Heat Personal Response

Heat is a 1972 film produced by Andrew Warhola, it parodies Sunset Boulevard, and was seen as controversial for it’s time due to some of it’s subject matter. The film was produced on a low budget with improvisational dialogue, retakes were not done and this can be seen in the ‘trashiness’ of some of the scenes. This can be particularly seen in the scene in which Lydia and Sally Todd are discussing their involvement with the main character Joey Davis. The two of them are essentially gossiping and trying to belittle the other and this is originally done by Lydia telling Sally that ‘she had Joey’, this soon turns into the two of them repeatedly asking each other ‘What do you mean?’ with the response of ‘What do you mean what do I mean?’ I found this poor improvisational dialogue incredibly amusing and is clear evidence for the lack of budget, film was expensive and a reshoot of a scene would cost far too much. Personally, I think that this lack of reshooting made the text seem a lot more natural, there are many elements of the social realism genre within this scene such a the handheld camera work and it being at eye level, the improvised dialogue and lack of reshoots enforces this idea. For me this made text a lot more entertaining and although personally, I have never gone through such an experience, it seemed to be relatable as if I could be a guest at this motel prying into other people’s business. Later, when there is a visit to Sally Todd’s ex husband we are presented with again an almost documentary like positioning the scene is shot using mainly mid shots to show the interaction between this misfit family. There are also close ups of Joey’s face more than anyone else’s, this is to show his reaction to what is going on around him and as such he essentially shows the audience how we should be feeling. This use of reaction shots within such a strange and uncomfortable situation are a good way to get across just how weird the lives of ‘stars’ can be. The whole film enforces this idea, but Joey’s reactions show, that in Hollywood, scandals topple the stars, this can be especially seen my Sally’s ex husband’s new partner. He is now in a hidden homosexual relationship, this is hidden due to the controversy of such a relationship, the same can be seen with Sally when she is asked a lot about her daughter’s relationships. Heat is a comedic film but essentially has the theme of not being able to show true colours within Hollywood and that Warhol wished to change this, this can be seen by his earlier work such as his screen tests, in which he placed people in front of a camera and left them to be themselves essentially. Heat does a good job of conveying such a message and although it is ‘trash cinema’ personally I think it is a brilliant text simply because of it’s taboo topics and the expression of them.

Presentation Script (Draft)

Most of Hayao Miyazaki's films display the theme of humanity's relationship with nature. Could this statement support an autertistic tendency?

Projector: “An auteur is a director who manifests a consistency of style and theme across his or her films.” (Item 15)
Speaker: Watching Miyazaki films you will be drawn into a fantasy world of awe and danger, child-like in nature but the message behind it being incredibly hard hitting. Miyazaki explores the relationship between humanity and nature in the majority of his films and this is clear to any active audience. This potentially means Miyazaki is an auteur, something I will be explaining later in much more detail. Not every director is an auteur but pay attention to the quote on screen.

Projector: Clip of Princess Mononoke (33min-35min32) (Item 2)
Speaker: This scene clearly highlights the greed and selfishness of humans that Miyazaki is trying to put across. It talks of the human's quest to destroy the forest for their own personal gain of more iron, even when Nago, the boar God of the forest, attempts to stop them, the humans don't care. Miyazaki is making the point that human's do not care what consequences any of their actions will cause even when they are staring them straight in the face. In short, human greed is always the most important thing and anything can be done to achieve the human's goals. 

Projector: “What “The Art of Princess Mononoke” is really about is the art itself, in particular the richly detailed background and concept art, and one theme dominates every frame: nature.” (Item 4)
Speaker: This quote on screen comes from a review of the book “The Art of Princess Mononoke” and having read the book, I can tell it’s true. The book written by Miyazaki explores the artwork used in Princess Mononoke, one of my focus films. The review of this book shows Miyazaki’s themes are easy to interpret and simply put, to Miyazaki nature is power. For a theme to be easily interpretable it must mean a lot to the director and this pushes Miyazaki further to that role as an auteur. 

