Can You Find Mom?

            The movie Alien was not your typical movie with highlighted objects and people, instead the visuals were dulled and darkened to the point that I couldn't find anything that was supposed to catch my eye.  Later as the movie finished, I realized that was the exact point. The lack of color and vibrancy forced the viewer to be confused as to what he or she was looking at. One could notice that at the beginning, before the monster had been born out of Kane's stomach, the lighting, especially at their final meal, was bright and everything was well visible.  The entire white room resonated the florescent lights so you were able to see the alien in full lighting. From that point on, the monster became one with the background, blending into everything corner and nook.  The execution of putting everything in a darker light forced the viewer to imagine every crate, corner, or pipe to be the alien.  Rather than adding importance with color, they added a thematic element of surprise and danger by taking away all light and details possible.  The movie never again returns to full brightness but the alien is finally revealed when Ripley shoots it and flings it out into space.  We are able to see it's full size but never his full color or shape due to all the shadows and dark on lighting.  The viewer is able to create his or her own image of what the details of the alien truly look like.  This allows them to form a personalized version of the alien that is different from viewer to viewer.
            Aside from the lighting, movie had a notion of constant birthing and rebirthing throughout the movie.  The movie begins with all of the characters, beginning and focusing on Kane, emerging out of an egg shaped cocoon that held them and protected them on their long journey to this new planet. In this instance the ship it's their mother is ironically called "Mother" and she carries  all the knowledge about the mission and how the mission will enfold.  (Unfortunately she is a bad mother and gets all of her kids killed, but that's not her fault exactly.) We then see this phenomenon happening again on the crashed ship that Ash has discovered.  There are eggs located in the crashed ship and one happens to leech itself onto Kane and then reproduces inside of him.  One could say that Kane is a mother, not in a humanly biological way, by being a host for the alien to grow inside of him and then is expelled out of him.  This process looks much like a mother giving birth to a human with the use of blood, mucous and other bodily juices.  The alien dies much like a mother giving birth.   Ripley shoots the alien out of the space ship and she's it flying out into space. Only thing is that the arrow is attached to a large rope that makes the alien appear to have an umbilical cord attached to it while being expelled or "born" into space.
            Though this movie contrasted very differently from movies in the past, it offered viewers many opportunities to find similarities visually about the metaphor of a mother.

The World Seen Through Blues and Grays

In the movie Sunshine, we are given more variation in colors than we ever have in a movie.  The general colors of the movie are not just purely black and white like we say in Moon, but dulled blues and grays.  The repetitive use of colors visually describes life and importance is amazing; I will never be able to watch a film without looking for a purpose with the tone and color of the movie.  In a very similar blog to that of Moon, I will be describing the different objects and their meanings with the use of color. 

            I will begin with the warm yellow/gold we seen in many life-depending objects.  These objects include the gold solar panels that reflect the sunlight, the space suit, the sun and the replica sun in the ship.  These yellow and gold’s continue to remind us constantly of the true main focus of the Icarus, in contrast to Moon where colors were the only source of life.  The main focus is the sun, the one main thing that is keeping the people back at home alive, and with out these bright yellow objects, the mission would not be able to be completed or even needed for that matter.

The one aspect of this movie that focuses on color in respects to life was the immense greenhouse.  This type of greenhouse not only existed in the second Icarus but the first as well.  The enormity to which the first Icarus’ plants grew is only to show you the potential to which they were expecting to need this item.  The saturated and rich green color that appears on the plants describes this to a tee.  The brighter and more vibrant the color appears, the greater in importance to life it becomes.  During the movie, one would not see a computer, except for its bright but white screen, in any form or vibrant coloring due to its lack of importance to their survival. 

One scene that I found rather confusing and defeated the purpose of having color as a meaning of life was the scene in which Capa says goodbye to his family on a video chat while he is surrounded by large green moving lines and squares.  At first glance, the meaning is not apparent, but we can see this flooding of green is there to describe life just like Gurdee in Moon.  This resembles human contact, life on the other side, which happens to be Earth.  This is their little sparkle of human contact to the outside world rather than their small one that includes only the people on the ship. 

