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