One of our final projects in Design was to create a presentation about an artist that interested us. After some consideration and bouncing around a few ideas I settled on Akira Kurosawa, the Japanese filmmaker, because I actually really enjoy a lot of his movies. ( Especially "Seven Samurai"!).
Kurosawa's film career last over 50 years, during which he became perhaps the most successful filmmaker in the history of Japan. He initially went to school to become a painter, but eventually dropped this to become an assistant director at a studio making films during World War II. He would work his way into a directing role and went on to make many classic films, including "To Live," "Ran," and "Drunken Angel". One interesting aspect of Kurosawa's films are his commitment to and usage of movement. In every scene, there is at least some form of movement, generally in the background to compliment a shot but occasionally in the foreground as the focal point of the shot. The movement generally moved in the opposite direction of the main focus of the shots, something that is not generally seen today. He is known as being a genius when it comes to movement because of his ability to use it throughout the movie in non repetitive ways. Generally he used things like snow or smoke in the backgrounds, but in scenes where movement is in the focal point of the shot its generally in a large scale manner, like an entire army moving in one direction.
If you wish to see the emaze presentation that went along with my actual presentation then you can click here.