The textbook explains mise-en-scene as every element in the frame that contributes to the overall look of the film. The author says that its quite literally everything “set design, costume, hair, make-up, color scheme, framing, composition, lighting… Basically, if you can see it, it contributes to the mise-en–scène.” (3). A good example that is used in the textbook are the films of Wes Anderson which are known to be kind of “every frame a painting” kind of films that are dripping in atmosphere and motif. You know when you are seeing a Wes Anderson film because of his intense detail in setting, lighting, color, and composition. Here is a fun little youtube video by GripUp about Mise-en-Scene (Understanding Mise-en-scene (Links to an external site.))
Some typical and extreme elements of the mise-en-scene in Blade Runner 2049 are the use of orange and blue lighting and composition juxtaposed with the dirty brown and metallic city setting. The post apocalyptic California and Nevada settings take places we know as familiar and turn them into a hellscape that is near unrecognizable. The costumes and make up pay a lot of homage to the original film. The staging often time shows K as diminutive or set apart from his superiors and co workers showing that he is not seen as an equal. The film uses a lot of typical sci-fi framing tropes.
The author speaks about how a character can inhabit a performance and how we as the audience can “examine the physical design” of performance or character. The performances in Blade Runner 2049 are heavily stylized. Ryan Goslings performance as K is noir and subdues showing him as an outcast and someone who doesn’t have a place in society outside of his function. That changes when he starts to believe that he may have been born vs made and Gosling is able to show some emotional range. Harrison Ford as Deckard gives a standoutperformance as a man also living on the outskirts of society. His performance is subdued, and he shows us the weight of the burden he has been carrying in subtle but fantastic ways.
The cinematography in the film is outstanding giving us a mixture of these giant sweeping shots of the city versus more close ups of the characters. The movie is dark and mysterious and fraught with intrigue. Some of the static shots like the early scene where K is interrogating Sapper Morton played by Dave Bautista have so much anxious pent-up energy in them. We as the audience are really put on the edge of our seats by shots like those.
Special Effects
The special effects in the movie are excellent, one really innovative and interesting affect comes when Joi, K’s virtual girlfriend, hires a real girl played by Mackenzie Davis to make love to K. The film overlaps Jois face onto the human Davis and blends the two in a really new and never before seen way. Another cool effect is when K’s car is shot down and we see a kite gun attract lightning to short circuit the car.
Functions
The elements at play in Blade Runner 2049 like mise-en-scene, lighting, performance, cinematography, and FX make the world feel inhabited but alien. They advance the story and force the audience to ask and examine a lot of tough philosophical questions
The textbook explains mise-en-scene as every element in the frame that contributes to the overall look of the film. The author says that its quite literally everything “set design, costume, hair, make-up, color scheme, framing, composition, lighting… Basically, if you can see it, it contributes to the mise-en–scène.” (3). A good example that is used in the textbook are the films of Wes Anderson which are known to be kind of “every frame a painting” kind of films that are dripping in atmosphere and motif. You know when you are seeing a Wes Anderson film because of his intense detail in setting, lighting, color, and composition. Here is a fun little youtube video by GripUp about Mise-en-Scene (Understanding Mise-en-scene (Links to an external site.))
Some typical and extreme elements of the mise-en-scene in Super Size Me are how Spurlock jams a lot his frames and sequences with the happy bright colors and characters associated with fast food chains like McDonalds. The locations are often in the fast-food restaurants with lots of bright red and yellow with bright lighting. He uses the food as a prop, we often see him holding up the sickly-looking big macs, chicken tenders, French fries, and sodas. The staging is specifically done to make sure that they are in the frame and in a lot of the frames we will see the cardboard cutouts of characters like Ronald McDonals, the Hamburgler, Grimace, and the like. These bright caricatures are often juxtaposed with him sitting down after the meal in the back of a car or a dimly lit apartment with him looking absolutely sick to his stomach.
The author speaks about how a character can inabit a performance and how we as the audience can “examine the physical dsign” of performance or character. While Super Size Me is a documentary I think that Spurlock does exaggerate his performance to get a desired effect. He plays into the happiness and ecstasy of eating the fast food and then will also play into how much he is suffering after eating it. Not to say that he wasn’t actually feelingall of these things but rather he just makes those emotions a bit bigger so that we can feel it through the screen. I think of the scene where he acts like a grade school child eating his big mac only to vomit it all up in the parking lot just a few minutes later. He is undoubtedly the star performer of the film but I also think that the doctors he goes to see also exaggerate their performances. I think of the Saudi endocrinologist who tells him hes going to die if he continues his experimental diet and I think he too was playing up his character a bit.
