what happened to civilization on earth in blade runner 2049?
D enis Villeneuve, manager of such mod classics as Blade Runner 2049 and Sicario, has yet to brand a bad picture show. His first two features might be flawed just they are still fresh and exciting. Between his 2nd and 3rd features, Villeneuve took a nine-year break but, since he's been back, he'south never missed the marker. Just what exactly makes Denis Villeneuve movies so adept?
This is not a "Denis Villeneuve Movies Ranked" commodity. Instead, we've taken a tour through his strongest films, highlighting moments that testify that he belongs on a list of the best working directors.
Tabular array of Contents
Everything you demand to know about Denis Villeneuve
- Denis Villeneuve's Filmography
- Cinematography
- Inverted Camera Angles in Polytechnique
- Lighting for Character in Sicario
- Product Pattern
- Establishing Landscapes in Blade Runner 2049
- Colour and Costuming in Enemy
- Editing
- Crafting Complicity in Prisoners
- Editing to Music in Incendies
- Sound and Music
- Soundtracking Threat in Arrival
- Conflicting Vocalization
i
Filmography
A Consummate Listing
Filmography
Denis Villeneuve movies
August 32nd on Earth (1998)
Young Simone is involved in a well-nigh fatal car crash, and as she questions her mortality, she also decides to have a baby. Her candidate for a male parent is her best friend Phillipe who happens to be seeing someone. He agrees, as long as they conceive in Salt Lake City, in the desert. The trip teaches many lessons about love, solitude, and cocky-discovery.
Denis Villeneuve Movies: August 32nd on Earth
Maelstrom (2000)
After plunging her car into a river, a woman encounters a man who helps her come up to terms with her life.
Denis Villeneuve Movies: Maelstrom
Polytechnique (2009)
A dramatization of the Montreal Massacre of 1989 where several female engineering students were murdered past an unstable misogynist.
Denis Villeneuve Movies: Polytechnique
Incendies (2010)
Twins journeying to the Middle Due east to observe their family unit history and fulfill their mother'southward final wishes.
Villeneuve Movies: Incendies
Prisoners (2013)
When Keller Dover's daughter and her friend go missing, he takes matters into his own easily every bit the law pursue multiple leads and the pressure mounts.
Prisoners
Enemy (2013)
A human seeks out his exact wait-akin after spotting him in a movie.
Enemy Trailer
Sicario (2015)
An idealistic FBI agent is enlisted by a authorities chore force to aid in the escalating war against drugs at the edge area betwixt the U.Southward. and Mexico.
Villeneuve Movies: Sicario
Arrival (2016)
A linguist works with the military to communicate with conflicting lifeforms afterward twelve mysterious spacecraft announced effectually the globe.
Villeneuve Movies: Arrival
Bract Runner 2049 (2017)
A young bract runner'south discovery of a long-cached clandestine leads him to track downwards former blade runner, Rick Deckard, who's been missing for xxx years.
Blade Runner 2049
Now that you're refreshed on his films, let'south swoop into them and larn a bit more about how he makes it all happen.
two
Cinematography
Techniques
2.i Inverted Camera Angles in Polytechnique
Presenting a world upside down
In cinematography, information technology's non merely important "what" the camera shows us. Presentation is too crucial. A subject'southward meaning is altered past the lighting, framing, and what type of lens y'all decide to utilize.
The camera angle tin also have a meaning impact. In Polytechnique, Denis Villeneuve films with extreme oblique and inverted angles to suggest a globe in chaos. Let'south have a await at a couple of examples from the motion picture and see how these angles are motivated.
Jean-Francois (Sebastien Huberdeau) survived the mass shooting, but his globe is forever fractured. He feels enormous guilt for his failure to prevent his classmates' deaths.
Life after the tragedy has been a struggle.
As he drives to visit his female parent (Johanne-Marie Tremblay), we rails his motorcar with an inverted aerial shot. Most aeriform shots assume a shallow bending of their subject, somewhere betwixt 20 to seventy degrees. Others volition shoot straight down at xc degrees in what nosotros phone call a God's Eye View shot.
But rarely, if ever, do nosotros run across an aeriform shot with a steeper angle than that.
In this case, the camera frames Jean-Francois' vehicle from perhaps 120 degrees. We see him below and behind u.s.a..
This produces a dizzying vertigo effect.
Tipping past our equilibrium
When Jean-Francois commits suicide a few scenes later, this aeriform shot is finally motivated. Since the massacre, Jean-Francois has lost his equilibrium.
