Tuesday, 10 May 2011

Question 4: What significance does the continuing development of digital media technology have for media institutions and audiences?

  Digital media technology keep increasing the abilities for media institutions year by year, and for past few years the change have been hudge. Starting from cameras that are being made nowadays and finishing off with marketing abilities online. It will keep developing day by day, as it allready is. There are a lot of new abilities to come which will improve the quality of films that are being distributed, which would bring more people in to cinemas and get them more interested in watching the new and improved films!
  Piracy is a mega problem that the media world is comming across: Hollywood investigators claim that '' a 10 per cent increase every year in revenue lost to illegal distribution'' It might sound very shocking, but this is what it is, and it is very hard for film institutions to stop the piracy. This is why a legal requirment was made in order to make piracy illegal, but people still do it. People can easily download films for free online nowadays and the internet is a big harm to media institutions, but as media technology keep developing, the more people will just upload the films for free online. this is the biggest harm that they come across, as they loose a lot of profit.
  In conclusion, media technology will keep developing, and soon media will take over the world. The technology will become even more comfortable and easy to use, the people will be more interested in technology. This I find an advantage for both, the audience of the new and improved films and the film institutions, as they will be able to distribute better films, as better tecnology will be used in the process of making as well as in the process of marketing and distributing.

Thursday, 5 May 2011

"Prime Evil" Representation of gender

Sound: Non diegetic sound is used in most times within this clip. There are a lot of bridges used, where the music goes from quite and calm to very quick intense. this is a very clever way of creating attention in scenes or group of scenes when it is needed in order to express the danger. Once danger is near or soon to approach, music becomes all tense in order to tell the audience that something very dangerous and attention full is going to happen. Diegetic sound is also used in order to create more attention than there is, when the middle aged man shoots at the ground in order to scare the lady. This shows me that the man is in more dominant position at that moment, as he has a gun, where as when the dialogue is in process, the lady seems to be in more dominant position than the man.

Mise-en-scene: Within the clip there is a clear representation of different types of woman. Near the beginning there is blond quite young woman, who is digging a hole in ground with needed machinery. This represents her as quite dangerous, as she isn't put off by the fact that she could get her clothes dirty. On the other hand the other character that was a woman within this clip, that cared a lot about the way that she looked. She was worried about her coat getting dirty even though she was almost shot.  Clearly both woman are represented in different ways. The blonde girl was represented as a strong woman, that saves the day, where as the other character was being saved. Basically the blonde girl is against the usual representation of woman.
   I have realised, that the use of characters is done, so it shows that females are in less dominant position and are not as involved in dangerous actions like male characters.

Editing: There is a lot of quick cutting used while escaping from the dangerous animal/creature that was attacking. The quick cutting is used in order to be able to show both, the character escaping as well as the animal attacking and chasing after the character.  Also quick cutting is used in order to make it more tense and interesting for the audience to watch. As the animal within the clip is far too large in size to be real, there are very few shots of the big animal being right near the character in physical sense. Green screen is being used in order to create the creature. The shots are created and put together in order for it to look as believable as possible. There was jump cutting used in order to get straight to the point and makes it to look more quicker.

Shots: There was plenty of different shot types used. Wide shots were seen quite a lot within this aspect. Wide shots were mostly used in order to show the setting and location that the film was set in, as well to brig a message across. There were two shots that made me realise, that woman are represented as less important within the team of man.
  There was a zoom out shot, which zoomed out from middle angle and from right to the left side of the screen to a wide shot. I did find the usage of shot very informative, as it made me realise who is in more dominant position within the clip . There were 4 people walking, and the female character was seen last and in the corner of the screen.
  Right at the beginning at the clip, there was a shot, when the blonde female was out of focus with the other guy, but the focus was on the character, which maybe was in more dominant position or more important within the clip. This made me feel like he could be the main character of the series or either way more important than the two other characters.
  There were plenty of wip panning shots, which were very needed as the animal was moving very quickly, so the panning shots were used in order to catch the animal in action. Also there was slow motion shot used in order to catch the moment in better detail as well as to look at it with more detail. I find these type of shots very informative as it is being in slow motion for a good reason in the most cases.

  In conclusion the man were represented as more powerful and dominant than female within this clip, I suppose that this is the usual representation within action films/series nowadays. Even though woman have become more independent and are being represented as more independent nowadays, there are still few aspects that show that male characters are more powerful and in more dominant positions.

Tuesday, 3 May 2011

The boat that rocked.

