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.