A presentation on the film director, Ridley Scott.

1. RIDLEY SCOTT

2. AN OUTLINE OF ACHIEVEMENTS
Scott has been a director and producer of many great films and
series, including The Martian, Child 44, Hannibal, The Good Wife,
Alien, Gladiator, American Gangster and Body of Lies, to name a few.
His most successful films have been The Martian and Gladiator. The
Martian has won multiple awards. At the Saturn Awards, he got best
director, at The Golden Globes, won Best Motion Picture – Musical or
Comedy, at the National Board of Review, won Best Director.
In 2003 Scott was knighted for his “services to the British film
industry”.

3. EARLY WORK
Born on the 3rd of September 1937, Scott has been making films since
he began attending The Royal College of Art in London. His first film
was a short black and white piece he named Boy and Bicycle. It
starred his younger brother and father and was later released on the
‘Extras’ section of the Duellist DVD.
In February 1963, Scott was named ‘Designer’ in the title credits of a
BBC TV show called “Tonight”. After this and graduation in 1963, he
secured a job as a trainee set designer at the BBC and worked there,
working on commercials and series until he was replaced by Raymond
Cusick.
In 1968, Ridley and Tony Scott founded the Ridley Scott Associates
(RSA). Five family members have worked along side the brothers,
including Ridley’s 2 sons and his daughter.

4. COMPARING & CONTRASTING
I am comparing the films Alien and The Martian. Both films are set
in space and in space air crafts so I thought as they are similar
they would be more interesting to compare and contrast.
In The Alien, the lighting is all very blue and very cool toned to
show the sci-fi horror genre. The dark colours give the audience a
feel of the unknown. However in The Martian, the tone is much
warmer to go with the desert type settings but also gives a slightly
more light hearted feel to the film.
When it comes to the different types of shots, I found in The
Martian there were lots of wide shots and extra wide shots to
really give you the full ‘outer space’ effect. For emotion, there
were a few close ups however because in most of the close up
shots it was dark, you were sometimes left to interpret expression
as you couldn’t always see properly what was happening.
In Alien I found there were more subject shots than ‘weather
shots’ and the scenes also cut more frequently than in The
Martian. However, in The Martian, shots were cut every so often
but to show that a large amount of time had passed more than to
show you a different set.

5. MY OPINION AND HOW I HAVE BEEN
INFLUENCEDMy opinion of Scott is based particularly on the 2 films I have watched this
weekend. I was pleasantly surprised by Ridley Scott after watching The
Martian. It wasn’t at all a film I expected to enjoy, however although it was
tense and serious in some points, Scott had also managed to include
humour which I thought was very impressive considering a large portion of
the film was focused just on Matt Damon in space, on his own. There is only
so much you can do with one character and I feel that from the
entertainment point of view, he did very well. It was based on a pretty
intense and intellectual subject yet I found he managed to include all types
of emotion throughout the film, sympathy, drama and humour.
I enjoyed The Alien less than The Martian. I think this is partially due to the
fact that Alien is a much older film and therefore things like special effects
were less impressive. In The Martian, the special effects were very well done
and this really contributed to the whole production of the film. I think for
films based in somewhere like space or in an imaginary setting, special
effects (done well) are really important as they contribute massively to
setting the scene and putting emphasis on the genre.