Se7en

During todays lesson we watched Se7en a film made 17 years ago featuring Brad Pitt, Gwyneth Paltrow and Morgan Freeman. It was a sick and twisted movie about a murderer who tortures and kills 7 different people and each crime scene represents one of the 7 deadly sins. The range of shots used were really good and emphasised the detail in the crime scenes and the gruesome effects.

Below is a 2 minute clip of the opening credits and I think the detail of the shots and timing of each frame as well as the sound helped to build up the suspense and the gave away the idea that this film is a horror. Below is the first two minutes of the film which shows the opening credits.

Shane Meadows

Shane Meadows is a director, screenwriter and actor who directed This is England and is a Bafta winner and has also directed many other short films. His work is very inspirational as he thinks outside of the box and uses as many different angles as he can in his scenes which prove to be very effective and make the viewer feel like they are part of the ongoing drama.

This is England 88

As a media student I'm so excited and cannot wait for the new series of This is England as I love the storyline and the all the shots and angles used and will be looking at some to use for my own film opening. Here is the trailer for This Is England 88

Harvey Nichols

I recently viewed the Harvey Nicols walk of shame advert and thought it represented women in a very negative way in the media and it mocked women and it was very stereotypical. I also think it was a very biased view of women and represents them as a laughing stock to men as well as constructing reality in a false way for the public to believe.

Starting Over

Last week we decided that our film opening wasn't going too well and we decided to go back to brainstorming ideas and start all over again. We've been watching some more film openings and will use a lot of shots and we are still thinking of another storyline.

Let the right one in

Last lesson we watched the film Let the right one in which is a horror about a vampire and a twelve year old boy who fall in love. It had a variety of shots and has inspired my group to think about filming some similar shots in our new film opening.
Here are a few shots from the film, They include a wide shot, a focus pull and a long shot.

Fifth Vlog

Here is a group vlog of our filming so far.

Quentin Tarantino

In 1992 Tarantino a writer and director premiered the film Reservoir Dogs, a British gangsta film featuring Michael Madsen. The film had critical feedback and the director became a legend immediately. Two years later, he released Pulp Fiction which premiered at the Cannes film festival, winning the coveted Palme D'Or Award. At the 1995 Academy Awards, it was nominated for the best picture, best director and best original screenplay. Tarantino and writing partner Roger Avary came away with the award for best original screenplay. In 1995, Tarantino directed Four Rooms.The film had very weak reviews. Tarantino's next film was From Dusk Till Dawn in 1996 a vampire/crime story which he wrote and co-starred with George Clooney. The film did fairly well theatrically.He also directed both volumes of Kill Bill which were also very successful.

British Film Institute Southbank

Despite the strikes going on today we had a media trip to the bfi at Southbank and was accompanied by Ms Goulding. Pete the chief examiner showed us a presentation and told us how to film a good film opening and what to avoid doing. He started off by pointing out to us the five key features to make obvious in our film openings which included:

• Genre
• Narrative 
• Character 
• Atmosphere
• Setting 

 He then showed us a really useful site called http://www.artofthetitle.com/ he showed us the opening credits to Catch Me If You Can which was created by graphics and didn't include any people which I think was a really interesting thing to do because the film is not actually a cartoon. A few other openings we watched include Dawn of the Dead which had a lot of diegetic and non-diegetic sound as well as the opening credits to Napolean Dynamite which I really enjoyed as it fit into the whole concept of the setting in a school  because of the school lunches and the library books. We also watched the first ten minutes of Once upon a time in the West which had simple credits and appeared over a long period of time which would not be relevant to us as our film opening has to be up to two minutes. We were then told that our blogs which are part of research and planning are worth up to 20 marks so should be detailed and include lots of evidence from our film opening. We were then shown some examples of some good blogs and what we should be including in ours. We were also told to investigate more into the ideas we were looking at and build up our skills by going out and practise filming which my group regularly do. We were then told that we should be brainstorming ideas, creating 25 word pitches and listening to feedback from teachers and peers which we have already done and we were then told the seven most common film openings students tended to go along with which our group didn't fall under as ours is a spoof movie. After that we were told the most common problems that occur in film openings such as poor sound and lighting and then we marked other students film openings from previous years.

There were two speakers who came in to talk to us one was Dexter Fletcher an actor and recently a director and the other was a visual effects director called Simon Carr who has helped add effects to films like The Kings Speech and recently Easy Virtue.Simon showed us a clip of how the green screens are layered behind the actual scenes and said editing films can take up to 5 months. Dexter spoke to us about his upcoming film called Wild Bill which he described as a western film set in Newham in East London we then asked each of the speakers questions and I think this trip was extremely interesting and a useful day out I also think I learnt a lot from it and it will help in the editing of my groups film opening.

