Inglorious Bastards Review

The Spaghetti Western genre, named after its Italian origin, is a film genre typically based in rural areas and has conventions such as overly violent action, using less dialogue, and adding music to illustrate the scene. Quentin Tarantino uses this genre in his WWII film Inglorious Bastards. He uses this genre due to not only its violence, but I imagine he chose it as well due to the Spaghetti Western's theme of isolation. In his film he had recurring incidents of betrayal, due to a character's own desires. He designed most of the characters as if they were alone fighting the war instead of with a group, such as characters like Hans Landa, Bridget von Hammersmark, and Shosanna Dreyfus. Those characters took actions toward what they thought was right instead of what they were told to do. This is very prevalent in the Spaghetti Western genre. In the genre most of the time is was one lone cowboy against the world, he was also not always a man of great character as he killed people for seemingly small reasons, just as the characters in Inglorious Bastards have committed deadly crimes. Overall, his choice to use the Spaghetti Western genre I felt was necessary for the film to be as good as it was.

This film also had many 'twists and turns' as many times we were unaware of what came next. Quentin Tarantino killed off main characters, used betrayal, and even made characters who were 'evil' seem comical and approachable, subverting the audiences expectations. I remember watching the tavern scene and to my surprise two important people of the American army were killed. Also, at the end of the movie when Hans Landa wanted to switch to the American side in order to save his life I was shocked, because I saw him as a character that would do anything for his country. One last thing that I didn’t expect was to like Hans and Frederick when they were Nazis. They were comical and even seemed somewhat nice, really humanizing the characters which I didn’t expect. These choices kept the film interesting as we never knew who was going to live, who to trust, and whether to like a character or not.

Critique Reflection

Our film had very positive feedback. Many complemented us on using design principals and how we did well acting and costuming. What I feel we did best with was our design. Our camera man made sure to use the rule of thirds whenever he had the chance. This made the scene easy to follow and pleasing to the eye. We also used some horizontal and leading lines. What we need a little improvement on is maybe our lighting and audio. Our lighting was very warm although the original clip was cool toned and our audio was a bit loud at some points because we had trouble when trying to shoot with the zoom recorder. Also personally I believe I could have spoken louder and more clear as an actor, as well as been more enthusiastic as my character.

My personal strengths I believe are camera angles and movements as well as some acting and editing. I definitely feel I can improve on those by purposely adding design principals and using rule of thirds when filming as well as more closely identifying my character so I understand how the lines are spoken. Also because editing is my favorite part of filming I can try to add more effects or interesting overlays/transitions according to my film. My weaknesses are audio and lighting. With audio I have trouble making the audio levels the same as well as making background sound loud enough to be heard without overpowering the actors and lighting is difficult for me because I have trouble lighting the face without washing the actor out. For future projects I believe I can just add more rule of thirds and design principals and try harder at acting. When editing I can try different transitions and overlays and for audio match the levels and not drown out voice with background noise. Also, for lighting I will just have to test how to light an actor as well as maybe trying to use back light.

Selecting A Film Genre

A type of film I feel would be good for filming in school is a thriller. With this genre we can make some sort of murder mystery or another type of suspenseful film. As school is our only setting I feel with this genre we have many different directions and opportunities with the materials we have. Also, with thrillers we are able to show off advanced camera angles and movements. Like Alfred Hitchcock and Rear Window (1954) I believe we could film something different from the normal camera movements and story plots. Using sound, acting, camera angles/movements and more I believe we could create a truly suspenseful film.