Film Show
Citizen Kane
By Jay Mather
Stoney Lane ,Thatcham Berkshire
RG19 4LL
01635 862121
EXTREME LONGSHOT/ INT- STUDIO.
SLOWLY ZOOM IN ON PRESENTER 1
STUDIO SETTING- TWO SEATS WITH PRESENTER ONE ON LEFT, 2 ON RIGHT.
PRESENTER1
Hello and welcome to the show. Today we are going to review
one of the most successful films in Hollywood film making
history and paying close eye on its maker Orson Welles.
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PRESENTER2
Citizen Kane is thought to be the best movie of all time in
many movie viewing polls.
Show image 1A (found in appendix) show image through the duration of the following
speech
Many web pages show 100% of people like it and many of them
leaving comments that go on the lines of ‘it’s the greatest
movie of all time’ It was the first movie that showed the full
potential of editing with the great work of cinematographer
Gregg Toland.
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PRESENTER1
Toland’s skilful application of new and rarely used techniques
proved revolutionary. He used techniques such as deep focus,
low camera angles and optical illusions to help Welles create
the masterpiece that is Citizen Kane. Some of the film’s
innovations that had contributed to its commercial failure,
including the non-linear narrative and strange and misleading
conclusion, eventually set Citizen Kane apart from other films
with more tradition structures and happy endings.
Show image 1B (found in appendix) show image through presenter 2’s speech for 5
seconds then fade out to the presenter centred.
PRESENTER2
George Orson Welles was an American director, actor, writer
and producer. Born May, 1915, Welles produced only 13 full
length films. He also created one of the most famous radio
broadcasts to ever hit radio stations with his radio adaption
of H. G. wells The War of the Worlds. Even creating panic with
his fake broadcast claiming there was to be an alien attack.
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PRESENTER 1
Welles didn’t have much control when he came to the film
studios in Hollywood. Welles was and individual who wanted to
show off his individuality. He wanted to add his touch on the
film studios by creating never before, ground breaking, nonlinear narratives. He also wanted to use his ideas and show
them through camera angles that would shake up Hollywood film
making for generations to come.
Show images 1c+1d duration; 5 secs per image fade out to presenter 2
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PRESENTER2
Citizen finally was released in the early month of May 1941.
Its reviews favoured Welles greatly but its reviews, alone,
didn’t help it to reach box office stardom. After 2 years
Welles re-released the film, thanks to the re-release Welles
began to get the attention he deserved.
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PRESENTER1
Welles had a budget of $5000, 000. This was a significant
amount for an unproven filmmaker to work with, which Welles
managed to exceed. The production cost hit $700,000. During
this time Welles was only twenty-five. He felt a great deal of
pressure when he began to work on his first featured film,
Citizen Kane
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PRESENTER2
The film attracted a lot of controversy. Welles was put under
radar of intimidation, blackmail, newspaper smears,
discrediting and FBI investigation. Before it appeared in New
York on May the 1st 1941, for its first premier.
Show images 1E duration; 5 secs fade out to presenter 1.
PRESENTER1
This was due to it appearing to fictionalize and caricaturize
certain events and moments, powerful newspaper magnate and
publisher, William Randolph Hearst had been a part of. Due to
this Hearst felt a sense of invasion and made an offer to RKO
pictures to destroy all the prints of the film, threatening to
sue Welles and the studios.
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Presenter 2
When citizen Kane was made and released, Welles faced great
difficulty from the Hollywood system. The golden age sore the
Hollywood Systems studios, which was created by five major
studios, known as the big five, place MGM in the top spot for
almost 10 years with 20th Century fox trailing in second.
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PRESENTER1
In July 1939 Welles created a deal to write, direct and
produce in a featured film. With this said Welles was given
permission to create and develop the script, storyline and
casting crew without any external interference. This was very
unusual for the time as a director wasn’t normally given as
much control as Welles had. Welles had complete control to do
what he felt would give his vision its well deserved
attention.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h78Lsi_6rpE SCIP TO 1:01 AND 1:26-SHOWING SOME OF
WELLES’S CAMERA WORK
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PRESNETER2
Although Welles seemed to have created a new way in which
movies are now seen and made. Other ground breaking moments in
Hollywood film making have arisen, the use of CGI came into
hands of toy story makers in 1995. This was a new, innovative,
step in making movies; it allowed directors and producers to
release their visions a mould them into the form of computer
generated animations.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=toy+story++1995 skip to 2;36 allow to
play for 10 seconds over presenter 2’s talk on CGI
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PRESENTER1
With such interest in the way Welles changed film making can
we view Welles as an auteur? He creates the fantastic nonlinear structured storyline that shocked the whole of
Hollywood. The story line that Welles choose to develop was
one that would picture the life of a successful individual
where in which his life was shown backwards, starting with the
iconic death scene, with the muttering of the words ‘rosebud’
which would later be a mystery that the audience find
themselves involved in. He was involved in all of the
revolutionary camera angles positioning and movements, he did
everything the way he visualized it.