Projector: Clip of Princess Mononoke (56min30-57min) (Item 2)
Speaker: This scene shows the rift between the creatures of the forest, the ape tribe now wish to kill the humans whilst the others simply want to preserve the forest. The apes have been trying to regrow the forest and have been planting trees every night to try and achieve such goal but the humans tear up all their work. The apes have decided the only real way to save the forest is to kill the humans otherwise 'we will all die.' The apes have had enough of being treated like lesser beings, who have to make way for the want of humanity, humanity has damned itself by damning the forest, Miyazaki is beautifully putting across his theme of humanity's nature with relationship, just as he does with the majority of his films and as such is an auteur.

Projector: "This exotically beautiful action film features gods and demons locked in a struggle for the future of the unspoiled forest" (Item 10)
Speaker: This quote comes from a review of one of my focus films 'Princess Mononoke', it talks of the prominence of nature within the film and it's meanings. I believe the quote on screen does an excellent job of summarising the film in one sentence. When the summary of a film mentions 'the unspoiled forest' it is clear that is this forest is key to the narrative and so supports my theory that Miyazaki is indeed an auteur.

Projector: "Eboshi is depicted as an astute business-woman with a desire to make money at the expense of the forest, even if she must kill all the gods, animals and trees there."(Item 12) 
Speaker: This quote comes the book 'Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies', a book about the environmentalism in two films, one of which being Princess Mononoke. This quote alone supports my theory again of humanity destroying their relationship with nature. This book goes into great detail about individual characters and their relation to overall themes such as the suggestion that Eboshi “embodies environmentalist evil.” The writers of this book summarise perfectly Miyazaki’s message “supernatural forces of destruction are unleashed by humans greedily consuming natural resources.” I couldn’t really have put it better myself, Miyazaki is really starting to look more and more like an auteur.

Projector: Clip of Princess Mononoke (41min50-42min20) (Item 2)
Speaker: This scene starts with Eboshi talking about the forest creatures coming back every night to replant the forest but she scares them off by firing her guns, the creature of the forest simply want to have a home to live in but the human's desires are more important. Eboshi says she wishes to kill the forest spirit so that the creatures will be 'dumb beasts' again and therefore it will be easier for her to wipe out the forest and make it the 'richest place in the world'. Again, Miyazaki is showing that human's care more about their won desires than anything else and as such do not care what consequences their actions may cause.

Projector: "This is the complexity in the relationship between humans and nature and since this is a big theme of this film, I didn't want it to be a story about a bad guy." (Item 7)
Speaker: Pay attention to this quote on screen, this is Miyazaki speaking in an interview about Princess Mononoke. Miyazaki cares so much about the theme of humanity's relationship with nature that he doesn't even want a bad guy in his film because he believes that would take away from the key message he is trying to get across. I believe this speaks wonders about Miyazaki as a person; he would rather put across his own personal message about nature than stick to the typical narratives and have a bad guy.

Projector: "He's also an environmentalist, of a somewhat dark and apocalyptic variety." (Item 5)
Speaker: The quote on screen comes from an interview in which Talbot discusses Miyazaki's films, his influences and his temperament. Reading this interview, I was noticed the talk about many of Miyazaki's influences one of which being his family and Japan in general. The most important thing from the entirety of the article was this quote on screen; it supports my theory that Miyazaki is an auteur thoroughly exploring the theme of humanity's relationship with nature across the majority of his films. 

Projector: Clip of Spirited Away (1hr2min50-1hr6) (Item 3)
Speaker: This scene starts with the revelation  that the supposed 'stink spirit' has a 'thorn in his side', any active audience member can infer from this that Miyazaki means that humanity is a thorn in the side of nature. There is actually a ridiculous amount of rubbish such as a bicycle and fish hook and once this has all been removed it is revealed that is actually a spirit of a river that had been badly polluted by humans. Miyazaki does a brilliant job of personifying nature so that we empathise with it and therefore are more likely to take the preferred reading that humanity needs to change it's ways to preserve nature.