Here is a photo we took with Dexter Fletcher a director and actor who came to speak to us about our film openings.

Ghost Research

here is some research about ghosts which ties in quite well with our film, the articles talks about the reaction of people to ghost films. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15624596

Gender Stereotypes

Here is a list of stereotypes of men and women in the media which I have added to my revision booklet.

Male	Female
Dominant Powerful Most important gender Adventurous Dangerous	Weak Vulnerable Rebellious Sexualised Objectified Dressy/girly/ hair and make up More likely to get worried Revealing clothing

Ann Gould- 6 Representations of Age

I've recently started to put together a glossary of terms as well as a glossary of theorists and Ann Gould said that there were six different stereotypes of teenagers which included:

• Rebellious
• Sexual- (teenage pregnancies)
• Artificial Tribe- ( a group of people with the same social interests)
• Nihilistic- (when teenagers reject moral values)
• Self Destructive-( drugs, pregnancies)
• Violent 

Representation of Age- Powerpoint (Youth)

During miss Fitzjohns lesson we presented our presentations about age. Me and Holly did a powerpoint presentation about youth and included the stereotypes of youth through the use of newspaper headlines such as bbc news and the daily mail and we included lots of pictures from google as well as tv dramas and programmes.
Representation of Youth

Group Vlog- Fourth Vlog

During Miss Fosters lesson we recorded a vlog about how our filming went and spoke about our film opening.

today we went to film our film opening again, i think we used a range of different shots and techniques and can't wait to watch it all back and start editing. I also think it was much more organised than the first time round as we already knew what we were doing and we made sure we were recording on the correct setting.

Filiming Kerfuffle

On tuesday we tried to upload our footage to our mac but we filmed our whole opening on the wrong setting which was not compatible with the macs so we had to go out and refilm everything today. This time we were more organised and knew what we were doing and we just need to start editing it all.

Filiming day 1- spoof

Yesterday we went off to film our film opening, it was rather tiring and we tried to fit in as many different camera angles and different shots as we could.

Devil- Spoof

We saw this short clip on youtube about the devil and found the spoof extremely funny and it has inspired us to do something similar as it coincides with our theme.

Representation of Gender

I recently walked past the Superdrugs store in town and noticed a human sized poster of an advertisement for the new Diesel perfume which relates to the representation of gender and the advert instantly reminded me of the stereotypical view of women in the media today. I think this particular perfume is advertising women as sex objects and is a negative representation because I doubt any woman would dress like this if they wore this perfume.

Today in Media

During Miss Fitzjohn's lesson we started storyboarding our film opening and so far we have completed one sheet and we also need to go over it in black pen and in Miss Fosters lesson we were looking at spoofs which gave us a few ideas for our movie and Miss Foster also recorded us vlogging as a group.

Vlog- Third Vlog

We've come to the decision of a horror spoof after changing our idea a numerous amount of times and we're thinking of spoofing Paranormal Activity mixed with The Exorcist and we are also going to be pretending to be playing the ouji board but we are going to spell the name wrong and use monopoly houses, Here is a vlog Miss Foster recorded of us going over our storyboard and what else we are planning on doing.

Age Representation Collage

Here is my collage that Mrs Fitzjohn set for homework about age representation in the media

I have included newspaper articles as well as lots of pictures I have found in various newspapers and headlines and stereotypes of different ages.

Vlog about storyboards and representations of age- Second Vlog

Me and Holly just recorded a vlog talking about what we have done in media this week.

Glossary of Terms: Representation of Age

Recently with Mrs Fitzjohn we have started to look at the different representations of age through media and how the youth and old age are sterotyped and represented, here is a table with all the key terms.

	Youth	Old  Age
Positives	Hardworking Fun Sociable Interesting Innocent Open minded Energetic Adventurous Liberated Able bodied Free spirited Modern	Caring Polite Wisdom/Knowledgeable Morals Financially stable Wealth Freedom
Negatives	Troublemakers Noisy Intimidating Asbo Careless Frivolous Lazy Dependent Rude Rebellious Sexualised/Objectified Sex,Drugs,Violence Gang culture Ignorant Immature Hedimistic Hypersexual Hoodies Volatile	Grumpy Fragile Arrogant Conceited Boring Wingey Narrow minded Moany Vulnerable Slow Racist Dependent on their children Smelly Anti youths

Epic Movie

Epic Movie is a spoof movie which spoofs scenes from globally known films such as The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Pirates of the Caribbean and many others. There are several scenes from all these movies which have been recreated with added comedy which makes it really funny to watch.

