Intro:
For my essay, I will be discussing the idea of visual styles in movies, and how some films may end up with a "style over substance" situation. This means that the narrative isn't much, or anything individual at all, but the visual style is what sets it apart from the crowd. With this, I have created a thesis that I believe that two popular films; known for their visual styles, would not be successful or individual without their visual styles. I chose the films:
Scott Pilgrim vs The World and
Drive.
Scott Pilgrim vs The World is a Hollywood film, however; despite this, tries to break away from the conventional visual style that Hollywood films are excepted to have and more leans toward the visual style that we'd see in an Independent film. This shows that this film could be trying to reach the audience of Independent film viewers and be considered an art form, which is not a typical thing for a Hollywood film to do
Drive is an independent film that pays homage to the fact that it is indeed independent, by showing a visual style throughout the film. This is because Independent films are conventionally pieces of art, rather than products for entertainment that Hollywood films are.
This is done to try and reach a very niche audience who are interested in the visual style, which is a personal level of engagement. This is atop your stereotypical film narrative/plot, which, when we remove the visual style of the film, makes it nothing special and removes the niche audience, leaving the film without any specific audience
P:
The visual style in Opening scenes, and how they'd be different without their visual style.
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AND:
COMPARED TO:
(Up to 1:37)
A:
The purpose of an opening scene is to set up the situation and introduce the viewer to the characters. This is a requirement for every film, as to not throw us into a non-contextualised situation, where we have no clue what is going on and each character's role in the story. Aside from the narrative, an opening is a legal requirement to give credit to the people who helped create the film through the use of name slates in the credits. Because I am comparing the narrative to the style, I shall leave the name slate credits from Scott Pilgrim out of my analysis, as there is no action or characters during the scene, thus the narrative halts.
Drive represents the character as a darker, mysterious character through the style of Neon-noir, as the colours are darker and of a blue tint, which are often said to show depression, sadness and potential loneliness, this could also be shown by the lack of dialogue by the driver. The driver's silence amongst the panicky passengers could show professionalism, composure and/or lack of expression due to him being naturally unemotional or traumatised by past events. We are also placed with the Driver and the criminals as we can hear the sounds of the car/police radio within the car, as well as being placed within the interior of the car. The shallow focus of the driver compared the background contrasts shows isolation of himself against the world, which only heightens that feeling of depression. The neon 80s sign typeface could show either that this film was set in the 80s or that the Driver has background from the 80s which he pays homage to by being in a mindset centred around the 80s.
I mentioned before that the visual style shows a lot about the character of Driver. The visual style in this sequence fully introduces the character of Driver, which sets up the narrative as we know a lot about the character's persona, none of which is given by anything but the visual style. Due to this being the opening, there is no context as to who Driver is until this scene has been shown. I believe that the visual style here, really broadens the viewer's understanding of who Driver is.
Scott Pilgrim vs The World literally introduces the characters with small name cards underneath them, including name, age and a short bio/nickname. This is an element we'd expect in a videogame as it introduces the characters in the shortest form possible. The most prominent visual style, however, is shown when the band play music. This helps represent the energy within the band and their volume within the scene. The blue/red offset are reminiscent to old CRT monitors or 3D, which could be another reference to video games. With this being the introduction to the main character Scott, we are led to believe that his friends are sketchy about the idea of him having Knives, a younger girlfriend. The way that we can see this through the visual style is that Scott is usually presented as smaller on screen when Steven is interrogating him about whether Knives can "geek out" or not.
Without the visual style, this scene would be quite different in the way of the narrative. The visual style literally tells us the names, nicknames and ages of the characters, without it we would not know any of this information. However, the visual style brings more to this, it does not necessarily directly add to the narrative, rather distracts us from it with unnecessary (yet aesthetically pleasing) graphics, (the name cards help us get to know the characters faster) but the actual titles, contribute nothing and infact hinder the narrative. However, it brings energy and some form of persona to each character. For example: Kim is shown to be loud and authoritative within the band, shown when she shouts "One, two, three!" and the band starts playing. This and the "yeah yeah"'s are the only dialogue loud enough to produce the text, proving it's loudness, and thus importance to forming the character of Kim and distracting us from all other happenings within the narrative.