Projector: "I like that we should all treasure everything because spirits might exist there, and we should treasure everything because there is a kind of life to everything." (Item 6)
Speaker: This quote comes from an article about Shinto perspectives in Spirited Away; Shinto is an old Japanese religion, and one that Miyazaki uses in his films. True to Shinto insight, all beings become polluted and so must be cleansed to become their true selves, this is why Spirited away is set in a bath house. This is made especially clear when a 'stink spirit' comes to the bath house and is cleansed of all sorts of rubbish, when the spirit is clear, it is revealed that is in fact the spirit of a badly polluted river, no doubt by humans. 

Projector: "Not the last of his films to resound with a clear environmental message" (Item 9)
Speaker: This quote comes from an article that talks about Miyazaki's major films up until The Secret World of Arriety (2010). It discusses all of my focus films and actually has Miyazaki's insight on some of them. The most important thing about this article, I believe, is the inspirations for the themes of his films, the mercury pollution of Minamata Bay being one, the majority of them are environmental influences and this is reflected in Miyazaki's films. As the writer of this article says about Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds, "this is not the last of his films to resound with a clear environmental message", further evidence for Miyazaki in his role as an auteur.

Projector: "Millennia from now, civilisation is destroyed in a man-made cataclysm known as the 'seven days of fire'." (Item 11)
Speaker: This quote from an article all about Nausicaä and serves the purpose of establishing the setting of the text. The quote tells us that the problem was man-made and as the film explores has left humanity as a minority on a world now ran by the insects of the forest, in short, humanity vs nature. The narrative is basically about humanity having messed with nature so much that it becomes an enemy to them, this fits in with the general theme Miyazaki uses across a lot of his films and the one in particular I am using to show that Miyazaki is indeed an auteur.


Projector: "Post-apocalyptic dystopia brought upon by human pollution and troubled constant warfare between the 'great powers'." (Item 14)
Speaker: This quote is summarising the plot for Nausicaä, and comes from a brilliant book that really dives deep into Miyazaki’s themes. It later discusses both Nausicaä and Mononoke saying they both have ‘an ecological message and what is really sought is a proper balance between civilization and nature.’ Miyazaki once again putting across his theme of humanity’s relationship with nature, making him an auteur. The book talks of Japanese religion and culture and the animistic influence it has had on Miyazaki’s work, many of his films focus on the spirit world because he tries to tell us that nature is just as alive as us. This is why he feels the need to put across a message to those who watch his films that nature is important and bad things can happen if we mess around with it.


Projector: Clip of  Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds (Start - 2min) (Item 1)
Speaker: The beginning of the film shows the now desolate barren wasteland of Earth, we are shown skeleton and hear the on screen character confirm 'another village dead.' After this we hear a voice over give us some exposition on how this came to be, we are told it is 1000+ years into a dystopian future, industrial civilization collapsed 1000 years ago and all that remains are the toxic jungles that threaten the lives of the few remaining people. In essence, nature has finally fought back, Miyazaki uses this text to show what will happen if we carry on the way we are now, we are constantly damaging our own environment to better ourselves, we are unaware of the consequences or rather we ignore them, Miyazaki wishes that we have an epiphany and realise what we are doing to the planet before it's too  late.

Projector: "In  the distant future, a thousand years after 'The Seven Days of Fire', the holocaust that rapacious industrialisation  spawned, the earth is a  wasteland of sterile deserts and toxic jungles that threaten the survival of the few remaining human beings" (Item 13)
Speaker:  This quote comes from a book called 'Journal of Religion and Popular Culture' and discusses the idea of Nausicaä being a saviour in  a world where humanity's industry has destroyed about everything there is. This quote in particular heightens the idea of industry being the demise of our planet and it summarises the film well, it's clear that this film again follows Miyazaki's theme of humanity's nature with relationship.

How far does the impact of the films you have studied for this topic depend on distinctive uses of film techniques?

