then and became enthralled.  He began filming the fights and the story of the feud unfolded in front of him within 12 years of his filming.  The film demonstrates the intensity of the family connection in Ireland and how the prorogation of violence can continue throughout generations to a point were no one knows what the violence is for they just know that the other clan is their enemy.  Palmer’s stumbling onto this story started as pure luck and became an excellent story with a strong message. 

            

          Another important element that goes into making a great documentary is the ability of the documenter to know what questions to ask to elicit the emotion they need to have the audience connect with the story and subjects.  A documenter cannot be afraid to ask tough questions but at the same time must be able to connect with the subject in a way that allows them to trust the director and feel comfortable divulging intimate details that they may have never admitted before.  This is not easy and takes a certain type of personality.  If the documenter can connect to their subject the subject will be more relaxed and truthful on camera.  This truth will be conveyed to the audience and in turn cause the audience to better connect to the subjects and therefore the story. 

            In the film Facing the Habit, Magnolia Martin is able to earn the trust of heroin addict and former millionaire Dave.  Earning this trust allows Martin to gain an intimate view into the life of a drug addict before, during, and after treatment.  The trust earned by Martin ensures that Dave is comfortable sharing every bit of his life and therefore can tell the real life raw pain of addiction.  In the film Dave reveals stories, struggles and his most vulnerable moments to the camera and gives the audience a rare insight into the world of addiction.

        

            The score or soundtrack of a documentary is often overlooked but is a crucial element to making a film.  The right score can make the shape, mood, pace and emotion of a film.  When scenes are paired with music that cause a visceral response the scene is much stronger and more effective in conveying the emotion of the situation to the audience.  The relationship between the composer and the filmmaker is very important to the film.  The documenter must be able to explain what they want to show in the scene and the composer must be able to compliment that creative vision with the score that will best demonstrate the emotion.

            Man on Wire is an excellent example of successful use of score to portray emotions in a documentary.  Every scene in this movie is perfectly matched to the situation and gives the film extra emotion.  One scene in particular has an excellent use of score.  In the scene in which Philippe Petit is explaining his emotions when first seeing the World Trade Centers the score conveys a feeling of nervousness, hopelessness but at the same time an excitement.  Petit says he felt as if his dreams were crushed when he saw the height of the tower, impossible, impossible he says but he had an unexplainable feeling to touch the tower.  This music adds to the drama of the scene and almost makes you feel what Petit was feeling.  Throughout the movie the music is composed perfectly in line with the situations and give the film added drama.  The scene below is another great example of the musical pairing in the movie.  The music is loud and dramatic giving the viewer a feeling of trouble and uneasiness as the police officers are waiting for Petit to exit the tightrope.

                 

              Having the right shots, asking the right questions and matching your film with the correct score are three crucial elements that can make a documentary powerful.  When documenters are able to utilize these elements successfully the product is a film that can change lives and minds.  Documentaries that portray the story successfully can bring their audience into the story in a way that allows them to empathize with people that they have never met and would have never thought of empathizing with.  Documentaries tell the reality of worlds that some people would never be to expose to otherwise and therefore they have the ability to open minds. 

            

EOF Final project

The Evolution of the Disney Princess

The media greatly influences the way we think. Films create an environment of images that we grow up with and become used to. These images begin to shape what we know and how we understand the world. 

Disney films have always been enormously popular with people of all ages. These films influence and reinforce gender stereotypes, and impact young people's expectations about how women should act. Little girls watching these films look to the princesses as role models and they are influenced by subtle message about how women should behave and what qualities are looked up to.

The Early Helpless Princess  

        The first Disney princess film was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs which debuted in 1937. This was the beginning of the studios ongoing emphasis on princesses. Snow white is depicted as subservient and vulnerable. She is unwilling to stand up to her oppressor, in this case her evil step mother. The next princess film made in 1950 was Cinderella. Cinerella is also seen as helpless and destined to be a slave to her step mother forever. She is unable to stand up for herself and her situation seems hopeless until her fairy godmother steps in. 

        The pattern of helpless princess continued with 1959's Sleeping Beauty, where princess Aurora falls victim to an evil fairy's curse. This trend continues in Disneys films made in the late 80's and 90's. In The Little Mermaid, Ariel falls victim to the evil sea monster Ersula, who threatens to destroy her fathers kingdom and puts ariel under an evil spell. In Beauty and the Beast, Belle finds herself trapped with a Beast and unable to save her ailing father. In Aladin (1992), princess Jasmine is enslaved by the evil Jifar. 

