Assignment

Over the past few weeks, I worked on an essay. It involved choosing a sequence and analysing it based on mise-en-scene, cinematography, sound and editing. There were many sequences from a variety of genres to choose from. Although all the clips had many excellent examples of the film elements, I narrowed my choices down to Psycho because the shower scene could be analysed in depth, Memoirs of a Geisha because the film was beautifully composed and the cinematography was stunning, Titanic because I love the movie so much and I felt that it could be well analysed and House of Flying Daggers because the camera focus was excellent and the characters were well defined despite the lack of dialogue. I ended up choosing House of Flying Daggers because I rewatched it several times and found that it was the most interesting. Also, the characters were well defined and I found that the scene was quite climatic.

The sequence was of the wuxia action genre and included a wuxia martial arts fight scene between the girl and the captain. After researching the action genre, I found that the sequence was a perfect example of the action genre: 'where one or more heroes is thrust into a series of challenges that require physical feats, extended fights and frenetic chases'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_film

'one or more heroes (the blind girl) is thrust into a series of challenges (echo game) that require physical feats (correctly interpreting which drum the rock hit and performing a complex dance move to hit it), extended fights (wuxia) and frenetic chases (girl tries to hear captain's movements)

I felt that House of Flying Daggers was an excellent example of the wuxia action genre and it conveyed its plot successfully to the audience.