The Last Summer and Editing Techniques

Last time in film class, we had a special guest. Corey Womack, a senior in the Honors College, came to the forum and showed us his film for his senior thesis. His film, The Last Summer, is about a recent high-school graduate deciding what he wants to do with his life. He could either go to college and leave his high-school girlfriend behind or he could stay in town and end up working at the factory like everyone else does. He faces a dilemma that a lot of people have to face. After seeing one of his fellow graduates drunk on a baseball field lamenting over his dim future in the town's factory, the protagonist decides to go to college and effectively breaks up with his girlfriend.

Corey said that his film was largely autobiographical, meaning that a lot of the emotions and characters in the film were things and people that he had felt and known in his home town. An interesting effect he used in the film to convey the claustrophobia he felt in his hometown is his use of aspect ratios. The film started out in the usual aspect ratios--resembling almost a full screen. But throughout the film the aspect ratio became more and more narrow, giving the audience almost a closed-in feeling. After the climax--the protagonist and his girlfriend breaking up--the ratio suddenly goes back to full screen. Similarly, the lighting in the movie continually gets darker and darker as the film progresses. At the end, when he finally makes a decision, the world becomes clearer, brighter, and more open. It was a risky move on Corey's part to mess with aspect ratios, but it achieved an interesting effect.

After we screened Corey's movie, we watched reworked trailers of movies. In one reworked trailer of The Shining, happy music and careful editing transform Stanley Kubrick's horror masterpiece into a lighthearted, family redemption story. It just goes to show you how much editing affects content of a film--or in this case--a trailer for a film.

Blowout vs. Blowup

Last time in Donna and Eric's film class, we watched Blowout, directed by DePalma and starring John Travolta. In summation of the film, John Travolta's character, a sound guy for a C-movie production company, witnesses and records the sound for a high-profile car accident resulting in the death of a presidential candidate. Travolta's character discovers that the accident was no accident at all, but rather an assassination by John Lithgow. Travolta then attempts to make the assassination public, aided by the candidate's would-be blackmailer.

Throughout the film, DePalma makes cinematic references to multiple iconographic directors. Beautifully smooth dolly shots and extreme closeups mark DePalma's adoration of Alfred Hitchcock. DePalma's use of suspense also rings familiar with Hitchcock fans. DePalma is also a fan of Italian director Antonioni. Antonioni's 1960s film Blowup not only sounds similar to Blowout, but also has a similar plot. In the everyday, this would be called either cheap or plagiarism. However, in the film world, this is called an homage. This eerily familiar setup is intentional and used to pay tribute to a respected director. It is used to signify that a director respects work that has been done. In DePalma's case with Blowout, the similarities are too numerous and blatant to be anything but intentional.