Jacob Behling : Assignment 2
Film Research
Moonlit setting over downtown LA. Establishing color palette.
Channel 6 News Crime Scene footage.
View of a bullet hole ridden window as seen on camera.
Lou with a camera, remorseless as he exploits tragedy.
Cool color palette.
Lou's face as he looks into the eyes of his dying partner.
Lou with a face depicting absolute rage and and slipping further into insanity.
Lou looking into the shattered mirror; he appears disconnected.
Lou discovers the corpses of a family before the cops arrive.
Sweet car upgrade.
Lou dragging a corpse so that he get it in better lighting for his video footage.
Lou arrives to a crime scene.
Police chase resulting in a police car going sideways.
Lou in front of a channel 6 news back drop
Late night race to the crime scene
Essay
After watching the movie Nightcrawler for the second time, there were a lot of things I noticed. The whole narrative of the film is based on the idea of exploiting tragedies of others in order to further a career. The main character Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the dictionary definition of a sociopath. He goes around the underbelly of Los Angeles trying to capture the goriest crime scenes with no remorse; he is completely emotionless aside from his obvious enjoyment in what he does. Lou is also quite literally a control freak. His objective throughout the entire movie is to gain control of the media through Channel 6 news, and he goes about this by manipulating the News Director Nina Romina. Lou knows that people want his perspective on the tragedies because they are so detailed and addictingly shocking, almost like a horror film but in real life. Because of this high demand, he is able to make Nina do whatever he wants, which includes giving him a full time position at the news station under the guise Video Production News. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself, and will do whatever it takes to get what he wants. He even had his partner set up to be killed because “he can’t jeopardize his company’s success to retain an untrustworthy employee”. Lou said this because Rick (his partner) kept asking for a raise, thus taking away Lou’s “bargaining power”. All of these instances point to our main character being a sociopathic manipulator. This type of story has a very dark tone. It’s not necessarily horrifying, but more along the lines of discomforting or unnerving.
Lou personally makes me feel very uncomfortable and has a very cold personality.
Words to Idea + Thesis Statement
“Nightcrawler”
5 words: Greed, Exploitation, Tragedy, Manipulation, control
Thesis statement: Nightcrawler is an expose on the power of greed and manipulation, and how tragedies are exploited for the purpose of control.
"Nightcrawler"
5 words: Fast, Dark, intense, unnerving, wild
Thesis Statement:
Visual Research (Inspiration Board/Collection)
Visual Research
Type Possibilities
Exploration/Formulation (Style Board/Examples/Studies)
Light Painting Material Exploration
TV Pixel Material Exploration
Newscast with Pixel Overlay Exploration
Exploration/Formulation (Motion Tests)
Story Board
Recorded high speed light texture, as if it is racing to the crime scene. Or in our case, the film titles
Slowed down picture of street abstracted streetlights, with typography rolling by to allude to the movement of a news reel
highspeed texture again
slowed down abstracted setting, rolling typography. First stop on the crawl. This is where you wait.
high speed texture
Car Crash texture slowed down, representing the footage nightcrawlers get.
high speed light texture transition
Slowed down news footage, last step for a nightcrawler when they get their footage published.
highspeed transition
Slowed down photo, type rolls into the scene and stays.
Final Film Titles
Nightcrawler from UIC DESIGN on Vimeo.