P:
Visual style in fight scenes, how differently they'd look without their distinct visual style
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COMPARED TO:
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Fight scenes are one of the key points of a film, which often peak in user engagement. For these films, their styles make the fight scenes even more memorable for viewers. For example, Drive uses the style of Hyper-Realism to better the fight scenes. This same style of over-the-top gore and hyper realistic violence reminds many viewers of the hit videogame franchise: Grand Theft Auto, which is renowned for it's copious gore, little dialogue and almost-superhuman strength and composure, found in this scene. The motel scene starts with a point man blasting off the face of character Blanche, the gore in this scene is intense to the point where it cannot be forgotten. This is a display of a realistic style used in it, the gore produced is realistic to one of an actual gunshot to the head. This makes the image traumatic to the viewer, proving the realistic style to be effective as it impacts the viewer much like witnessing a real shooting would. This was an intentional occurrence to further immerse us in the scene. The fact that the Driver does not say anything during this scene proves that the events depicted did not affect him, meaning he really did have a troubled past. This relates to the style of Neo-Noir, as this is a typical trait, having a character who is affected by his/her past experiences and does not say/reveal much about themselves. If we also notice, Driver is also often the darkest entity on screen, which could also relate to his shady persona. A final shot in the scene shows the hotel room to now be a bloodbath. There is blood on the lens to help place us back into the scene and add to the trauma, as blood obscuring our view would be in real life. The next shot shows blood on Driver's face, which means, by the blood being on the lens, it is on our face(s) too.
By removing the visual style, the scene would be less engaging as there wouldn't be the idea that we can question the mental stability of Driver; as currently, he witnesses the killing of 3 people in gory ways, but doesn't seem affected by it. Removing this could either make him look like a psychopath and completely unrelatable or, like an unprofessional, uncomposed man who wouldn't be all that enjoyable to watch, and would maybe annoy the viewer, much like in a stereotypical Hollywood movie. When in fact, the visual style in this film, keeps us questioning who Driver really is, which is to make us think ( a trait found in Independent movies) whilst not distracting us from the feeling of the scene and keeping us fully immersed.
This style is unlike that of Scott Pilgrim vs The World, which uses more video game styles in it's fight scenes, which is very unique, and is effective for this film. The style of Video game visual effects, not only make the violence in the film a lot easier for younger audiences to view, replacing the gore with coins and video game combo scores. But keeps the older, more mature audiences engaged as they are effectively references for retro video games, fuelling the interest of the viewer with nostalgia. Visual style in costumes are noted by one character, Wallace, who notices that Patel dresses "like a pirate", which, when we look in a broader perspective, applies to almost all characters. Ramona flowers has bright dyed hair, which separates her from the crowd and makes it seem that Scott is so infatuated with her that he can (as the cliché goes) make her out from a crowd.
