Feminism- belief in the principle that women should have the same rights and opportunities as men. Feminism involves political, cultural and sociological theories.
Male gaze- By Laura Mulvey, an analysis of media images which suggests that the camera represents a male perspective and as such casts men as subjects and women as objects. In our group project we have a vulnerable female protagonist and use perspective shots that make the audience question who is it that is watching her. Relating to the theory; male gaze.
Saturday, 20 March 2010
Monday, 22 February 2010
Exam question (Section A) Explain how you chose your genre to adhere to the genre's conventions of real media texts?
When starting our research and planning for our production, we initially had planned to do the genre romantic comedy. We all wanted to do a genre we hadn’t worked with before. We started our research by looking at the conventions of a romantic comedy. We looked at various rom-com films such as ‘Notting hill’ and ‘Bridget Jones Diary’. We wanted to base our plot similar to a film called ‘Prime’. We not only researched film trailers but also looked at film websites to get an idea of what conventions they carry forward onto their film website. We analysed these and chose the main conventions in which we were going to use for our own production in order to create a piece that related to our chosen genre. After discussing our plot, we realised it was going to be harder and more challenging than we thought. Our idea was to have a 35-year-old man to play the main character. Already we knew this was going to be a problem with casting, as none of us knew of any one of that age group, and we obviously wanted our trailer to look as professional as possible, so therefore needed people who would be reliable and can act. After realising this problem we immediately knew we should scrap the idea. We then started thinking about doing the genre, thriller. While discussing this many ideas came to mind for our trailer, and our group knew this genre would be much more exciting and easier for us to produce. We then started researching the conventions used in a thriller film. We looked at lots of thriller trailers, such as ‘Bourne Identity’, ‘Derailed’, ‘Disturber’ and ‘Enough’. We noticed even in teaser trailers the editing of shots was very fast pace, which created an exciting engaging flow. The music helps build tension for the audience; it often gets louder in parts and quieter in others. We noted these particular conventions and used them in our own production. Our teaser trailer ‘Desire’ follows these conventions of a thriller genre. We show this through all three texts, the main text and both ancillary texts (film poster and website). In the teaser we wanted to closely focus on suspense and enigma in order to follow a convention of the genre. The basic plot for our teaser is a young girl has recently split from her childhood boyfriend and eventually finds herself becoming paranoid and frightened as someone (who she thinks is her ex-boyfriend) is stalking her within her own home, however the stalker is not her ex-boyfriend. We use conventions to force the audience to think that it is the ex-boyfriend who is messing with her mind and her life. During editing, we made our production fast pace by editing the shots to be quick and snappy. This made our trailer look engaging and action packed, which is a convention of a thriller. We used conventional music throughout the trailer, having it louder in places that were more dramatic and quietening the music when there was dialogue being spoken. This added dramatically to the flow of the trailer and had great significance in making it have more of a thriller feel, leaving the audience with suspense and excitement.
Monday, 8 February 2010
Exam question: Explain how you used digital technology to adhere to or deviate from the conventions of real media texts?
During the development of our practical project, our group have used a variety of digital technology in order to produce a teaser trailer that uses the same conventions as a real media text. The main components used were the video camera and the editing facilities such as using imovie on the mac computers. The first part of digital technology used was the video camera, in which we used to film the trailer. In order to carry out the conventions of a real media text, we used particular techniques that would be used in the real media world. For example, various shot types, angle types, technical ways of moving the camera (i.e. panning, 180 degree rule etc…) Using these techniques helped produce a more skilled, professional looking film and helped us gain a better understanding of the details used in making a film.
The other digital technology, which was just as important, was the editing created on imovie. This program helped with editing our teaser trailer and putting it all together. We were able to play around with shortening and lengthening shots, cutting shots we didn’t want, and adding music with the shots. By using these tools we were able to have a trailer that not only looked professional but also helped to create our thriller genre. We cut many of the unnecessary shots and conversation, and shorten the length of the shots in order to make our teaser trailer sharp and fast pace, which helped engage and excite our audience. We found by re-arranging the order it changed the dynamic of the trailer, which definitely helped make it look like a real thriller text. The usage of music in a trailer is also another digital technology. We searched for thriller music using a free download website called ‘Audio production network’. Here we found our soundtrack song for our trailer. We saved the music into a file on the computer then transferred this onto a memory stick in order to convert onto the mac computers. The music in a trailer is a convention of a real media text. Looking back on the process of making our film, digital technology is extremely important in the making, and you wouldn’t be able to produce a representation of a real media text without the use of digital technology.
