The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Cinematography and Special Effects

Rule of Thirds

The Cinematography by Stuart Dryburgh

Throughout the whole movie the movie crew did a fantastic job at filming each scene thinking and applying the proper techniques of the rule of thirds. They filmed this scene that our group chose high on mountain tops and rugged terrain. The background on the hike with the hikers had a good balance of beauty and ruggedness. For example, in one scene, Walter Mitty is walking through a valley of snow on the bottom of the screen and on the top third is the mountain horizons. It shows balance, beauty, and loneliness.

 Special Effects
     James R. Bilz
As a graphic design major, I thought it was very interesting how they used the negative space in different scenes to have Walter Mitty's journal entries appear and disappear as he is hiking through the mountains. I liked that it was not just words but that it was handwritten with lines similar to that of a journal. The placement of the journal entries were placed with the snow/rushing water like white paper. It gave a great narrative to the scenes and how he would feel. For example, there was one part where he felt like he was alone and all of the words disappeared except for the word "alone." This special effect allowed the viewers eye to bounce around the screen in a visually appealing way.

 Another Special Effects was replacing backgrounds with appropriate Nepalese imagery using supplied reference and real photographs taken by one of their own artists. “Something that was very successful was not only replacing the backgrounds,” says Rocheron, “but also we tweaked the foregrounds on which Walter is walking. We added cliffs, or little chunks he was walking on, to make them steeper. It was a subtle manipulation to show he was always climbing those mountains and that it was somehow a very hostile environment.” 

Compose Your Frame

Today marks one month of my son's life on Earth. This photo's main focus, like many portrait photos, is his eyes which were strategically placed in the top left third of the photo frame. His head is tilted with his eyes looking toward the bottom right corner which is opposite of the focus. The ground, which is the rippling blanket that Ezra is laying on, is very simple and doesn't take away from the image or make it busy but there is enough contrast to keep it interesting. The light in this photo comes across the image on a diagonal line, contrasting lights on his face with the shadows on his back and illuminating his face making the image more appealing.

Axioms of Web Design

Sports Illustrated's webpage is an ever-changing website with sports updates of news and scores. There is a lot of information compacted into one homepage for the viewer to chose what to look at or read about. The webpage is designed to be broken into different categories so that the viewer can navigate with ease to their desired location. They accomplish this by margins between each category and using sizes of the images of titles by important to least important. For example, when I first got to this website there was a picture of LeBron James flying through the sky with a report of him scoring a career high of 61 points. Another way that this page is designed well is the navigation bar is fashioned after an old-school banner. This small detail is aesthetically pleasing to the eye and draws the viewer to where they need to be in order to navigate. Another goal for a webpage is to have returning visitors. They accomplish this by having current scores at the top of the page allowing fans to be updated quickly and easily. This website is also converted to fit on a cell phone browser by converting the sports reports into smaller rows and columns that is easy to navigate as well. This website is well designed for all the information that is compacted and is easy to navigate.