If we remove this visual style, we'd be left with two teenagers in stereotypical clothing, and a very gory scene, completely alienating the younger audience(s) and bumping the BBFC rating upward. The visual style is what makes the fight interesting and sets it apart from the regular fight scenes expected in a Hollywood film. I don't believe I've seen a fight scene in a film with a visual style like Scott Pilgrim does. The clip that I have chosen is the first in many "boss battles" found in video games, this is a villain, harder than the usual foes to defeat. Defeating them is a requirement to move on to the next stage. As you get through the game, the bosses are harder to defeat. This is followed by Scott Pilgrim, which has bosses that get harder, until G-man at the end, who is the only boss who kills Scott. They use this as an alternate to the cause and effect found in Classic Hollywood Narrative to both try and appeal as an artwork as well as disassociate itself from reality, where there'd be a load of beat-up teenagers, and thus, the other half of the movie would be spent with either Scott being hunted by the 7 Evil Exes like a gang for vengeance, or Scott being hunted by the Police for assault(s). This helps keep the narrative moving forward (and not halting with Scott in Jail), keep the rating a 12 and keep the mood of the film positive. The visual style in the fight scenes helps make the film more enjoyable as well as help support the idea of escalating video game bosses, otherwise, with the video game style included, it would be harder to associate it as being a video game, and more like people getting unnecessarily and unexplainably more difficult as Scott progresses, which should be Scott getting harder to beat as time goes on (fighting experience gained)
P:
Visual style represented in dialogue between characters and how different it would be without it
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(Contains graphic nudity, NSFW)
COMPARED TO:
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Dialogue is a huge part in all movies. It's usually used by the general audience to determine heroes/villains and their favourite characters. However, the visual style in scenes of dialogue is as equally important as what is actually said. Drive shows it's Neo-noir and Neon-80s style through the proving of Driver to be a mysterious character as he says very little in the scene despite it being an interrogation. This shows that Driver either has something troubling him or has had a past experience which has caused him not to reveal much about himself. The bright lights in this scene are a heavy contrast to the darkness of the roads. This shows that he is happy when under conflict, linking back to Neo-noir as we question the character's sanity. As well as the imagery and symbolism of heaven and angels, portraying Driver to be an angel who is doing this for good intentions, despite his violence in this scene. The low angles (and depth through blocking) in the room also show that Driver has complete power in this situation and looks intimidating to the viewers. Closeups on the hammer create the same effect, also supported by the fact that the hammer is a phallic object, which is stereotyped toward power. Without this visual style, Driver would seem less like a troubled man and more like an "Average Joe" without as much which would leave us without any questioning who Driver is and what caused him to pursue his line of work. As well as this, it would change the scene entirely, to a stereotypical beat up scene, found in Hollywood. This would, effectively remove the character of Driver, making him less of an interesting, puzzling character, much like those found in Hollywood films. This could potentially infer that Driver is engaging to a work of art when in dialogue.
Scott Pilgrim presents it's visual style very clearly in this scene (I chose it for this reason). In this scene, Julie powers curses a lot, displaying her hatred toward Scott. This is covered in the film with a black box over her mouth and an old Dial-up router sound to drown out the cursing. This is significant as the film has cursing in it already, all of which left uncensored. The censoring of this language could mean that the profanity used in this scene is substantially more crude than the other profanity used, keeping it at a 12A rating, or is purely done for artistic reasons. The use of a Dial-up tone is nostalgic to 80s-90s internet, meaning that the target audience recognise it and consider it a form of retro art. This also is the scene where the visual style during dialogue is most prominent, no other scene uses this style, not even when Julie Powers talks again at any point during the film. Without this visual style, it would (depending on what was said) be certified as a 15 or even 18 rating, and would just seem like the foul-mouthed ramblings of a distraught girl. The visual style adds a comedic twist to this, distracting us from the crude dialogue and replacing it with a laughable, awkward situation. I believe that this scene has interesting dialogue as it stands out as the only scene with deliberate censoring.
Certainly in these films (Drive and Scott Pilgrim), the visual style and it's elements are more important within the film than the narrative is. This is due to the fact that if we were to strip these films of their visual styles, I believe that they'd be your standard, non-inventive or imaginative Hollywood film. For this reason, I will be incorporating a visual style that is similar to the original Drive into my 9 Key Frames.
Why has the director done this with the visual stlye? (Messages)
The director(s) do this to make the story more memorable and considered a form of art (trait of an indie film) as well as make the story itself more dynamic (a lot about characters can be found from visual style). I believe that for both of these films, it is effective; and without the visual style, I believe the film would not be anything special and would follow the typical Hollywood narrative,plot and stock characters.
