^ This review shows that the film could be considered as ‘genreless’ text (goes against Derrida’s theory) because it includes so many different conventions from different genres of films that it is no longer a hybrid of genres but has no genre because of the great number of influences/conventions included.
Monday 26 March 2012
"Drive" (2011) - Reviews and Postmodern Aspects
"Winner of the Best Director prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, “Drive” is a stylish film that doesn’t know what it wants to be. Is it a thriller? A romance? A heist film? All of the above? To be honest, I really don’t know. Though based on the novel of the same name by James Sallis, “Drive” has very little dialogue. The majority of the story is told through camera angles and a musical score that seems to have been composed in 1985." - (Section of the review by Mike Smith - LINK).
Monday 19 March 2012
Hot Fuzz - Postmodern Film?
I found this while trying to find different postmodern films that I might have already seen. I have seen Hot Fuzz before (many times!) but never thought of it in a postmodern way. This PowerPoint points out some of the postmodern elements (I didn’t make this PowerPoint):
Thursday 15 March 2012
Saturday 10 March 2012
"L'Odyssée de Cartier" Advert - Postmodern?
"Discover the new Cartier film, a journey between dream and reality.
For the very first time, Cartier has decided to create a cinema epic focusing on its history, its values and inspiration, its artistic and universal scope."
For the very first time, Cartier has decided to create a cinema epic focusing on its history, its values and inspiration, its artistic and universal scope."
The above description is from YouTube. Their website gives a breakdown of where they have got their inspiration from over the years and what each part of the advert represents.
Theories: In terms of theories, the main one could be hyper-reality because of the merging of the inspiration for the jewellery represented visually for the audience to see in an “epic” way. Because of all of the creativity put into the visuals of the advert, the audience will associate this fantasy world with the jewellery itself and will remember it.
Also, the music was recorded in London's Abbey Road Studios,;where a host of sucessful films have had their soundtracks recorded. The music does add to the 'Utopia' style because of the dramatic mood and has a chorus with 60 female and childrens' voices included.
Friday 9 March 2012
Post Production – Progression From AS to A2
There have been mainly two types of text that I have worked in for my AS and A2 coursework pieces; Print and Film. To begin with, my progression of the post production stage for Film has been a lot better than that for Print because I have produced and editing four pieces in this course (Preliminary ‘Door Opening Sequence’ and ‘Busted Music Video’ and then my own music video in A2 and my own film opening for AS). This has meant that I have been able to develop skills in postproduction throughout the two years and especially my skills with Adobe Premiere Elements has improved because I used that piece of software for both of the coursework pieces (and using them in different contexts with the film opening and music video).
Also, I have worked in a team while editing for the two preliminary tasks and this has helped my research and planning to be more precise as I knew that the editing stage is just as importance as the filming itself. This allowed me to learn before the Music Video that the Storyboard in planning is vital for the postproduction stages especially because it allows you to follow and keep organised with the footage that you are editing. Through teamwork, I have also developed that criticism is a good thing for audience feedback because it helps with the postproduction stage and allows the text to keep to the target audience and be more focused towards the overall impact that the text should have.
Furthermore, I have also worked as an individual for my Print pieces and have constructed and designed three pieces of Print in this course (Preliminary ‘School Music Magazine’ and Ancillary ‘DigiPak and ‘Advert’ to go with my Music Video for A2). This allowed my personal progression with the Adobe PhotoShop Elements to develop because my editing and manipulation skills with images became a lot better for the DigiPak and Advert for A2. I have learnt that the key skills with PhotoShop are to use it as frequent as you can and ‘mess about’ with the editing features on an image in order to gain confidence with the software. It then allowed me to develop and enhance my creativity because I was able to use it with confidence and try new effects to make more eye-catching texts that will suit the target audience.
