For the last homework the ending that I chose was from the 2005 film ‘The Descent” the film is about a group of friends that journey down a cave to explore it and end up meeting some pretty horrifying creatures down there. The girls fight to survive but ultimately all get killed off from the creatures in the bottom. In this ending scene, the main character who has survived the longest seems to have hopes of being the only one out alive.  Just as we have hope for her we see that she sees a birthday cake reminding her off her deceased daughter. We then see what appears to be her daughter staring back at her. At first it’s confusing to the audience (it confused me the first time I saw it) but after deconstructing the movie due to the ambiguous ending,  I found out that in fact she never makes it out alive. The full ending shows her getting out and escaping to her car before this scene is shown and we realize that that was just an hallucination. She along with all the other girls end up dying down in the cave. I just found the ending to be so powerful and I liked the kind of “hopelessness” it leaves the viewer feeling when they discover that nobody makes it out alive. I’ve always found movies that don’t necessarily end on a happy note so much more interesting and intriguing than the simple and predictable “happy ending” Movies like that to me remind us that things don’t always work out and life is a balance of bad and good. To me they come off as a bit more realistic.

I’ve decided on the jump cut from the film Stanley’s Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey released in 1968. The opening jump cut depicts an event several million years prior where monkeys first encounter the film’s MacGuffin, the Black Monolith. One of the monkeys is holding  a bone, the camera cuts to the bone being thrown in the sky and back down to the monkeys and and again into the sky and the monkey’s hands. He uses it to beat another monkey already knocked on the ground in submission, symbolizing his position as the victor. This portrays the beginning of evolution from caveman intellect to learning the use of weapons and hunting for survival. The film than cuts to a a satellite orbiting the earth upon ascending from the rising sun and descending back down. The impact of this specific scene describes the basis of evolution taking place and how the Black Monolith is instrumental in the advancement of Earth’s evolution from the prehistoric time to the modern day future. It is widely regarded as one of the most memorable match/jump cuts in cinema history. The film itself is a personal favorite and an adaptation of a 4 part novel series set which expands decades.

Below you shall find the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtbOmpTnyOc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aYp-pJO9FA

I don’t know if this is really considered an ending scene, but I do love this after credit scene from Deadpool. He does his signature style which is talk to the audience, and he even gives a tiny hint of what’s to come – which is that they will be having Cable (a character). Another reason why I love this ending is for the fact that he tells the people to clean up after themselves in the movie theaters (which is very convenient to the people who work in the movies such as myself). My general manager even insisted in putting this scene at the end of every movie just so people won’t leave their mess behind which I find to be hilarious. Besides that, this ending scene is like the movie Get Him to the Greek directed by Nicholas Stoller, who has famous rapper, P.diddy, telling the audience to go home.

My actual favorite ending scene is from the movie Human Centipede 3, but I can’t find a video of it anywhere. As everyone knows I am an extreme gore fan, and of course I would pick a movie like that. The only reason I like that ending scene is because for the first time a human centipede didn’t seem like a bad idea. I mean why feed every single prisoner (whose done bad to this world) when you can just feed one of them and they all get fed. Especially in the human caterpillar where they cut off the people’s arms and legs because they were sentenced for like, so why even waste time feeding all of them – and people’s hard earning money.

As I watched the short film that Herve Attia made, all I continued thinking was of the ‘find what’s different’ game that everyone used to play.  There was certainly a numerous amount of differences. Buildings were demolished, some places seem drier, the color of paint was different, and even fences were built around certain areas.    Some places were still some what the same (besides the remodeling) like The Tides restaurant. Although the name changed  (it used to be The Tides Restaurant, but now its just simply The Tides), it still has the same concept – as in, its not a house, its still a place people go and dine.   I liked how the places used to look in Hitchcock’s film though just because in the beginning you see that the palm trees look bigger and healthier (obviously nature is getting ruined by the amount of toxics this present world releases now), and I love how Hitchcock shows the newsstand where it has a San Francisco poster, making it obvious to the audience where they are – unfortunately it’s not there anymore.