The cinematography of the filmis fairly typical. We do see a lot of narrow shots that focus on Spurlock and his ecstasy or discomfort. We also get lots of longshots of him sitting alone after the McBinges showing how isolating and lonely he’s feeling while he’s in pain. The cinematography relates to the documentary genre in that it feels pretty low budget but candid so that we really feel like we are watching this honest transformation of a man letting his health slide to prove a point. I remember watching an Italian docudrama profiling a heroin addiction and Super Size Me reminds me of that quite a bit.
Special Effects
I do not believe that there were any special effects used in the documentary, at least not to my knowledge.
Functions
I think that the function here is to profile the destructive capability of regular fast-food consumption. The film really shows in excruciating detail just how adverse the physiological and psychological effects of this food really are.
In Blade Runner 2049 cinematographer Roger Deakins utilizes a lot of move in/move out shots to show the vast sprawl of the dirty squaller that has become LA, SD, and Las Vegas in 2049. For instance the opening sequence mimics the original Blade Runner with an extreme long shot of the city then moves closer and focuses on our protagonist (Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford, respectively). He used a hybrid blend of classical and contemporary shooting styles that harken back to the original movie while also building on his innovative computer controlled rigs to shoot and make the lights of the cityscape feel bustling and alive. Two sequences that really stand out are the opening tracking shot of K arriving to investigate the protein farm, it sets the stage for the barren wasteland inhabited by the rejected replicants of society seeking to evade destruction by a society that now views them as a liability. The other is the Las Vegas sequence which is dripping in noir and brilliant orange and blue lighting that brings life to the once bustling city. These sequences use space and time to build a world that is both familiar and alien all at the same time.
The film does follow a classical 3 act structure, first following our McGuffin protagonist, K, as he does his menial detective job. The inciting incident is when he finds that the bones that were buried in Sapper Mortons front yard are a replicants bones, and that she had a child (something that was thought to be impossible). This set K off into act II where the rising action takes place. He finds that Wallace is interested in investigating as well for nefarious purposes like creating a replicant disposable work force. The movie compartmentalizes information and for the most part we are learning revelations as K does. He begins to think that he is not a replicant made, but one born, and this changes his entire outlook. Act III dispels that notion and we find out along with K that he was wrong, he is not special, he’s a replicant just like the others. But act III shows us that it is not some lineage or prophecy that can make the protagonist a hero, it is the actions of the protagonist himself. K goes and saves Deckard from being taken to Wallaces off world location where they had planned to torture him for information.
The film is an argument about humanity and about the validity of life. What makes humanity so intrinsically special? Are replicants not valid living beings? Do they have a soul? The film is also a lot like poetry, rhyming and echoing the philosophies and themes of the original movie. The movie doesn’t spoon feed you its ideology and the audience is left to make meaning of the story when it ends. Personally, I feel that the story emphasizes that we assign our own meaning, our own humanity, and purpose to life. We should not be constrained by the rigid rules and ideologies set forth by society, but rather carve out our own path, meaning, and purpose out of life.
A sequence is “a series of edited shots characterized by inherent unity of theme and purpose” (Barsam and Monohan pg. 453). Whereas a scene is “a complete unit of plot action taking a place in a continuous time frame in a single location” (Barsam and Monohan pg. 453). There are many scenes within the documentary Supersize me but the two that stick out the most to me are when Spurlock begin’s his journey with excitement with his first purchase to mcdonald’s. The second scene is when he meet’s with his healthcare team and they all say he should stop the documentary as it is wreaking havoc on his body and mental health. The chunks of the film are expressed with different themes which all lead to the same plot. I would break this film into 4 chunks the first is the. Beginning of his journey to about a week in, then the second week, the third week and lastly the 4th Critics refer to the movie in significant parts.
Some of the the scenes/sequences discussed this week that are readily apparent in Super Size Me and used gratuitously throughout the documentary ate three shots and montage sequences. The documentary loves to show us a shot of the thing: usually an unhealthy McDonalds food item, the person (Morgan Spurlock the film maker and guinea pig), and then a shot of the person with the thing (Morgan chowing down on a Big Mac, Mcrib, Quarter pounder, etc.). These shots really highlight the slow creeping addiction that Spurlock experiences throughout the movie. At first we see him precariously holding up the food, like he is repulsed by it, like it is a danger to him (which it totally is). Then he starts to get addicted to the food, and we see the three shot change, with Morgan holding up the food happily like an elementary aged schoolboy who’s been begging to go to Micky D’s all week and now he’s finally got it, except Spurlock is doing it 3 times a day all month long. Then towards the end he seems truly exhausted when holding up the food, like its heavy, a weight dragging him down (again, it totally is).