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PRSENTER2
With that said, can Welles be viewed as an auteur? The auteur
theory suggests that the auteur has a view of a film that
emphasizes the director, who stamps the material with his or
her own personal vision, style, and intended cinematic
experience. In my opinion I believe Welles is an auteur. Orson
Welles was a director who is thought to be the definition of
auteur, Through the use of his camera angles, lighting, and
character proxemics. He frequently shoots in a closed form,
with high contrast low key lighting, and uses a crane camera
to create many movements within a scene. These techniques he
uses, to me, all reveal a personal vision that Welles is
trying to achieve. The iconic scenes such as
Show image 1F (found in appendix) the following scene of a camera angle on the
stage of Kane’s. Continue playing over speech
This shot to me is Welles’s attempts and putting his own mark
on the film by using new and inventive camera angles that
picture Kane’s power. Within the shot the use of the camera
angles gives off, to me, a sense of Kane’s power and political
abilities and presence. It just shows Welles uses camera
angles to create his visions, the way he wants it.
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PRESENTER1
We view a director as someone who comes up with the idea,
scripts it and produces it. But we now know that there is more
to the world of movie production then one person. Orson Welles
to me gave young generations the courage to become independent
film makers and carry on the auteur role.
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PRESENTER2
Quentin
modern
mark on
and eye
Tarantino also seems to have a habit of defining the
day director. He uses violence and blood to put his
his films. He gets heavily stuck into creating iconic
catching camera angles. One that he is well known for
is his ‘car boot shot’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxPErIjToLg shows full clip – duration 20 secs over
speech of presenter 2
The car boot scene that has come iconic to Tarantino’s work,
has been used in many of his films, including Pulp fiction and
Kill Bill. This in my opinion puts him in clear classification
as an auteur.
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PRESENTER1
Tarantino’s excessive use of blood, to me, shows what kind of
movie director he is, it’s his way of stamping his mark on his
film and showing what he’s about. We can see this with the use
of the continuous blood splatters on marketing and
advertisement attempts.
Show the images 1G (found in appendix) posters of Quentin Tarantino’s work. Play
over presenter
The iconic blood ,not only in the poster advertisments, but in
the films layered with the violence and racism is taratino’s
use of icongraphy to place his mark as an auetur.
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PRESENTER2
When watching films we try and categorise them into genres by
looking at the elements and Iconography involved, this is what
we call Genre Theory. So what exactly is Citizen Kane? Can we
actually pin point it down to an individual genre? I believe
you cannot pin down the genre of such a film. During the time
I believe people were soon to jump to the conclusion it was a
drama, documentary. But deep analysis might suggest otherwise.
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PRESENTER1
In my opinion Citizen Kane Could be put under a sub-genre, as
being a mystery. This is because of the camera angles Welles
uses to capture the iconic scenes of the snow globe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4mQqVqRB7I rosebud death scene. Fade out to
presenter 1 continuing talking
Scenes such as the rosebud scene that show an older version of
Kane dropping the snow globe, with the use of a low angle
shot, the film starts with a non-linear plot. It begins to put
our minds at work, trying to sort out the mystery behind the
word ‘rosebud’. The snow globe also appears in several other
scenes. I believe the use of the snow globe adds mystery to
Kane’s life and foreshadows his pain throughout his life. The
iconography of the snow globe is important in showing how
Kane’s life has been a drama and full of pain and unwanted
negative attention. To me this helps to give evidence and
reasoning to why It could be a mystery sub-genre.
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PRESENTER2
It could easily be said that Welles’s successful attempts with
Citizen Kane has changed and influenced genre, therefore
influencing others to create films in the same style. Quentin
Tarantino’s pulp fiction, created in 1994, along with Welles
citizen Kane were both films that changed the way the public
perceived the cinema and created an inspiration that would
affect future directors. Like citizen Kane, pulp fiction is a
character driven film but instead of Kane, in pulp fiction the
viewer sees through the eyes of more than one character. They
include; Vincent, Marsellus, Jules and butch. Both films
could be depicted as focusing on redemption. In pulp fiction
nearly all of the characters are given a chance at some kind
of redemption. This could indicate it’s a crime fiction movie
due to the excessive need for redemption amongst all the
characters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czb4jn5y94g skip to 0:56
showing all characters from Pulp Fiction.
