Emma Nicholas Essays (1162 words) - Entertainment,

Emma Nicholas Professor McMahon Orientation of Film 10 October 2012 In Brian Helgeland's exciting, entertaining, medieval set film, a peasant squire's master dies following which fueled by his desire for food and glory, the peasant creates a new identity for himself as a knight. Unlike most film set place in the medieval era, this one happens to take a stance on the life from a peasant's point of view. The motif behind the movie being that "a man can change his stars", meaning which a person's alignment of their life may be realigned with their strength to change their future. Throughout Brian Helgeland's script, the English is easily understood due to its use of common language. It contains a few humorous lines and amusing characters that break up the seriousness of the movie. Characters in the movie speak with an English accent due to setting of the film, thus more intriguing to listen to compared to more common film's shown in America that keep to an American accent. Even though the movie uses everyday language, the one character known as Geoff rey Chaucer speaks with an extremely educated tongue. If not familiar with higher learning speech, it can be difficult to understand his context. This singles him out in which it is easily picked out that he has been polished with knowledge to a more advanced degree than that of the other characters. Though their actors portray the characters mediocrely. The acting in this film resembles nothing of other movies that have won awards and have had the budget to recruit A-list actors and actresses. Some actors outshine others through their performance. The actors who are bland or at the least have their dull moments make such parts of the movie a little less interesting to watch. Although some actors who may not perform perfectly throughout the movie do have a few incidents in which they make up for their over all acting performance. It may be because certain actors have more engaging characters to depict, though in that case it questions their acting ability. It could also be because Helgeland wrote these characters with too common everyday language thus being more of a challenge for these actors to make their character that more compelling. In which this demeans their acting talents. Leaving it to be a bit difficult to tell which reasoning is true or accurate thus keeping it questionable. Brian Helgeland being the writer as well as the director must have found the acting worthy along with his writing. The directing of this movie was better done. Though the acting was middling, the directing is superb in comparison. Being that the adequate directing job contrasts with un-compelling acting. It is my judgment as to why Helgeland picked these certain actors, some may fit their character well enough but some are debatable in which they play the role convincingly. Helgeland has the actors use big motions as opposed to just standing and delivering their lines. They have them very active in each scene in which they move about the set. In the film there is an immense amount of jousting, sword fighting, even a banquet dance scene where all in unison the attendees of the banquet dance among each other using up the entire dance floor amongst the middle of the hall and the feasting tables. He has the frame of the camera showing the actors from waste up for the majority of the movie when the actors are just speaking along with a good amount of the shots of the main character on his horse ready to joust. The director, Helgeland, displays the jousting scenes in exciting ways where as it captures all of the actions. Some shots in which the horse is galloping at full speed straight into the camera, other shots consist of the side view in which one is able to see the two horses approaching either at top speed preparing themselves on impact with the knight's lances. Seeing these shots in action matches the convincing set design along with amateur costume choices. The film's set design is well planned and convincing. It may not compare to a bigger budget movie, but it is designed well enough in which it makes the film