Also, I have worked in a team while editing for the two preliminary tasks and this has helped my research and planning to be more precise as I knew that the editing stage is just as importance as the filming itself. This allowed me to learn before the Music Video that the Storyboard in planning is vital for the postproduction stages especially because it allows you to follow and keep organised with the footage that you are editing. Through teamwork, I have also developed that criticism is a good thing for audience feedback because it helps with the postproduction stage and allows the text to keep to the target audience and be more focused towards the overall impact that the text should have.
Furthermore, I have also worked as an individual for my Print pieces and have constructed and designed three pieces of Print in this course (Preliminary ‘School Music Magazine’ and Ancillary ‘DigiPak and ‘Advert’ to go with my Music Video for A2). This allowed my personal progression with the Adobe PhotoShop Elements to develop because my editing and manipulation skills with images became a lot better for the DigiPak and Advert for A2. I have learnt that the key skills with PhotoShop are to use it as frequent as you can and ‘mess about’ with the editing features on an image in order to gain confidence with the software. It then allowed me to develop and enhance my creativity because I was able to use it with confidence and try new effects to make more eye-catching texts that will suit the target audience.
In order to widen my knowledge of the conventions of Key Media Concepts within Print and Film, I researched into the common conventions. These Concepts applied to both areas of the media:
· Representation (Film: Representation of Characters, Character Roles, Stereotypes, Cinematography associated with representation such as high and low angled shots; Print: Representation of Artists, Male Gaze, Manipulation of Cinematography such as harsh and soft lighting in the photograph).
· Media Language (Film and Print: terms such as Mise en Scene, Cinematography, Editing and Sound enabled me to focus on those key areas and develop my creativity through each of the four aspects).
· Audiences (Film: BBFC certificates for films to give me an idea on the target audience; Print and Film: Direct Target Market Research, Reception Theories and Audience Theories).
· Institutions (Budgeting, Logos and Branding for the Production Company and Artist).
For example, I used the conventions of using close up shots of the characters’ faces in my Film Opening sequence because those are one of the generic features of horror cinematography. This enabled the audience to decode the film opening as a horror and enhanced the representations of the characters.
Wednesday 7 March 2012
Phantom Of The Opera - Plagiarism claim from Pink Floyd's "Echoes"
Roger Waters of Pink Floyd had asserted that Andrew Lloyd Webber had plagiarized the intro section from the Pink Floyd song "Echoes", which largely resembles it, although he decided against filing a lawsuit.
"Yeah, the beginning of that bloody Phantom song is from Echoes. *DAAAA-da-da-da-da-da* [sic]. I couldn't believe it when I heard it. It's the same time signature - it's 12/8 - and it's the same structure and it's the same notes and it's the same everything. Bastard. It probably is actionable. It really is! But I think that life's too long to bother with suing Andrew fucking Lloyd Webber."[3]The notes in question are about 4 minutes into this video:
Banned Xbox 360 Advert-"Standoff"
From Mr Ford's Blog:
In 2005, Microsoft made a "Jump In" ad for their Xbox 360 console that never aired. The ad, deemed too controversial, showed commuters on a subway platform playing "shoot ‘em up" with their fingers.
The following is from Ad Punch November 25th 2005
The xbox 360 ad which shows people are shooting at each other while running around is perceived as too much violent for lil kids. Robbie Bach of Microsoft told Businessweek that in this tense violent milieu it better to withdraw the advert from television even though it looks like an award winning piece.
The ad as conveyed by insiders exclusively meant for broader audience and not for hard core gamers.
The adspot was shot on a subway platform, where commuters like kids run around in a fake backyard battle.
LINK
In 2005, Microsoft made a "Jump In" ad for their Xbox 360 console that never aired. The ad, deemed too controversial, showed commuters on a subway platform playing "shoot ‘em up" with their fingers.
The following is from Ad Punch November 25th 2005
The xbox 360 ad which shows people are shooting at each other while running around is perceived as too much violent for lil kids. Robbie Bach of Microsoft told Businessweek that in this tense violent milieu it better to withdraw the advert from television even though it looks like an award winning piece.
