First Movie!

In the past, we were given an assignment to watch and analyze movies of a specific genre to enhance our own project. The first movie that we watched was Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. We chose fantasy for our genre, so we went through fantasy movies made after 2013(as per criteria). We found a few good movies that we narrowed down to four. We wanted movies that were high fantasy, as that is what we are going for in our own project. This movie was obviously magical, as it comes from the Harry Potter series.

Something that comes to mind when talking Harry Potter is their wands and spells, which prevailed throughout the movie. Through the use of lighting, sound effects and no doubt editing, the spells truly came to life. There were POV shots from the angle of people under a spell(with pink lights and tingling bells for the love spell), when they teleported their bodies morphed, and the fire was controlled and of different colors than normal(CGI). The people who performed these spells were dressed for the time period, and with their old fashioned clothes there was some magical flare added. The makeup wasn’t overboard, and the only way you could tell the difference between the two sides was the harsh lighting for the evil, soft lighting for the good.

Other things to mention was the camera angles and shots. When in flight, the camera zoomed around, and when on the ground, the camera looked slightly handheld during some intense moments to make the action more fluid, immersing you. When there wasn’t any action there would be close ups of Newt’s magical creatures, and when the villain shows up, sometimes the shot would start from the shoes and pan up to the face. In one scene there was a canted angle down a hallway which gave a strong feeling of uneasiness, showing the otherworldliness of it. Of course, in every scene there was always multiple angles to observe all the magic. Whether it be a shot-reverse-shot during conversation or the many angled of fleeing from a magical creature.

Speaking of magical creatures, there were a lot of them. They were CGI, and they weren’t the only things CGI. There was a table that had a magical pool in the middle of it, giving off a glow, showing characters. There were many demonstrations of floating water. Dumbledore covered the whole town in mist. There were house elves and their tools that moved by themselves. There was a feather floating and leading the characters. CGI really has come a long way, as it was well done. Of course, not all of it was CGI, like some of the technology looked like puppets. Puppets would be more manageable if we were going to consider doing something like that. And then there was the sound! Every creature and spell had its own sound, most likely made in a foley studio. Which is also something we might consider doing for our sound effects.

We took a lot of notes on what we could do, that we liked from the movies. From this one, the lighting and camera angles were something we saw we could do. Unfortunately, CGI seems a little far out of our league, so even though we liked it, is isn’t something we can apply. Another thing that we can’t use is the kind of establishing shots they take. The camera is high in the sky and swoops down, and we don’t have a drone or the time to do this, although it would be fun.