Terminator rationale

Terminator:

A robot is sent from the future on a deadly mission. He has to kill Sarah Connor, a young woman whose life will be very significant in the future. Sarah has only one protector, Kyle Reese also sent from the future. The Terminator uses his exceptional intelligence and strength to find Sarah, and they don't know if there is a way to try and stop the indestructible robot.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Terminator
Michael Biehn: Kyle Reese
Linda Hamilton: Sarah Connor


In this clip we can see the terminator searching for his target, Sarah Connor. He manes to just barge through the security, crushing a man's hand in the process. His mision is to kill the victim so he will not stop. The terminator searches around the club for her scanning for his target as he goes. When he spotts her, he walks up to her, takes out his pistol and aims it straight at her head. Luckily Kyle Reese is there with a shotgun, and he manages to save her just in time. But the terminator brushes off the shotgun shot like it was nothing. This is when we discover that the weapons we have today are no match for a cyborg from the future. The lighting in this scene is typical of a club, but they added smoke for atmosphere, but it could also be present in a club.


 In this clip we can see just how relentless the terminator is. The terminator has just been burned by an exploding fuel truck, removing the flesh that was the only thing that could disguise him as a human. He chases Kyle and Sarah through a factory, when Kyle sticks a bomb in the terminators pelvis. It explodes and the terminator seems defeated, but he isn't . Kyle was killed by the terminator, in a fight before he can stick the bomb in. Even after he has had his legs blown off, he still manages to drag himself along, still trying to kill her. This shows that his only purpose is to kill his target, and he will stop at nothing. The terminator is finally destroyed by a large press that was conveniently lifted just before. In this short clip, there are many low angle shots of the terminator, which presents him as a big threat. There is very clever lighting in this scene, this presents the kind of lighting you would find in a closed factory, very well.

In this film the robot is portrayed as a machine with enough intelligence to act like a human, so that nobody suspects a thing. But he is mechanical enough to feel no pain, and to never give up on his mission until he is dead. He is very hard to kill, because the weapons we have today are almost useless. He is only really a threat to one person in this era, but in the future, when there are many terminators, the whole of the human race will be at risk. 

Pacific rim rationale

Pacific Rim:

Pacific rim is a film set in the near future. Giant aliens have invaded not from space, but from a portal deep in the pacific ocean. These aliens just kept on coming, so humans decided to fight back, by building giant robots to fight the alien monsters. After his brother was killed in a fight with the aliens, our main character, Raleigh, has to fight alongside a trainee from Japan. They discover that they both have had bad encounters with the Aliens in the past.

Charlie Hunnam: Raleigh Becket
Idris Elba: Stacker Pentecost
Rinko Kikuchi: Mako Mori


In this clip we see the build up to the fight scenes. Parts of some of the fight scenes. We also see how scared people are of  the aliens, and how much they are relieved for the existence of the robots. This film mostly contains CGI. We see the well made suits that the pilots of the robot wear. There is a good effect when the camera shakes when the helicopter flies past. Most of the shots from a low angle are to make us fear giant aliens, in most shots we don't see their faces. But during the fights, the cameras are at angles that give us the best view of the action.

In this clip we see part of a fight between one of the robots and one of the aliens. You see how the alien is portrayed as quite stupid but a very strong opponent. But also how the robot has upgraded weapons and tactics. Since the robots have no expressions and can't feel emotions, shots of the pilots inside the robots are used.

In this movie, the robots have no mind of their own, they are completely controlled by their human pilots. They show how helpless the humans are without the robots weapons and hard outer body armour. But also how useless the robots are without their pilots. In most films robots are portrayed as machines that develop minds of their own, and take over the world. It's nice to see a film where they are portrayed as our saviours for once.

I robot rationale

iRobot:

iRobot is a film set in 2035. A policeman who is not pleased with the fact that robots are living beside humans, and helping them in everyday life. A new generation of robots is launched, and they are available to all people. But on the same day, the very man who invented the robots is murdered, and the only suspect is a robot that appears to be able to feel emotions like a human.

Will smith: Del Spooner
Bridget Moynahan: Susan Calvin
Alan Tudyk: Sonny


In this clip the robot named sonny is being interrogated for the murder of his creator. This is when they discover that he thinks like a human, because he can feel emotions and learn.


This clip is a good overall view of the whole film. It shows the main ideas and a few of the chaotic fight scenes. It also has some of the thought provoking and impactful quotes recorded by the man, to help spooner to find out exactly what is going on.

In this movie, the robots have to obey three rules that prevent them from harming humans. They cannot feel emotions like a human. And are mostly controlled by a main program named V.I.K.I.

Film rationales

Main idea:

I am researching the idea that film producers portray robots as taking over the humans, and trying to kill them. But in few other films they are portrayed as our saviours. The films I have chosen show that if robots are left to think for themselves, they will rebel and kill humans. But if we control them, we can use them as defence machines.

Production journal

PRODUCTION JOURNAL FOR A 5 MINUTE FILM

Director: Callum
Cinematographer: Aaron
Editor: Sam (me)

Original plan: Our original plan was to film a film of a similar style, except it took place in an abandoned asylum. All was going well until we had to try to get inside the asylum. This was very difficult because all the doors were borded up, so we had to squeeze in through a window, with all the equipment. This really broke everyones concentration and our footage was not good. And we didn't want to go back to film, because it would be such a hassle again.

Pre filming planing : We didn't have a very long time to plan our films, or rewrite the scripts. Since we scrapped our original plans of filming in an abandoned asylum. We decided to film in the woods around our school farm. We had a few weeks to write a script and prepare everything needed. And we managed to pull it off just in time.

