Director casy study: Jason Reitman

37 year-old, Jason Reitman, is a film director from Quebec, Canada. Son of director Ivan Reitman and Genevieve (actress), Jason’s career always looked to be heading towards the film industry. His father, Ivan, directed successful films such as Ghostbusters and Stripes.  Throughout his younger years, Reitman would often be on-set with his father learning his trade in the editing rooms and even serving as production assistant. Whilst attending Skidmore college to major in a pre-med studies degree, Reitman had a sudden change of heart and opted to move back to Los Angles to complete a degree in English and creative writing at the University of Southern America.  

Reitman started out making short films during his time at USC. Throughout his 20s, instead of accepting offers to make commercial feature films, Reitman began making his own short films and directing commercials. Although he was offered the opportunity to direct  Dude, Where's my car? on two separate occasions, he declined to pursue production of his own short films.  In 2006, Reitman eventually directed his first feature film, Thank You For Smoking. The film was a commercial and critical success. Following the release of the film, it eventually grossed over $39million and was nominated for two Golden Globes. This success certainly showed that Reitman was more than capable of directing films to a very high standard.

Reitman has a particular style when it comes to his films and particularly the opening sequences. He regularly uses high key lighting with bright colours to add to the positive atmosphere created. These two conventions are regularly used due to his films mostly being comedies like Juno. The consistent use of high key lighting and bright colours also gives an insight to the nature of the film for the audience. Furthermore, the bright colours may engage the target demographic (E) for these films more so than low key lighting and mundane colours. In addition, Reitman's opening sequences are well credited worldwide with lots of original elements that many other directors do not use in their opening sequences. For example, Reitman use a clever pan shot in his sequences to give the audience a clear idea of where the film is set. A successful use of this in in Juno when the main character is followed in a pan shot throughout different seasons which gives the audience a clear insight to the narrative. This is a clever technique use by Reitman as it shows that he is understanding of the how the target audiences are engaged in films. 

In addition to the more complex camera techniques, Reitman also uses simple camera shots successfully. One example of this is in Juno where there is a frequent use of a high angle shot. The use of this high-angle shot connotes that there is going to be something in the film that the protagonist has no control over. This makes the audience want to carry on watching to see what the disruption of the equilibrium will be. Furthermore, close up shots are also used to emphasise the facial expressions of the main characters. This is extremely important in the opening sequence because it allows the audience to form an impression on the main character.




After Reitman's first success with Thank You For Smoking (based on the novel by Christopher Buckley), he admitted that he would like to work with Buckley again. However, to date, they are yet to reunite with the hope of a success as big as Thank You For Smoking. Having said that, there does seem to be a particular theme with the choice of actors from Reitman. He often uses a female as a protagonist. For example, he uses Ellen Page in Juno as the main character and Lianne Halfon in Young Adult. The narratives for these two films, in particular, are very similar. They both see the protagonist finding themselves with some sort of problem. However, the resolution is always found but perhaps not in the way we imagined as an audience.

Learning comment: I have learnt from this task that it is very important to engage your audiences immediately from the start of the opening sequences if you are to have any chance of producing a successful film. Furthermore, I have understood that establishing a certain style of film is very important as well. This can easily be done through the use of certain sound effects. In addition, having a clear protagonist from the immediate start may be more engaging than having several characters. Jason Reitman does this well in the majority of his films with having just one protagonist, for example, in Juno and Up in Air.