The other digital technology, which was just as important, was the editing created on imovie. This program helped with editing our teaser trailer and putting it all together. We were able to play around with shortening and lengthening shots, cutting shots we didn’t want, and adding music with the shots. By using these tools we were able to have a trailer that not only looked professional but also helped to create our thriller genre. We cut many of the unnecessary shots and conversation, and shorten the length of the shots in order to make our teaser trailer sharp and fast pace, which helped engage and excite our audience. We found by re-arranging the order it changed the dynamic of the trailer, which definitely helped make it look like a real thriller text. The usage of music in a trailer is also another digital technology. We searched for thriller music using a free download website called ‘Audio production network’. Here we found our soundtrack song for our trailer. We saved the music into a file on the computer then transferred this onto a memory stick in order to convert onto the mac computers. The music in a trailer is a convention of a real media text. Looking back on the process of making our film, digital technology is extremely important in the making, and you wouldn’t be able to produce a representation of a real media text without the use of digital technology.
Thursday, 19 November 2009
Postmodernism
There are many media examples of texts or products which deliberately set out to explore and play with this state of hyperreality. These texts are said to be intertextual and self-referential- they break the rules of realism to explore the nature of their own status as constructed texts. in other words, they seek not to represent reality, but to represent media reality.
Examples of films that are postmodern: The Matrix, Blade runner, 500 days of summer (very recent film). The advert for Cadbury's chocolate is seen as postmodern too. The films directed by Michael Winterbottom and the Coen Brothers have postmodern elements aswell. We will be studying a few Michael Winterbottom films in class and analysing the factors that make a film postmodern.
P.A.I.N.P.I.P.E.S
Play
Aesthetic- How things look
Intertextual-Bringing other texts eg. thaming of the shrew.10 things i hate about you
Nihilism/Nihilistic- no religions, no values
Parody- Immatation
Irony/Ironic- Audience sharing a joke
Pastiche- Mixture of genres eg. scary movie (lots of types, comedy, horror etc)
Electic- blend of genres
Self-referential- relating to the audience
Examples of films that are postmodern: The Matrix, Blade runner, 500 days of summer (very recent film). The advert for Cadbury's chocolate is seen as postmodern too. The films directed by Michael Winterbottom and the Coen Brothers have postmodern elements aswell. We will be studying a few Michael Winterbottom films in class and analysing the factors that make a film postmodern.
P.A.I.N.P.I.P.E.S
Play
Aesthetic- How things look
Intertextual-Bringing other texts eg. thaming of the shrew.10 things i hate about you
Nihilism/Nihilistic- no religions, no values
Parody- Immatation
Irony/Ironic- Audience sharing a joke
Pastiche- Mixture of genres eg. scary movie (lots of types, comedy, horror etc)
Electic- blend of genres
Self-referential- relating to the audience
Monday, 12 October 2009
Learnt to use Photoshop
I learnt to use selective colouring on photoshop in my lesson on friday. I was very pleased as i have wanted to know how to use photoshop for quite some time. I will regularly use photoshop to help me get familar with the program as it will help us as a group to produce part of our film poster, which we will start to produce soon. We are already coming up with ideas for our poster!
Friday, 9 October 2009
Thursday, 5 March 2009
Film Evaluation
I worked in a group with Phoebe and Lucy for my media product. We didn’t have any problems deciding this, as we share very similar ideas and interests and work really well together. Over the winter school term we produced our own mini cardboard mise en scene. My group choose to do the genre ‘Christmas Classic’. After doing this task, we were keen to do our media film on this particular genre; including romance too. As it was around Christmas time when we were thinking this, so we were inspired by all the Christmas classics shown on TV around this time. But after discussing this through we thought the genre wouldn’t be challenging and exciting enough for us. And we would be very time restricted to get the filming done around the festive season. So we then thought against this idea and started to look at other genres. To help develop our media product we looked at conventions of real media productions. We analysed three different film genres; romance, thriller and rom-com, particularly focusing on the mise en scene and semiotic codes. The film we were interested in most was the thriller ‘Enough’. We liked the opening scene of this film as it portrays a normal life style, however the camera shot is from somebody’s point of view, watching the characters every move. This would perhaps make the audience feel uncomfortable and give them an idea of the genre. The film title flashes up in red bold writing, with a black background. The colours connote danger and violence, which would signify the genre. We liked the idea of using this convention in our media product, showing normal life with various shots and flashbacks to suggest the genre. This film was where our inspiration came from.
