Film Techniques Used In Spike Lee Films
A movie is a piece of art and in art everything has or should have a reason to be part of it, otherwise there wouldn’t be a reason for a costume designer or a location scout, that is, if the details wouldn’t matter. A good movie goer or film critic will analyze everything from the film material, the lighting, the acting, the costumes, the shoes, the hair-cut, the movie cars… and the location, even if he doesn’t know for sure, if the movie director has chosen them with a purpose in mind or just by accident.
Films transport you deep into the location where they are filmed. Often using a particular city as the canvas, the settings serves as a dynamic character that plays a major role as the story is being told. Whether it's a gritty motorcycle
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Each of his films transports you into the location. Often using Brooklyn as his canvas in films like, “She’s Gotta Have It”, the story of a woman and her lovers around the streets of Brooklyn. Brooklyn has often been the subject or character of his films including “Do the Right Thing”, “Crooklyn” and “Clockers”.
Films are powerful storytelling devices, but what they reveal about the places in which they are made and set, is many times, more important. Brooklyn plays a critical role in Spike Lee’s films – in that Brooklyn becomes an additional character. Often, Lee demonstrates how the place or location of the film works together with other characters of the film.
In Do the Right Thing, the entire film takes place on the hottest day of the summer, in one particular Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn. Even more so, throughout the film, Brooklyn, the character, is not only interacting with the other characters but shaping the growth and changing the characters of the story. There’s no bigger character in a Spike Lee film than Brooklyn. Brooklyn is as prominent and charismatic as Mars Blackmon in “She’s Gotta Have It” and Radio Raheem in “Do the Right Thing”. The cinematic props of the steps of the stately brownstones and chalk-drawn sidewalks are also
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