thanks for your email and thoughts re Rap point 1.
You've picked the film's soft focus and music to talk about - good choices.
That soft focus works a treat to give you instant meaning doesn't it?Straightaway you know that what you are seeing is not real. This is called film shorthand and you can see it in every film ever made - see Lee Burton's first email for the reason.
Soft focus is an easy trick to use when you're filming, it's now done with filters when the filming is done, or software like Photoshop later on at the editing stage. In the old days of film, before digital trickery, we used to do things like shoot through muslin cloth or smear vaseline over the lens. And that was pretty messy, as you can imagine.
Soft focus works to tell you instantly that you're seeing a dream, or a fantasy
sequence, or the past, or the future, or ...inside someone's head even.
If you check out my response to 7A, you'll see I make a big deal about how meaning depends on what is happening, not just on identifying a technique. This is true of soft focus as well.
See my list above, about what soft focus means? How would you know what soft focus meant in a film if you didn't take notice of what is happening in the plot? Are you seeing a character's thoughts about the past or the future when you see soft focus. There's a big difference! You need to think about what is happening to get the full picture and the real meaning from a filmic technique or filmic element.
Onto the music!
It's a pretty jazzy and funky collection of music and sound the makers have assembled for the series. Big on guitars too. The choice of music fits the characters and the action and the themes and the plot. It goes
beautifully with the visuals of colour, avatars, Noah's comic book world, and all that chopping and changing of people to cartoon worlds and back again.
I really like the artificial action sounds too - like the football being kicked that you mention. And when Saskia and her mother are talking about hormones - at the end of that scene when the camera shifts suddenly to Saskia - that sound effect is terrific. It's clever and it adds humour. Visuals and sound = humour. Fabulous.
Tell me though - and I'll throw this open to 7A too as they mentioned Benny - do you think the Benny character is interesting and believable? That whole subplot about him being a musical prodigy and having the world at his feet so young -does it work for you? And, that has happened you know - Mozart for one was a child musical genius, and there have been a couple of Australian guitar whizzs, in the 1980s, who performed for big!
crowds
before they hit high school. So it does happen. What are your thoughts about the Benny character?
Hope you are enjoying the Noah and Saskia show, and looking forward to reading you response to Rap point 2.
