WKW aesthetics

• Unique camera style
• Memorable music
• Soulful monologues by lonely characters
• Experimental nature of filmography,
• What is step-printing?

  The duplication of a film frame.

  The duplication of multiple frames stretches the running time of the sequence, and creates a sense of slow motion.
• Step-printing means using every alternate frame twice, resulting in a slow motion effect.
• By creating jitterness, shaking, and slow-mo shots, Wong establishes a distinct emotion in every movie.
• Step-printing is one of the many visual components that is part of WKW auteur techniques.
• Step-printing in Fallen Angels.

  It is applied to exhibit chaos, violence and murder.
• What does step-printing signify about the Killer?

  The dreaminess of step-printing signifies the killer is trapped in his sense of solitude.
• What is another overtly used technique by WKW?

  Monologues
• What does monologues allow?

  Lets the audience into the characters lives, by presenting a glimpse into their most personal private thoughts.
• Wong makes the audience feel like the characters are a part of them, we form an intimate connection with them, that his characters hopelessly yearn for but rarely achieve.
• What does monologues explore?

  Isolation

  The vanity of lonliness

  Since the characters fail to communicate and connect with others, they try to have meaningful conversations with themselves.
• What does Wong use monologues for?

  To paint an experience

  He permits the viewers to dive into the characters past in the hopes to better understand them.
• What else transpires through the monologues?

  The characters longing to have meaningful converaations.
• What is a leitmotif?

  A recurrent theme throughout any literary composition, associated with a particular character, idea or situation.
• What does the music in his films do?

  It is captivating and appealing, they create an entire mood.

  The music is so engaging that the audience becomes entirely absorbed in the scene.
• What does Wongs use of music set up?

  An enviroment, creating an almost hypnotic state that prepares the audience with an idea of what is about to happen.
• How does WKW use visuals?

  Hypnotic, eye-popping visuals

  A neon-soaked world.

  Memorable uses of colours

  Unconventional shots

  Frames within a frame

  Claustrophobic set design

  Catchy music
• Wong Kar Wai has a reputation for remonticizing the meloncholy, which is attained by the meaningful visual experience.
• Neon Lighting and Colours

  Used to showcase HK's typical lifestyle, Wong constructs an over-crowded and populated setting drenched in neon.
• How does Wong channel emotion?

  Through his visuals, the setting being drenched in neon forms emotions ranging from highly energetic to mundane.
• What constrasts does he create through the neon lighting and colour?

  An atmosphere where characters are in colourfully lit and crowded settings visually and emotionally contained contrast their lives: gloomy and lacking meaning/purpose.
• What emotions do colour in Wongs film portray?

  Red = passion, love, embarrassment, lust and anger

  Green = envy, greed

  Blue = coldness, distance

  Yellow = frustration, insecurities, cowardice, caution
• As well as colour, Wong uses a lot of MONOCHROME.
• Wong contrasts emotion with monochrome frames, becoming distinct against the neon scenes.
• Wong contrasts emotion with monochrome frames, becoming distinct against the neon scenes.
• When is monochrome used in Fallen Angels?

  When unexpected or unusual things happen in the lives of the characters, something out of routine.
• What does monochrome bring focus to?

  A single thought, Wong makes the audience concentrate on a centralized subject by making everything else less prominent.
• How does Wong use frame within frame?

  He creates a chaotic and claustrophobic enviroment.

  Distancing the protagonist from the world with the vivid use of the foreground.
• How does Wong use frame within frame?

  He creates a chaotic and claustrophobic enviroment.

  Distancing the protagonist from the world with the vivid use of the foreground.

  Add depth to his scenes, further the emotional distance of his characters to a physical distance
• Reflection / Observation


  Wong emplys this parallel tool by using reflective surfaces to create cinematic effects.
• What does using reflective surfaces make the audience feel?

  Like an observer / lurker
• How does wong build on the invasion of privacy / space?

  He constructs frames that create the effect of his characters being observed from the outside.

  It is used to bring forth a sense of voyuerism.
• How does Wong design a loop effect in his films?

  By using repetitive shots, using only a handful of locations and shooting multiple scenes at one location.
• What does using a small number of locations create?

  It adds a sense of mundanity to the lives of his leads.
• Wong isolates the characters from the fixed backdrops, changing only the isolated lives of the protagonists not the backgrounds.
• Why does Wong not change the locations?

  To make the audience familiar with the enviroment, since he jumps and skips through time, repetitive location help establish the time changes.
• Wide angle lens - 'close but far'