Robert Zemeckis's Trademarks

"You just have to do your art. Nothing can stop you"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-q4_mHeQ70

Robert Zemeckis was born on May 14th in the early 50s, in Chicago (United States). He is a famous American filmmaker and innovator in visual effects. His most important movies have been primarily, the trilogy of Back to the future, Forrest Gump, A Christmas Carol among many others. He utilizes a lot of different genres that attract both adults and families. According to David Thomson, there has not been another American Director who has used special effects for narrative and dramatic purposes like Robert. In the trilogy of Back to the future, we can analyze that it is a science-fiction comedy directed to families, he adopted a ‘zany formula’ in his work and knew how to make a good traditional animation and live action scene. He also supports the Spielberg kind of movies and perspective while directing films, Spielberg also produced many of his movies and they worked along together to create unpredictable movie results which became very popular internationally.

Through his movies, he presents a very important trait that is ‘zany’ which means “amusingly unconventional and idiosyncratic”. Moreover, a very important trademark was that he liked to use over and over again the same actors and make them create different scenes in totally different movies. “Zemeckis loves casting Tom Hanks in his films, as is evident in Forrest Gump, Cast Away, and The Polar Express. Zemeckis also loves hiring Alan Silvestri to do the music for his pictures. Examples of this include the Back to the Future trilogy, Forrest Gump, Cast Away, and The Polar Express. Usually, he begins his films with long takes that mainly attract the audience's attention by being so unexpected and interesting, such as, in Contact, Forrest Gump and Back to the future. In his most famous trilogy he has a very significant scene with a long take of the protagonist Marty McFly in a new technologically developed city, meaning he travelled in time to the future, it is a quiet scene in which we can observe the city and the changes it has had, while Marty being confused about the year, the time and the impressive changed in the city structure.

As stated before, he is a ‘master’ using special effects and creating visual effects in different scenes in his movies. He established that he has always used the most upgraded technology in order to keep surprising his targeted audience and more, this way he did not only created interesting and unpredictable films but also ‘heartfelt’ films who were very liked by families.

Bibliography

“Robert Zemeckis Biography.” Tribute.ca. 2014. 31 Jan. 2014 <http://www.tribute.ca/people/robert-zemeckis/4015/>.

IMDB. 2014. 01 Jan. 2014. <http://www.imdb.com>.

Wilcock, David. “Robert Zemeckis.” IMDb, IMDb.com, www.imdb.com/name/nm0000709/bio.

Watkins, Anthony. “Director Profile: ROBERT ZEMECKIS.” Cinemablography, Director Profile: Robert Zemericks, 2 Dec. 2014, www.cinemablography.org/blog/director-profile-robert-zemeckis.