Film day 1: We arrived at the woods early in the morning and used the crane almost straight away. It took some time to get our concentration up, but we managed to film scene 1 by lunch. We had our lunch at 1 o clock, and filmed all afternoon to almost finnish scene 2. No strange occurrences this day.

Film day 2: We arrived at the woods at the same time and got our concentration up straight away. We finished scene 2, and got halfway through scene 3 by lunch time. We had lunch around the same time as the day before. And then set off to finnish scene 3 and half of scene 4, since the end of scene 4 takes place indoors. During filming one of our actors tripped over a brach and badly hurt their wrist. We sat down to talk about what happened that day. When a man creeped up behind us, he appeared to just be looking for mushrooms. But it was still a little suspicious, and we decided to return back to our school.

Film day 3: We started to name our clips and we had done so by 10 o clock. I then started a rough edit and finished the first scene by lunch. I then edited all afternoon and managed to edit every clip we needed.

Post filming: Trimming down the clips to get the best continuity and cut down on the time to improve pace. We also filmed the final scenes after school and during lunchtime, for the twist ending. That evening, after school, we started to edit the final part of our film. But something had to go wrong. When we listened to the footage again, everybody had a much deeper voice, and the editing program kept jumping around. Our sound recording mic on the camera was broken, so we had no sound. Luckily, we had recorded backup sound on a sound recording device, unfortunately, this sounded even deeper than the original footage. This was very frustrating, and we didn't know if there was something wrong with the program, or if was just rendering slowly.

Super 8

Super 8

A group of friends are making a film about zombies for a competition. They decide that it would be a good Idea to go to a train stop to do some filming. When they see a train approaching, they decide that this will add production value. When one of them spots a car driving along the tracks, the train hits it, and derails almost killing the children. The train dumps it's cargo everywhere, small shapeshifting cubes, and something appears to be alive in one of the trailers. They find that the driver was a biology teacher, who told them to tell nobody about this, as the police arrive they drive away.

The next few days are chaotic, people and dogs disappearing all over town, power cuts, the camera broke too. The main boy is told that he cannot go outside with that girl anymore, who is then taken by the alien, and his dad is captured by the military. Who then start an artificial fire to evacuate the whole town, the boys now know that the military is hiding something.

The strangely escape back in to town, to find the biology teachers room. They find classified film's about an alien landing in a ship made of shapeshifting cubes. They are caught and are on the way back to the evacuation site, when the bus is attacked by the alien. This is the first time we see the aliens face, just before he bites the commanders head off. The boys escape and decide to try and find the girl and save her.

They get to a spot where there is a garage with mud on the windows. They break in and find tunnels leading to a spot under the water tower, where the alien keeps the bodies of the stolen people. They find the girl and cause a distraction by setting off all the fireworks. They are trying to find their way out of the lair, when the alien spots them he chases them and picks up the main boy. He tells the alien that not everybody is mean and that he will help him. They get let out and the alien starts up the auto rebuild mechanism for his ship. When they get outside the small cubes are being attracted together on top of the water tower. But it needs extra materials to work, so bicycles and other metal objects are attracted to the base. The alien climbs in to the ship, but it needs one more bit. So the main boy lets the necklace of his dead mother go and pierce the water tower, setting the space ship off in to space.

Characters

Joel Courtney : Joe Lamb

Ryan Lee : Cary

Zach Mills : Preston

Gabriel Basso : Martin

Elle Fanning : Alice dainard

Filming Styles

Mostly this film was Sci-fi and at some times it was quite scary. Also a mystery film because the boys were trying to find out what was going on. There were some funny moments in the film, but quite allot of it happened in dark conditions.

War of the worlds 2005

War of the worlds (2005)

Plot:

In new york, Mr. Ferrier has to look after his children for the weekend. There is a strange lightning storm, which has silent lightning that strikes only in one place and cuts of all electricity, phones, watches and cars. As people run to the spot where it hit, a huge tripod emerges from the ground, gets out some disintegrator guns and starts destroying the city.

Everybody runs away, but Mr. Ferrier finds a working car. And drives to a house with a basement, during the night a plane crashes in to the house. So they decide to get the boat to boston. As they have one of the only working cars, there is a fight and they lose the car, so they have to walk.

When they finally get to the boat, an alien tripod comes from under the sea, and sinks the boat. They manage to swim to safety, and run for the hills, where the son decides to join the army. The remaining 2 find a house with a man, who is obsessed with trying to kill the aliens. He nearly gets them killed on many occasions, then he goes crazy, and Mr. ferrier decides to kill him.

The aliens find them in the house, and put them in cages that hang full of prisoners. Luckily he throws a grenade inside the tripod, and blows it up, freeing everybody. When he manages to get to boston, he finds aliens dyeing all around him. They find the house and he returns the child, to find that the son has already got home. Bacteria had killed the aliens.

Character

Tom Cruise : Ray Ferrier

Dakota Franning : Rachel Ferrier

Justin Chatwin : Robbie Ferrier

Miranda Otto : Mary Ann Davis

Filming Styles

Quite modern, allot of close ups, and slightly copied story line. There were allot of “edge of your seat” moments. The effects were very good, although the aliens were a little blurry.

Background Research

9/11 is the date when the twin business towers were bombed by commercial aircraft, killing many people. A sleeper cell agent is an undercover terrorist, who stays in a country for years until given orders to commit an act of terrorism. Guantanamo bay is a prison where bad people are trained, the enemy within is knowing that bad things are inside you.