His earth has lost its center.
The final shot of the film pushes an oblique bending even further. In this example, we track along the ceiling of a hallway in the schoolhouse. But the photographic camera is completely inverted 180 degrees. The "floor" is the ceiling and vice versa.
Down is up, up is down
What are we to take away from Villeneuve'south parting shot?
Has the world lost its equilibrium?
Perhaps. But just like Valerie (Karine Vanasse), we must continue.
Denis Villeneuve films approach violence in a very particular and brutal way but he tempers this darkness with poetic shots like the ane above.
How would y'all use an inverted aerial or tracking shot like Villeneuve?
When considering a shot similar these in your next project, make sure they are thematically motivated. Yous tin can communicate a lot about your characters and their mental land with a simple camera angle.
2.two Lighting for Grapheme in Sicario
Using calorie-free and shadow thematically
In a scene of two people talking, the dialogue and performances are the audition's primary focus. Merely there are opportunities elsewhere to heighten the scene's power and meaning.
Editing, music and sound, costumes, production design--all of these should support the scene. Cinematography can likewise be used in practical ways to communicate character.
How exercise Denis Villeneuve films similar Sicario utilize shot composition to reinforce grapheme and ability dynamics?
One of the final scenes in the motion picture is a fantastic example of this process.
Prepare?
At the terminate of the film, Kate (Emily Edgeless) has institute herself in the unsafe world of drug cartels. Fifty-fifty more dangerous is her colleague, Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro).
After their mission went off the rail, Alejandro appears in Kate's apartment. He forces her to sign a statement claiming no criminal procedures took place.
He sits her down, at gunpoint, and explains that her options are death or compliance. It is a tense scene and also heartbreaking as Kate is made to compromise her moral integrity.
Be dishonest or dead?
But how can specific lighting techniques heighten elements similar character development?
We've cleaved the unabridged scene down then yous can run across every shot. Cheque out our StudioBinder shot list below:
Sicario Shot List: Kate and Alejandro
Every bit Kate walks in from the balcony, she stands in silhouette confronting the window, exposed. Alejandro sits in the darkness, concealed.
He's gotten the drop on her.
In Kate's single, she sits in front of a white wall wearing a lite gray shirt. She is also well lit, erasing nearly of the shadows. She is shadowless because she has no secrets. She is pure only vulnerable considering of it.
The contrary of Alejandro is lit much differently. He is camouflaged with shadow. At points, nosotros can merely see the glint of his left eye.
Alejandro is zilch just secretive. He is morally fluid and has the chapters for darkness that she will never take.
Using shadow and light for character
These ideas are reflected and reinforced past the lighting.
Afterwards she signs and Alejandro leaves, Kate grabs her gun. She returns to the balcony and aims at Alejandro as he walks away. At present she is in control of the situation, and the lighting scheme marks this reversal.
A dark groundwork now surrounds her while the sky behind him fully exposes Alejandro. Both characters are framed in a low angle, which is oft used to give a graphic symbol power.
Just there is a divergence here besides. The angle on Kate is low but simply to match her eye-line. The angle on Alejandro is much lower and opposite to his eye-line.
Who is in control?
Fifty-fifty in this situation, Alejandro is the more powerful of the two. If Alejandro felt threatened, we would frame him in a high angle, looking downwardly.
But there is no threat. He knows she won't pull the trigger.
Do you have a tense dialogue scene in your script? Could you utilize light and shadow to create a power dynamic similar this scene in Sicario?
If y'all've seen this technique used elsewhere, permit us know in the comments.
3
Production Blueprint
Villeneuve Worlds
3.1 Establishing Landscapes in Blade Runner 2049
Building worlds
A authentication of science fiction cinema is the creation of new worlds. The entreatment for audiences is existence transported to these strange or strange places. It could be a distant planet, an alternate reality, or our near future.
The story and characters provide us with the micro-view of these worlds. But how practise nosotros consummate the world-building process? How exercise nosotros convince the audience that this world extends beyond the frame?
Establishing shots and production blueprint.
In some genres, establishing shots office as a bumper or filler between scenes. They signal to u.s.a. that nosotros're moving locations, but they exercise petty to enhance the storytelling.
In excellent science fiction movies, this is not the case. With any new earth, there is a lot of information to provide the audience. How does this world work? How practice people live? Allow's look at how Villeneuve uses these tools for world-building in Blade Runner 2049.
