...“What Makes Great Fiction” There are many aspects in a story that play key roles in its quality and the overall view of by reader. Suspense, drama, love, conflict, and war, make movies great. However, what separates these movies and makes them stand out from one another? Yes, each movie has a different story with different characters, but there has to be something truly unique about it to make it memorable and a classic. The writing technique that I am going to focus on is narrative structure. Narrative structure isn’t as simple as it sounds. There are many styles and approaches authors and directors can take to keep the story from being too bland and uninteresting. In The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction it says that in order to write good fiction, the writer must take a more complex approach in portraying the story to the reader and the story must be original. A writer and director that has mastered these two things is the notorious director, Quentin Tarantino. A great example of how significant narrative structure is Quentin Tarantino’s use of nonlinear storylines. Nonlinear storylines can be seen in Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, and Kill Bill. These movies seem to start in the beginning and play through without any suspicion to reader of it starting somewhere other than the beginning of the plot. As the movie progresses there are specific details that are missing that leave the viewer confused. The movie is displayed in a series of chapters that seem...
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... Carl Sagan was known as an American Scientist and was born November 9, 1934 and died December 20, 1996. Carl Sagan was a pioneer in many countries scientific realm and is known throughout the world as the renowned astrophysicist of our known generation. He was also an achieved astronomer, cosmologist, astrobiologist, author, scientist, and writer. Dr. Sagan published more than 600 scientific papers and over 20 books during his lifetime. Dr. Sagan spent most of his professional career as a professor of astrology at Cornell University. Dr. Sagan grew up as a young boy in Brooklyn, NY in the early 40's. His mother was very religious and his father a Ukrainian immigrant who worked in a garment industry. Carl was an avid reader of science fiction and did not play sports. Carl Sagan was an avid science researcher, and many of his books and writings clashed with the religious groups. Carl often would talk about life on other planets or solar systems and how could Earth be the center of the Universe if we as a species had never experienced or seen other beings or worlds. The religious sect of society had their negative views of Dr. Sagan and fought to reduce funding of his program on PBS Known as "Cosmos". They eventually won these funding arguments, and the program was discontinued. “Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another ("Good Reads", 2015). Dr. Sagan wrote mainly...
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...Reasons for this range from body type, to gender and racial ethnicity. The cosplay community is speaking out about aforementioned predicaments to ensure the events are safe and enjoyable for everyone. Regardless of the downsides, cosplay is and will always be a unifying and celebrated pastime. Speaking of creative art forms, film is an eclectic and cherished medium. There are countless great directors, yet some iconic and renowned for their cinematic style -- such as Quentin Tarantino. (In)famous and controversial for the use of abundant bloodshed, intense violence, murder, and cuss words in his films. In most recent projects – Django Unchained and Inglorios Basterds, he re-imagines and re-writes some of the grimmest eras in history. The protagonists triumph over the inhumane treatment they are subjected to, avenge their suffering and that of their loved ones, and triumphantly conquer their adversaries. A little known fact about Tarantino’s filmmaking process is that he derives ideas from music and compiles soundtracks which flawlessly capture and reflect the atmosphere, aesthetic and stories. One of the most notable examples is Nancy Sinatra’s “Bang Bang” hauntingly used in Kill Bill. Tarantino also likes to incorporate homages to the films he grew up viewing. Critics have said he’s unoriginal for doing so yet he deserves credit for bringing various genres into the mainstream and modernizing them. He is heavily influenced by samurai and western...
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...Intro to Film Study Film Analysis of Pulp Fiction Pulp Fiction is a movie that seems to have multiple stories being told almost simultaneously. Some will say it is about two hit men or a boxer, but the truth is there is no story behind the film. The whole purpose of the film is to parody every type of film movement created. This film leaves no movement out. The director, Quentin Tarantino, uses the film’s formal properties to express larger themes. First of all, Quentin Tarantino somewhat sticks to the classic Hollywood System for editing. Tarantino does not seem to cross the axis of action. However, there are times when the director breaks with the classic Hollywood System for editing and one way he does this is by having a discontinuous editing system. One example is the end of the movie. Under the rule of continuity editing, it should have been following the beginning of the film. The director, however, did not seem to use crosscutting, which could have worked in his film and makes him adhere to the continuity editing system. Among all the other styles present in the film, film noir and surrealism seem to be the most obvious. Throughout the movie, Tarantino parodies these films styles along with many others. Film noir is one of the most noticeable styles in the movie. First of all, one important aspect of film noir is the fact that each character has no clear moral base. This is very true in Pulp Fiction, especially with Samuel L. Jackson’s character, Jules. In the beginning...
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...The Four Key Elements on Tarantino Films Quentin Tarantino has revolutionized the film industry. From his first directorial debut of Reservoir Dogs (1991) to his latest film Django Unchained (2012) he has presented the audience with unique techniques to intrigue and capture their desires for more. I regard Tarantino as the William Shakespeare of our time, because of the development and passion for his imagination and ambiguous style. Jim Smith wrote of Quentin Tarantino, as well as his films, so to have a better understanding as to whom Tarantino is as a person and director/writer. Smith titled his book “Tarantino”. The book states Tarantino has four key techniques in which most of the films are based on. These techniques are: the usage of the dramatic dialogue in the film; the very long, slow scenes exploiting, explaining, and foreshadowing the characters; the sudden dramatic reversal of tones; and the anti-chronological structure that transcends the audience’s limit of thought. Film directors edit their work to maintain only significant scenes to be revealed, thus most dialogues are cut in order to achieve such goals. Tarantino does otherwise. Dialogue is one key element in his films. Through dialogue, Tarantino manages to convey certain elements that are crucial to the existence of each character. For almost the first ten minutes in Reservoir Dogs, the development of each character is raised through the use of Dialogue. The characters discuss many comical issues which...
