Faculty of Arts
- Introduction
- Learning Resources
- Preventing Plagiarism
- What Tutors Do
- Notes - FILMIC CODES
- Assignment 1
- SHOT TYPES
- Week 3
- Week 1
- Attendance
- Tutorials
- Turnitin Guidelines
- Help
- Film, Television and Media Studies
- Assignment 1 - Names
- Week 3 B
- Week 4
- Week 5
- Week 6
- Week 7
- Week 8
- Assignment 1 - Criteria and Tips
- Staff
- Week 9
- Week 10
- Week 11
- Week 12 Lecture 1
- Class Reps
- Assignment 2
- Assignment 2 - Criteria
- Reading and Independent Study
- Deadlines & extensions
- Formatting coursework
- Plagiarism
- Important dates
- using the web
King Kong
Early Influences;
Victorian era exploration of exotic lands
The use of publicity material such as film to promote such exploration to the public to raise funds for further exploration.
Myth of finding a place ‘that time forgot’
1912 novel Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World
The Lost World , 1925– stop motion animation - Willis O’Brien
Technical importance of KK;
The combination of;
Stop motion animation
Rear projection
Miniature rear projection
Early experimentation with combining elements of music, dialogue and sfx together (3 track mix).
Horror genre:
the woman as the object of male desire
the desire is transgressive
Sexually charged monstrous ‘other’
Contains other generic elements;
Influence of ethnographic filmmaking and research
Polarities of noble savage or brutal aggressor
Ambivalent subtext - racism
Modernist primitivism
Travel documentary/jungle adventures
Through filmmaking experience of Cooper and Schoedsack;
The recurring tropes associated with the travel documentary & jungle adventure genres;
Camera/gun trope – associated with the aggressive white male gaze
Drama of the touch (girl in the hairy paw - iconic).
Physicality - the touch central to ‘jungle’ narratives – hands, touching, body contact – meeting point between ‘civilisation and nature’ or western and non western worlds.
Also important;
Representation of Visual Spectacle
Representation & exploitation of the ‘exotic other’
Generically mobile - 1950s release on TV associated it with sci-fi genre &
resonates within cold war political climate – fear of the aggressive outsider.
popular in foreign markets because strongly visual, universal storytelling & the emotional ‘winner’ was the monster who violently challenges the intensions of the arrogant American explorer/entrepreneur.
LAURA MULVEY
Essay;
‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ 1975
Merian C Cooper
Ernest B Schoedsack
RKO – Radio Pictures
Willis O’Brien
Stop Motion photography
Rear Projection
Miniature Projection
Improved Optical Processing
Blue Screen
Matte
Full size Props
