Genre Research: The Karate Kid

In the opening of the newest The Karate Kid, main character dre is seen in his house moving around on a suitcase. The lighting is dim as for the fact that he is getting to leave everything he knows to move to a foreign country. This poor lighting is done on purpose to provoke sad emotions in the viewer. A couple minutes in, they are outside while it is raining. The lighting is still poor here as they want to portray a gloomy feeling. In the middle, the lighting changes a lot, it is bright when the character is happy, and it is gloomy and poor when he is scared, nervous, or having to face his fears. Nearing the end. The lighting is both good and bad. He is fighting on a circular mat that is fully lit, but everywhere outside of that is gloomy to show the reader the fight is serious. I liked this because it was a direct indicator of what mood the viewer should be feeling, and I hope to contribute this into my movie.

 Camera angles in the start are not much. They rarely change and usually can get the whole scene in the frame. They use no high or low shots, just wide angle shots. In the middle, every fight scene was a crane shot, and there were even some eye line shots. The end was also neutral. There were a few crane shots, but they were mostly wide angle shots meant to get the whole scene in view. Throughout the movie, the camera movement was the same, they rarely used tracking shots and the one time they did was at the end when they were fighting on the circular mat. Another thing I did not really enjoy was the editing. Throughout the movie, there was no actual bad editing, but I thought they could improve. For example, when showing fight scenes, the switch angles so fast it is hard to see the fight move and it confuses the flow of the movie. This is an easy fix that I will not make in my movie.

Something I really think tied the movie together was the sounds. At the start, there was pure everyday sounds like trees and planes, that let the viewers assimilate to Dre’s lifestyle. In the middle, whenever there was a fight, and there was a big punch you would hear a crack. I enjoyed this as it allowed me to stay engaged, ready for the next big hit. However, the ending had the best sound. There was only one fighting going on, yet you could hear the crowd boo or cheer. Yet also, you could hear Dre and everything that was going on with him during the fight. The costumes were also phenomenal. At the start, when he lived in America, he dressed as a very stereotypical kid which was nice to view. Then in the middle, as he was transitioning to a different culture, he began to take on more and more and more of their clothing styles. At the end, he dressed as if he were a local, and this allowed the viewer to understand he enjoyed it in his new home.