            Color is vital part to movies, when a certain color appears only on important objects, we subconsciously pick them out and notice them in a whole other light.  I enjoyed this new and updated lighting of blue and gray than the one in Moon, which was only solid black and white.  One could say that with the black and white, it is much easier for the eye to notice when color does appear and much more difficult when surrounded by dim and dull colors. 

Are You On The Dark Side?

          During the movie Star Trek: The Next Generation, we are given the crew of the ship NCC 1701-D and are introduced to the villains the Son'a.  These two groups show their main directive by the way their costumes, makeup and lighting appear on them. 

         To begin, the Star Trek crew, even though Admiral Dougherty is an exception, are appeared to be out together and very clean cut. What I mean by this is that all the members on the ship are matching in dark and light blue suits.  This clearly helped distinguish their group Tom the hometown of the people the Ba'Ku. The crew also appeared in a bright, non shadowed light at all times; this gave the appearance of goodness and kindness instead of evil and vengeance.     Another aspect to their being was that they were always well kept looking.  Besides their clothes always looking as pristine as possible, they had makeup done so they had flawless skin and their hair was always well manicured.  

          Data, originally an enemy but then an ally has magically glittering skin that sets him apart from the rest of the crew.  He is dressed like the crew in a blue suit and is also in we'll lit lighting, but his eyes seem to jump off the screen.  They are not a normal shade of blue or green, instead they are bright yellow and look infected almost.  These different characteristics make it easy for us to identify that he is special to this crew, but is still to be treated with respect since he is in human form rather than if he was a robot.
          On the total opposite side of the spectrum were the Son'a. They were distorted and clearly unhealthy in every way. Their skin had to be stapled on and stretched  almost everyday and would tear if they became stressed or showed too much expression (something that would happen to Jone Rivers.)  They also were continuously shown in dark settings except when they were on the NCC 1701-D, but they still appeared darker than every other person and character on the ship.  The Son'a also wore dark clothing that looked more like drapes and rags than a uniform. This made them appear to look unorganized and made them appear homeless.
         The costumes and make up throughout the movie have helped us visually to separate the characters and their roles. The evil vs the good was visually easy to distinguish between the two.   

Pipe or Monster?

            The movie has two distinct parts to it, the dream state and reality.  These two continue to mix between one another and become difficult to separate especially towards the end.  In the beginning, when it is clearly the dream or reality, one can see that the pipes are throughout the entire movie.  The pipes are silver, ribbed, and old in contrast to what modern day pipes would have looked like in that time.  The idea of the pipes being on the outsides showed that everything is exposed, nothing is hiding, it is all in the open for us to see.

            These pipes seem to haunt Sam throughout the movie in many different ways.  To begin with, his air conditioner breaks down and the company cannot come and repair it right away.  The pipes are weaving between the walls, and the colors blending into the walls making it hard to differentiate one pipe from the next.  As the movie unfolds and he begins to lose his sanity, his pipes lose their composition as well.  The pipes unravel, they are taken apart, and they explode in his apartment because of the mechanics wonderful maintenance job. 

            While the difficulty is occurring with the pipes, Sam is continuously being haunted in his dreams by a large, metallic monster.  This monster resembles the pipes and disaster he is facing in his life.  On a larger scale, the monster is one big pipe that Sam must overcome.  To begin, we see the monster haunting Sam, unable to defend himself but just continuously haunting him from dream to dream.  At the last dream, we witness Sam crushing the monster in his dream.   

            The lighting on the pipes is dim, dark never well lit.  The colors of the pipes never seem to change from place to place.  In Sam’s apartment they are gray and dim and even in the work place they continue to be dark and grim.  But in contrast, the monster is decorated in shining “armor” or just a cleaner pipe the kind of pipe that would be assume could be replaced like in the commercial in the opening scene.  One can notice that this light on the monster shows that we need to pay attention to it and must notice it.  The pipes, since they are muted, seem to fall away in the scenes and are not brought out; they fall away and blend in with the rest of the gray, bland walls. 