Our first await at this world is a group of aerial shots of what we assume is an agricultural region. We see a gigantic solar farm, populated with a series of circular grids of panels and looming towers. We know now that solar power has become a dominant resource.
Our start glimpse at the future
The adjacent shot is a apartment, fragmented plain. This is clearly farming land, simply information technology tells usa more than that. Every inch of available land is being utilized. The population has grown, and the demand for food production has reached a tipping betoken.
Later, 'K' (Ryan Gosling) flies into Los Angeles. This is our kickoff introduction to the city, and the presentation is deliberate. The sequence is comprised of graceful, floating shots as we take in the landscape.
The offset iii shots give u.s. a glimpse at a body of water of gray and claustrophobic urban sprawl. The buildings are lifeless and indistinguishable. In that location are no lights or colors anywhere.
In the side by side few shots, nosotros start to meet a little variety with small pops of afar neon lights.
Nosotros also get the start few skyscrapers, breaking upwardly the vertical terrain.
The urban center begins to take shape.
Finally, the camera tilts with Grand's vehicle, and we become our first full glimpse of the LA city. It is a massive hive of culture and technology.
The centerpiece, of course, is the awe-inspiring LAPD headquarters. The size, architecture, and fundamental framing of the building give united states of america a clear bulletin.
The LAPD is a powerful organization, one which one man will accept to face before the terminate comes.
LAPD, a powerful institution
Let'south recap: in the offset 15 minutes, nosotros've been fairly introduced to the world of Blade Runner. We've learned a lot about the earth and the circumstances surrounding the narrative.
If yous think these types of establishing shots are restricted to Human activity One, you're sorely mistaken. The entire flick has shots like this. Each location is designed with its ain character and personality. You tin immediately tell Denis Villeneuve's vision was clearly understood by the prepare designer.
Los Angeles is a claustrophobic sprawl, which Wallace Corp. HQ has a menacing, rigid order to it. These differences establish a thematic opposition between these two locations and what they represent.
We've used StudioBinder's shot list feature to collect over xxx of the best world-building shots in Bract Runner 2049. Click the paradigm below and see for yourself just how far they went.
Establishing Shot Storyboard
We've even seen a variety of landscapes and locations. This world is Large, and we get a sense of that immediately. Presenting the size and scope of the world does wonders for an immersive cinematic experience.
InBract Runner 2049, this is washed with a few uncomplicated establishing shots and evocative production design. Denis Villeneuve'south next motion-picture show is an accommodation of the sci-fi classic, "Dune." Chances are high that he's going to push this world-building even further.
Can you imagine what a Denis Villeneuve Dune volition wait like??
Successful world-building is directly related to how much fourth dimension and effort is given to shots like these. Establishing shots are opportunities to enhance and solidify your storytelling. Give the audience the experience of a complete and new world.
In your next projection, consider how you tin can utilize these shots to your reward with a thoughtful shot list. The audience might not see the immediate benefit, simply they will experience it.
three.two Color and Costuming in Enemy
Contrast creates conflict
Denis Villeneuve films tin have surreal elements but you wouldn't necessarily phone call him a surrealist. In his most esoteric movie, there are a lot of unanswered questions. We've seen stories about doppelgängers earlier, but Enemy is in a grade all its own.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays two roles: Adam Bell and Anthony Claire. 2 men who are identical in appearance just live very dissimilar lives. Like many other movies about doppelgängers, Adam and Anthony represent ii sides of the same money.
Their personalities are as unlike as their images are similar.
How do y'all visualize their differences? Is there a way to separate the pair visually and thematically?
The reply lies in this scene from Enemy.
Both men have identical hairstyles and facial hair. Their costumes are the only way to gear up them autonomously visually. Adam is the more wholesome of the pair, and his outfits' color palette are generally lighter. Anthony is more aggressive and reckless, so his color scheme is darker.
We can brand the straightforward argument that skillful guys wear white and bad guys article of clothing black.
But this is only the start of how costuming is used in the film.
What we run across around the characters provides additional context and meaning.
I think movie theatre is a tool to explore our shadows.
— Denis Villeneuve
In this scene, Anthony confronts Adam in his apartment. The power dynamic is axiomatic between the two, just Villeneuve takes it a step further.
He highlights this situation with costume and production design.
In these two shots, notice the use of contrast in color and background. In Adam'south shot, his white shirt blends perfectly with the cabinets behind him. He blends into the room, making him less physically imposing.