The first film I studied in this topic was the French film La Haine, directed by Mathieu Kassovitz in 1995. The film uses many distinctive film techniques in order to make the impact on the audience the greatest possible such as mise-en-scene and cinematography. Personally I think the most important of these is the mise-en-scene, Kassovitz uses this to tell us so much about the characters and what situations they are in.

Kassovitz uses mise-en-scene to give us little bits about their personality. When we are first introduced to Vinz, he is shown in his bedroom, a camera rotation of 360 degrees shows us everything that is in Vinz's bedroom, the first thing we see is his trainer collection, all of the trainers seen are American branding, there is also various posters depicting sex symbols from American culture such as Marilyn Monroe, a picture of a wrestler and also a weed poster. This shows us that Vinz is deeply rooted within American culture and also smokes weed. It also shows though that Vinz rejects his parent's values, his distaste with the laws of society and his need to gain another identity of his own.

The first time we see Vinz we are introduced to his bedroom which contains a lot to do with American culture. This is due to the fact that Vinz needs to be presented as a bit of a loose canon unsure of who he is but sure he wants be someone. This is a contrast to Hubert's bedroom but Kassovitz uses the same technique of a 360 degree camera turn to show everything on the walls, Hubert's room seems to focus more on his African heritage having photos of Mohammed Ali and the black power salute.

In La Haine, the contrast of the city of Paris and the banlieues is evidently clear, not only in the streets and attitudes of the police, one calling Said 'sir', but also in the living conditions. Vinz's house where he has to share a room with his sister greatly contrasts the huge flat that Asterix is living in. This just clearly shows the difference between the city centre, seen as such a magical place and the estates on the outskirts, simply forgotten about more than anything else.

Although the mise-en-scene does promote realism it often contains messages and values from within the film. This can be seen in La Haine where the characters are sat in a park, not really doing anything, this was another technique used by Kassovitz to promote a sense of realism. Whilst they are sat here, a team of journalists approach and do not even leave the car, this shows how Paris and a lot of the world view these banlieues as underclass. The scene is set up as if the trio are in a zoo, there is the high walls where the characters sit unoccupied and visitors come and look over the fence at them. this is even referred to within the dialogue, when Hubert says to the reporters that they are not in a safari park.

Catalogue (Draft)

Films

1. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds (Dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 1984)
This source is useful as it is one of the first and main films  Miyazaki has created.The film is a Japanese animated post-apocalyptic fantasy adventure film. The film tells the story of Nausicaä, a young princess of the Valley of the Wind who gets involved in a struggle with Tolmekia, a kingdom that tries to use an ancient weapon to eradicate a jungle of mutant giant insects. Nausicaä must stop the Tolmekians from enraging these creatures. The main storyline itself is all about humans interaction with nature, a key theme Miyazaki repeats in most of his films. Miyazaki is not only the director of the film but he is also the writer of the screenplay and the manga which is the film is based upon. This is why I think it is a perfect example to use for my research investigation.

2. Princess Mononoke (Dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 1997)
Another incredibly useful source, Princess Mononoke is an anime epic historical fantasy adventure film, again written and directed by Miyazaki. The story follows the young Emishi warrior Ashitaka's involvement in a struggle between forest gods and the humans who consume its resources. Miyazaki again uses his wonderful storytelling to show humanity's struggle with nature, this time due to humanity's sheer greediness, once again Miyazaki has made a children's film with a deep underlying theme, which makes this source ideal for my research.

3. Spirited Away (Dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
This source was again useful but not so much as the other two films, Spirited Away is a Japanese animated fantasy film, again written and directed by Miyazaki. It follows the story of Chihiro Ogino, a sullen ten-year-old girl who, while moving to a new neighborhood, enters the spirit world. She is thrown in amongst a world of chaos at the bath house, which has many visitors including a supposed stink spirit who has in fact been polluted. This once again shows Miyazaki's theme of humanity's relationship with nature, he indicates within the film the sources of pollution within the bathhouse, a place of ritual purity, come from within the Japanese society. This makes this film a key source to my investigation.

