The film I wanted to talk about is a Chinese movie called Hi, Mom, directed by a director in Mainland China named Jia Ling. This movie is based on the sketch of the same name in 2016 and Jia Ling’s personal experience, the film tells the story of Jia Xiaoling, a girl who has just been admitted to college, who experienced a big rise and fall behind in her life, and then accidentally crossed back to the year 1981 and met her mother, who worked in a chemical plant 20 years ago. This film shows us the social life in this period in China, and the architecture in this film also has a sense of age. In this case, I choose this movie to be my discussion topic.
In this movie, the director used many old type buildings to show the life of the 1980s, including a group of people gathering around a small, black and white television and watching TV programmes, a volleyball competition held by the factory and so on. The architectures used in the movie were all designed just like that period, their design idea is probably to maximise efficiency. There are no excessive designs and patterns, simple but without losing beauty. The movie also uses an aerial view to contain an area of the city, not only showing the structure of the place but also showing the style of the buildings. This shows the director’s rigour when directing the film.
The movie also uses some special ways to render the scene. When Xiaoling and her mother tried to persuade their old partners to attend the volleyball competition by helping them solve the problems they met in their daily life, which caused them cannot prepare for the competition and has the mind to quit the match, the director use around 15 camera lens, showing the different ways the main characters use to solve three member’s problems and their successful result. There is another scene, that shows when Xiaoling heard that her friend, LengTe’s mother is hospitalized, they quickly rushed to the hospital. The director first shows the inside of the hospital, using the dim light and the doctor’s reprimand to LengTe, a loafer, to show the repressive atmosphere after the accident. Then, the scene turned to the outside of the hospital, the conversation between these two main characters. Here, the building shows the background of the conversation and their discussion promote the development of the plot successfully. These are all applications of montage, showing this part of the story clearly and the characteristic of the main characters.
The director also uses mise en scene in the movie. When the volleyball competition was held, the director combined many different views of the area to show the competition’s situation, including the number and the scale of the audience, and the members of the two groups. The director shows the audience the situation of the competition successfully by showing these elements in parts.
Liu Yitong UID:3035948328
Your choice of site is not clear, I wonder if there is a specific location for analysis? Moreover, your fieldwork research is rather limited as there are no other sources/ images than the film itself. You may compare and contrast the sites in film and in reality as a method to understand the director’s choice. It may help you to be more specific in your analysis as well. Images could be inserted in-between content so that they could anchor your analysis. Lastly, do remember to properly cite all the sources you have used.