Blair Witch Spoof

Here is the trailer for The Blair Witch Project and the link below shows how it has been spoofed by Scary Movie



The link below is an example of The Blair Witch Project being spoofed starting from 1:20
http://youtu.be/C1_MYTNGxm4?t=1m20s

Research on spoof movies

Spoofs also known as parodys or ‘Mockbusters’ are remakes of particular genres or films such as horror and are turned into Comedy. There can be many scenes from a variety of films all put into one spoof movie and they all would have been mocked and made to be funny and less dramatic.

Here is the trailer for Vampires Suck it is a spoof of the Twilight movie and the originally dramatic movie that everyone loved has been spoofed and it has been turned into a hilarious mockery.

Film Opening Idea- Spoof

We have rethought our idea and thought that working with an animal would be rather tricky and we thought it would be too muddy and dirty to film in a field in during the winter. We have decided on something completely different and something that is a new genre and has not been done before. We are thinking of doing a horror spoof and  thought about spoofing Paranormal Activity, The Exorcist and perhaps Narnia in our film opening which we think will be quite funny and we think we can pull it off.

Gender representation essay

We each completed a section of the essay over the half term and put them all together and uploaded it to Scribd. I think our essay is rather good as it is detailed and refers back to the title as well as using code significance and representation.

Mac 4 gender representation essay

Film Opening Idea

After a lengthy discussion with Miss Foster and the rest of our media class we have decided to use a horse in our film opening because not many people use animals in their films as they are hard to work with but we want to make our film different to every other horror film and make it stand out in a positive way and we want it to be a unique horror film

Group Essay

We were given a group essay to complete during the half term based on a short clip of our choice and we have to complete the homework in our film opening groups and it is an exam question which asks how gender is represented through TV dramas. We will then exchange our essay with another group and complete their question based on their clip.We have almost completed this homework and are quiet proud of our work. Below is the video we have taken notes on and written an essay about

First Essay Attempt

Last week in media we took notes on a short Doctor Who clip and had to write an essay in exam conditions, The lesson after we got our marked essays back and I think I did quiet well considering it was my first try.
We also wrote three twenty five word pitches and decided to base our film opening on one of them and we want to make our film different and try something that a lot of people haven't tried but have not really decided what yet.

Our Film Opening Ideas

Here are 3 possible treatments in a 25 word pitch.

      1.    Scary thriller about friends who go camping but are met by an unexpected surprise; were they never told not to going into the woods alone?

     2.   Teen movie showing the unfortunate difficulties that life may bring, no one said growing up would be easy, as Sally finds out the hard way.

     3.    Everyone wants the perfect life and perfect family like Mollie Jackson, but behind closed doors is where the truth comes out and the heartache starts...

First Vlog

Here is a two minute video of everything we've done so far in Media since September.

First filming practise

Here is some footage we shot the first day we were given all our equipment, We edited it and added some strange music and a few special effects. We have also included a pan shot and a close up shot in this video.

Prelim Out takes

 Here is our groups outtakes, we used a variety of editing skills and I think it is extremely funny.

Filming Practise

During today's lesson we went into town and practised filming with the flip and tried using a few different shots, here is the edited footage.

Filming Practise

Yesterday Miss Foster gave us all our shooting equipment and a human sized bag to fit it all in, In my case i had to carry it and receive strange uncomfortable stares from strangers, She then sent us off to practise shooting and my group started off filming in the school playground then we filmed a long shot frame of Daisy and myself chasing a policeman, Shortly after we were being zombies in the graveyard and tried to fit in as many different shots as we could and we also practised panning shots and wide shots to fit in the mise en scene. I really enjoyed filming and taking part and cannot wait to start editing with my group.

Shots and Angles

Shot reverse shot:  this method is when a conversation is filmed from one characters point of view to the others then the first characters again, this represents the movement of the different characters.

This short clip shows Patrick and Denise having a conversation from each others point of view from 0:06 to 0:45

Cutaway: This is a shot which is reframed to present information that was previously outside the cameras view which often reveals something that was not as obvious before.

This is a cutaway image of Archie and the pub which has been edited so that only Archie is seen in the shot and the pub in the mise en scene.



slow motion: This is when a footage is slowed down to emphasise what is going on and looks at things in more detail.

