I mentioned in one of my earlier blog entries about a subject we have this semester, Media Appreciation. For this subject, we watched quite a few things in class this week.

On Monday, we watched "The Day After Tomorrow" on DVD. Then, we saw the making of that movie on Tuesday, which was really cool! Most of the scenes were practically shot in a huge warehouse, especially the scenes with all the disasters happening.

They built parts of New York city, the public library and etc. We saw how they did the hail storm, which were basically plastic bubbles. But the bubbles bounced really high when they hit the ground, so chunks of real ice were used. And on a scene where the few tornados were wrecking Hollywood, they actually shut down the whole street of Hollywood to film that. COOL. Now that's what we call big budget movies!

And one of the crew mentioned that when they were wrapping up after filming some important scenes, everyone was so excited, someone called her and pointed at yards and yards of film spilled all over the ground. >.< Poor thing! So it was pretty cool watching an hour of how they filmed this sci-fi movie.

Yesterday was really interesting. Ms. T decided to show us one of the first movies ever made, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari". You can find this movie in YouTube. It's a silent movie, and we've never actually seen a silent movie before other than Charlie Chaplin, especially the really original ones. Although it was kinda confusing most of the times and the video was REALLY blur, we should respect this movie because it's pretty long for one of the first movies, about 50 minutes. T

he movie is about a guy, Francis, who falls in love with a girl named Jane. Another guy, named Alan, also falls in love with her. He starts telling this guy, Dr. Olsen, the story of him and the girl. The head of a mental institution, Dr. Caligari, had a somnambulist (don't ask me what this means, I think it's a zombie-like thing), named Cesare, kept in his house. One day, Dr. Caligari wakes Cesare up, and the people made him predict their deaths. He said that Alan would die at dawn. And he did.

It seemed as though Cesare murdered him. Then, another suspect was caught. Then, Cesare captured Jane, wanted to murder her but couldn't. And Dr. Caligari was also suspected to be behind the whole thing. Francis was like the investigator in the movie. Bla bla bla...it got pretty confusing, especially during the climax when all the documents in Dr. Caligari's office were revealed. We couldn't read a single word at all because it was really REALLY blur. You guys know how silent movies are right? You see the motion and hear background music, the characters talk but you can't hear them, then a slide with words comes on, then another scene, then another slide, and etc.

Then...suddenly...the movie shifted to present. Francis asked Jane to marry him, but she couldn't because she was "of royal blood". It turned out the whole things was just Francis' imagination. They were all patients of a mental institution, but Dr. Caligari was really the head. Even the so-called somnambulist, Cesare, was one of the patients. =__= The movie was kinda scary at times because the characters had super thick make-up and they were freaky-looking. We kept making fun of Cesare LOL, 'cause he's really tall and the way he stood was really um...proper. We were supposed to pronounce his name as 'se-sah-reh', but Irene kept calling him 'kay-se-ree', the guys called him 'chee-sair', LOL =___="

I'm surprised we actually went through the whole movie because it seemed boring in the beginning. Next week, we're gonna watch "The Incredibles" and maybe the first movie EVER made, "The Factory Workers", which is a 10 minute movie showing people exiting a factory. That's all. But thousands of people flocked to the premiere of this movie because it's going down in the history of mankind and film-making! Can't wait!

And to think that we've had enough movies, we have to watch another movie for a Social Psychology assignment. Busy, busy, busy semester!