storyboard task

Today we were set our stroyboard task. The storyboard has to include 10 stills to explain the story visually. Then each still has to be analysed; talking about dialogue, sound, mise-en-scene, camera, props and costume, lighting, editing and special effects.

We started to write out what would be in each scene and tried to turn this into what we could take 10 pictured of to explain this.

stills analysing continued

Today I carried on analysing the stills in detail, I gave in a very rough draft to Mrs Ward today to see what else I needed to add. The feedback was that I needed to use alot more media language such as 'signifies' or 'connotes', and that I needed to add in about the sound in that particular part of the film. These are the final analysis's of the six stills.

Analysing six stills from the film Bon Voyage

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Still analysis of short film 'Bon Voyage'

In todays lesson we took 6 stills from a film and started to analyse them using technical codes and representation.
I chose the short film on YouTube called Bon Voyage as it is the horror, which is the genre film that we will be making soon, and it is also a low budget film, which will also be similar to ours. I then chose 6 shots which told the flm the best and also showed strong conventions of the horror genre; next, I started to analyse each shot using technical codes and representation. I found whilst doing this that it became helpful for ideas of the sort of things we could include in our short film.
Here is the film Bon Voyage.

Reflection of 'About a Girl'

After analysing about a girl and learning more about representiation within films, I find that I have gained more knowledge of how directors use certain thinsg such as camera/costume/characters, to represent certain things. Of course, it is up to the audience as to how they interpret the representation of a particualar thing, however, the director usually creates an atmospher using a mixture of mise en scene, camera, lighting, props, costume, character and dialogue to make the audineces mind up about what they are trying to say about the character/thing. I hope to interepret this understanding into my film to create a more professional feel the to film.

About a Girl still analysis

This is an anlysis of a still shot from the film About a Girl. I have analysed the image through the use of representation, however, I have used my notes about the film in general to add to what I know about the image so that the points I have made are stonger.

About a Girl still analysis

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About a Girl representation notes

These are the notes I took down on representation within the film 'About a Girl'. I tried to make them as detailed as possible so that in future it was stuck in my head and it can help me write an essay on representation.

'About a Girl' short film

Representation

In todays lesson, we looked at representation. The way I have chosen to remember representations within a film is by using 'CAGEDS':
C - class
A - age
G - gender
E - ethnicity
D - disability
S - sexuality
Once we had discussed this we then started to analyse the short film 'About a Girl', a drama done in documentary style. Not only did we include representation when we analysed this film, we also included technical language, i.e. camera, lighting etc. I found that the main representations throughout the film were Age, Class and Gender, and in each section I analysed how the technical terms show each of the representations.

treatment

Gce media unit g324 treatment

This is our final treatment for our film, in the treatment it explains the story, where we will be filming, the amount of money we will be spending on the film for props etc. It also includes how many characters there will be and how the film will eventually be distributed. 

Planning the treatment

Today we started to plan what needed to be in our treatment, therefore we need to come up with a stroyline so that we can start writing it up. We need to make sure we include:
- how much we think we would need for funding
- what we would need to create the film i.e. camera, microphone, lighting etc
- what sort of props we would need
- what costumes we would be using
- how many actors we would need
- how we will distribute the film
- a working title
- the duration of the film

Narrative structure: Todorov

Today, we looked at Todorov's theory and how it relates to films, and how we need to think about it when we start to produce our film.
The theory:
+ A film starts with the EQUILIBRIUM (everything as it should be)
+ Then comes the DISQUILIBRIUM (disruption - something happens)
+ Lastly you see the NEW EQUILIBRIUM (new order of things)