The film also uses a very liberal amount of montages showing the marketing McDonalds and other foods put out, with happy smiling in shape folks chowing down on calorically dense nutritionally defunct foods. These montages are juxtaposed with Spurlock narrating about the evils of the food and the myriad of health problems that they are causing to millions around the world. That juxtaposition is where the film really succeeds as it highlights the dissonance between what we’re being told about the food (Its good, it will make you happy, it can be part of a healthy diet) and the morbid reality of its negative effects on our society.
Protagonist is defined by “the primary character who pursues the goal” (Barsam and Monoham pg 120). Whereas Antagonist is defined as “the character, creature, or force that obstructs or resists the protagonist pursuit of his or her goal” (Barsam and Monohan pg. 443). Obstacles are “Events, circumstances, and actions that impede a protagonists’ pursuit of the goal. Often originate from an antagonist and are central to a narrative conflict” (Barsam and Monohan pg. 450). The protagonist is Spurlock. The goal of the film are to observe the changes that occur when eating McDonald’s for a month straight 3 meals a day. The actions of the film are eat the mcdonald’s, visit healthcare team, and discuss with filmmakers how you are mentally doing. The obstacles are health is in a decline. The antagonist is the cashiers if they ask Spurlock to Supersize then he has to and he had to multiple times. The helpers are Spurlock’s girlfriend as she mentally supports his goal to finish but physically doesn’t want him to. The inciting incident of the film is when Spurlock purchases and begins his month-long journey only eating McDonalds. The rising action is realizing every time he visits his healthcare team, he has drastically become more and more unhealthy than the previous visit. This is incredibly shocking news as this only occurred over a month and he could has seriously gotten himself ill. The climax of the film is when Spurlock is in his hotel room and is no longer happy eating McDonalds but still has to continue on for the film. He has began to notice changes in his mental health and feels sluggish and rundown. The resolution is at the end of the 30 days he no longer has to eat McDonald’s and continue down a bad path for his health. The denouement is his last healthcare screening when his liver has pretty much become fat and has gained a lot of weight. The film does not have a 3-act structure. Critics refer to the elements using the dramatic structure.
Being a documentary that takes place a little over 30 days it is sped up and we are only seeing pieces and possibly skipping whole days where we are not even seeing what is going on. If nothing eventful had taken place that day there is no need to film Morgan just consuming McDonalds you can only have so many shots of that without the audience becoming bored. So to keep the attention of the audience they use eventful days or possibly a few different days and merge them to seem like they were one day in the film. For the most part the film in shot in consecutive order being as it needs to be since we are watching the effect this food has on his body over a period of time we need to see it from day 1 to 30 you can’t really jump around too much. I don’t think too much was restricted from this film. We were able to see Morgan go into the doctors office and the medical advise he was given, him going into the McDonalds and ordering the food, of course him also eating the food and sometimes throwing it back up. His wife also interviewed and explain what she thought was going on. I feel they were pretty transparent on what was going on. But that was also the nature of the film.
“Narrative Is a story such as fiction films as opposed to other movie modes, such as documentary or experimental” (Barsam and Monohan pg. 116). Duration is the differences in the movie that separates story and plot. For example, the duration in the film occurs within minutes when in actuality the documentary is occurring over a month, but we only are able to view scenes of different days over the period of the month. The audience does not get to see a clear 30-day representation on all the meals he ate we just take his word for it. Frequency helps to separate story and plot as there are artists portrayals of McDonald’s and the viewer sees many of the images over and over again to invoke fear over McDonald’s. The documentary restricts the viewer’s knowledge of future information until the part of the film is shown. The information is expressed chronologically at the same time Spurlock finds out the view finds out. Critics do not mention storytelling.
The film itself is an argument against fast food being an essential part of our culture and every day life. It picks apart the lies that we have been told about the fast food industry and attempts to reframe the debate about what can be considered a part of a healthy diet. A sequence that is particularly poignant is when he goes and investigates what kind of foods kids are eating in the cafeteria of local middle and high schools. Again, they are all eating calorically dense nutritionally defunct foods that are terrible for regular consumption. Even the “healthy” alternatives (salad with a ton of dressing, cheese, and croutons, lemonade with a ton of sugar akin to a coke) are pretty unhealthy themselves. I also think that the sequence about the prison that switched to a healthy plant based foods and lean meats was a very strong argument, they saw a dramatic decrease in inmate violence after a year of switching as well as increased levels of inmate satisfaction/contentment.
