TALKING HEAD OF THE FILM(RENT)

TALKING HEAD FOR FILM (RENT)

The film I am going to talk about is RENT, Rent is the film version of the Pulitzer and Tony Award winning musical about bohemians in the East Village of New York City struggling with Love, Aids and Life, and the impacts they have on America.

Director:- Chris Columbus

Writers:- Stephen Chbosky  (screenplay)

                  Jonathan Larson (book)

Genre:- Musical Drama

Year:- 2005

Setting:- New York

FIRST CLIP

The opening scene was a long shot of the main 8 characters of this film with spot light on them on the theatre stage singing, from the frame  of this long shot,they were all positioned at the bottom third of the frame. This scene intend to invite the audience to come and watch the life of this characters. The theatre stage connote life, the theme music messages shows that the film is about Love and Life.

Movement of camera on dolly tracks keeps the zoom the same and keep the 8 characters on a unique medium-shots. Panning of camera from one character to another is another camera technique that was applied, used of focus lens is also noticed whereby a particular character was focused on while the others look blur at the background.

Key-lighting is used with the spot-light on the stage to illuminate each characters faces, also to convey special meaning about character and what they portrait.

Both diegetic sound and non-diegetic were used is this scene, the voice of the characters singing is regarded as diegetic sound because the audience can see the source of sound which is their mouth while the sound of the piano is non-diegetic because the piano is no visible on the stage the audience can only hear it.

The graphic display from the beginning of this scene let the audience know the title of the film, this is called opening credit, its also contains the names of the actors and actresses including some of the production crews like the producer, editor, director, choreographer, costume designer e.t.c

The narratives of this film starts with the state of equilibrium whereby life seen normal according to TODOROV THEORY

The song is this open scene title ‘season of love’ and it goes like this :-

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes

Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes

How do you measure a year

In daylight?, In sunset?, In midnight, In cups of coffee?

In inches?, in miles?, In laughter?, In strife?

In, five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes

How do you measure, a year in the life

How about, love?

How about, love?

How about, love?

Measure love

Season of love

Season of love

Season of love

And the song goes on and on…..The songs symbolises the life style of the characters.

SECOND CLIP

This scene started with images old camera projector and flicker sound, follow by narration that gives the audience a kick start to the film. The use of transition effects smoothly brings the audience from old camera projector screen to modern film formats.

Another interesting scenario is when character(mark) was riding a bicycle the camera was dolly-in while he was riding toward the camera mounted on a moving vehicle, then after  few seconds the film was cut to a tracking shot to give the audience a detail tour by following the character.

Songs was used as a dialogue because the film is a musical drama. Songs and music in films are great charm that makes the audience develop interest in the film.

THIRD CLIP

In this scene the character (Roger) was using song as dialogue to narrate the story of him-self and his late girlfriend tragic death, the use of flash back shows the audience the character past, started with love, follow by drug addiction and aids then the death of his girlfriend.

Fade- to- black, dissolve and cut are used as a transition between different shots to narrate flash back.

Extreme close-up was used so that the audience can see facial expression how the character is feeling while a birds eye angle shows the audience that the character was on the root a building singing.

Kissing shot shows the audience that the two characters are lovers.

FOURTH CLIP

Choreographing, Make-up and Costume are very important elements in musical drama production, in this scene character (Angel) dressed like a woman in father charismas robe wearing wig, lip-stick, tight and woman boot. In reality this character is man and this shows how make-up and costume can transform any character in film production.

Dancing or choreographing in this scene is entertaining to the audience, with character using drum sticks to beat the table and sound of the drums is coming out. This is asynchronous sound because there no drum-set or any musical on the scene. Asynchronous sound provided realism to this scene.

FIFTH CLIP/ENDING SCENE

TZETAN TORODOV THEORY Suggest most narrative starts with state of equilibrium is which life is normal. This state of normality is disrupted by outside force. In this scene an outside force is drug overdose that almost claim the life of character (mimi). This force was fought with and she came back to life and the characters leave happily after.

Some of the props on this scene are the projector, projector screen, table etc.

Counter point sound  in this scenario are voices of the characters not matching the pictures that been display on the projector.