Planning for our film

Today we teamed up into the groups that we want to work with in order to create our products. I will be working with Lauren Jackett and Charlie Woollard to create the film and other joint tasks. We have chosen to work together as we each can handle tasks on our own and work well as a group; not only this but we feel that we can have a good grasp on time management to keep on top of the work. We will not nessicarilly have roles within the group, we will simply split tasks evenly and work together on the main tasks, such as the film.
Once we were in our group we started to discuss what sort of genre film we wanted to do and also discussed a basic storyline we could go by. We decided that we definatly wanted to produce a horror or thriller film as we felt we could create a good storyline and make it look good within the 5 minutes we have for the whole film. We also discussed the what our target audience would be 18 - 35 as we think this would be the age group that would be more likely to watch the film as it could come across as too scary for a younger audience, depending on our story.
(from left: Lauren Jackett, Maddie Read, Charlie Woollard)

Reflection of analysis of 'Smashed' and 'The Insane'

After looking at both 'Smashed' and 'The Insane' in
detail and analysing them thouroughly, I found that it has greatly improved my understanding of conventions of short films and in particular horror films. I have found that their are conventions that I feel are necessary within films, in particular horror films, for instance the music building up tension toward the climax. However, there were also conventions that I feel could make the film i will be creating in the future more individual if they were broken, for instance less dialogue to make the audienced more on edge about the unknown. Although these specific things I have pointed out could both work well within any film, I have found that it is sometimes best to stick to conventions, as it is what the audience expects and enjoys, and if it is something differnet, it could either be something that the audience would enjoy, or something that they feel doesnt work as well as they are not used to it or it is not as effective.

The Insane essay

This is my 'Insane' essay. For this essay we had to discuss the film in relation to key concepts of media language and genre. When writing this essay I found that it became easier as the I wrote, mostly because I had tried to get as many notes as possible. I found myself picking the key parts from my notes that I could use to create a good and fluent essay. When receiving the essay back I was exceptionally happy to find that I had achieved an A; I was pleased to find in my feedback that i had finally grasped the correct structure for a fluent essay, and was also using media language and technical codes and terms correctly. However, in future I need to start discussing points with a 'critical voice', and I also need to work on my introductions and conclusions to make them stronger.

The insane essay

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Continuing to analyse the short film 'The Insane'

In todays lesson, we carried on analysing 'The insane' to make sure we ha everything we needed to write the essay we have been set.
The essay title is 'Discuss the short film 'The Insane' in relation to the key concepts of media language and genre'.
During the lesson we also talked about using a writing frame to get us the highest marks, the easiest way to remember the writing frame is to write 'SEXY':
S - statement at the start of every paragraph
E - example to back up the statement
X - explanation (how it fits into the essay question)
Y - your opinion

Analysing 'The Insane' short film

In todays lesson we started to analyse the short film 'The Insane' which we will later have to wriet an essay on. Whilst analysing the film I had to remember the key concepts within a horror film and make sure I analysed the film using these key concepts. Those being; camera, lighting, sound, props, character and setting.

'The Insane' short film

'The Insane' is a short film with a horror genre directed by David J Ellison and Mark Cripps. A man finds himself being chased by some kind of demon around his house.

The concept of 'genre' within a film

In todays lesson we looked at the concept of genre within a film, and why it is important to the audiences and industries.

We learnt that genre is an essential marketing tool for film producers and provides part of a group of expectations of a film. Also, without genre, producers couldn't describe films for a target audience easily, and therefore would not get a secure funding for a film. Having a genre also makes it easier for the audience to have expectations of a film and to hope that they would be met. Not only this, but film producers also like genres as it provides predictability and, to provide stability producers also like to see similarities with other films of that genre so they know that the film should be a hit in the box offices.

We then started to look at horror as a genre, and how it has been sucessful for over 112 years. During the 1970's and 1980's producers were concerned about using explicit violence and genre in case the audiences were too shocked by it; it wasnt untill 'Halloween' set off alot of film within the sub genre 'slasher'.

The we looked at the conventions of horror films and why we have them. Music is one of the main elements within a horror film as it adds to the suspence and triggers emotions, lighting and characters are also a huge part of a horror as they also contribute to trigering emotions within te audience. Smaller things like props and typography can also have a big impact upon a film, and also the audience and add suspence.