Physical Attractiveness 

Disney Princess movies glorify one particular body type above all others; tall, skinny, and curvaceous. Women with any other body types are generally viewed as outcasts in the films. In order for a princess to win the love of her prince charming, she must be stunningly beautiful. 

The Modern Warrior Princess 

   In 1995, with the release of Pocahontas, the word Princess took on a whole new meaning. Pocahauntus was a strong, independent, and fierce women. She was outspoken and brave, fighting in battle alongside her male counterparts to defend her homeland. Pocahontas played an important role in rescuing the man she loved. This was a big change from the old notion of princess where the princess was powerless to her own fate, and waited around for a prince to rescue her. 

Disney’s next princess, in 1998’s Mulan goes so far as to disguise herself as a boy in order to join her country’s army. In this story Mulan is seen as an equal to her male counterparts, and she is the heroine who saves the day. She is an accomplished warrior who is determined, tough, and independent, but still keeps her feminine qualities. With their most recent release, 2009’s the Princess and the frog,  "Disney has struck an appropriate balance between the kind-hearted  princesses of yesteryear and the strong, girl-power-oriented heroes that today’s young women have come to expect."- David Nausir

 Films can be a reflection of the ideals of the culture during the time period that they were made. The evolution of Disney's Princess mirrors the evolution in feminine equality. For the first time in history women are now seen as equal to men. Now a days little instead of expecting to grow up to be a subservient housewife, girls dream of having their own careers and their own independence. 

Final Questions

Brad Williams

Elements of Film Final

5/9/12

                                               

                                                Final Questions

1.)           

            Citizen Kane earns its widely lauded title of most influential film ever made for a multitude of reasons. The direct Orson Welles deserves incredible recognition for what he came in and managed to do so early in his career. It is a genuine rarity to have such a gift for viewing the complete picture that is required to make a film be more then special. However what truly made this film stand out was time period it was released in. The techniques he employed to make the film stand out as unique dramatically renovated the film industry. By using a deep focus to film every scene, everything stayed focused in every shot. This had not yet been done in any movie to date and provided a new, surreal view of the complexities of Mr. Kane.

            Another critical aspect that made the movie so influential was the compelling soundtrack. The industry had not made the emotional connection between scores and character development and it added an incredible feel to the layers within the movie. The amount of inventive filmmaking that Orson Welles piped into the industry is more then enough to justify Citizen Kane being recognized as the most influential film in history. It paved the way for further innovation that has led to some amazingly creative ideas being passed to later generations of filmmakers.

2) 

            Orson Welles was a rare breed of filmmaker. From the very beginning of his career he had uncanny talent that was seemingly channeled precisely into the purpose of directing plays and films. However this uncanny ability often put him at odds with the movie industry, making his films few and far between. Much of his talent had to do with both a natural inclination towards the arts and his parents being accomplished in many fields of performing arts. By growing up in a place where his true potential was being tapped from a very young age, Welles compiled an impressive list of achievements in a very short amount of time. Beginning with theatre, he quickly rose as both an accomplished director and actor. By age 20 Orson Welles was widely considered a prodigy because of the incredible success his take on Macbeth was met with.

            From 1936 – 1938 he poured himself into making his next few plays work in the face of Federal cuts on spending. However, what he did in 1928 really cemented his name in the public’s mind. On radio that year, Orson Welles performed an adaptation of The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. This brought Welles instant fame that resulted in putting his name on film studio’s maps. He received many offers, but his independent nature caused him to resist for some time before taking on Citizen Kane. His impressive resume and compelling nature enabled him to garner complete creative rights over the film. While such a feat is nearly unheard of, the inventive work he had already performed on radio and in plays made the risk worth the reward. Unfortunately his need for complete creative control also resulted in complications with the film industry. His problems with the industry resulted in just a few films being made by Welles. His demands were just too much for a studio to leave to chance in that time period.

3) 

            The opening scene of Citizen Kane is by far the most interesting introduction that I have ever seen. The way it slowly built up to the castle from very far away was like a slow, calculated introduction to a mysterious man. The way it came up to the sign on that fence post really set the tone for the type of movie that we were about to see. It provided a glimpse at just how visual the film would be when we got to see the deep focus throughout the entire shot. That was the scene I immediately thought about when I learned that Orson Welles shared his title card with the Visual director. I remember being captivated by the depth that was being displayed on screen and in collaboration with the suspenseful music; it really built a feeling of foreboding of what was to come.