Attia does have a unique hobby, as I never would of thought people would do this just for the fun of it. It is kind of nice though, being able to revisit a certain place and seeing how time has effected the area. I do find it interesting that he chose this movie, is it because he loves San Francisco just as much? Or maybe because he enjoyed The Birds? I personally cannot stand this movie, I love scary movies, but this movie just creeps me out. The idea of birds being able to hurt a human that is over 10 times their size just sounds scary (plus I’m scared of pigeons overall).

Watching  Attia’s video based on the film location of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963’s The Birds really puts into perspective how much time has passed by since the original filming of the movie. As Attia revisits these places we can see changes in the locations the film was shot at. One of the locations that really stood out was the revisit of “The Tides”restaurant. The restaurant had a cozy neighborhood type of vibe in the movie but looks much more grand and modernized today. It looks more like a chain now than an independently owned place.

I found the matte backdrops that were painted on in the film so much more atmospheric (as it was intended to) than what it looks like in real life present day. Obviously Hitchcock had a vision in mind and decided to recreate nature in a way that seemed more fitting to him. This is also apparent in the scene where Tippi’s character Melanie, along with Mitch walk towards the hills overlooking a matte painted background rendition of the countryside.  The lighting on the characters and the fact that there is no wind indication as the grass isn’t moving makes it obvious to a modern viewer that this was replicated in the studio. It’s interesting that Hitchcock was such a control freak to the point of trying to manipulate nature for his own artistic vision.

https://youtu.be/K2GPBBxFpEw

In this sequence for the movie “Royal Tenenbaums”, the character Richie Tenenbaums goes to the bathroom to shave himself. The use of jump cuts in this sequence is necessary both visually and timely. Shaving is usually something that is considered to be a monotonous task and can take a while. In order to show the impact of the character’s physical transformation while keeping the audience engaged and not bored, the use of jump cuts were implemented to suggest the passage of time as Richie shaves himself.

Jump cuts is when a director records one shot and moves to another shot – the scenes transitions immediately. The movie I chose I actually googled to find a scene with a jump cut that doesn’t have to do with people communicating, like Breathless. This movie was directed by Stanley Kubrick in 2001, A Space Odyssey.  In the scene below he uses the technique jump cut to demonstrate the transition of a bone that was thrown. It does a huge jump cut when it goes from the bone to actually becoming a space object – it even changes the setting from a light sky to outer space.  You get more jump cuts as the space object goes down to earth – you see it getting closer to the planet. In the very first cut scene you see the bone getting thrown up, and then you automatically get another cut scene to what seems to appear the bone heading downward (which confuses me because it goes all the way into space). In the next cut scene the director chooses to have an amazing time gap where million years have passed. From my understanding this whole scene indicates evolution. It started with a man-made object, a bone, and within time and technology advancing the bone turned into a space object.

One of my most favorite film opening scenes is that of the superhero film genre from X-Men: Days of Future past based off the famous comic super hero team of the same name. The opening scene depicts the mutants and the story’s main characters in a war-torn future where they are hunted down by sentient robots known as Sentinels. Their purpose is to hunt, capture and/or kill the mutants and X-Men alike. What I came to love most about this scene was how it it opens up using the time frame of the X-Men characters of the original trilogy( Hugh Jackman/Wolverine, Hallie Berry/Storm, Patrick Stewart/Professor Xavier, Shawn Ashemore/Ice Man) in an apocalyptic setting as opposed to different characters playing their parts.

This entry in the film series adapts the comic’s 1981 story line by combining the main cast’s younger and older selves together to deliver a powerful ensemble of strong acting and story telling making it the most iconic installment in the series. It was a dual sequel that later acted as a retroactive continuity piece rather that outright completely reboot the franchise as a whole. This film is among one of the final times the original cast would reprise their roles as X-Men.