We then discussed where we would like our location to be, and immediately thought of the capital, London. We were interested to shot at a train station as we noticed many films started with a form of transport, and we really liked this convention for our film. We also wanted to shot in a park as we felt the quietness and stillness a park has, would add to the weary thriller genre. After thinking through these ideas, we realised it would be much easier to film in Oxford City centre, as Oxford has a train station and public parks. Filming in oxford would be more time efficient.
After locating the setting and thinking about the plot, we were ready to pitch our film in front of two teachers. We had pre-prepared a pitch and synopsis with a storyboard of our preliminary task. And explained our thought process. They were really impressed with the thought behind our film and our process. So we were then able to start filming and have access to the filming equipment. From there, we worked out a schedule to film what parts and how long it would take. Most of our filming was produced during a double media lesson that we have every Monday. We firstly filmed the flashbacks in the bathroom scene, which was filmed at Phoebe’s house during a Monday double lesson. The following Monday we went to Oxford to film at the train station and in the parks. When we had all the footage needed, we uploaded to the Imovie HD. When producing our film we took so many shots, quite a lot were all very similar to one another. So when it came round to uploading our footage onto the computer, we had so much unnecessary footage. We briefly looked over our shots and selected the shots we liked. Then started to edit from there. For our background music, we wanted something that was cheerful to suggest a normal lifestyle but also have a slight weariness that would suggest the genre. We experimented with a few pieces of music but many of them didn’t fit and the beat didn’t coordinate with the character walking. We eventually found our music on a large audio internet base, where we researched the atmosphere we wanted to create. We also wanted to combine natural sounds like the water running in the shower to anchor the setting.
Looking back at when we did our preliminary task, I think it was very beneficial to us. It was useful as we were able to play around with the camera and learn how to use it before our real project. Problems that arised when doing this task, was it was filmed over the course of a couple of days so we had continuity occur with clothing. This was something we learnt and remembered when it came round to our project. The task gave us a chance to experiment using different camera angles and shots. Particular shots we focused on were using the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot/reverse/shot. By the end of this task we were very familiar with how to use them.
Our film starts with flashes of the character ‘Emily Shrampton’ who has mental health problems. To show that she is in a bad state, we have shots of her in the shower with clothes on, taking pills and drinking alcohol. To give this more of an edgy feel we used a blue tint effect on these shots, which connotes health problems. The flashbacks are very fast pace and the transitions of each shot fades out. We edited this in this particular way to reflect the genre. We positioned the flashbacks at the beginning of our film as we wanted the audience to have questions running through their heads about the storyline and who the character is. This is a way of engaging the audience into the film as they try to figure out what is going on. Our film then continues following the journey of a detective undercover, through the city. We have a shot of Oxford’s spires, which anchors the location of our film. We also show the woman (detective) walking down old cobbled streets and past a red telephone box, which anchors traditional Oxford.
Our media product represents a social group, as the character ‘Emily Shrampton’ is a schizophrenic, dysfunctional young woman, who has suffered seriously from the separation of her parents and the death of her brother. We represent this stereotype by the strange camera shots used. The actions in the bathroom; which include her in the shower with her clothes on. The camera shot of her scrubbing hard at her face, with heavy black eye makeup and red lipstick. A shot of her drinking alcohol in the bathroom, and close up’s of her taking pills. The audience may have sympathy for the character as she stereotypically falls into the category of a vulnerable, young female.
As our media production’ values were low budget our film would be considered by an ‘art house distributor’ with a minority audience. Our film was filmed in a local area with our own actors and actresses, so it would be unlikely that big institutions like ‘Universal’ would assign our product.
Our target audience for our media product would be aimed at people above the age of fifteen years, as our film contains a young girl with mental health problems. It would not be suitable for a younger audience to see, as these problems are shown. We didn’t just want the age group of teenagers we wanted to engage adults too. To attract such a wide range if ages, we felt our film should be detailed and have a mature approach, so it would engage an older age group. To address our audience we used social problems that may arise in life, such as drinking alcohol, taking drugs and losing someone close to you. People can relate to these common problems, which would engage them more into our film.
