Quick Update: Phenomenology

I'm still just trudging along through my paper. It's pretty slow going as of right now because it's actually a lot more work than I thought it would be. I have so much notes and it's hard to sift through all of them for quality material. When I went to Dr. Morris last Friday he told me about a certain approach to my paper that I think I'll definitely be using from here on out though. The strategy he recommended I look into was called a phenomenological analysis. Rather than writing a formulaic and basic essay where I touch on each director, with a phenomenological approach I'll be able to have my paper sound more like a casual conversation. And if I were someone reading something like my paper, I'd much rather have it sound like a casual conversation instead of a blasting of facts and theories to my brain. Below is a picture of Edmund Husserl, the founding father of phenomenology.

Phase 2

It's been a while since my last blog post but I've still been working on my project. I'm in the sortof, phase 2/ final phase of the project. I haven't watched every movie I wanted to take notes on but I feel like I've seen enough from each director to have a competent and educated idea on what each of their styles are. The last film I watched was Tarantino's Death Proof, and that was last weekend. I will still probably watch a few more movies before the whole thing is over, but for the most part, I'm completely done with that. I'm now in the creation phase of the project. I have all the information I need, in the form of unorganized notes, now it all just needs to be turned into something. I've been reading through the material that Dr. Morris gave me and it's giving me a good idea on how to structure my paper. This week I'm going to try and work out a sample page so that way I can see how I want to write my entire paper. I'm also going to be looking for people to give me feedback on the sample sheet so that I know if there's a better way to structure it. From here on out it's probably not going to be very exciting in terms of the progress that I make, but if anything does happen, I'll be sure to make a blog post about it.

Spring Break

Well Spring Break has been my most productive week by far since we started this project. Listing all the movies I watched would just be redundant, but off the top of my head I think it was around 10 movies. Some of the highlights were Vertigo, Psycho, Inglorious Basterds, The Prestige, and Nolan's Batman trilogy. In addition to those I also watched The Grand Budapest Hotel, Rushmore, and American Psycho. These 3 movies aren't necessarily useful for my project but I could probably refer to them if need be in my paper. I'm still on schedule to finish these movies by May 1st.

James Stewart-A-Thon

It was a genuine coincidence but the last four movies I've watched have all had James Stewart as the leading role in them. I'm on a sort of Hitchcock kick right now that started when I watched Rope last weekend. Stewart played the cynical and sarcastic professor, Rupert Cadell in the film, which before this weekend, was also the only role I've ever known him as.  Dr. Morris told me to watch Vertigo before we met up again and that just so happened to have James Stewart as the lead in it as well. I'm not sure if I like Vertigo as much as Rope but both are truly amazing films. Yesterday, I gave my Dad the option of choosing the next movie to watch, and he randomly chose The Man Who Knew Too Much which also happened to have good ole Jimmy Stewart as the leading man. By this point I was already amazed that the last 3 movies I watched all featured Stewart as the lead and then I popped in Rear Window, for no other reason than I couldn't sleep last night. And as soon as I heard that recognizable drawl, I was laughing to myself so hard that I had to pause the movie right there for like a solid 5 minutes. The entire film I couldn't take entirely serious because of just how many roles I'd seen the man in during the same day. Maybe I like subconsciously internalized that Stewart was in all of these movies but truly, I really had no clue. Stewart is to Hitchcock as Samuel L. Jackson is to Tarantino. This also displays an important aspect of Auteur Theory, director's reusing actors they enjoy. Tarantino with Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, and Tim Roth. Nolan with Christian Bale. To an extent Kubrick with Peter Sellers and now Hitchcock with James Stewart.

 I counted up the rest of the movies I need to watch and there's 19 left. My goal is to be finished with all of them by May 1st and I think it's definitely doable, I just have to stay on schedule.

Kill Bill and Rope

Over this weekend I watched Tarantino's bloody revenge flick Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Hitchcock's psychological crime thriller Rope. Both of these movies I had seen previously and they are personal favorites of mine as well. In a similar vein as Pulp Fiction and Memento, my notes for both of these movies were considerably better than movies that I had only seen once. It's easier to explore themes and write about the mise en scène  of a movie when you are already familiar with the film. 

My goal for this week is to watch 2 more movies. I'm planning on watching Vertigo and probably Kill Bill Vol. 2 but who knows, maybe I'll be in the mood for something else when I actually get around to watching something. I scheduled everything out and I should be finished with all the movies by May 1st. I just have to make sure I stay on schedule. 

The Product

I finally decided what my final product will be. Rather than writing a separate essay for each director I'm instead going to write one large paper that talks about each of the directors. Also instead of breaking up the paper by directors, I'll instead have chapters on certain techniques, themes, characters, etc., and then how each director uses all of these things in their films. I wish I could have decided on this sooner because I practically wasted all of last week writing a rough draft on Kubrick. I definitely have some catching up to do if I want to stay on schedule. Since the entire thing will be one large paper, I'm going to need to watch every film before I start to write it. My goal is to finish all the movies I need to watch by May 1st. I counted it up and I have 29 more essential films to watch.

Over the weekend, I was able to watch Quentin Tarantino's classic crime tale Pulp Fiction (which is my absolute favorite movie) and the Christopher Nolan psychological thriller Memento (another one of my favorites). Having already seen both of these movies multiple times, my notes for these films were much more in depth and just all around better compared to films that I took notes on for the first viewing. It makes me wish I had the time to watch each movie two or even three times, but that's not entirely doable, even if I was just studying two directors. I feel a lot of these movies (especially Pulp Fiction) I could base my entire project on. While watching I just kept thinking that I could write like an entire 20 page paper on just this film. While as a person himself, I think Tarantino is a (for lack of a better word) douchey, white trash, asshole; there's no denying he is a genius filmmaker. He catches a lot of flak from critics and moviegoers alike because of his supposed "film theft". Whereas, I don't think Tarantino steals shots and scenes from other films, he pays homage to them. He takes his favorite movies and incorporates the best parts of them into his movies. I would argue Tarantino is the epitome of a modern day auteur.

Dr.Morris' Gift

Today when I met with Dr.Morris he gave me a book called Film, Form, and Culture by Robert Kolker. I've been leafing through it and it contains practically everything about the technical aspects of film. I think it's gonna help me a ton for this project. Now, I have all the official terms for the tropes and techniques that I've been observing in all the movie's I've been watching! It even contains information on auteur theory which I definitely need to know more about.

I've decided that I'll write separate essays for each director now so I think I'll try to write a rough draft of a structural/technical analysis on Kubrick this weekend. Ill give it to Dr.Morris to look at probably so he can make any revisions.  If I find the time I'll also try to watch at least one of Tarantino's movies this weekend. Probably not Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction because I've seen them like 10 times each but, it definitely wouldn't be torture if I decided to watch either.