Formal Film Study 2

Formal Film Study on Best Picture Winners

This time around for my Formal Film Study, I decided to do something very different. Instead of researching a certain genre or director, I chose to research the winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture movies from the last three years. These movies included, The Hurt Locker(2008)directed by Kathryn Bigelow and  won in 2009, The King’s Speech(2010) directed by Tom Hooper and won in 2010, and The Artist(2011) directed by Michel Hazanavicius won in 2011. I had never seen any of these films, so I was very excited to watch these movies.

All of these movies were very different in their own way.  The Hurt Locker was a very intense war movie that had my heart beating all the way through. The King’s Speech was a movie that I felt like I was a part of and The Artist was a movie that I really enjoyed even though I thought I definitely would not.

The styles of these movies are different. In The Hurt Locker, the cinematography is very shakey. It is as if someone is holding the camera the whole movie running away from the bombs, following the bad guys, and looking around to make sure the area is safe. The movie is mostly from a third person point of view but there are a few times when the camera switches to make it a first person point of view. For example, when the Sergent William James puts on the bomb suit, it switches to his point of view looking out of the eye hole and you can hear his breathing and his steps. Another time in the film the third person point of view changes to first person point of view when a soldier is looking through the scope of his gun looking for any threats in the area. It shows the scope so it looks like the person watching the movie is looking through the scope.

In The King’s Speech the most part of the movie is in third person but in the opening scene when he attempts to give the speech, he is so nervous and the camera switches to first person point of view and it shows the microphone right in his face and the entire crowd. There was one thing in this movie that I saw as a recurring view. The Duke of York has a speech impediment and needs to go to speech therapy. In the office, many times, the camera shows the Duke sitting on the couch on the way left side of the frame and the empty wall on the rest of the frame. I’m sure that this was done purposefully, but I could not figure out the meaning of it.

In The Artist was completely different than any other movie that has been made in a very long time. This movie was not just in black and white, but it was also a silent film. I was really skeptical about watching it at first but in the end I liked it. It started off exactly like the other silent movies that we had watched in class with the credits starting in the beginning of the movie. One thing that I noticed about this silent film was that when the actors talked, I could read their lips sometimes so I knew what they were saying. In the other silent films I have seen in class, I do not remember being able to read the characters lips. Since I was able to in The Artist, I had more of an idea on what was going on. I also noticed that the lighting was really important and played a role in how the crowd is supposed to feel in the film (like how the actors face emotions help feel what the mood is).

 Not all of these movies were big when they came out. When the review people started giving the films good reviews saying they could possibly be candidates for the Best Picture, then they became even more popular. This is especially true with The Artist. When this movie came out, it was very small. After people started to see it and talk about it, then it started to become very popular. Since all of these movies were Best Picture winners, they are very popular and will always be remembered in film history.

I did find one overarching “discovery” about these three films. I believe in order to be a winner of the Academy Award Best Picture of the Year, the films needs some specific qualities.  I think that the Best Picture films from 2009, 2010, and 2011 needed to have great actors, an easy but intriguing plot to follow and relate able characters.  All of these movies I thought had fantastic actors. These amazing actors portrayed characters that were so relate able I felt like I was either part of the plot or there in the scene. In The King’s Speech, the Duke of York has a speech problem that he needs to work through. 

While watching this movie, I felt so sorry for the Duke. He tried so hard to work past his issues but still had some struggles. In The Hurt Locker, whenever the main character Sergeant William James (played by Jeremy Renner) went in to detonate bombs, my heart was beating and I was actually scared to see what was going to come next. I could not even imagine what it is like to have to do that in real life. In The Artist, I actually felt like I was in the studio watching the film being filmed. With these qualities a film (these films) are really amazing films and I am glad they won Best Picture awards.