Ayanna Sisson

For my independent film, I watched Napoleon Dynamite and the foreign film that I had
watched is Grease. Napoleon Dynamite is a movie about a young teenager, Napoleon
Dynamite, who is trying to find his place in the world. The main character is a high school kid
with not many friend’s due to his troubles fitting in. Throughout the movie he has to deal with
his crazy family life back at home and his social life at school. Napoleon befriends a new kid,
Pedro, at his school and they soon decide to run for class president. In this movie, it was very
apparent that its purpose was to bring laughter and joy to the audience, as the character
development made the viewers feel sympathy for them. This movie made me laugh and I
noticed that the characters progress is very modest, which I found very relatable to real life.
The movie was very realistic and the budget seemed to be on the cheaper side as there weren’t
really any special effects or over the top scenes. The cast of this movie also felt very small which
resulted in the movie telling a smaller story through the character development rather than the
actions. As this movie seems like a typical teen movie there were many things that made it
unique. For example, there wasn’t any use of drugs, alcohol, or profanity, rebellious behavior,
or sexual scenes. The artistic vision on this film seems very well thought out an wasn’t very
mainstream, meaning it felt very unique in the content it held.
The foreign film that I watched was Amelie. Amelia is a movie about a young woman
who secretly customizes the lives of the people around her in order to create a world of her
own creation. She suppressed memories from her childhood due to her father’s mistaken
concerns of a heart defect. This causes her to have little to no interaction with people outside
her home, which results in this made up world of her own. She ends up becoming a young
woman who then moves to Paris. She then finds a treasure in which she returns to the owner
and this causes her to come to a realization that she wants to help those around her. Along the
way she ends up learning more about herself and what she wants in life and love. This foreign
film contains a lot of heart felt moments, and scenes that really make the reader think. Amelia
is also considered a moral hero over a physical hero, which is common in foreign films. Amelia’s
need to help others due to her good morals leads to her discovering what she wants. The
budget for this film seemed to be on the cheaper end compared to big film industries as well.
This overall movie came across as very artistic with a unique quality.
Independent movies have some big differences from major film studio movies. One
major one that I seemed to notice was that the budgets are different. Major film studios
normally have bigger budgets and independent films normally cost less to create. Because
major film studios normally have a larger cast this normally results in bigger more complex
stories that involve more props or background sets compared to independent films with smaller
plots and casts. The cinematography also seems to be better when it comes to bigger studios as
they have a much bigger budget. The artistic vision also seems to be more specific with
independent movies as these types of films are normally targeting a specific crowd compared
to major films targeting a much more diverse group. Foreign films compared to American films
have huge differences. American films tend to have a lot of drama that ends up being solved
very neatly, optimism about the future, issues get resolved by the end, and are normally much
more optimistic than any real-life situations. Foreign films don’t usually have a happy ending,
drama normally isn’t easily solved, and there are a lot of issues that don’t usually get resolved.
Another huge difference is the way the movies interact with the audiences. The theme of
foreign movies is much more in depth and make the viewers constantly think about the plot.
American films are often made for the views to escape the stresses of their day so they make
the movies more for entertainment.