During the process of constructing our product we learnt about new technologies, such as, the composition of shot. This enabled us to learn about what needed to be in a particular shot to anchor the meaning of something. Lighting was another technology we learnt about. Our flashbacks were shot in a bathroom with a large mirror against one side of the wall. While filming we had to be careful where we positioned ourselves with the camera, as we obviously didn’t want our reflections filming in the shot. When filming the shots in the park, we didn’t realize how quiet the dialogue would sound when on the computer during the editing. We had quite a few problems with the audio; fitting the music where and when we wanted it was very tricky. Parts of the music fitted perfectly with various transitions of shots. So fitting the music and shots where appropriate and at exactly the same time was difficult. The start of the music is quiet and gradually gets slightly louder. At the point where the dialogue comes in, the music is louder than we wanted, so hearing the conversation was impossible. Using the program we were using ‘Imovie HD’ we didn’t know how to turn down the music and turn the audio up. It was a different program to others, as everybody else was using ‘Imovie’ so nobody could help us figure it out. We had to cut pieces of the music from the start to get the part we wanted. But even now we still have a problem with this.
When first starting to use the editing program it was considerably easier than I thought editing a film would be. We made a very big mistake by not buying our own memory stick to hold our film on. So we had to use a friend’s memory stick to transfer our film onto youtube to show the rest of the class our unfinished film. At this point we still had a problem with our audio, but at this stage it wasn’t a disaster. After the February half term we came back to sort out the audio and realised our film had been deleted off of the computer. It had also just recently been deleted from our friend’s memory stick, so the only copy we had was on youtube. We were extremely disappointed and annoyed by this, as we had worked so hard and so much time taken to edit. The copy on youtube had a major dilemma with the music and audio. We knew we had to do something about this as after so much effort we weren’t going to hand in a copy we weren’t pleased with. The solution we came up with was to upload our footage, which luckily was still on the camera tape to Phoebe’s Mac computer. This way we would know exactly where our film is. We had to start from the beginning, and re-edited everything. Unfortunately, we lost a section of our footage. However, it was a scene that could be done again without much hassle.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the entire process of making our film and learnt a great deal from it. I am extremely pleased with the outcome of our film.
We then discussed where we would like our location to be, and immediately thought of the capital, London. We were interested to shot at a train station as we noticed many films started with a form of transport, and we really liked this convention for our film. We also wanted to shot in a park as we felt the quietness and stillness a park has, would add to the weary thriller genre. After thinking through these ideas, we realised it would be much easier to film in Oxford City centre, as Oxford has a train station and public parks. Filming in oxford would be more time efficient.
After locating the setting and thinking about the plot, we were ready to pitch our film in front of two teachers. We had pre-prepared a pitch and synopsis with a storyboard of our preliminary task. And explained our thought process. They were really impressed with the thought behind our film and our process. So we were then able to start filming and have access to the filming equipment. From there, we worked out a schedule to film what parts and how long it would take. Most of our filming was produced during a double media lesson that we have every Monday. We firstly filmed the flashbacks in the bathroom scene, which was filmed at Phoebe’s house during a Monday double lesson. The following Monday we went to Oxford to film at the train station and in the parks. When we had all the footage needed, we uploaded to the Imovie HD. When producing our film we took so many shots, quite a lot were all very similar to one another. So when it came round to uploading our footage onto the computer, we had so much unnecessary footage. We briefly looked over our shots and selected the shots we liked. Then started to edit from there. For our background music, we wanted something that was cheerful to suggest a normal lifestyle but also have a slight weariness that would suggest the genre. We experimented with a few pieces of music but many of them didn’t fit and the beat didn’t coordinate with the character walking. We eventually found our music on a large audio internet base, where we researched the atmosphere we wanted to create. We also wanted to combine natural sounds like the water running in the shower to anchor the setting.
Looking back at when we did our preliminary task, I think it was very beneficial to us. It was useful as we were able to play around with the camera and learn how to use it before our real project. Problems that arised when doing this task, was it was filmed over the course of a couple of days so we had continuity occur with clothing. This was something we learnt and remembered when it came round to our project. The task gave us a chance to experiment using different camera angles and shots. Particular shots we focused on were using the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot/reverse/shot. By the end of this task we were very familiar with how to use them.