Internet

4. Review of The Art of Princess Mononoke by Ian Martin.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2014/08/02/books/book-reviews/deeper-look-hayao-miyazakis-nature/#.VBGXf146FZg
This is a useful source because it shows the great deal of depth Miyazaki's goes into with his recurrent theme of nature. It explores Miyazaki's work as an auteur and his own relationship with nature that he tries to express within his films. The book itself was written by Miyazaki and this can be seen when reading it "in particular the richly detailed background and concept art, and one theme dominates every frame: nature." (Article quote)

5. Interview in which Talbot discusses Miyazaki’s films, his influences, and his temperament.
http://web.archive.org/web/20060524092154/http://www.newyorker.com/online/content/?050117on_onlineonly01
This is a helpful source as Talbot discusses many of Miyazaki's films in one article and clearly expresses his underlying themes, one of which is humanity's relationship with nature. It is a point which is referred to a lot within this interview and Talbot also talks of some of his inspiration including his family. She refers to him within the article as "an environmentalist, of a somewhat dark and apocalyptic variety"

6. Shinto Perspectives in Miyazaki's Anime Film 'Spirited Away' by James W. Boyd and Tetsuya Nishimura
http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/Vol8No2/boydShinto.htm
This article was helpful as it gave a brief synopsis of the film, a look into shinto perspectives (shinto is the indigenous religion of Japan) and also an interpretation of the film. The article looks at shinto perspectives as part of Miyazaki's relationship with nature. Miyazaki himself refers to this idea, talking about spirits existing everywhere in nature, or so his grandparents believe anyway, this can be found in his films, therefore this source was useful.
 
7. Interview with Miyazaki about Princess Mononoke, The Hayao Miyazaki Web,1997
 http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/interviews/m_on_mh.html
 This was a useful source as it explores greatly the different aspects of Princess Mononoke, one of my main focus films. Miyazaki's links nature into the smallest parts of his creation, this article shows just the great deal of thinking Miyazaki puts into his film to produce a philosophical children's film. Miyazaki himself says in this article whilst referring to the theme of nature within the film, he talks about making humanities destruction key to the film rather than having a bad guy, the bad guy for Miyazaki is humanity itself.

Magazines

8. Sight & Sound magazine June 2014
 
  
  
This source was very useful in that it explores a lot about Hayao Miyazaki as a person and his other themes involved in his films, such as flying. It touches upon his view of the environment and what role they play in his films and also discusses some of his influences. The most interesting part of this article is that when discussing his influences, many people are thought of but Miyazaki says that he scraps a lot of this inspiration when it actually comes down to film-making, he prefers to express his individuality.

9. An article about Hayao Miyazaki (Empire Magazine, 2011)
http://www.empireonline.com/features/hayao-miyazaki/p1
This article is useful in that it has a short focus on most of his major films up until The Secret World of Arriety (2010). It talks of the different ecological problems in my focus films and also has some of Miyazaki's influences for these problems such as the mercury pollution of Minamata Bay was his main inspiration for my main focus film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds. It also has a brief commentaries from Miyazaki himself about why he used certain themes or characters in certain movies.

10. A review of Princess Mononoke
(Waging a Mythic Battle to Preserve a Pristine Forest, New York Times, 1999)
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/27/movies/film-review-waging-a-mythic-battle-to-preserve-a-pristine-forest.html
This article is useful as it is an interview of Princess Mononoke, the title of the review itself made me look at this specific article, as I felt it was promoting the idea of nature being used in the film. The article talks of the nature, mythology and history used to make Mononoke's world. "This exotically beautiful action film features gods and demons locked in a struggle for the future of the unspoiled forest and an elaborate moral universe that Mr. Miyazaki has created." This quote shows exactly how the article sees the film and this is why it is useful for my research. 