Morgan Spurlocks documentary film Super Size me was and still is one of the most incredibly unique documentary films you can view. The film focuses on Spurlock eating McDonalds, a fast food that many people world wide consume regularly, for a month. He ate McDonalds for every meal, breakfast, lunch, and dinner and chronicled his declining physical, mental, and emotional health. The approach is certainly unique and I struggle to think of any other documentaries similar other than Spurlock’s own follow up documentary series “30 Days” in which he adopted all sorts of new habits for 30 days and chronicled how it affected him. Now, there are plenty of documentaries that speak to the unhealthy life-style that many of us have gotten sucked into in terms of unhealthy eating but what really sets Spurlock’s Super Size Me apart is how he put his own body and own health on the line to prove a point. He suffered greatly to make the film and the doctors he consulted to chronicle his declining health all told him he needed to stop well before the 30 days were up lest he cause serious, long lasting damage to himself.
What is truly out of the ordinary is how candid and real the documentary film is, he doesn’t shy away from all the disgusting things that happened to him when he was on the McD diet. Within the first few days we see him vomiting up a Big Mac and fries in a McDonalds parking lot. We see his once flat stomach engorged. He and his wife both speak about how he was experiencing extreme erectile dysfunction. While out of the ordinary I believe these moments are what make the film so successful.
The genre of this documentary film are a mixture of drama, comedy, and shock-realism. In such a heavy film (no pun intended) there are moments of brevity because Spurlock is genuinely very funny and entertaining and that also helps the film succeed. It is not a totally dour affair, I laughed quite a bit while watching it. It helps us to see the absurdity of the lie that McDonalds and the fast food has been selling us for years, that this food can be part of a healthy diet, and that the food makes you happy which is anything but the truth. Studies have shown that nutrient deficient high calorie meals like those served at McDonalds can quite literally make us depressed. We see Spurlock fall into this addiction, he becomes so lethargic and unhappy, and its only until he’s eating his next McDonalds fix that he smiles and laughs and is able to be happy for a moment. Its very akin to smoking cigarettes. The food is actively forming a habit within Spurlock, teaching him that only the food will make him feel better. Again, I believe that this helps the film succeed as it shows us how sick the cycle of addiction is for heavy users of fast food meals.
Blade Runner 2049 is pretty high up there on the uniqueness scale and I actually think that it kind of suffered at the box office because of that. Casual moviegoers who saw the trailer and teaser for Blade Runner 2049 would have easily been duped into thinking that it was just another paint by numbers sci-fi film when in fact the movie is anything but. It is a deep character study of what it means to be human and deals with lofty philosophical ideas that would definitely turn a moviegoer off if they were walking in to see another Star Wars-esque spectacle. The most unique part of the film is K, our protagonist, who again would be really easy to mistake for a Luke Skywalker character on a linear destined path to fulfill prophecy and become this magnificent hero. K, himself, in the film believes this, he believes that he is the first ever replicant to be born rather than made and this makes him uniquely special and a symbol of hope and humanity to all of his fellow replicants, The movie encourages us as the audience to believe the same until about three quarters through the movie when the rug is pulled out from underneath us and K. He is not special. He is not going to fulfill some prophecy. He is a run of the mill replicant, factory made, he is not Luke Skywalker, he is a walking can opener.
There are many out of the ordinary moments in this film, one of my favorite is the fateful meetup between Harrison Fords Deckard and Ryan Goslings K. It takes the movie nearly two hours to reach this point and when we finally see Harrison Ford return in all his Blade Runner glory we get some interesting dialogue that begins with “Mightn’t happen to have a bit of cheese about you, do you boy?” a quote from one of my favorite books Treasure Island. There is a fight, one of the few action scenes in the movie, but what is so out of the ordinary is the way in which the fight takes place. This isn’t the Avengers with big explosions and showy displays of masculinity, even though K is a replicant with super strength he doesn’t really attempt to harm Deckard at all, it a very noir fight in a decaying Las Vegas showroom with snippets of old school Vegas performers like Elvis, Sinatra, and Nancy flashing in the background. K lets Deckard get his punches off until Deckard tires, at which point the realization sets in that he cannot win, again exploring what it means to be human.
The genre of Blade Runner 2049 is again unique in that it borrows elements from so many genres that it almost becomes its own. Theres elements of science fiction, fantasy, action, adventure, mystery, thriller, and Neo-noir. Critics will mostly characterize it as strictly science fiction but again it is so much more than that. It has its own mythos built from its predecessor and builds on that mythos with ritual and ideologies that go so much further than the original.