Our film starts with flashes of the character ‘Emily Shrampton’ who has mental health problems. To show that she is in a bad state, we have shots of her in the shower with clothes on, taking pills and drinking alcohol. To give this more of an edgy feel we used a blue tint effect on these shots, which connotes health problems. The flashbacks are very fast pace and the transitions of each shot fades out. We edited this in this particular way to reflect the genre. We positioned the flashbacks at the beginning of our film as we wanted the audience to have questions running through their heads about the storyline and who the character is. This is a way of engaging the audience into the film as they try to figure out what is going on. Our film then continues following the journey of a detective undercover, through the city. We have a shot of Oxford’s spires, which anchors the location of our film. We also show the woman (detective) walking down old cobbled streets and past a red telephone box, which anchors traditional Oxford.
Our media product represents a social group, as the character ‘Emily Shrampton’ is a schizophrenic, dysfunctional young woman, who has suffered seriously from the separation of her parents and the death of her brother. We represent this stereotype by the strange camera shots used. The actions in the bathroom; which include her in the shower with her clothes on. The camera shot of her scrubbing hard at her face, with heavy black eye makeup and red lipstick. A shot of her drinking alcohol in the bathroom, and close up’s of her taking pills. The audience may have sympathy for the character as she stereotypically falls into the category of a vulnerable, young female.
As our media production’ values were low budget our film would be considered by an ‘art house distributor’ with a minority audience. Our film was filmed in a local area with our own actors and actresses, so it would be unlikely that big institutions like ‘Universal’ would assign our product.
Our target audience for our media product would be aimed at people above the age of fifteen years, as our film contains a young girl with mental health problems. It would not be suitable for a younger audience to see, as these problems are shown. We didn’t just want the age group of teenagers we wanted to engage adults too. To attract such a wide range if ages, we felt our film should be detailed and have a mature approach, so it would engage an older age group. To address our audience we used social problems that may arise in life, such as drinking alcohol, taking drugs and losing someone close to you. People can relate to these common problems, which would engage them more into our film.
During the process of constructing our product we learnt about new technologies, such as, the composition of shot. This enabled us to learn about what needed to be in a particular shot to anchor the meaning of something. Lighting was another technology we learnt about. Our flashbacks were shot in a bathroom with a large mirror against one side of the wall. While filming we had to be careful where we positioned ourselves with the camera, as we obviously didn’t want our reflections filming in the shot. When filming the shots in the park, we didn’t realize how quiet the dialogue would sound when on the computer during the editing. We had quite a few problems with the audio; fitting the music where and when we wanted it was very tricky. Parts of the music fitted perfectly with various transitions of shots. So fitting the music and shots where appropriate and at exactly the same time was difficult. The start of the music is quiet and gradually gets slightly louder. At the point where the dialogue comes in, the music is louder than we wanted, so hearing the conversation was impossible. Using the program we were using ‘Imovie HD’ we didn’t know how to turn down the music and turn the audio up. It was a different program to others, as everybody else was using ‘Imovie’ so nobody could help us figure it out. We had to cut pieces of the music from the start to get the part we wanted. But even now we still have a problem with this.
When first starting to use the editing program it was considerably easier than I thought editing a film would be. We made a very big mistake by not buying our own memory stick to hold our film on. So we had to use a friend’s memory stick to transfer our film onto youtube to show the rest of the class our unfinished film. At this point we still had a problem with our audio, but at this stage it wasn’t a disaster. After the February half term we came back to sort out the audio and realised our film had been deleted off of the computer. It had also just recently been deleted from our friend’s memory stick, so the only copy we had was on youtube. We were extremely disappointed and annoyed by this, as we had worked so hard and so much time taken to edit. The copy on youtube had a major dilemma with the music and audio. We knew we had to do something about this as after so much effort we weren’t going to hand in a copy we weren’t pleased with. The solution we came up with was to upload our footage, which luckily was still on the camera tape to Phoebe’s Mac computer. This way we would know exactly where our film is. We had to start from the beginning, and re-edited everything. Unfortunately, we lost a section of our footage. However, it was a scene that could be done again without much hassle.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the entire process of making our film and learnt a great deal from it. I am extremely pleased with the outcome of our film.
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