            These pipes continuously seem to become more and more confusing as to how they work throughout the movie.  Their appearance first begins and plain, simple.  One would assume they are just air ducts, flowing hot or cold air from one room to the next because they don’t move, they are attached to the walls where we would expect them to be, but at the end of the movie, they are woven together, sparking, being crushed.  This makes them hard to focus on and confusing us.  While all the pipes intertwine, they seem to be larger becoming one, unified pipe.  This unified pipe can also be thought of as the pipe monster in Sam’s dream. 

How Long Will The Cockroach Live?

            Small rolled characters are able to exemplify a trait or two of the main character, especially on you may not be able to catch at first.  In the movie Wall-E, the cockroach is seen as a character that cannot die.  Disney took the ideology that cockroaches never die and turned it into its main purpose throughout the movie.  While the rest of the entire planet, or what we can see, is deserted, of course a cockroach would be alive, nothing else would be logical except for maybe a cat, but after 700 years I would assume they would run out of their seven lives.  The cockroach then finds a home in a Twinkie that too has the ideology that never goes bad. 

            The cockroach finds himself in many odd, life-threatening situations.  To begin with, he is a cockroach living with a robot in the middle of some city that has turned into garbage piles is not the healthiest home.  Also, the cockroach follows Wall-E wherever he goes, and as we know, Wall-E is not exactly the most put together or coordinated robot to exist.  Wall-E happens to roll over him multiple times and even EVE shoots at him, thinking that he would be blown into oblivion, but he still remains completely in tact.  While Wall-E and EVE are away, the cockroach is patiently waiting for their arrival.  He has survived sand storms, rocket launches, and lack of nutrition even without the help, or not help, of Wall-E. 

            Wall-E, like the cockroach, is eternal, or what it seems like in the timeline we are given.  He is the only lone survivor of all the Wall-E’s that have been created due to his collection of deceased Wall-E’s spare parts.  Unlike the cockroach, Wall-E does have a lifespan but one that depends on the sun in order to recharge his battery.  The first accident Wall-E inquires is when he falls from the ceiling after being thrown up into it by EVE.  This is a slow introduction to his defects to show that he is quickly fixed.  At the end of the movie, Wall-E is completely destroyed and has to be rebuilt by EVE.  Unlike the cockroach, Wall-E cannot pop himself out of the shell and return to normal, he relies on other robots to fix him and to give him parts.

            Both Wall-E and the cockroach have adapted to a life threatening surrounding and robots.  Wall-E and EVE are the threatening aspect in the cockroach’s life, shooting and rolling him over while the cockroach acts like a dog to Wall-E and does not pose any threats on to him or EVE.  EVE, on the other hand, is a threat to both Wall-E and the cockroach.  Since she is a higher technology, she is able to hurt Wall-E in a way he is no used to, while she is indestructible.  Even though she hurts both of them, EVE is also able to fix what she has broken each time, but she herself is never harmed or hurt.  These characters continue to be hurt and fixed but continuously survive no matter where they are placed.  

Every Man Loves A Little Makeup

            Even though a black and white film does not show large contrasts in color, nor does it allow you to understand the full context of a conversation, the film does have the ability to over exaggerate facial expressions on characters faces.  Without the use of words, the makeup artists must be able to describe characters feelings through visual effects that make up for the lack of emotion through conversation.  This will then give us context to what the characters are feeling and what their overall demeanor is. 

            Taking a closer look at the main character’s father, Joh Fredersen, the attribute that stuck out the most to me were his eyes and eyebrows.  Normal eyebrows do not appear so low on a man’s forehead, but to accentuate how focused and stern Joh is, the make up artist darkened them most likely using a dark brown or black eye shadow to give them a furrowed look.  Also, to push his eyebrows even more forward and his eyes back, they darkened his eyes to look shadowed and very deep into his face.  As the movie continued to progress, Joh’s eyes grew farther and father away from his eyebrows, becoming more dark and sinister as it went along.  His emotions were clearly worn through his makeup even though his emotions were heard in his voice.  One was able to notice that he grew more worrisome about the lower city and about a possible uprising. 

