Monday 20 January 2014

German Movies 1920's



The next thing I will conduct research on is lighting effects and crazy concepts. One of the famous genre of movies who feature this characteristic is 1920’s German movies.

There is a 1920’s German horror movie called Genuine. This is an usual movie because the clips use many hues rather than black and white. One of the most noticeable scenes in the entire movie is the woman moving strangely but elegantly moving in the hairdresser. On 23:56, the black background and the lighting makes her look something out of the world of imagination. The number of cuts is low because her body movement is slow. This enables the clip to show that she signifies something strange. 

On 24:12, the main focal point is the man’s facial expression.The hairdresser has an unfamiliar suit and hair style. To audiences, such as myself, this comes across as eccentric but people living in the 1920’s would have found this usual to watch movies with this characteristic. The light also reflects on his skin, creating more contrast between the shadows and the highlights areas. This causes his face to be very noticeable. I realised that there is shadow surrounding the clip, making it stand out. 

The overall clips gives a disturbing impression. The sound of a strange soundtrack and the fascinating scenes entices me to get influenced by this style. Although I cannot use one soundtrack on the video, it is a great idea to play with the audio. Maybe I would use my own sounds rather than use somebody else’s work. 


Lets talk about the technique, Ica and VP-Ensign are among of camera that may have been used for production. Very old recorders must be used to record the music and then insert it into the silent movie. 


The main thing I want to focus on this research is the theme and the shadows. The most frightening and iconic scene is the shadow clip at 0:28 until 0:34. Having the light source reflecting on the wall causes the shadow to stand out. The scene is quite imitating because the black and white colour scheme, the loud audio and best of all the unclear indexical signifier. The connection of the indexical signifier and what it signifies is unclear because there is no visible human or object causing the shadow to appear. 

In semiotics, a shadow immediately symbolises a horror movie. As mentioned on the previous paragraph, the shadow is an indexical signifier that has a blurry connection with it signifies. This  invisible phenomenon is either a ghost or an illusion. 

To achieve this effect, the lighting had to be very bright. It is most likely that the lights with large lamps and stand were used in this production. 

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