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...The American culture in PULP FICTION “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the tyranny of evil man. blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And i will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the lord when i lay my vengeance upon thee. ” This is the famous lines of pulp fiction, which also comes from The Bible. I have seen a lot of American’s movies, but this one, pulp fiction, made me confused and thought a lot until now. You may think what kinds of deep and profound things you can figure out from a film which is fulled of violence, sex, and drugs. But on the country, through the classic “black humor”, it exactly reflect the reality life of American lower class in 19 century. Pulp Fiction is structured around three distinct but interrelated storylines—in Tarantino's conception, mob hitman Vincent Vega is the lead of the first story, prizefighter Butch Coolidge is the lead of the second, and Vincent's fellow contract killer, Jules Winnfield, is the lead of the third. Although each storyline focuses on a different series of incidents, they connect and intersect in various ways. The film starts out with a diner hold-up staged by "Pumpkin" and...
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...Guy Ritchie hit upon a successful formula when directing his first two films, bringing his unique sense of style and panache to the crime thriller genre, but then blotted his copybook when he attempted new things in his following two movies. The husband of mega-popstar Madonna cast his famous wife in one his biggest commercial and critical flops, but has since tried to get his career back on track after divorcing her in late 2008. Guy Stuart Ritchie was born in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England, to successful marketing executive John Vivian Ritchie and Amber Parkinson. His parents divorced when he was five, and his mother would later marry Sir Michael Leighton, a baronet. Ritchie spent a fair amount of his childhood at the Leighton estate, although his mother and Sir Michael would divorce seven years later. Ritchie was born with severe dyslexia, and at 15 was expelled from Stanbridge Earls School, a specialist school for dyslexics. He worked as a labourer before getting into the film industry at age 25. He began as a film runner (an odd jobber on film and TV sets) before trying his hand at directing music videos, doing “20 videos back to back, really crappy ones with sort of German rave bands”. This gave him some valuable experience behind the camera, and he moved on to doing commercials. With the much-needed grounding, he went on to direct a 20 minute short, ‘The Hard Case’ (1995), which aired on Channel 4. As it did so, it caught the attention of Trudie Styler, the wife of...
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...being treated like property and not a person. Imagine being bought and sold, forced to work, unable to marry, taken away from your loved ones, held against your will, beat or raped. Can you imagine? Starting in the early 1500s slavery took place in southern states. During the slavery period, African Americans were forced to do all of the above and more; no African American wanted to be a slave. “I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery.” Slavery has always been a topic people believe as brutal, cruel, inhumane and horrible so when I went and seen the movie supposedly based on slavery; “Django Unchained” written by Quentin Tarantino, released on December 25, 2012, I was disappointed. The movie Django Unchained mocked slavery and tried to make a serious matter funny. Slavery was nothing closed to a joke, if any slave was asked to describe slavery, the last thing it would be described as is a joke. The movie takes place two years before the Civil War. Actor, Jamie Foxx played the main character, Django, in the movie. Django becomes a bounty hunter in the movie after he is recused by a German dentist/bounty hunter man named Schultz at the beginning of the movie. Django agrees to take the job offered as a bounty hunter because he can think of no better job than to kill white men for money. In the movie he says, “Kill white folks and they pay you for it? What’s...
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...9-502-040 OCTOBER 5, 2001 DOUGLAS B. HOLT Mountain Dew: Selecting New Creative Standing at the front of a PepsiCo conference room, Bill Bruce gestured enthusiastically, pointing to the sketches at his side. Bruce, a copywriter and Executive Creative Director, headed up the creative team on the Mountain Dew account for PepsiCo’s advertising agency, BBDO New York. In fact, it was Bruce who devised the famous “Do the Dew” campaign that had catapulted Mountain Dew to the number three position in its category. With his partner, art director Doris Cassar, Bruce had developed ten new creative concepts for Mountain Dew’s 2000 advertising to present to PepsiCo management. Gathered in the room to support Bruce and Cassar were BBDO senior executives Jeff Mordos (Chief Operating Officer), Cathy Israelevitz (Senior Account Director), and Ted Sann (Chief Creative Officer). Each of the three executives had over a decade of experience working on Mountain Dew. Representing PepsiCo were Scott Moffitt (Marketing Director, Mountain Dew), Dawn Hudson (Chief Marketing Officer, and a former senior ad agency executive), and Gary Rodkin (Chief Executive Officer, Pepsi Cola North America). Scott Moffitt scribbled notes as he listened to Bruce speak. Moffitt and the brand managers under him were charged with day-to-day oversight of Mountain Dew marketing. These responsibilities included brand strategy, consumer and sales promotions, packaging, line extensions, product changes, and sponsorships....
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