We also learnt that there is always a repetoire of elements within a horror film, meaning what we as the audience expect to in a horror film. (The conventions above)

final 'smashed' essay

This is my final draft of my 'Smashed' essay. After getting this essay back i found that I had gone up by 12% and had therefore gone up to my target grade. I changed the layout slightly and added some text into parts of the essay to make it more fluent. I also went through it and changed any non technical words to technical terminology and codes also to do what the title asks of using media language.

Smashed essay[2]

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first draft of my 'Smashed' essay

This is my first draft of the 'Smashed' essay. We were asked to analyse the film applying technical and analytical terms from the key concept of media language. When I received my essay back, I found myself a grade below my target, but I had been told what I had been doing well within the essay, and needed to keep doing throughout, but I also had feedback which I needed to create the final draft of the essay. It seemed to be that the main problem with the essay was structure and how I needed to make the essay less like a list in a sense, therefore I need to go through my essay and restructure it to create a more fluent essay. The other points that I needed to sort out within my essay are using more technical names and codes, this is a case of reading through my essay and adding/changing some of the words I have used.

Smashed essay[1]

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Developing critical writing essay skills

Today we looked at developing our critical essay writing skills; in particular, signs, the signifier and what they signify. This is something that is needed in every essay to show the most skill.

Analysing 'Smashed' film in detail using technical codes

For part of our planning and research we are to start watching short films to analyse so we know conventions of short films and the genres they are in. This will help us in the future for our planning of our film as we will know the conventions that we need or could break to make our film individual.
Today we analysed the short film 'Smashed' using the technical terms of camera, lighting, setting, sound and props; we were looking to see how the technical codes encode meaning. We have done this to gain a greater understanding of the meanings within the film and how they are encoded to us, and also to make it easier to write the essay, particularly to write the essay in great detail. This was also a great help for any other essays we may get set that we have to analyse.

'Smashed' short film

'Smashed', is a short film written and directed by Peter Snelling. The film is based around the every day life of four characters who each decide to go out on a night out and get 'smashed' because of their love lives. As the story unravels, we find each of the characters slowly end up in danger and need to find a way out from their circumstances.

Studying short films

As our main product we are to produce a short 5 minute films, so to start we need to gain knowledge of film genres and conventions within them alongside with representations. We also need to have a grasp on key elements of films such as mise en scene, characters, props, lighting, camera, sound and dialogue. To gain this knowledge we will be looking at short films produced, we will be using websites such as BBC Shorts, Virgin Shorts and Channel 4 in the hope that the films on the websites will be well produced and show each of the things listed above clearly so that we can see what exactly it is that we would need to include to create a conventional film of our genre choice.

Starting A2 Media Studies

After doing my first year of Media Studies last year, I found that I enjoyed it and was keen to do another year at A2, particularly after hearing the tasks that were set by the exam board, as they sounded as though they would be interesting to do. Our brief for this years coursework is to create a shot 5 minute film in a genre of our choice, and a poster and radio trailer to go with it or magazine article. We need to continually research and plan throughout this project, not only writing but also drawings and imagery, this all needs to be posted along with our development and progress throughout the project. We must make our blogs as visually pleasing as possible by presenting our work in a creative way, we must also use different medias to post our work, i.e. Sound Cloud, Slideshare and Vimeo. Although this seems like a great amount of work to do, I feel that if I time manage what I'm doing correctly I will keep on top of my work and not struggle to create the finished products.
In this first lesson we discussed the brief set by the exam board for our coursework and exam, so that we are prepared for the tasks that would need to be done throughout the year.
We then started to discuss the first key concept, Media Language. We started to look at the short film 'Smashed' from the BBC film network, analysing it with the technical codes; camera, lighting, setting, characters and props. We also looking into the structure of the film and, discussed why short films are made  and/or if they carry message or meaning.
We were then set the task of writing an essay about the film with the title of 'Analyse the short film 'Smashed' applying technical terms.'