Adam blends in, weak
Anthony, on the other manus, is wearing a blackness leather jacket, separating him from the well-lit background.
His physical presence is darker, stronger, and imposing.
Anthony stands out, stiff
Gyllenhaal's performance as both characters makes their differences obvious enough. But the subtle choices in how you lot dress, light and stage these performances requite scenes like this a subtextual and intangible quality.
Costuming is an essential part of the procedure. In your films, consider how costume can be combined with setting to button the symbolism fifty-fifty further.
Staging the scene this fashion is a subtle option and one your audience shouldn't even notice. Only information technology volition piece of work on a hidden level, and information technology will elevate the film.
4
Editing
Villeneuve'south Films
4.1 Crafting Complicity in Prisoners
Activating the imagination
Editing is all near manipulation.
It is a construction of sound and epitome to produce a story, a feeling, or a theme. Editing tin can provide meaning to a scene that might not take been in the script.
Editing can also activate the imagination and bring the audience further into the story. Villeneuve does this in a scene from the fierce drama Prisoners. He doesn't show us the frightening images of a kidnapping.
Instead, he allows united states to imagine it for ourselves.
Allow's break this scene downwardly and talk about how this is done. Bank check out our StudioBinder shot listing for a look at each shot included in the scene.
Interrogation Scene Shot List
Two little girls have gone missing, and they've finally captured a doubtable. Paul Dano plays the prisoner in question (Alex) while Jake Gyllenhaal's Det. Loki questions him.
Loki grills Alex about the kidnapping with questions about his motivation and processes. The interrogation is intercut with footage of Alex's RV being tested past forensic investigators.
During these shots, the interrogation continues in voiceover. Loki's questions effort to construct a timeline of events. "Did you lot ask them to come inside the RV and then take them away?" "Did you tie them up?"
Engaging our imagination
Alex denies having any interest with the missing girls. Merely the scene is synthetic to convince us that he is guilty. As nosotros are shown images of the supposed crime scene, nosotros imagine the kidnapping for ourselves. We visualize our own scene that shows Alex taking the girls.
Nosotros brand him guilty in our minds. We "saw" him do it.
This judgment is disquisitional because Alex's innocence is questioned throughout the film. Keller (Hugh Jackman) is convinced that Alex is responsible and goes to severe lengths to prove it. Keller travels forth a moral tightrope in his search for the truth.
And because we've constructed our own version of what happened, we must examine our moral territory.
In contradiction and paradox, you can detect truth.
— Denis Villeneuve
Through editing, Villeneuve complicates the audience'south feel watching the motion picture. Nosotros are no longer passive spectators; we have thrown our hat into the ring.
When editing a scene like this, continue the audience experience in listen. By engaging their imagination, they volition bring themselves farther into the story.
And that's when yous know you've got them.
iv.2 Editing to Music in Incendies
Images + music = theme
Denis Villeneuve films the opening scene to Incendies like a music video. The relationship between images and music compliment each other in really interesting means. The edit is designed around the music, but this is non a formal exercise without purpose.
This scene is much more than meaningful to the story than we realize.
When you first lookout Incendies, the context for this scene is missing. Information technology only makes sense to the viewer by the cease.
And only then does its existent power reveal itself.
The music playing is a song by Radiohead called "Y'all and Whose Regular army?" It begins every bit a quiet carol without percussion. It is a soft vocal and a reverb guitar.
The images friction match this tone with a gentle, panning camera and irksome-motility images. Our location is a decrepit and empty concrete room somewhere in the Centre East, where a group of immature boys is getting their heads shaved.
The starting time clues to our location
Their expressions tell us that they are perchance in that location against their will. The adult male person soldiers conveying automated weapons confirms this. The lyrics to the Radiohead track mention cronies, an ground forces and the Holy Roman Empire.
It is a challenge: Bring your ground forces and let's do boxing.
And that'south when we begin to develop a context for the scene. They are turning these boys into soldiers. Shaving their heads reduces their individuality as they now belong to the cause.
The song drops from the elegiac ballad into a much more powerful chorus. Drums and pianoforte kick in and the song suddenly soars. The moment the percussion drops, the image changes dramatically.
We now face a young boy staring straight at the photographic camera. In wearisome motility, the camera pushes towards his face equally he endures the mandatory haircut.
Breaking the fourth wall, but why?
He glares at u.s. as the music's jump in energy signals his importance. We run across a small tattoo of three dots on his heel just before this. It is only subsequently that we understand the significance of the tattoo.
