Genre studies

Genre studies #1 Fantasy/adventure - Spirited Away (2001)

Release date: July 20, 2001(Japan)

Director: Miyazaki Hayao

Story author: Miyazaki Hayao

Cinematographer: Okui Atsushi

Awards: Academy Award for Best

Animated Feature and more

clip duration: from 0:00 to 3:40

duration originally use from Netflix

( I can't not find any original opening scene to download but this is the closest reference )

The movie begins with gentle and relaxing sounds along with the image of farewell bouquets of roses sent to Chihiro by friends. The opening scene with the farewell bouquet of flowers shows that the main character, Chihiro, has just move away. 

Leaving a familiar place and the laughter of close friends to come to a new place to live. Chihiro's father's call woke her up in an old car that made engine noises. The camera angle changed. The scene filled with belongings in the car shows that Chihiro's family is on the way to a new home. 

Chihiro's expression when she known that she had actually come to a new place to live, she expressed her displeasure, unhappy with this family's decision. This shows that Chihiro has a stubborn personality and unique personality. The gentle piano music combined with the sound of the wind blowing through the car window creates a bright and cheerful atmosphere. inherent innocence of animated films in the 2000s. The lighting in this scene has a warm tone showing that it is summer, along with the clothes the characters are wearing showing comfort, coolness and simplicity. The sound is very unique, but from this angle we can see that the mood of the girl Chihiro and the outside scene are completely opposite. The stubbornness and personality of the teenage girl when having to leave places and those close to her who come to a strange land also tell us that Chihiro is someone who cherishes the people and places around her, and whose love for everyone is expressed through her regrets. 

The next scene changes the angle to cover the entire neighborhood. In this scene, the director also shows us Chihiro's family's new house. In the first scenes of the movie, The film is presented in bright colors and warm tones symbolizing summer, highlighting the green of the trees and mountains. The film's sound gradually changes to violin music, bringing a sense of suspense because In this scene, Chihiro's family got lost on a strange road while looking for a way to their new home.

The whole family and the old car passed through the trees on a narrow road with statues on both sides. Japan's typical guardian god. 

The camera angle is changed to the character's front camera angle so that we can feel the tree branches hitting the car window and the sound of the surrounding bushes colliding with each other. In this scene, our eyes are rubbed. softened by a long stretch of green to compensate for the suspenseful and slightly spooky sound of this scene. As they gradually reached the end of the road, Chihiro's family saw an abandoned building isolated in the mountain.sound. This scene gradually becomes softer so that viewers can feel the sound of the wind inside the forest. The lighting in this scene is also changed to cold tones to show Chihiro's curiosity and a little fear. Out of curiosity, Chihiro's parents ignored her advice and continued to enter that abandoned gate. 

★ 。★ 。★ 。★ 。★ 。★ 。★ 。★

Genre studies #2 Psychological/horror - Parasite (2019)

Release date: May 30, 2019 (Korea)

Director: Bong Joon-ho

Awards: Academy Award for Best Picture, Palme d'Or and more

Screenwriter: Bong Joon-ho, Han Jin-won

Premiere: May 21, 2019 (Cannes); May 30, 2019 (Korea); June 21,2019 (Vietnam)

Clip duration: from 0:00 to 4:00 

The film opens with a street scene from the window of the basement where the main characters live, along with gentle sounds. This seems to reflect the poverty of a family that can only survive. In a small basement with a window looking up, it seems to express the Kim family's desire to escape poverty. 

From the light scene, it gradually turns to a darker color with a bit of cold light as if expressing coldness. in that cellar. The camera slowly moves back down to the characters Ki-woo and Ki-jung, the Kim family's two children, walking around in the stuffy apartment and complaining about the neighbor changing the wifi password so they can no longer use it. 

This image is trying to metaphorize this family as "parasites" that only know how to cling to others to benefit themselves without having to put in any effort. The scene moves to Mr. and Mrs. Kim, the breadwinners of this family. The two of them are in a cramped and dirty room with a lot of untidy furniture. 

The camera moves to pictures of Mrs. Kim's past. is an excellent athlete, but because of his nature and circumstances, The next scene showing Mrs. Kim sitting and eat his sandwiches, seeing and kill the bug on the table represent how dirty their house is. The whole family is forced to live in poverty and have to squeeze together in an apartment where the toilet is built higher than where they live. 

