An Island of Dreams

In the article Psychoanalysis of Dreams: Dream Theory and Its Relationship to Literature and Popular Culture, Walden and Poch point out that Freud’s “greatest influence for his entire career may have been the first novel that he read, where ‘the hero went mad’ at the end of the book.” The unnamed novel inspired the thought behind Freud’s theories of dream interpretation, which have in turn inspired the new thoughts behind popular culture.

Allusions to Freud are evident in the movie Shutter Island. In this thriller, U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo Dicaprio) is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Boston’s Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital. Before long he wongers whether he hasn’t been brought to the island as part of a twisted plot by the hospital doctors, whose treatments seem to be unethical, illegal, and sinister. Teddy carries baggage of his own, dealing with the recent death of his wife in an apartment fire and being haunted by the memory of Nazi concentration camps. As Teddy works on the investigation, he discovers that not is all as it seems.

As discussed in the Pathos of the Unconscious article by David J. LeMaster, dream sequences were used to develop a relationship between Charlie the Tramp and the audience by representing his dreams of success and deep fear of failure as “The American Dream.”  In Shutter Island, dream sequences are used to reveal the true character of Teddy Daniels to the audience.

Teddy often dreams about his wife, daughters, fire and water. We eventually learn that these dreams are manifestations of Teddy’s repressed past in which his insane wife drowned their three children, fueling his subsequent murder of her. He also has daydreams and hallucinations involving images of his wife and children, as well as of his time spent in the army, which helps the audience understand that he is not mentally stable.

In addition to these aspects of the movie involving Freudian thought, Dr. Naehring in the movie in an allusion to Freud himself; he even has a German accent and round glasses. At one point in the movie Teddy pins him against the wall, and Dr. Naehring gives his own interpretation of Teddy’s dreams when he says “Did you know that the word ‘trauma’ comes from the Greek word for ‘wound’? Hmm? And what is the German word for ‘dream’? Traum. Ein Traum. Wounds can create monsters, and you, you are wounded, Marshal.”

This movie uses dreams and delusions to reveal the truth behind Teddy, and add suspense to the movie. This dreams and delusions make the audience as confused about Teddy’s reason for being on the island as he is, forcing the audience to doubt the motivations and staff of Ascecliffe as much as he does.

The Anatomy of Dreams

In the article The Pathos of the Unconcious: Charlie Chaplin and Dreams, David LeMaster discusses the technique of using dreams and daydreams to give the audience a deeper understanding of the characters. Specifically, the author states, “it may be concluded that the most effective manner of analyzing character in film is by a full examination of the character’s dreams” (LeMaster). ShondaRhimes, the producer of Greys Anatomy, frequently uses this technique throughout the 12 seasons of the show.

The clip above shows George O’Malley’s dream. At this point in the television series, George and the three girls in his dream are still interns at the hospital. Since George is not the most masculine or attractive man on the show, the girl interns tend to treat him as a brother and never look at him romantically. In the beginning of the clip the audience hears Meredith Grey ask, "What's the one thing you've always dreamed of doing before you die?". By showing George’s dream, the viewers are able to take a look inside George’s thoughts. We learn that George fantasizes that the girl interns are attracted to him and give him romantic attention. By portraying George's inner feeling in a dream, the audience is able to better understand his views on his brotherly relationships without him actually having to explain it.  

Some background information before you watch the clip below: Owen Hunt, head trauma surgeon, has recently come back from the war in Iraq. Teddy Altman, head cardiothoracic surgeon, just got a job at the Hospital and was in Iraq with Owen. Owen’s PTSD is more severe than Teddy’s, and talking to Teddy sometimes triggers his memories from the war.

By showing Owen’s daydream, Shonda Rhymes was able to reveal his inner thoughts, “without disrupting the flow of the film, and give the character a brief escape from what is happening to him” (LeMaster). Up to this point in the television series, it was never revealed to the viewers just how close Owen and Teddy were in the war. There was always awkward chemistry between them, but no one knew why. Owen is currently in a relationship with another surgeon on the show, however with Teddy around his feelings have become conflicted. Instead of taking up time explaining exactly what Owen is thinking, his daydream portrayed his past and conflicted feelings about Teddy in approximately one minute.

In the Name of the Godfather...

One of the most clever uses of montage editing in the history of film is the Baptism of Fire scene from The Godfather. In Anatomy of a Film, Bernard F. Dick discusses the way in which montage creates the desired emotional response. "Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein believed that shots should not so much connect as collide, and that the viewer should be affected by their collision. Unlike continuity editing, which is supposed to be unobtrusive, montage calls attention to itself...Eisensteinian montage is based on contrast and conflict, which can exist both within the film as a whole and within a particular shot or scene. The Baptism of Fire is an excellent example of the latter.