            While surely there are arguments to be made for many of the great scenes in the movie, what is more impactful the opening one that sets the stage for the entire film. If I had any doubts that this would be a strong movie, those doubts were erased as I heard the slow build of music that created an environment that set the stage for every scene to come. The art direction in Citizen Kane was just on a whole new level. Every single shot had an important focus and drove home the feeling Orson Welles set out to show.

80's Action Movie Project

Brad Williams

                                    The Rise of 80’s Action Movies

The Rise

Throughout the 1980’s a new type of genre was rapidly becoming the benchmark for new releases. Emerging from a history of spaghetti westerns where a typical anti-hero battles his inner demons and some other antagonist, the movies in the 1980’s were a result of three productions late in the 70’s that changed the genre and opened it up to new possibilities. Those three key movies were Star Wars, Superman and The Spy Who Loved Me. What they did was move away from the standard darker characters and create a new type of lead. It became ok to have a character that was heroic, suave and ready to deliver one-liners at a moments notice. However breaking away from the more dark and contemplative movies in the 70’s was going to take some iconic characters that Americans could idolize.

The Key Players

            One of the first movies to embrace this newer feel was The Raiders of The Lost Ark. Harrison Ford’s portrayal of Indiana Jones become one of the most iconic characters on film and that cocky sort of demeanor became almost standard issue for big budget action films. The time for self-doubting leads was at an end and it was obvious that the audiences embraced it. The early 1980’s really established the pace for the entire decade; most movies in this period followed the simple formula that Eddie Murphy, Sylvester Stone and others made popular. Eddie Murphy’s role in 48 HRS established the Cop-Buddy dramedy that became one of the most repeated stories in film for the next 20 years. At the same time, Sylvester Stallone released First Blood, a movie that walked the line between the 70’s dark style and the new emerging style but had not quite made the switch. These two films arguably had some of the biggest effects on where the 80’s would take the genre.

            In the Mid 80’s Eddie Murphy’s role in Beverly Hills Cop turned out to be a pivotal movie for the rising 80’s action heroes. The film was just full of Eddie Murphy’s hilarious one-liners and after that film we begin to see those same funny lines emerge in the action movies done by Schwarzenegger and others. The duel rise of cop-buddy films and action packed men of steel movies created an interesting tone for the 80’s. Each genre pulled from the other and fed off the interesting dynamics in each style.

The Style

To effectively transform from darker action to this more light hearted destruction, there needed to be a change in the way the movie was shot. Realism in destruction became relatively more important as each action film tried to outdo the last in spectacle. This resulted in a whole slew of new ways by which directors would set up and make shots. It also pushed the industry to develop more special effects that were both bigger in scale and better in quality. These effects have paved the path towards the modern day desire for films to be more realistic in quality. By beginning to push the envelope on stunts and explosions, the whole industry had to expand and develop in new ways. Technical innovations paved the way for some pretty incredible sequences brought out in movies like Die Hard, Top Gun and Robocop.

Production and Music

            Concise, violent and funny was the order of the decade. Most movies clocked in around one and a half hours in order to keep the action high and the audience engaged. While plot mattered to an extent, most movies were centered on their ability to get to the action and maintain a fast paced experience for moviegoers. To do this, the production phase had to create clever new ways to utilize special effects in order to continuously improve upon the level established by other movies in this time. The need to keep growing the action in both volume and realism pushed the industry into evolving more towards the idea that the more realistic it looks the better. Special effects began to improve by leaps and bounds as it became more necessary to achieve the ambitions of the studios. At the same time the music became more involved with supporting the fast paced nature of the films and built situations through strategic scores. The goal was to keep the pace up and the audience passionate about the icons on the screen, so the music often supported the idea that the characters on screen were unstoppable, manly men.

The Decline

            The type of film shot in the 80’s didn’t so much decline as it did shift. The growing ambition of Hollywood began to look bigger and broader as their capabilities grew exponentially in that period.  While the cop buddy film remained timeless, the action movies began to see a shift to more sci-fi action type movies that occasionally popped up in the 80’s. The reason behind this was because the special effects were final at a point where realistic effects could ease the transition from the status quo towards more futuristic stories. The same iconic characters often permeated into the 90’s and even a little into the next generation but it was their role in the early 80’s that cemented their status as American icons. The lingering effects of the two major film types can still be seen in the construction of modern films today that is truly a testament to how much they changed the movie industry.