These unique filming angles have helped the actors tell the story through different angles. The sound gradually became noisy due to the noise of the machinery and the camera angle changed to the worker spraying insecticide in the neighborhood. Every angle of view was gradually blurred by the clouds of cigarette smoke being emitted into that dirty apartment.

Stubbornness and laziness in cleaning. That family stubbornly let disinfectant spread throughout the house because of their lazy nature and poverty that blinded their eyes like the smoke gradually fading away. the look of the camera angle. 

The sound at this time was like chaos with the sound of machinery and the cough of the whole family from being choked with smoke. The frontal angle combined with blocking and narrow angle, the film conveyed a A realistic view of a cramped, cramped and confined place for people at the lowest level of social status. Directly is the portrait of a couple and their two children who are unemployed even though they are adults. 

The whole family sits together, folds pizza boxes, and chats together with the sound of foam pieces being bumped together, creating a sound that is both joyful and the sound of hardship to make ends meet. the camera angle gradually covers the entire basement with the poor lighting angle, dark tones and quiet ghostly music as if showing that the basement shows their extremely needy life, even in the early parts of the series.  

All films are directed by the director through dark and cold tones and comprehensive and frontal angles that help us clearly see the coldness and vulgarity of the whole film. It is these angles and images that help us gradually visualize the "parasites" whose title is also the name of the film and the message the film wants to remind us.

For the general movie

Composition and Staging

To guide the audience’s attention in a cramped space, composition and staging play important roles in showing family dynamics and revealing the subtexts of the plot. From Parasite, the scene is shot in the Kim household, situated in a small semi-basement house near the sewers. The rest of the family also direct their attention to the pair, which in turn helps guide the audience’s attention. Other than creating a sense of depth, the arrangement of the characters also helps to express power relations. This is especially prominent in Parasite because the starting scene aims to introduce the exposition of class as an identity in South Korea. The director uses blocking effectively by seating the mother and the sister in the background, creating a stair-like pattern in the mise-en-scène when combined with the other planes, which may suggest the stranger as someone in a higher social class as them.

Lighting and Colours

Relating to emotions, lighting and colour are also important components in creating a particular mood for

a scene and are relatively effective in suggesting a division between an in-group and an outsider. The scenes feature a dimly-lit setting, subtle adjustments in lighting can be seen to highlight particular sections in the frame. For example, higher or lower key lighting is used on the stranger to pick them out from the family. In Parasite, the visitor, which is the man on the left is shone with brighter lighting that resembles sunlight from the windows. This hints a bright future for Min-hyuk who is travelling abroad to further his studies. The lighting design also helps him to look more glamorous compared to the Kim family that has shadows cast on them, thus illustrating Min-hyuk’s higher social status that enables him a comfortable life without burdening worries. Also, the colour schemes used in both scenes help to create different moods like warmth and distance. in Parasite, a cooler colour scheme is used to portray the humid and low-lit living environment of the Kims. Other than expressing coldness in the semi-basement house, the greenish-blue hue also suggests Ki-woo’s envy towards his friend, as he does harbour a repressed desire to become exactly like his friend and to reach a social status as high as him. This foreshadows his later actions and explains his motivation of taking over Min-hyuk’s job and eventually also stealing his girlfriend. While achieving realism in the portrayal of poverty, the directors are also able to convey emotions by utilising subtle lighting and colours designs.

Setting and Costumes

Being easily noticeable, the setting and costumes can help characterise and form distinct comparisons between social classes. It is an effective component of mise-en-scène to rapidly convey a character’s personality or social status, where the class system is heavily discussed. One prominent example is when director Bong Joon-ho differentiates Min-hyuk from the Kim family with expensive clothing, a luxury watch and a valuable scholar stone as his gift to the family. Their differences are further emphasised when he is dressed in grey compared to the Kims who are dressed in blue tones. 

The setting also plays an active role in portraying life in poverty and the emotional state of minds of the characters living in these spaces.The set is built to resemble a poor neighbourhood in South Korea and is specifically designed to be a semi-basement house to signify the Kim family’s social class. As the only windows in the house are situated near the ceiling, the Kims can only look up to have a glimpse of the outside world. Their living space serves as an important symbol to the hopes of a lower class and the cruel reality of the class system. With the strong visual combination of the setting and the costumes, are able to reinforce their thematic ideas and paint the lives of people living in poverty.