            Another character that had large amounts of make up on was Rotwang the Inventor.  His makeup was not the only key factor in his emotions but his hair as well.  In order to give him a crazed, lonely, partially insane look, he was given messy, disheveled hair.  Apart from his wacko hair, his eyebrows, much like Joh’s, were extremely darkened and enhanced.  From scene to scene, his eyebrows change from furrowed for when he was in deep thought to very raised and highly accentuated for when he was excited.  The makeup artist created the eyebrows to be not only dark but also extremely pointed at the top and long to come all the way across the face.  Rotwang also had very accentuated eyes, his eyes were also dark and heavy, but they were describing a whole different emotion than Joh’s eyes.  His eyes had large amounts of eyeliner around them and dark rings beneath them to give the appearance of not craziness, but exhaustion.  Since he is a scientist, we can assume that he is constantly working and discovering different technologies for his robot causing him not to sleep or care about bodily functions, rather living for the robot.

            Much of the artist’s techniques may appear the same from character to character, but the reasoning’s behind why each one is done gives the audience hints at to what the character is feeling.  Eyebrows were a huge telling point to what the characters felt.  Since they did not have words, eyebrows can show much emotion by just lengthening them, shrinking them or making them thicker or skinnier.  One thing that was consistent through many characters was the size of their eyebrows.  The artists elongated each character’s eyebrows to over exaggerate all emotions coming from them.  If they kept them at a normal size and color, they may have been to light to show up on the black and white screen or too small to really notice any large emotion changes or expressions they have that are vital to the movie.  Overall, the makeup and hair became a large roll in this movie, helping dictate the mood of the movie as well as the mood of the characters.  

A Colorful Life

While watching the film Moon, the background is shades of white, grey, and black, color only showed up in very small, hidden corners.  Picture, small, lifelike representations of Sam Bell’s life covering the walls of his bedroom, in a picture frame by his bedside, and in his pocket of his pants at all times.  He is a clone that is attached to these inanimate objects as if they have meaning when in reality, he is just part of this mission, just part of the machinery.  These pictures bring Sam to life give him meaning, direction purpose to his time on the Moon.  He is able to see recording of his loved ones, which he believes to be present.  The rest of the ship isolates him, giving him no life or motivation.  Waking up each morning, he turns off his alarm clock and takes the picture of him and his wife and counts down the days until he is able to see her, two more weeks.  These pictures remind him of the time he has supposedly shared with her, forcing him and the audience to believe that she is real and that he is real.  His passion and love for his wife and daughter put him on a level in which we can relate to, a feeling that we believe he feels, a feeling of pain and longing.  Again, these emotions stimulate him to become a better man for them shown by the difference in Sam one and two.  The first clone shows patients and gentleness while the newly awoken Sam shows anger and frustration not yet understanding the value of these women.

Another colorful object that caught my eye were his plants.  They were hidden in a dark refrigerator with one light shining on them.  The green was vibrant and inviting, something that gave the space station life, true and real life rather than artificial life.  Sam was able to tend to them like children, talking to them, giving them names, and individually tending to them.  The audience was able to see him make daily checkup making sure they were healthy or if they needed fresh water.  Sam would sit close to them, giving his undivided attention to them as if they would die if he did not give them the right amount of attention and care.  The plants were his children, like his daughter Eve who he was unable to take care of and who was so young in all of the videos.  Both are so fragile and need constant love and care in order to thrive and survive.

The plants and the pictures together motivated Sam to continue on his journey on the Moon.  The plants helped him learn and to remember how to take care of something or someone, preparing for his “little girl,” who he constantly saw in his photographs everyday, who was waiting for him back at home.  If it was not for these little pieces of hope and color in his life, Sam would have lost his humanity and turned into a machine like the one in which he truly is.