Extreme Close up: A close up shot is a shot which fills the entire camera frame and signifies the detail used by  zooming in so much.



Long Shot: A long shot is used to get all of a persons body in and includes all the details it shows the head at the top of the frame and the feet at the bottom it also shows the characters body  language and all their reactions. it can also get all details of a scene in and emphasise on certain objects.











Two Shot: A two shot is a shot with two people in a frame and is usually used in two way conversations to focus on the people speaking and their reactions and facial expressions as well as body language it also focuses on the two people in the shot.
       

Aerial Shot: An aerial shot is a shot taken from high above like a helicopter, it is usually used at the beginning of a film or TV drama. Eastenders starts with an extreme close up of The Thames and zooms out in to an aerial shot of London and shows really clear detail of all the landmarks and building and the shape of the river.




Low Angle Shots: Low angle shots show a view of something from low down which makes it look  like the object or person is towering over the audience and makes the audience seem really little or can make the characters or objects look really big.


Canted Angle: This is when the camera is tilted to show imbalance and instability. these shots are often filmed by hand held cameras and are usually used in point of view shots.


Over The Shoulder: Shot: this shot focuses on someone speaking and focuses on one characters point of view as well as showing the shoulder or the back of the other character.



Pan: this is when the camera turns horizontally from a fixed position around the scene slowly and steadily which shows details and lets the character know what is happening. but it can also be a fast shot if there is adrenaline or its a shot where there is a lot of action and fast moving objects.



Rule of Thirds: This is a technique in camera framing where the camera is divided into sections to create reference points.


Diagetic Sound: This includes sounds that are meant to be heard by the characters like their voices and birds singing as well as music from headphones and stereos that are being played.



Voiceover: This is a narrator commenting on what is happening in the footage but is not actually a character in the scene.
Here is a short advert that includes a voiceover who explains what is happening the whole way through



Mid Shot: This is a shot that only shows the half a characters body, this is used a lot in TV dramas to concentrate on a characters body language and facial expressions and it also allows space in the frame for the mise en scene.

prelim exercise mac 4

Here is our prelim task which has been edited and this is the final version. Our group were really proud of ourselves for managing to film a whole clip and edit it and we think this was really cool.

Filming the Prelim

During today's lesson we filmed our preliminary exercises and we had to film it several times to ensure we had enough camera angles and shots to choose from. I think it went rather well even though I forgot the easiest lines a few times and I'm looking forward to editing the prelim and the outtakes film and will be looking forward to doing that during my free periods.

the 180 Degree Rule

The 180 degree rule is when shooting can only take place from one side of the room to establish the positions the actors are in, if the 180 degree rule is broken the actors will look like they've switched sides.

Match on action

Match on action is when the camera films an action and when it cuts and returns it must show the same action or how it changed into another action. match on action helps the audience to fully understand what is going on in the scene and it is also an example of continuity editing. 

Media Booklet

ECS as and A2 Media Studies Course Booklet



This is a copy of my media booklet which i will be using a lot over the next year and it is extremely helpful in helping me achieve a good grade.

This film opening is one of my favourites because it is really interesting and I really enjoyed watching it. The song fit in with the film opening and with what was going on but the song was not their own it was from another film. Also there is a green screen at the beginning that is only used at the beginning of trailers which was not good because it was meant to be a film opening not a trailer. I also think it was too long because the running time was 3:17 and the limit was only two minutes and the ending was given away which makes it look like a trailer even more.

I liked the different effects used like the title typed up with a typewriter because most other groups used the special effects from the macs, I also liked the flashes of the dancing ballerina because it adds emphasis to the title. There were many different shots used such as extreme close ups of the boy's shoe when he stepped out of the car which made it look more suspicious and mysterious, they also used long shots of the girl which made it look like the boy was spying on her from behind and there were long shots of the two of them which were intended to make it obvious that he was following her. In addition I liked the low key lighting because it represented that it was not going to be a happy opening and I liked the shot of both characters running in opposite directions because it was unusual and different to most other groups

Angeldust film opening

i really enjoyed this film opening made by a group of media students from Hurtwood but it was more like a short film or trailer rather than a film opening, I really liked the different shots and how it all evolved around the girl and the website facespace.

Film Openings

Today Miss Foster showed us a variety of film openings which gave us an idea of what to avoid when making our film openings and what to include such as a selection of camera angles and interesting things like that. I really enjoyed watching some of the film openings my favourite was the first one about a girl with different shots of her typing in some sort of chat room which was a bit like a blog, I enjoyed this the most because it was not too long and had really good special effects which stopped me from getting bored.

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