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PRESENTER IN CENTRE.
PRESENTER1
So how exactly did Citizen Kane catch the audience’s
attention? How did the use of advertisement and marketing put
bums on seats in cinemas?
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PAN TO PRESENTER2 IN CENTRE.
PRESENTER2
Welles was limited to the amount of advertising he could do
for his new masterpiece. Although a source of awareness came
from an unusual source. Citizen Kane took almost 2 years to
produce, but before producing Welles planned to base the story
around an individual called William Randolph Hearst
Show image 1 (see appendix) in centre of screen and then pan back to studio
room.
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PAN TO PRESENTER1 TO THE LEFT.
PRESENTER1
Hearst was an American publisher who built the nation’s
largest newspaper chain. His methods influenced the way
American journalism is today. Welles wanted to make Hearst the
main protagonist within the film. After hearing this Hearst
was furious at the thought of a film being based around his
life, he wanted the studio to destroy all the negatives of
citizen Kane for almost $805,000
LONG SHO/ INT
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PRESENTER2
Although the film was changed to be base around Charles Foster
Kane, a fictional character, similarities of Kane’s life and
Hearst’s can be easily connected. With all this said there is
no doubt that all the controversy and threats to sue Welles
and his team created a huge source of marketing for the film.
People wanted to know why Hearst was so eager to get rid of
Welles’s ideas to publish this film based around him. This,
with no doubt, attracted people into seeing what the fuss was
all about.
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JUMP TO PRESENTER 1 IN CENTERE
PRESENTER1
When Welles first released Citizen Kane for audience viewing
it didn’t get the release recognition it deserved. The
attempts to market the film where based around screening
viewings and reports on how Welles had created such a great
masterpiece.
Show reviews page (appendix image2) (5secs) over second part of speech
Reviews all over the world slowly picked up the viewings, but
not immediately. But revenue for marketing was created due to
the positive reviews
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PRESENTER2
Press books were used to attract the audiences in, giving them
an insight into the plot, story line, and background and
production information of the film.
Show press book picture (appendix image 3) (5secs) over second part of
speech
The use of the press books allowed Welles to engage and
involve is audience by allowing them to understand more about
the film before they went and watched it. This method allowed
Welles to interact with the audience by giving them a sense of
insight and recognition before he expected them to go and see
the film in cinema. This allowed people to know what they were
in for when they went to go watch his film in Theatres, across
the country
JUMP TO PRESENTER 1
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IN CENTERE
PRESENTER1
Quentin Tarantino, on the other hand, has used a wide range of
methods to market his movies. Movies such as the big Hollywood
blockbuster, Pulp fiction, used marketing methods that
targeted the audience as individuals.
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PRESENTER2
Tarantino created not just one poster, but many.
Show poster images 4,5,6,7 and 8 (appendix image 4,5,6,7 and 8) (5secs
each) over second part of speech
Tarantino used his Hollywood actors to help promote Pulp
Fiction, in his various posters. By having that celebrity
endorsement, Tarantino was able to target audiences that had
interests in the main stars John Travolta, Samuel L Jackson,
Bruce Willis and Uma Thurman. The use of Uma Thurman laying on
the bed and smoking seems to be a sneaky way of adding sex
appeal to attract other kinds of audiences.
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PRESENTER1
By creating the different posters with the appealing big
stars, Tarantino was able to take into consideration, during
production, the different amount of audiences he was able to
attract.
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PRESENTER2
Tarantino doesn’t stop at using posters as a source of
marketing his work. When producing Django Unchained, Tarantino
released screenshots of the film and used them as a chance to
market his film.
Show poster images 9 (appendix image9) (durating-7secs) over second part of
speech
In this screenshot it once again shows two well know actors
Jamie Fox and Leonardo DiCaprio. These two actors were clearly
enough to promote the film by itself, bringing in fans that
have followed and love the actors work.
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PRESENTER1
Tarantino’s efforts didn’t stop there he used merchandises and
a wide range of DVD casing to help target different target
audiences around the world. Also producing the film in 3
different languages; Chinese, Spanish and German. This was
Tarantino promoting himself worldwide and succeeding in doing
so.
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CUT TO PRESENTER 1 AND 2 IN CENTERE
PRESENTER2
Well that concludes tonight’s show. We’ve looked at many
aspects of Citizen Kane and its Producer, Orson Welles. What
has been described as the greatest film of all time can no
dubitably be placed in the ranks of ground breaking film
making, with the use of his individuality to create such a
successful film. Till next time, goodnight.
Fade out into sub titles