By the time the 1980s rolled around., Hong Kong cinema was popular the world over for its martial arts flicks or wuxia. Most Asian families during that time couldn’t afford a TV so the film industry had a huge local following.  Capitalizing on this fame to spread the Hong Kong style in other genres of […]

A POV (point of view) shot shows the audience the fictional world from the perspective of a character. It places us in the observer’s shoes, allowing us to see what he or she is seeing from a first-person perspective. In other words, a POV shot mimics real life, replicating our line of sight in the […]

Actors are strategically placed in certain pre-determined positions and their movements in a scene are also thought out in advance.  This choreography of actors, including the positioning and movement of the camera and props as well is what is referred to in totality as blocking. It is a crucial element of film production, without which […]

Stories told from a first-person account involve a narrator walking us through a film’s events. When the narrator is not trustworthy or his credibility is in doubt for some reason, he becomes an unreliable narrator.  Or perhaps the truth is just stretched… a bit like the narrator in Big Fish (2003): We cannot take what […]

Foreshadowing refers to offering a futuristic hint of events or their outcomes in a movie. It is a film technique where elusive clues lead viewers to a possible outcome that may not yet be so obvious at the start of the film.  Foreshadowing provides pointers that a seemingly meaningless conversation or prop, among other elements, […]

After the events of World War 1, Germany became estranged from the rest of the world. Foreign films were prohibited by a vengeful government angry at the rest of the planet. A new cinema movement rose to what is now globally known as German expressionism as a result of that isolation.  A culture of independence […]

A storyboard is a pictorial representation of the sequence of events in a film, depicting what’s happening from start to finish in a linear, graphical fashion. It can also be thought of as a flowchart for the plot or narrative. Step by step, it graphically unravels the order of activities through square/rectangular images.  Each image […]

A camera shot refers to a continuous sequence of frames that go on without breaking away from the action, or without cutting away to another instance. Shots are the essence of filmmaking and they toy with film lovers often in more ways than they know.  Conscious decisions are made by cinematographers in terms of camera […]

You have a great screenplay to work with, you’re past pre-production and now it’s time to get the tape rolling. Except, there’s no one to roll it. You have no movie without a crew and you can’t achieve success in cinema without talent behind you.  This is why it’s important to know how to find […]

Blaxploitation is a term coined from the merger of two words, namely black and exploitation. It referenced a new, unconventional at the time, ethnic genre where film would focus on the lives of black characters. Blaxploitation infamously earned the term because it faced backlash for its use of non-black directors, writers, and filmmakers in general […]