Hello everyone, I am Joceline Giron! My whole life, I have always loved film and now, I’m interested in becoming a director. I have always been fascinated by cameras, but my love for film has developed more as I have grown older, which also sprouted my appreciation of the art that directors create. 

For my blog, “The Director’s Eye”, I will be doing in-depth analyses of films. I will focus mainly on film techniques like color theory, audio, editing, types of film shots and more. 

The first movie that we will be analyzing is “Tick, Tick… Boom!” directed by Lin Manuel Miranda. This is the film adaptation of the musical by Jonathan Larson that came out in Nov. 2021.

The film is an autobiography about Larson. It follows his journey of trying to make it big in New York by creating musicals, but his life isn’t as glamorous as one might think.  He lives in a tiny apartment that he can barely afford just to succeed at his dream. 

Throughout the film, Miranda adds a faint ticking noise in the background that alludes to life moving too fast for the main character, Jon (Andrew Garfield). It is a crucial part of the story, as it is the focal point of the first song “30/90”. This ticking becomes more amplified to the watcher later on in the film when Jon’s life begins to fall apart in front of him. 

Another film choice that Miranda took was having some shots look like they were filmed on a VHS. As the story is set in the 1990’s, VHS recordings were a common thing for people to have. When he uses these shots, they are edited to flow into the scene perfectly. During the end credits, viewers see that the VHS shots were recreations of Larson actually performing in the 90s’. 

An amazing technique that is used constantly throughout the film is the cutting back and forth between conversation and a song. This technique is used twice with the songs “Therapy” and “30/90”. The scene for “Therapy” has two very different scenes that each break that tension from the argument that happens between Jon and his girlfriend, Susan (Alexandra Shipp). While he is on stage with Karessa (Vanessa Hudgens) performing a recreation of the argument, the scene keeps cutting back and forth between the song and argument. 

Additionally, Miranda used color throughout the whole film. Color theory is a way that filmmakers use tones and hues to convey a story under the surface of the film to the audience in a subtle way. A clear representation of this is in the song, “No More” where the viewers see Michael’s (Robin de Jesús) apartment, which is spacious compared to Jon’s smaller barely-livable apartment. There is a big difference between the colors in each apartment. Jon’s apartment isn’t very well lit and is cluttered with trash and his instruments, while Michael’s is bright and organized to make a clear contrast between the two and how they each live. 

This film was executed perfectly. Every film technique that was used built on the story of “Tick,  Tick… Boom!”. If you are interested in watching the film it is exclusively on Netflix. I highly recommend it.