Religious Traditions and Sacred Relationships

"A cause, principle or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith." this is one of four definitions of religion from Merriam-Webster dictionary, but religion is so much more than this. People have had this discussion time and time again what religion is or is not. People have started wars and built their own colonies all in the name of religion. One way to tell what is acceptable by society as a religion is if it possesses some of these eight characteristics belief system, community, central myths, ritual, ethics, characteristic emotional experiences, material expression, and sacredness. Some have even said that religion is based on a moral code, but this starts a whole another debate because when people commit crimes some can argue they have no moral code, so in turn they must not have a religion, or their religion allowed them to commit this crime.

One thing that is undeniable in all religions is that they hold

The film states it is New York City in 1936 and East Baltimore around 1928, but it was filmed on the backlot of Universal Studios, and KEHE studios in California the sets were remarkable and a great deal of work went into making it look like 1936 and 1928. Realizing this movie was filmed on a studio made it a little clearer how they could incorporate cars and horses on one street at least in 1972.Working on a set gave them more freedom to work with; they did not have to worry too much about safety. In addition to operating on a set, it gave them the chance to manipulate many their scenes. They could make it day or night anytime that they choose to and did not always have to depend on the sun. Many of their scenes were filmed inside, so they used plenty of soft lights and shadows. Some of the shots in the film seemed dark and could have been brighter, and I thought that when the movie came out on DVD they would have enhanced it from its original version, but maybe they did not want to change any aspects of the picture.

Working on a set gave the films cinematographer more options on how they wanted to shoot the movie, but considering the film was made in the 1972 it was shot using an anamorphic lens. Back then many of movies were shot this way, but nowadays different lenses are available and the use of technology has made it able to play movies with widescreen view. Panavision is not widely used any longer.

The films editing was satisfactory for this time period, but I did noticed they did used lap dissolve; however, currently we are in the digital era, and there were a great deal of editing that could have been done differently. Some scenes in the film where Piano Man (Richard Pryor) was supposed to be playing the piano, but you can clearly see that he was not even touching the keys could have been closer. Some scenes in the nightclub where one of the singers Yvonne (Yvonne Fair) was doing her routine and the 180 degree rule could have been used, or a close up did not have to be used, it would not have left the audience trying to envision what was she actually doing. This film did have a large amount of continuity editing, and eyeline matches. One of the times this was done in the movie was in