Genre Research - What Happened To Monday

Having decided to create a film part of the sci-fi genre, my group and I thought it would be best to watch and analyze a few movies part of the genre to get a better understanding of the conventions part of it to create ours. One movie we watched was “What Happened To Monday” released in 2018. We noticed that it had many different camera angles, movements, and shots. Some common angles in it were high-level, over the shoulder, medium shots, medium close-ups, close-ups, and medium long shots. There were also many two-shots and three-shots in this movie. Some camera movements we noticed were pans, flash pans when showing the setting, as well as tilts to show entirety. Tracking shots were used to move along with the action happening. Lastly, some camera shots I noticed in this movie were crane shots and I believe I saw many stock shots.

When watching this movie and the other movies, I do plan I made sure to take note of every aspect of CLAMPS present in the movies. In this particular movie, the costumes we saw were professional clothing worn by professional workers, scrubs worn by doctors and scientists, and every day clothing (such as a t-shirt and jeans) worn by the normal people in the film. The common lighting in this film was basic three-point lighting, hard film lighting, low-key lighting, natural film lighting, and practical set lighting. The actors in this film had to act sympathetic, dramatically, violently, and hopelessly for the many different moods the scenes had. I was impressed with their acting. They were very talented. The make up in this movie compared to other science-fiction movies was not too dramatic. The actors had make up that highlighted certain features of their faces, but not dramatically. The make up seemed to look like every day make up women would wear in the real world. The main props in this movie were technological items such as computers and machines. Some other props included regular items found in the household. There were three main settings in this movie which included the outside world, the inside of the houses, and laboratories. The majority of the movie took place inside the home of the seven girls and their father. It wasn’t until later in the movie when they began to leave the house to the outside world.

The main types of editing we noticed in this movie were cross cutting, cutaway, eye-line match, shot reverse shot, and jump cut. There were also many dissolves, fade ins, and fade outs. As far as the common sound in this movie, they were diegetic sound, dialogue among the actors, and voiceovers. For the soundtrack there was score, incidental music, and ambient sound. The sound enhanced the movie a great deal. It made the scenes more dramatic when they needed to be. As well as sad when something bad happened.

All of these elements in this movie “what happened to Monday“ made the movie very interesting and involving. Watching this gave my group and I ideas of the types of camera angles, shots, and movements to include into our opening scene for our film. It also gave us idea of the sound we should include, as well as the editing. In this movie we enjoyed the suspense and the acting. At some points in the movie some scenes were dragged on and became slow and that is what we would have to say we disliked about this movie. But other than that, it was a very good science-fiction movie. We hope to make our opening scene creative as this movie was. We will include many of the elements from this movie and the other movies we watched.