Shots! Shots! Shots!

Movies are all about the shots. The right shot can make a clip great and the wrong type of shot can ruin the whole movie. Using the correct shot will be the difference between your movie making it and your movie failing. In the reading Film, Space, and Mise-en-scene Dick Bernard talks about all of the different types of shots that are used to provoke certain emotions and to give the movie a certain feel. The wrong type of shot will fail to provide the audience with the feelings that you wish for the audience to feel. Learning how filmmakers use shots changes the way that you perceive films, instead of just being engrossed in the movie, one can intelligently attempt to perceive why the filmmaker is presenting the scene in such a way. This reading really makes you think intensely about your favorite movies and makes you try and explain why certain shots were used in a certain way.

In the film, 13 Hours, many different shots are used. The movie is about the 9/11 attacks on the Libyan embassy in Benghazi that left 5 Americans dead. The movie uses an assortment of shots in order to convey the different emotions that you should feel at different points of the movie. The beginning of the movie is very foreboding and you have a feeling that something bad is going to happen. Toward the end you are left with a feeling of outrage and American pride. The movie trailer switches continuously between action shot footage and informative screens that give brief information on what happened that night and the situation that had been occurring in the area over the past couple of months.

The movie trailer starts with a long wide cut view of the city of Benghazi. The purpose of this scene is to set the stage. It shows how beautiful of a city Benghazi can appear to be. However, soon the trailer takes a dark turn and it turns to close cut clips of the special operators at Benghazi. The tight close up frames help to humanize and make you grow attached to the special operators. Next the camera cuts to a black page with solemn words that help and outline the situation showing with words what the video could not. This shot is very forbidding and screams out that something bad will happen in this movie.

This image shows a medium range shot that is neither a close up nor a far away shot. This shot serves to humanize the operators. Even though the operators are trained killing machines that have killed more human beings then I could ever dream of, this frame shows them as just average everyday americans who are just doing their job to keep their country safe and to go home to see their family. This

Landing the Perfect Shot

Dick B.'s Assembling the Shots discusses how shot assembly and shot composition can affect the tone and delivery of a film or a part of a film. Aspects like rhythm, time, space, tone, and theme all play a part in this effect.

One film that exemplifies this is Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel, particularly in the concluding fight scene. In this scene, the protagonists Gustav and Zero attempt to run from captors that are wrongly trying to take them into custody. The shot using fast cuts and sweeping shots to showcase the fight. In particular, the aspects of Assembling the Shot that Anderson uses are time, space, and theme.

Employing parallel cutting allows "two concurrent actions to be depicted on the screen without one being completed before the other begins," and this is done with cutting quickly between the two shots in question. In the gunfight scene, Anderson chooses to switch quickly between each of the separate parties, often allowing the audio of one party to play while visually showing another party. This gives the viewer a sense of real time, where each character is performing an action at the same time as every other character.

This scene also shows how the choice of shots can "alter our perception of space." Each party is a different balcony of the hotel, and by carefully placing the camera between the balconies, Anderson creates a sense of space and dimension within the scene. It is easy for the viewer to imagine where each character is in relation to other another, an because of the nature of the scene, this sense of spatial awareness helps with the understanding of the events of the fight.

Anderson uses theme in this scene to help the viewer favor one party over the others. Gustav and Zero and show in whimsical blue clothing holding boxes of cake, and through the fight the two hide behind a pillar. The opposing parties are all shows in dark clothes with large guns, and none of them are hiding. The themes that are associated with each character add a juxtaposition in the scene that creates a comedic effect, provides the viewer with a sense of discourse, and helps the viewer in feeling emotionally drawn towards the protagonists.

Carl and Ellie: A Sequence of Love

In his article Film, Space, & Mise-en-Scene, Bernard Dick covers the concept of a sequence which is defined as “a group of shots forming a self-contained segment of the film that is, by and large, intelligible in itself” (Dick 64). In other words, a sequence is a set of shots that are combined together to create a portion of the film that can essentially stand on its own. Audience members are likely able to understand that portion with or without the rest of the film. Dick covers three kinds of sequences in this article.

The first one is a linear sequence which is one that has “a beginning, a middle, and an end” where the beginning of the sequence “initiates the action”, the middle of it “adds to the action”, and the end of the sequence “follows and completes the action” (Dick 65).

The second one was the associative sequence where “scenes are linked together by an object or a series of objects” (Dick 67).  Unlike the linear sequence, “the beginning, middle, and end are visual rather than narrative” in an associative sequence (Dick 65). Instead of a bunch of different shots telling the story, it would be one shot or a bunch of shots focused on one thing telling it all. 

