Gravity: Cinematic Experience

One of the best movie for year 2013. It definitely need to watch at cinema, better if you had a chance to watch at IMAX. Although this movie had past several months ago, I still feel very excited and wanted to share my experience of watching it.

Gravity tells a medical engineer and an astronaut work together to survive after a catastrophe destroys their shuttle and leaves them adrift in orbit. A simple story, but it brings an unique ride of experience at the cinema. The visual effect and the sound of this movie can let you experience of floating at outer space. That is the reason why Gravity can win 5 awards from this year 86th Academic Awards (Oscars), which are the visual effect, sound mixing, sound editing, music and director.

Poster/Trailer

The poster was designed in total blackness with only 1 astronaut floating at space and the tagline tells "Don't let go". Huge impact to me where I start to have deep thought about the movie because the poster give much thinking space for me to wonder how will the story goes.

As we all know, space is vacuum, thus the poster tells nothing can be done by the astronaut and the time is ticking where the oxygen level is getting down when you let go from the shuttle. The struggle of the astronaut is drastic, and it is a hype for me to find out how the director will tell the story.

After viewed the trailer, the feeling of anxious and curios appeared. The anxiousness feel where the shuttle had destroyed by the debris and Sandra struggle to detached in order to be alive, but then she end up floating at the space without any support for her to reach to other shutter. And now the "what next" feeling of mine had pop up after the end of the trailer, which brought me to feel this movie definitely need to watch at cinema.

Review

Gravity definitely need to watch at cinema, if you had not watch, then you need to find a very good sound system room to watch. The content itself was not much dramatic as there are mp involvement with many human conflict. The movie only tells the struggle of Dr Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) find her way to return to the earth when her shuttle had been destroyed by the debris at the space. Hence, it's only 1 man show for Sandra Bullock to support and it is her challenge of her acting skill.

I got amaze on her performance in the film because my first impression of Sandra is from the comedy film, but Gravity had change my perception towards her. She manage to brings out the character of Dr Ryan Stone. She shows the struggle, bravery, independent and weakness of the character. Hence, she is fortunate to be nominate as leading actress for the 86th Academic Awards.

Audio is a very important role for a movie, most of the nature sound tells the impact of a particular incident like a collision with explosive sound. However, at the space is vacuum, then there will be no sound can be heard, so Gravity manage to brought up the movie experience to the next level of eliminate many nature sound from the environment. While you watching the movie, the collision and explosion of the shuttle were heard nearly nothing and replace to very intense music for the critical and intense feel.

Throughout the movie, beside music we can hear the communication and monologue of Dr Ryan in her suits. 

Not a silent film, we still have lots of sound to hear from the movie. The execution of it is take care carefully from not being totally silent, the movie had find ways like breathing, communication with Houston (mission control center), anything contact with her suits will able to hear some sound coming from.

The nice part for me is after finish the movie, my ear start to have buzz sound or little uncomfortable when I step out from the cinema. I had use to the environment create in the movie, and make me need to rearrange the environment with many nature sounds around me.

Visual, the cinematography and camera movement of movie also do amaze me, which it can shot to be like handling the camera without any gravity force. The shots can move so freely, we can see the camera turns 360 degree and move around in any direction. After all, the beauty of looking at the earth from the space is so beautiful and you can feel that we are so tiny compare to the world.

A whole journey for Dr Ryan had portray the purpose of a life, which had problem or dilemma form the past and it need to face it. No one can escape from any problem, we need to face it no matter how hard the process. Along the journey, we might got people to help but they won't be together with you till the end, you still need to face it all the way alone. Once we had conquer our fear and problem from the past, we will have a feeling of new live. A wonderful feel to rejoice about the air and ground we breathing and stepping at.

Overall, it is an unforgettable experience to watch at cinema to have the feel of being at the outer space. Besides, audio and visual that had brought the new experience, Gravity also tells a reflective story of life. A good movie to share with and to have deep thought of the content itself.