The lyrics and imagery are thematically linked. It is a powerful manner to open the motion picture and a great instance of editing to music.
Using a pre-existing song can be a risky decision. If the song is popular, most audience members take their own associations with it, which may compromise the consequence you're going for. Get through your script and consider what songs would take the most impact.
What are some of your favorite moments edited to music?
Tell the states in the comments.
5
Sound and Music
of Denis Villeneuve
5.one Soundtracking Threat in Arrival
Creating dread with music
Arrival is almost the meeting of two worlds. Ours and theirs. To help establish this separation, the visuals are striking on their ain. Only the soundtracks representing those worlds as well echo this idea.
How does Villeneuve use music to communicate the strangeness of these visitors? And how can music engage our imagination almost these creatures earlier we ever see them?
We're going to respond those questions with scene studies from Arrival.
The first music we hear in the movie is during the prologue. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) speaks in voiceover in what appears to be a flashback sequence. Information technology is a romantically shot and edited sequence with a tragic determination.
The music is a melancholy arrangement of stringed instruments. We've never heard this detail score before, but we recognize that it is of our world. It is familiar and homo.
The next fourth dimension we hear music, Dr. Banks approaches the alien craft in a long, gorgeous aerial shot. This time, information technology is music that isNon of our world. It is a droning hum with a melody that sounds near like vocalization.
Alien music for an conflicting scene
The melody is close to what we may accept heard in whale-song, but it is more foreign than that. Could it be a song sung past the aliens? We're non sure, and that uncertainty creates tension.
What are these visitors, and what practice they want?
We've entered a new reality, one in which aliens exist, and that strangeness is heard before it is seen.
Afterward, Dr. Banks and the team enter the spacecraft. The score'southward threatening and conflicting tones increase. As they approach, nosotros hear a foreboding and deep drone.
When the scissor lift carrying the team stops and they bladder briefly in a higher place the platform, the alien melody returns.
And as they walk towards the main chamber, we are greeted with a multi-layered harmonic nail. It sounds like a warning or an alarm coming from the ship itself.
A few seconds later, we see a shot of the squad evidently walking on the ceiling, and nosotros get a 2d warning boom.
Something's not correct..
The team is upside down.
In an alien spaceship.
The dread of this scene is loud and clear.
Denis Villeneuve films have become just as sonically interesting as the visuals. Even though cinema is a visual medium, your audio and music choices are opportunities to suggest what nosotros tin't see.
Don't let these opportunities laissez passer y'all past.
5.2 Conflicting Vocalization in Arrival
Speaking in tongues
When nosotros finally hear the aliens "speak," our suspicions are confirmed. We wondered earlier if the moaning melody in the music might be conflicting vocalism.
Their bellowing and buzzing spoken language fit right into the territory established by the music. When the "heptapods" present themselves, their speech is mixed with the music. There is no separation between the two.
Abbott and Costello, the nicknames given to the heptapods, "speak" with sounds that are alien yet familiar. Their clicks, honks and guttural grunts could be a mix of animals institute on Globe. But even those associations are complicated past distortion and reverb.
The heptapods move through their environment as if they were underwater, which makes their "whale-song-esque" speech even more familiar. No affair how alien their voice communication, information technology seems to be grounded in sounds we've heard before.
Meet Abbott and Costello
This gives the heptapods a legitimacy, a "realness" that makes them even more frightening.
The humans are powerless in this scene, and there is one other sound that makes this clear. The chirping of the tiny bird in its cage compared to the massive vocalizations of Abbott and Costello is symbolic.
A metaphor for the situation
Nosotros are that bird. Small, trapped, and insignificant in the presence of these behemoths. Aliens are rarely presented as dreadful and unsafe as they are in Arrival. Most of this is due to the sound and music blueprint. Aliens are still a mystery, which makes their presentation fair game.
What would aliens sound similar in your pic?
Upward Next
Aronofsky visual techniques
Denis Villeneuve films show that he is an evocative filmmaker but, if you lot're looking for a director with a more aggressive style, bank check out our commodity on Darren Aronofsky. Desire to know the secrets to Aronofsky's cinematic mode?
We clarify his camera, editing, sound pattern, and music to illustrate what makes his filmmaking so exciting and how you can use those same techniques to your next project.
Up Adjacent: Aronofsky visual techniques →
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Source: https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/denis-villeneuve-directing-style/
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