Love and Death (Woody Allen)

Today, we will watch the film Love and Death. As you watch, please pay attention to the camera shots Allen is using to tell his story.

Additionally, the use of farce, hyperbole, mistaken identity, and absurdity are rampant in the film. Notice how these comedic techniques are used in the film. You, too, can use these techniques in your own writing! Wow!

Woody Allen is parodying various famous films. Here's a few clips of shots that he is taking directly from famous films:
Ingmar Bergman Persona
Ingmar Bergman Seventh Seal
Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potempkin
Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky

Eventually, you are going to be asked (again and again) to write film reviews. Most newspapers utilize film and theater reviewers. If you learn the basics, you may have a future career. It all starts here in 10th grade.
Advice about writing a film review.

HOMEWORK: Please read A Streetcar Named Desire. Conduct a play review for this play (due Jan. 5). In your review, use a hook or grab our attention, research enough of the play and its history to explain to your audience its place in history. When was it written, who first produced it and where? Then go on to discuss the characters, setting, plot events, and theme. Your review should be about 5 paragraphs in length (2-3 pages, double spaced, for example). Use details from the text to support your opinion about the play.

Camera Shots (Vocabulary)

Please learn the following basic film vocabulary.

Shot: How much subject matter is included within the frame of the screen.
In general, shots are determined on the basis of how much of the human figure is in view. Additionally, a shot is also an unedited strip of film, recording images from the time the camera starts to the time it stops.

Types:

1. extreme long shot - taken from a great distance, almost always an exterior shot; shows much of the setting or locale. They serve as spatial frames of reference. Used where locale plays an important role. (Historical, epics, westerns, etc.)

2. long shot (proscenium shot) - About the distance one would be from the theatre stage to the audience. Usually includes complete human form to a distance less extreme than the ELS.

3. Full shot - Fits the whole human form in the frame of the camera.

4. Medium shot - Usually contains a figure from the knees or waist up. It is useful for shooting exposition scenes, for minor movement and for dialogue.
A. Two shot (two people in the shot, usually from waist up)
B. Three shot (three people crowded in the shot)
C. Over the shoulder (focal point is the person the viewer can see, shot over another character's "shoulder" to show POV

5. Close up - Usually a person’s face (or neck and shoulders). Concentrates on a relatively small object. Elevates the importance of small details, often symbolic.

6. Extreme close up - Focuses on a very small item. The item usually fills the frame. Used to elevate importance of small details; again, often symbolic.

7. Deep Focus Shot (wide angle shot) - A long shot with many focal distances. Shot captures objects at close, medium and long ranges simultaneously.

Camera Movement Shots

8. Pan, panning shot: (short for panorama), a revolving horizontal movement of the camera from left to right or vice versa.

9. Tracking shot, trucking shot, dolly shot: A shot taken from a moving vehicle. Originally tracks were laid on the set to permit a smoother movement of the camera.

10. Crane shot: A shot taken from a crane (mechanical arm) which carries the cinematographer and the camera to move in any direction, vertical or horizontal.

A Streetcar Named Desire (notes)

Streetcar Named Desire is one of those standard classics that you can use on a Regents exam, as well as learn good playwriting from Williams. What follows is a little help in unlocking the enigma of the play.

A Streetcar Named Desire can be described as an elegy, or poetic expression of mourning, for an Old South that died in the first part of the twentieth century.
The plot of A Streetcar Named Desire is driven by the dueling personalities of Blanche and Stanley (protagonist and antagonist).

1. Light is used as a motif and symbol in the play. Consider what its presence or absence indicates. Particularly, what does it mean as a personal symbol for Blanche?
2. Williams uses sound as a dramatic device. When and what does Blanche hear music? Look for this sort of symbolism throughout the play. Music helps create tone, as well.
3. Mitch is different from the other men in the play. He is a contrast to Stanley's brutishness. Williams uses Mitch as a complication for Blanche, and a contrast to Stanley.
4. Likewise Stella contrasts her sister Blanche.

The two most complex characters in the play are Blanche and Stanley.

Blanche DuBois

"When the play begins, Blanche is already a fallen woman in society's eyes. Her family fortune and estate are gone, she lost her young husband to suicide years earlier, and she is a social pariah due to her indiscrete sexual behavior. She also has a bad drinking problem, which she covers up poorly. Behind her veneer of social snobbery and sexual propriety, Blanche is an insecure, dislocated individual. She is an aging Southern belle who lives in a state of perpetual panic about her fading beauty. She does not want to belong in this setting, but she fits in quite nicely to our image of New Orleans as a cesspit and ancient behemoth. Stanley quickly sees through Blanche's act and seeks out information about her past.

In the Kowalski household, Blanche pretends to be a woman who has never known indignity. Her false propriety is not simply snobbery, however; it constitutes a calculated attempt to make herself appear attractive to new male suitors. Blanche depends on male sexual admiration for her sense of self-esteem, which means that she has often succumbed to passion. By marrying, Blanche hopes to escape poverty and the bad reputation that haunts her. But because the chivalric Southern gentleman savior and caretaker (represented by the ideal Shep Huntleigh) she hopes will rescue her is extinct, Blanche is left with no realistic possibility of future happiness. As Blanche sees it, Mitch is her only chance for contentment, even though he is far from her ideal.