Sunflower: Transition of Life

Qing Ming Festival, also known as Tomb Sweeping Day is a Chinese traditional festival that celebrate either April 4th or 5th in a given year. In this period of time (it can be celebrate early or later 2 weeks from the exact date), Chinese will gather with the family to visit the graves or burial grounds of their ancestors. It is a festival to give opportunity to the celebrants to remember and give homage to their ancestor. A very unique way to teach the younger generations about the Chinese Value.

In conjunction with Qing Ming, a short film based on death is produced by the Reservoir Production and directed by Quek Shio Chuan. The short film is called: Sunflowers short film.

Summary

A struggling makeup artist, Ping who has the ambitious dream to be famous amongst the fashion industry and wanted to go to overseas to be the famous celebrities makeup artist. Despite living in the highly competitive environment, she finally lands a job that is not makeup for the living. With the dilemma she has within, she soon had been enlightened and understand more about the meaning of this new job, funeral make up artist.

Review

Sunflowers short film had successfully tells a story that touches lots of peoples' heart. The simplicity of the story telling, but deeply the meaning that going to be convey. By watching the short film in the Qing Ming season, everyone get more related to the story with it.

Chinese proverbs had said "one generation plants the trees; another gets the shade". Our ancestor had done their very best job to ensure we are now live in peace and steady life. Hence, Qing Ming is all about it, remembrance the contribution from our ancestor.

In the short film, the grandmother wanted Ping to live less struggle, so she asked the veteran to give a job opportunity to Ping. A valuable virtue found in the Chinese was diligently shown in the short film.


Furthermore, the appearance of some props used in the short film had symbolic meaning that make the film more concrete and meaningful.

1. Sunflowers: 
     Meaning of the sunflower is faith and hope. Grandmother's life is like sunflowers, it bloom and shine to give hope and cherish to Ping, but still had to wither when the time had come. Nothing is permanent.

2. Makeup Box:
     Makeup box is an identity of a profession. The veteran advise Ping not to use her own makeup box when she is helping the deceased make up. The reason of it is to tell Ping still had the choice of living to continue pursue her dream using her own makeup box but not for the deceased.

In the end, Ping wanted to use her own makeup box to help beautify her grandmother because it is the time she had made her decision to has a transition to settle down and continue the job together with the veteran.


Producing short film is a good way to experiment new technique of story telling. We can easily identify a sudden change of camera angle and shots. All these methods were made had their own meaning to be told.

1. Tilt screen and divided evenly

The screenshot shown above, Ping is lying on the bed and suddenly her phone rang. The time the camera starts to tilt from horizontal line of the bed towards vertical. The screenshot we saw now had split into left and right evenly from the line of the bed. It is a 50/50 decision for Ping to decide on accepting the job or not. Moreover, it was also the time Ping's career life will going to be a turnover.

2. Bird's eye view

These scene are well shot because it brings us a feeling that Pings is stepping to the new environment where we follow her footstep to the place without knowing what ahead of her. Both shots, Ping is nervous and frighten to step in, though it is the same place, but different occasion.

3. Stop motion

This scene was adapted from the time where Ping received a call about her grandmother's death. The cinematography had well express her feeling during that time. Everything come too sudden, she was shocked and started to loose the focus on her environment. The surrounding of Ping are all blurry and fast moving, only herself was still and very emotional.

Overall comment

Quek's film tells a good story with the good combination of music and down to earth storyline. You can see his awards winning 'Guang' and several Petronas TVC are good example of his director style.

The screening premiere I went is on the 3rd April 2014 at E@Curve, Mutiara Damansara. Many media and supporter are welcomed to have their first glimpse before the video went viral at the internet.

I was very touch and relate very much in this short film, because I was in the same Chinese culture and I do have a similar scenario of helping to clean my grandmother's body. The emotion starts to get deepens, when we see our loved one had departed. Our last role at that time is to make their body to look as natural as possible.

To sum up the Sunflowers short films, it is short film about the transition of life: from alive to death; from ambitious to steadiness; from attachment to relieve. All these are the value of life, where everyone gonna have their own transition for their life. This short film is based on death as the main transition.

Please do view it and share among your friend about this short film from our Malaysia's local director, Quek Shio Chuan. His been very passionate about film making and also hope there will be a transition of his life to film a featured film after this.