11. Nausicaa and The Fantasy of Miyazaki (SF journal Foundation, Issue 72, Spring 1998)
http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/nausicaa/article_ao_foundation.txt
This source was incredibly useful as it is an in-depth exploration of my main focus film, it talks of the plot and characters in great detail, and also mentions some of the mise-en-scene used. It also links all of this to the fact the film is basically about humanity messing with nature so much it becomes an enemy to them. This fits in with research investigation question as it explores Miyazaki's theme of humanity's relationship with nature.

Books

12. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies (Vol. 26, Issue 1, 2012, Michelle J. Smith & Elizabeth Parsons, p25-37)
This was incredibly useful source as it explores the environmentalism in two films, one of which being Princess Mononoke. It talks of individual characters and their relation to overall themes, an example of this is the character of Eboshi in Princess Mononoke, the authors characterize her as a business woman who has a desire to make money at the expense of the forest and also claim that this "embodies environmentalist evil" (quote from the book)

13. Journal of Religion and Popular Culture (Volume 21, Number 2, Summer 2009, Ian DeWeese-Boyd p1)
This was another useful source, although not as useful as the other books I found, it focuses on the environmentalism seen in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds. It talks of it in comparison to certain religions and also popular culture, seeing Nausicaä as some sort of messiah, responsible for saving the world for humanity's actions.

14. Encyclopedia of Religion and Film (Eric Michael Mazur, p320-324)
 This source was useful in that it discusses parts of Japanese religion and culture and also looks at the origin of the word anime which comes from the latin world for soul 'anima'. Shinto, Japan's main religion is largely animistic. This be can seen in many of Miyazaki's films, they focus mainly on the spirit world, especially his films that have the main theme of humanity's relationship with nature. Miyazaki likes to put across the message that nature is as much alive as us humans are and so we must live in co-existence for both to survive without corruption.

15. Film Studies (Warren Buckland, 1998, p50-61)
This source was helpful in that it talks directly about the auteur theory and so gave me a lot more understand on the topic as a whole. A brief summary of the auteur theory shows that an auteur is an artist rather than just a technician in some cases and how the theory came about. It also states that "an auteur is a director who manifest a constancy of style and theme across his or her films." (quote from book) This helped me a lot because it supports my idea that Miyazaki is an auteur.

Interviews

16. UC Berkeley Center for Japanese Studies' 50th Anniversary


This interview is incredibly long but this was good as it allowed Kelts to get a lot of information from Miyazaki, this include some of his greatest influences, talks of his individual work and also his recurring themes. Miyazaki has a lot of themes in his film, the most prominent of this being the idea of feminism, he also explores the idea of coming of age and although these are both key part to making Miyazaki's films the masterpiece they are. The theme I am interested is his environmentalism, he touches upon in this interview talking about massive disasters such as the mercury pollution of Minamata Bay. This made this a useful source as it taught me so much about Miyazaki himself but also about his themes and influences for those themes, I feel this has helped me understand Miyazaki as an auteur much easier.

Rejected Items

http://www.allmovie.com/artist/hayao-miyazaki-p167694
I rejected this source as it talks of Miyazaki in very general terms, it touches upon him using ecological themes, but it is more of a generalisation. It is more about Miyazaki than his themes and contains a filmography, but this is not useful for my research investigation.

Kiki's Delivery Service (Dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 1989)
I rejected this source as when i first picked it I thought it would at least touch on some ecological themes, but tho is more in touch with Miyazaki's themes of feminism. It follows Kiki as she starts her own delivery service. It is a fantasy coming of age story that discusses according to Miyazaki the gulf between independence and reliance in teenage Japanese girls and therefore not useful for my research investigation.

A talk by Mr. Hayao Miyazaki and Mr.Moebius


This interview was between Miyazaki and a french artist Moebius, it discusses the two's styles and how they slightly intertwine. It doesn't however actually talk about any of themes Miyazaki uses, although a director's style can be used to class him as an auteur for my particular research I am looking at Miyazaki as an auteur due to his recurring ecological themes.