Hungry Love Cretique

Rationale:

Hungry love was inspired by the 2001 French film "Amelie" and its themes of love and and magical realism. We wanted to make a film that focused on these pure kind of ideas but use them in a kind of childish and selfish kind of way to add little more light harted humor to it. The protagonists takes advantage of these ideas and uses them to his advantage to get what he wants, but the use of comedy makes it impossible to hate the protagonist for what he does.

Critique:


In Hungry Love, my role in the the making and design of the film was to be the actor. I was the main protagonist and the character that the ausience was supposed to connect with and identify with. The Character was supposed to be sly and witty and smart enough to use people emotions to his advantages. He was also was supposed to be somewhat of a ladiesman (being able woe the ladies into falling in love with them and taking advantage of them). Althought the audience could clearly see that he is just a user, he is supposed to be likable and the audience is supposed to be on his side. In the Shot above, the girl is obviosly smitten, but his indifferant look shows that he isnt really trying all that hard, if he even is at all. Characterization was a major part of our story because the entire plot line was about the chemistry between them two. It was really important as the actor to get the audience to understand the kind of charcter i was playing.

The hardest and definetly most challenging part of making the film was maintaining continuity from shot to shot. With the large amount of close ups and very little wide shots, if my body movements or actions altered from shot to shot , it was very appartent. Some times during filming i would have to switch hads with props like the guitar or cards, and we would have to reshoot because they did not match in the edit. The props would jump from hand to hand or side to side with no explanation. This would create problems for the cast and crew because we would have to go back and film on extra days that would not have been ncessary if we got it right the first time. But the biggest problem that was totally out of our control was lighting because all of it was natural light from the day. We mostly filmed around the after noon which usually has some of the best light but the problem lied in that we filmed over severla days around the same time. The lighting was never exactly the same and it was apparent in the filming. All the shots are not equally saturated or lighted. Some are more washed out while some look very good and bright. Unfortuently, the outside wheather is not under our controll. Rain also delayed our schedule and made it impossible to shoot sometimes.

Magical Realism was the most important theme we where tring to relate to. We used the progaonist "magical romance" to bring in props that we could not bring in usually in a more realistic film. Props like the guitar, cards, and paper pad all appear at the protagonists whim. The score also was a very important part of the film. We used a very french accordion piece that was somewhat of an allusion to the Amelie and its themes of Magical Realism. The music takes over the audio track for the film which gives it a more silent movie type feel. It also allows the actors to act out there emotions through body language instaed any kind of dialogue.

"Amelie" also focused on simple and innocent love and characters. Amelie took her joys from simple everyday life. We tried to incorporate those ideas through the location and intenet of the characters. The protagonist want something that people everyday(food) by using something that people don't find everday (love). We also tried to portray the girl as being very innocent by her posture and modest clothes and reserveness when first coming in contact with the boy. Likewise. the pose posture is somewhat laid back and uncaring and obviously trying to get into a "cool" character.

In terms of cinematography, there was manly one location and there main perspectives (His view, Her view, and a 2-shot. Most of the film uses 1 of these 3 perspectives, especially near the last scene with the cards. The camera keeps reversing shots to keep what is on the card a secret from the audience. The constant switching adds a good amount of suspense and makes the final reveal much grander.

Overall i feel like the film strongly related to the themes that we studied in romantic comedy such as Amelie. We included very french stle music and the location seemed somewhat romantic as well. My favorite part was the large heart ending which really seemed almost cartoon while keeping the themes of love.