Redskin

My bad, I totally lost time and forgot to post before 9. Hopefully this is okay. During the film Redskin, I noticed that there was a lot more text for the viewer to read. Other films that we have watched there really was not any text to read and if there was, it was short. In Redskin there was on average a text to read every few minutes. This increase in reading seemed to me that the producers of the film really wanted the audience to come out of the film with one idea and story. In other movies the story was left up to the interpretation of the audience. I think that this film was one of the first to push movies into more of a narration and one base line.
Another thing that I noticed was that the screens with the text were different. While with the Natives, the screen was larger and it had a design, but with the whites the screen was half the size and only black and white. I really do not understand why this was done, there does not seem to be a reason.
One of the other main things that I noticed was the use of makeup. During the film, the story fast forwards like ten or more years and instead of getting all new actors, the characters were dressed up in makeup to make them appear older. Other movies that were watched before this, there was no makeup used for the characters besides powder to make people's skin color lighter. Wing Foot's father and the other main characters were dressed up in makeup that gave them wrinkles and gray hair, all of this made the tribe members look old. Also later in the movie Wing Foot is out in the desert and he discovers oil. When the whites come looking they find Wing Foot who looks crazed. This is done through dark makeup around his eyes. The makeup also makes him look sickly and close to death.
This film did many different things that I had not seen done in earlier films. This was a very interesting film to watch and was not hard to watch.

Within Our Gates

While watching the film, I saw many interesting things. One of the things that stuck out the most was the use of color for the characters. The main characters in the movie who were black were very light skinned, while those who had smaller parts were darker. Although it may have not been on purpose, the movie gives the view that only lighter colored skinned blacks were educated and important, while the darker skinned blacks were the ones who were uneducated and had small parts. It almost seems like the film was going against what it was actually trying to promote, that is that blacks are equal to whites and need to be educated just the same. What the use of lighter and darker colored blacks, it appears as if blacks themselves were not able to get over the barrier, so how is it that whites are supposed to treat blacks equal when blacks cannot treat each other equally?
Another thing that stuck out about the film was the use of flashbacks. I thought that the use of flashbacks was unique in that many films of the time did not or could not use the effect. What the flashbacks in this film did was fill in the story line later on. This effect helped explain the part where Sylvia decided to leave the South to go to the North to raise money for the school so it could stay open. After this scene I was left with the question of how much money she needed to raise, but due to the fact that flashbacks were used, the film showed a clip where Sylvia got a letter from the school saying that it needed $5,000. This small flashback helped answer my question as well as add to the story.
Both of these things stuck out in my mind throughout the film, they added aspects to the film that I did not expect to see.

First Reading English 341

In the first reading of Smoke Dancing, I was introduced to a technique of writing that I found very interesting. The author switches between characters as he starts a new chapter. Each of the characters are described by the other characters and as a reader you get an idea of how that character actually is, but when you read the story from that person's perspective you see that the character is not always as they seem. In the instance of Mason, he is described by the others as being a "horny" guy and only out for his own good, but when you read his story you see that he is still "horny", but that he wants to help the reservation by cutting them in on his business' profit. Although he may be doing it the wrong way, he has the right attitude. The story and use of characters is very interesting and makes this book an easy read so far.