Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino was born on the 27th of March 1963.
He is a well known director, writer and actor, best known for films such as;
- Reservoir Dogs
- The Hateful Eight
- Kill Bill: Volume 1
- Kill Bill: Volume 2
- Pulp Fiction
All of these have one main genre in common, this genre is thriller.
Thrillers are characterised and defined by the moods they elicit, giving viewers heightened feelings go suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation and anxiety.
Reservoir Dogs was the first Quentin Tarantino movie that had its own soundtrack. Whereas other Quentin Tarantino movies didn't have their own soundtrack.
Even tho
ugh the movies had used a variety of songs all from different musicians, but they were not put together into a soundtrack.
Tarantino had a specific style of filmmaking when it came to choosing the music used in the films he produced. In an awards ceremony in the Critics Choice Awards which celebrated Tarantino cited that music is an important part of Tarantino's filmmaking style, and he said that he would listen to music in his bedroom and create scenes which correlated to the music that was being played. This is important because the music used in the movies would be the type of music that was most popular at that moment in time, therefore people would find it interesting that a movie scene is based on a movie that they have heard before. When it comes to music Tarantino also uses songs that his friends have suggested that he should use. In order to driver forward the plot Tarantino often manipulates the use of commodities or even in order to present an intriguing juxtaposition between the characters and their surroundings.
The Hateful Eight was Tarantino's first movie that used an original score, this score was composed by Ennio Morricone. This score was the first western score composed by Ennio Morricone in 34 years.
Pulp fiction and Reservoir Dogs both movies produced by Tarantino with a common genre of thriller have been frequently compared with each other due to the fact that they both touch on the theme of accidents and both have a lot of black humour incorporated into them, more importantly the style of dialogue and narrative style that Tarantino incorporates into both films. This is important because it shows that Tarantino has a specific styles that even though isn't reflected on all of it's films it is still there and with the movies having been released two years apart from each other and having a similar narrative style highlights that it is something that Tarantino finds to be something that the audience would find enjoyable to watch. Or it may just be that the narrative is easy for an audience of all ages to follow.
Pulp Fiction's opening scene starts with a two-shot, and moves on into different shots, a close up while the waitress is serving Mia some coffee and an over the shoulder shot from where Pumpkin is sitting.
Similarly in Reservoir Dogs the opening scene starts with a two-shot and then goes into a right pan, this is to show the atmosphere of the room and introduce all the faces of the characters to the audience, which I find is important, specially if those characters that are first introduced are the main characters in the movie.
In previous interviews Tarantino has stated that his writing process is like writing a novel before writing it into a script, this is because it means that Tarantino is creating a blueprint of the film and therefore making the film feel more like literature rather than just a movie. Tarantino himself said this in an interview with The Talks;
-"[My] head is a sponge. I listen to what everyone says, I watch little idiosyncratic behavior, people tell me a joke and I remember it. People tell me an interesting story in their life and I remember it. ... when I go and write my new characters, my pen is like an antenna, it gets that information, and all of a sudden these characters come out more or less fully formed. I don't write their dialogue, I get them talking to each other."
I find this interesting because that way it means that Tarantino's characters have a unique aura about them because sometimes they are based around real people, people who may have lived what we see.
And the fact that Tarantino listens to everyone's opinion means that everyone feels as if part of the final product is theirs because they contributed by giving ideas of how a specific part of the movie should look like, such as the mis-en-scene and which angle they should be recording from.
Also, just like every other artist or producer Tarantino gets inspiration from other producers and actors, for example; has stated that the celebrated animation-action sequence in Kill Bill (2003) was inspired by the use of 2D animated sequences in actor Kamal Hassan's Tamil film Aalavandhan. Tarantino often seeks to harness, manipulate and ultimately imitate the aesthetic elements and conventions typically used in the cartoon medium. More specifically, Tarantino often attempts to meld comic strip formulas and aesthetics within a live action film sequence, in some cases by the literal use of cartoon or anime images. Tarantino's cinematic ambition to marry artistic expression via live action and cartoonism is yet another example of his ability to morph genres and conventions to produce a new and authentic style of his own.
The aesthetic of a movie are important because if a movie does not have good aesthetics then the audience will not enjoy it, therefore the movie won't be a success. Action-thriller movies are meant to give you a rush, they should give you a feeling of suspense and anxiety, and if a movie which is said to be a thriller does not give you a feeling of suspense then they are not meeting the promised criteria and therefore not worth seeing, same goes with a movie that is not aesthetically pleasing.