Last but not least, there is the montage that “consists of a series of shots related by some theme or mood” (Dick 65). The shots are “arranged in a particular order for a particular purpose” (Dick 68). They may or may not be in narrative order, and in fact, they may be in reverse order or jumbled up. In the end, however, whatever order the shots are in, there is a reason they are placed that way. These three types of sequences, while different in their own right, can overlap one another.

An excellent example of a sequence is the love sequence in the Pixar animated film Up. The sequence tells a story about the marriage of young Carl Frederickson and his former childhood friend Ellie. This sequence is primarily a linear sequence with a beginning, middle, and end.

The beginning initiates the whole thing with Carl and Ellie sharing their wedding kiss. The middle adds on to that and continues the story with Carl and Ellie moving forward with their marriage with events such as moving into a home, getting jobs at the zoo, going on picnics and dates, and most importantly, funding their dream trip to Paradise Falls, something heavily pursued after they find out that they cannot have children. After all of that, the sequence ends with Carl and Ellie sharing a final moment as Ellie dies of an illness before the two could ever embark on their dream journey. 

As mentioned earlier, sequences can overlap. This linear sequence that is Carl and Ellie’s marriage life overlaps with both of the other types of sequences. It can be seen as an associative sequence when Ellie is always tying Carl’s tie at the beginning of the day. As she does so, the viewer is initially unaware that both are aging as she is tying them until the camera shows their faces after several instances of her doing his tie. She first does his tie when the two are still young, but after a few more consecutive shots of her doing the same knot, the camera pans out to see they are slightly older. After another series of consecutive tie shots, we then see Carl and Ellie and senior-level ages.

A montage can be seen when they use a jar to collect change to fund their Paradise Falls trip. In the montage, there are many instances where they are filling the jar with money, and then when Carl injures himself, they end up having to break the jar to pay for medical expenses and as a result, have the start over on their trip fund. There are shots of the jars filling, Carl getting hurt, and then Ellie breaking the jar to pay for Carl’s accidents.

By incorporating all three types of sequences, the sequence of Carl and Ellie’s marriage is incredibly clear, strong, and does so much to the viewer emotionally without the viewer having to see or know what happens in the rest of the film.

Mindlessly in the Clouds

  

The article "Assembling the Shots" by Dick discusses a variety of tactics, such as rhythm and space, that a filmmaker has the ability to incorporate into their film. A film that applies these two tactics that Dick states in his article is Charlie St. Cloud.

This film is focused around a 19-year-old boy, Charlie St. Cloud, who loses his 10-year-old brother, Sam St. Cloud, in a tragic car accident just months before he intends to begin college. The filmmaker displays Charlie to the audience as frozen in time after the death of Sam. Charlie is unable to leave Massachusetts because of a promise he made to Sam to play baseball with him everyday at sunset no matter what. Due to that promise the film occurs in present day and in the mind of Charlie.

The beginning scenes of the film display Dick’s claim about rhythm, and a great film has no uniformity within its rhythm (81). This film portrays just that, for instance, the opening scene of the movie is shot over the ocean at an accelerated pace, the camera then pans over to Charlie and Sam on their sailboat competing in a sailing competition at the same pace. The speed of the movie continues at that accelerated pace until the competition ends. This scene works to support Dick’s claim how the variant speeds of scenes produce a rapid or slow rhythm for the film. The use of rapid rhythm causes an effect of suspension with the audience, wondering what is going to occur next. 

Towards the second half of the movie, the filmmaker incorporates space. He does this by introducing Tess into the storyline and into Charlie’s life. Tess is another sailor whose next excursion is to sail the world. A week prior to leaving, she attempts to sail the seas through a treacherous storm, despite being advised against it, and gets lost at sea. Because Charlie is stuck on the idea that he needs to be apart of Sam's world, he neglects to realize that in order to save Tess he must leave the comfort of Sam's world. Once Charlie comes to the realization that the time he spent with Tess was not a reality, he then makes the decision to leave Sam's world to save Tess. What the filmmaker depicts here is Dick's tactic of space.

Dick states that space is having the ability to correlate two events occurring at the same time, but in different places coherently as one (82). This occurs because Charlie thinks and believes that he has encountered Tess in present day, but he actually only sees her in his mind. Tess then attempts to lead Charlie back to reality to find her lost at sea.

The two tactics of rhythm and space within this film have the ability to create what Dick discusses as the continuity editing. Although they are only two elements, they have the ability to impact the viewer's perception.