Stanley's relentless persecution of Blanche foils her pursuit of Mitch as well as her attempts to shield herself from the harsh truth of her situation. The play chronicles the subsequent crumbling of Blanche's self-image and sanity. Stanley himself takes the final stabs at Blanche, destroying the remainder of her sexual and mental esteem by raping her and then committing her to an insane asylum. In the end, Blanche blindly allows herself to be led away by a kind doctor, ignoring her sister's cries. This final image is the sad culmination of Blanche's vanity and total dependence upon men for happiness."

Stanley Kowalski

"Audience members may well see Stanley as an egalitarian hero at the play's start. He is loyal to his friends and passionate to his wife. Stanley possesses an animalistic physical vigor that is evident in his love of work, of fighting, and of sex. His family is from Poland, and several times he expresses his outrage at being called “Polack” and other derogatory names. When Blanche calls him a “Polack,” he makes her look old-fashioned and ignorant by asserting that he was born in America, is an American, and can only be called “Polish.” Stanley represents the new, heterogeneous America to which Blanche doesn't belong, because she is a relic from a defunct social hierarchy. He sees himself as a social leveler, as he tells Stella in Scene Eight.

Stanley's intense hatred of Blanche is motivated in part by the aristocratic past Blanche represents. He also (rightly) sees her as untrustworthy and does not appreciate the way she attempts to fool him and his friends into thinking she is better than they are. Stanley's animosity toward Blanche manifests itself in all of his actions toward her—his investigations of her past, his birthday gift to her, his sabotage of her relationship with Mitch.

In the end, Stanley's down-to-earth character proves harmfully crude and brutish. His chief amusements are gambling, bowling, sex, and drinking, and he lacks ideals and imagination. His disturbing, degenerate nature, first hinted at when he beats his wife, is fully evident after he rapes his sister-in-law. Stanley shows no remorse for his brutal actions. The play ends with an image of Stanley as the ideal family man, comforting his wife as she holds their newborn child. The wrongfulness of this representation, given what we have learned about him in the play, ironically calls into question society's decision to ostracize Blanche." (both taken from Sparknotes)

Mitch and Stella provide Stanley and Blanche with appropriate foils. They complete the possible futures for Stanley/Stella and Blanche/Mitch.

There is a lot in this play (as in all Tenessee Williams' work). Characters are complex, plot is driven by the desires of its characters, conflict is nicely supported through characterization, setting is significant, and literary devices such as symbolism run rampant through its pages. No wonder the world knows this play. It is fine play writing. Read it. Learn.

10 Minute Play Script Draft Due! & Tennessee Williams

During period 7, please complete your 10-minute play scripts. Have a partner read your script during period 7 and correct any formatting or spelling/punctuation/grammar problems before turning in. Print and turn in.

Period 8: please collect A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams. When you arrive back in class, please read and take notes on the link above. We will begin a look at Streetcar in class today.

10-Minute Play Script Draft

Keep on truckin' er writin'. Today please continue working on your 10-minute play. You should be almost done (if not completed) by the end of today's class. The play draft, however, is not due this evening.

Amiri Baraka Visits RIT. If you go to this event, write a short response to your experience and you'll get extra credit!

10-Minute Play Script Draft

Today please work on your 10-minute play draft #1.

Your play should have:

1. At least 2 characters. Limit your cast to 5 or 6 at the most. This is a short play. Each character should have a purpose and reason to be on stage. Give your characters motivation.
2. Your play should have a title. Title your play the feeling, emotion, or concept you chose for your theme.
3. Include a cast list with a short (1-2 sentence) description of each character.
4. Your play should open with a short description of the setting. Only include the most essential props or set design. It is custom to give your characters SOMETHING TO DO when you introduce them. Give a character some action at the beginning of the play.
5. Format your script properly. Use the links and format described on the previous post (or follow the format found in your Woody Allen books).
6. A 10-minute play is roughly 6-12 pages in length. The more monologues and speeches your characters give, the longer the play. Short dialogue runs a little quicker.
7. Keep your play in one setting. Keep the momentum of the play moving! No changing scenes!
8. Write dialogue the way people talk. Avoid overusing: "well," or "um", or "so", or "like." Allow the actor to throw these in if he/she needs to. Write in SHORT DECLARATIVE SENTENCES or FRAGMENTS.
9. If a character interrupts another, use an em-dash to indicate this. Pauses are traditionally inserted as "pause" or "beat" -- the time it takes a short exchange of dialogue between two characters. Ellipsis are used for trailing off...

Also: Coffeehouse tonight! Use SOME time in lab to prepare your piece if you are performing.

God & Woody Allen Comedy Script

Today we will be reading the script God by Woody Allen.

When we have completed the play reading, please go back to your brainstorming notes.

Choose the best concept, human condition, or feeling (see previous post) and write a 10-minute play (about 6-10 pages) in script format. Your play can be any topic or style, but you should have a central theme that speaks to your chosen concept.

NOTE ABOUT FORMATTING A PLAY SCRIPT:

There are generally two different types of play script format. One is preferred over the other, although some literary managers will accept either.

Please link to this website for advice and examples of correct script formatting. You may also look at how the script is formatted in Woody Allen's book. This is also correct.

Death & Last Day

This is the last day of the marking period.

Today, before we continue reading: please brainstorm in your journal/notebook a human condition or feeling. Make a list of these: for example: life, God, death, love, justice, gluttony, etc.

Let's continue reading Death. After completing this play, please work on updating your portfolio with your fiction or revising your Hemingway stories. These are due by Monday, Dec. 6.