Produced by: Hilary Beran Jones
Directed by: Richard Curtis
Distributed by The Working Titles
The problems that they came across were dealing with the setting, which was the big boat as well as the music, as they had to use a lot of music within their film. As they had to satisfy their audience, they had to use music that they might like or would be attracted to.
The Boat that rocked is based on Pirate radio in the United Kingdom during the 1960's
The production costs were £30million.
As Richard curtis was involved with The Working Title, the film was already garentead to make a lot of money. Richard curtis uses a formula, which is : British films+ american actors= success.
The actors: Philip Seymour Hoffman, which is american actor. He also starred in movies like:
'Charlie Wilson's war (2007)'
"The Savages (2007)"
"Jack goes boating (2010)"
As he is well known American actor, he attracted a lot of his fans into watching The Boat That Rocked.
Bill Nighy
The Working Title use the same actors, as they are successful. Bill Nighty also starred in "Love actually", which is also one of the Working Title films"

Premiere: Star studded world premiere in London's Leichester square.




boatposter.jpg

Marketing: soundtrack called The Boat that rocked. Posters, that show the style of music(60's style), roughly the age of actors, the setting (A boat, the sea, plank). The poster sets out clear understanding of the genre, style and music that this film involves.

Sorry, this is too messy...

Producer

  The Responsibility of the producer is to make sure that everything runs after the plan. The schedules, actors, props, mise en scene. These are few of things that the producer need to take care of. The producer can hire people to help him with the process, but overall it is his responsibility to make sure that everything is running after the plan. Producers job is to researching on aspects and ideas that could help to make the film be represented in the best way. Also this involves a lot of research, effort and time put to it.
  The script is also meant to be chosen by the producer as well as the genre and only then it can be changed by the director of the project. So the producers role is very important.

Hotel Babylon

Representation: Representation of the ethnicity was shown in many different ways within the way that the shots were used, within mise-en-scene as well as the sound, shots and editing.


Mise-en-scene: The immigrants were dressed in simple and comfortable clothing, as they were working. They were lower class and I can tell by the way that they were treated, when they were chased after by the immigration services. Wide shots were used quite a lot in order to show the setting and them running in fear of being captured. People in higher positions were wearing suits and fancy dresses in order to represent the hotel that they all were working in, but the immigrants were dressed in uniforms or casual clothes, as they were not shown to the public as much. This also tells me that they were doing all the hard work, but wasn't really awarded for it, as they were awarded by getting the minimum wages.


Sound: diegetic sound was used in order to set the atmosphere. The sound of a person knocking at the door increased the attention in the room, which was full of immigrants. So the sound helped the scene to become more realistic, as it created a lot of attention and scare. The asian men had an accent, that is also a common representation of people that come from forint countries.


Editing: There was a lot of quick cutting when the immigrants were running in the hallway as well when the men was running to warn the immigrants. This also created attention and made me understand that the genre of this film involves a lot of action, which don't increase boredom, it just makes it more interesting for the audience to watch.


Shots: A lot of close ups of immigrants faces while in the room were used. this was done in order for us to see their emotions and understand their feelings at that moment more. Also there were few zooming shots, when from wide medium shot, it zoomed in to wide close ups. this was done in order to make it more interesting to watch, as there was different variety of shots used. There were shots, that were shot from low angle in order to show who is in higher position within the workplace. This was done when the asian men looked up to his boss or manager.

Thursday, 24 March 2011

SMART Targets

Specific/motivational/achievable/realistic/trackable

1: Working on the structure of the exam paper, get more familiar with the questions. the structure of mark scheme.
2: Need to use more of media terminology on daily basis. One key word per 2 days.
3: Finding out much more on "The Working titles" as it is a big part of my media exam.

"Life on mars"

Period of time.

Props: cars-> the cars that was seen in the film were very old school and expensive to have nowadays.
           cigarettes-> Staff in the office were smoking indoors, this gives me an idea of different laws    dominating at different times. 
           Landline phones-> People haven't discovered mobile phones yet.
          Mise-en- scene-> was very old fashion. the way that the policemen talked and was dressed, it gave me an idea of him being very old fashion, as well as the offices looked very similar to ones from back at the day. 
          This film is about traveling in time, as all I just spoke about gave me an idea of that! Without the props it would be almost impossible to understand what was going on in the first few minutes of the scene.
 Setting: Once the film started, the setting was near a Manchester bridge, but when the main character woke up in 1973, the Manchester bridge was only being constructed. I could tell that by the prop (poster) as well as the old buildings and the large amount of space, which gave me an idea, that something will be built there. The setting was meant to be the same setting from the beginning of the film, but many years ago, which is why all the props and acting had to be much different then nowadays lifestyle. 
The shots that had been used were sometimes very different to what we se in Tv Drama these days. some of the shots were slow motion, there was a 360degrees shot in slow motion, in order to show the setting and to make it easier for people to understand what is going on, as it might get quite hard to catch up with everything that goes on! There also were tilted shots, that showed the main character laying on the ground. The tilted shots kept zooming closer shot by shot till the main character opened his eyes. This gave me a very weird feeling of something strange going on. And the shots were used to probably let the audience know that something very big and surprising is going to happen. 
Music:  David Bowie- Life on mars. this song was written at the period of time which the film was set in. Also the lyrics of song includes the name of the film. I suppose that they have chosen the song in order to tell the story better, as the lyrics do include some of the props and situations of the film. This was non diegetic sound. Diegetic sound that was used was of birds, cars and people. There was a moment, where the sound was very different from what we saw, but it was still diegetic sound. This gave me an idea of him being out of concionse, and being brought back to the real world by the ambulance, as the sound made me believe so.