Beau Babics - Art & Technology FMX 211

  Films are carefully constructed works of art that have underlying hidden meanings in them. In Star Wars: The Force Awakens , meaning is added through film language and mise-en-scene. This can include the composition of shots, where the camera is placed, camera movements, lighting, and what and where characters are on screen. In the opening scene of Star Wars: The Force Awakens when the First Order Stormtroopers land on Jakku, their blasters shoot red lasers while the villagers’ guns shoot blue lasers. This illustrates a part of mise-en-scene which includes color. The red of the Stormtroopers weapons convey thoughts of violence, chaos, and blood while the blue of the villagers’ weapons bring a meaning of purity and underlying innocence.  Later in the opening scene when Poe Dameron gives BB-8 the map to Luke Skywalker, the camera is placed low to ground looking up at Poe showing BB-8’s perspective. This low-angle shot makes it look that Poe has superiority over BB-8 when te...

As someone who is not very familiar with opera at all, it was very eye-opening to be exposed to some of the history of opera and what makes it so special. I would say the only real exposure I’ve had to opera was  Antonin Pavarotti’s performance of “Nessun Dorma”. My parents often played it for me when I was a kid and I always loved singing along. Learning about Claudio Monteverdi, the father of opera, was interesting because until watching Howard Goodall, I had no idea he existed. He was known for his very popular secular and sacred works that were very emotional in nature. Like a lot of art, hearing that opera is very much tied into social events and politics doesn’t surprise me. It was interesting to see a play like Le Mariage de Figaro grow to such popularity but get banned by several governments. It took people like Mozart to disguise certain political messages in order for them to actually be heard instead of banned by aristocrats and monarchs.