Sources

"Alex Leo." Action Movie Villains From The 80s To Today. Web. 09 May 2012. <http://alexleo.tumblr.com/post/2808000788/action-movie-villains-from-the-80s-to-today>.

"BEST FILMS OF THE 1980'S." BEST FILMS OF THE 1980'S. Web. 09 May 2012. <http://aslan369.tripod.com/Movie/80s/Best80.html>.

"T Y S T O » Blog Archive » The Rise and Fall of the ’80s Action Genre." T Y S T O » Blog Archive » The Rise and Fall of the ’80s Action Genre. Web. 09 May 2012. <http://www.tysto.com/2009/11/80s-action-movie-timeline/>. 

Elements of Film Final

Katlyn Alix

Elements of Film Final

1.             Citizen Kane created quite the buzz when it debuted in 1941. The film was nominated for Acedemy Awards in nine categories and won the award for best original screenplay. In addition Citizen Kane has been voted the greatest film of all time in each of the last five sights and sounds polls of critics. Roger Ebert has been quoted as stating, "So it's settled, Citizen Kane is the official greatest film of all time."

             This film is praised for its innovation in cinematography sound, and narrative structure. The story was principally narrated by flashbacks which was a novel way to depict a film.  The story is revealed by the research of a reporter who is trying to solve the mystery of  Mr. Kanes’ last word, "Rosebud". This was one of the first uses of a Frame story or a story within a story. The frame story makes the film more interesting and dynamic. Creating a film biography in which a man's life would be brought to the screen after his death through the memories and opinions of the people who knew him best, was ingenious.

            The most innovative cinematography aspect of Citizen Kane is the extended use of deep focus. In nearly every scene in the film, the foreground, background and everything in between are all in sharp focus. Another innovation was the use of low angle shots to display a point of view facing upwards making the scenes look like they were all shot on location. Musically the field had a very complex layered soundtrack. The film also pioneered the technique of putting the audio ahead of the visual in scene transitions.  This meant, as one scene would end, the audio would transition to the next scene before the visuals did.

2.            Orson Wells became involved in with the arts at a young age. He discovered his love of theater at Todd School in Illinois, where he learned a great deal about film production and directing. Welles performed and staged his first theatrical productions while attending the Todd School. A few years after graduating Orson wells became a drama coach at the Todd School. Afterward he coedited Everybody's Shakespeare series of educational books that remained in print for decades. Welles drew a great deal of attention in 1937 with a production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar set in Fascist Italy and a voodoo-themed version of Macbeth.

 Well’s made his Broadway debut with Katharine Cornell's company in 1934. The following year he managed a unit of the Federal Theatre Project, one of the work-relief arts projects established to spark economic recovery. Afterwards he organized plays at the Mercury Theatre, and had a number of successful show he helped direct and stared in. Welles found national and international fame as the director and narrator of a 1938 radio adaptation of the novel The War of the Worlds performed for the radio drama series Mercury theatre on air In his first 23 years of life he demonstrated his creative ingenuity and ability to act in, organize, write, and direct theatre productions.

3.     The story telling technique used in the very last scene of the film was symbolism.  In this scene the detective is working on a jig saw puzzle.  Kane’s life was symbolized by this jig saw puzzle. The detective tried to put all the pieces of his life together in order to get a picture of the kind of man Kane was. Each person he interviewed gave a different piece of the puzzle. They offered their own interpretation of who Kane was.  A woman in the scene indicated that she felt  Kane’s last word, rosebud was the key to making sense of who he was. The detective explained no single word can explain a man’s life, rosebud is just a missing piece in the puzzle. The difficulty of a jig saw puzzle mirrors the difficulty of interpreting a man’s life. Rosebud may symbolize his childhood that was ripped away from him at an early age. His early childhood was the only time in his life when he was really happy. Despite Kane’s immense wealth and innumerable possessions the rosebud sled may be the only thing he truly loved.

             The camera movement in the final scene helps to bring the narrative to a close.  Deep focus was used to bring everything in the frame into focus including the backround. This helped give the viewer a sense of the huge number of Kane’s possessions. The high angle shots of the reporters makes them seem small compared to the scope of the great room. The camera pans over thousands of objects as if searching for something. The close up shot of the sled in the fire reveals the mystery of the word rosebud. The last scene is very film noir with the use of low lighting and shadow to create a dark, moody and mysterious atmosphere; with the K sign fence in the foreground and Xanadu looming in the background.