My personal favorite movie of the last decade was Denis Villenueve’s Blade Runner 2049. The film reaped $92.1 million domestically and $168 million abroad for a grand total of $260 million. At a glance these numbers might seem fine but the production was costly and the studio didn’t even break even with their endeavor, losing more than $80 million on the project. I truly believe that Blade Runner 2049 is a masterpiece of both visual and written storytelling but it would seem that audiences didn’t agree. Compare that to the profits Disney was able to reap off of the bloated nightmare that was The Rise of Skywalker (I know I professed my love for the Star Wars series earlier on in the class but this excludes the abomination that it the most recent trilogy). TROS made $515 million domestically and $558 million abroad capitalizing on Star Wars nostalgia to the tune of a $300 million net profit. I think this sheds light on a huge problem in Hollywood, that they will almost always go with the safe bet. A stylistic narrative like Blade Runner 2049 that explores themes of what it means to be human, to be alive, cannot compete with the bleak spectacles put out by JJ Abrams and his ilk.
The critics and audiences seem split on Blade Runner 2049. AO Scott of the NYT praised Villeneuve’s ingenuity and creativity in creating an “unnerving calm” in the movie that culminates in a storm. Mike LaSalle of the SF Chronicle called it one of the greatest films of our time. When looking at audience reviews there seems to be a consensus that it was too long and didn’t have enough action and explosions to keep their attention.
An element that I love about Blade Runner 2049 is the color of the movie. Roger Deakins the cinematographer takes a bleak futuristic world and instead of making it gray and boring injects brilliant orange and blue palettes that make the film absolutely breathtaking to view. Especially the sequence where K finds Deckard hiding out in the ruins of Las Vegas, the orange motif makes us feel we’re in some radioactive decaying Salvador Dali painting waiting to slide off the screen.
Supersize me is a documentary revealing the ugly truth when it comes to McDonalds, whereas Food Inc. gives and up-close perception on America’s food industry. Supersize came out in 2004 with a budget of 65,000 and made 516K, whereas Food inc. came out in 2009 and made 60,500. Supersize me made way more than Food Inc. In fact, Food Inc. made the same as Supersize-me budget for the film. The movies are very similar in the way that both focus on the health of the individual that is enjoying the food. The movies also focus on how bad of food we consume and hoping to change individual’s perspective and help them to eat healthier containing fruits and veggies. It sheds light on Supersize me for setting an example for future filmmakers to take values away from it and use it in other settings of America. McDonald’s is not the only company advertising to children many other fast-food restaurants do as well. Food Inc. demonstrates how the food is made and how it gets to the restaurants.
According to the journalistic website Wikipedia the movie was conceived at Spurlock’s (main character) at his parents’ house while watching a commercial regarding two teenage girls who were blaming the fast-food chain for their obesity. According to Maire O Simington on her article ‘Supersize me’ and the rest of the fast-food nation. It focuses on the problem of obesity. The scholastic article mention “Supersize Me” as a funny rendition on the impact McDonald’s has on a relatively normal body weight. It also mentions increases on obesity over the years and how to eat healthier. McDonald’s is an easy face to pick on but there are many other fast-food joints doing the same thing.
The single element form “Supersize me” would be Ronald McDonald the clown. Ronald McDonald brings the film together as it represents how we’re poorly advertising to children to eat unhealthy food. Ronald McDonald is found on commercials as well as he is the creator of the “happy meal” even though it doesn’t contain anything healthy. Ronald McDonald is dressed in red and yellow which are McDonald’s main colors which represent ketchup and mustard. Ronald McDonald always demonstrates the play place for children. The play place is an obstacle place set to entice children to want to come to McDonald’s because then they can play with all the other children.
Roger Epert gave Super Size me two thumbs up saying that it packaged a serious message in a way that was digestible to audiences. Robert Davis of the NYT praised the film saying Spurlock took incredible risks to bring a public safety announcement about the danger of high calorie cheap fast food. Audiences seemed to enjoy the movie with many claiming that it affected how they thought about fast food and their unhealthy relationship with it.
Another element of Super Size me that stands apart is how Spurlock went toe to toe with such a powerful mega corporation. McDonalds has reigned supreme as the #1 fast food eatery in the world for so long and Spurlock forces us and them to take a good hard look at the kind of foods they were offering and the effects of frequently eating those foods. Famously, McDonalds discontinued their super size as a response to the criticism in the film and now offers some marginally healthier options like salads and plant based burgers as well as offering sensible alternatives to French fries like apple slices and baby carrots.
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