The ad as conveyed by insiders exclusively meant for broader audience and not for hard core gamers.
The adspot was shot on a subway platform, where commuters like kids run around in a fake backyard battle.
LINK
Thursday 1 March 2012
Research and Planning Questions
Organisation of Research:
Referencing all of the internet sites that I had visited to find the research was easy because I could just place a link from my blog to that website. Books could just be referenced on the blog by writing out the author and where I got the book from.
My organisational skills did develop over AS and A2 because I found the blog easier to use as I went along and because all of the posts were in chronological order so if I needed to refer back then I could easily find it. Also, I included a ‘Search Posts’ feature on my A2 blog because that made it even easier for me to find previous posts, keeping it organised and easy to access each post.
Planning (Pre-Production):For the pre-production stage of my coursework pieces (planning), I researched into a more variety of different planning methods in order to help with the organisation on the day of the shooting. For example, in my AS coursework for my film opening, I produced a script and researched about call sheets that were used in the real film productions in order to make sure that the cast knew where they were at the correct date. It also helped for preparations with props and the locations (especially when I needed to use make-up for the witch character).
Drafting was extremely important because it allowed for audience feedback to be more precise and teacher feedback was more appropriate/direct towards certain aspects of my text. I collated audience feedback by keeping ‘feedback sheets’ with audience members’ feedback on it. For AS, I used a simple questionnaire to evaluate whether or not the film opening was appealing to them and how they think it could be improved (which helped point out that the inside shots were too dark and should be re-filmed).
Organisation of Time, Personnel and Equipment/Working as an Individual:
Communication and organisation of personnel (the cast in my case because I was working on my own) was improved because of the use of planning (call sheet for example) and the storyboarding allowed me to know what cast member would be in which shot (and so when producing a music video with many shots it made it easier to organise the people into the right places and pre-tell them the next shots that we were going to film). What I did learn through organisation of personnel was that sometimes cast members sometimes do not get along as planned to (for the music video the musician and the female character were supposed to be in the same shot but didn’t get along so I filmed them separately to try and get around that). What I could have done better with the situation was tried to get them to meet before the day of shooting and so I knew for definite on whether it would work or not.
I learnt that there are advantages and disadvantages of working on my own (such as being able to be more creative and not having conflicting ideas with others) but also having the disadvantage of having more work to complete on my own instead of sharing it out with a group.
I learnt that there are advantages and disadvantages of working on my own (such as being able to be more creative and not having conflicting ideas with others) but also having the disadvantage of having more work to complete on my own instead of sharing it out with a group.
Organisation/Presentation of Research and Planning Materials:
In order to make it easier to read (because I was working with children for my AS), I made sure that the script and call sheet were Word Processed so that they were easily readable and also I could print out several copies of each document to give to each cast member in advance so that they knew what they were saying/doing. I also gave them a ‘brief’ before filming telling them exactly how it would work and what I overall had in mind for them to do when acting. This made it a lot easier to move quickly through the production stage and they knew what I wanted them to do.
I posted ‘diaries’ of how each shooting day went and this helped to reflect back onto what I had done previously and compare on what I should re-film (especially with my A2 music video). To enhance with the presentation of my planning/research I used digital technologies and a variety of software (such as Animoto and Prezi) in order to show my creativity through presentation.
I posted ‘diaries’ of how each shooting day went and this helped to reflect back onto what I had done previously and compare on what I should re-film (especially with my A2 music video). To enhance with the presentation of my planning/research I used digital technologies and a variety of software (such as Animoto and Prezi) in order to show my creativity through presentation.
Postmodern Adverts - The Guardian 'Open Journalism - Three Little Pigs'
Just saw this advertised on YouTube for The Guardian. Thought it was quite interesting for an advert because it uses the ‘Three Little Pigs’ story to elaborate their open journalism concept. I think that a postmodern theory of hypotextuality (Genette) could be used here because they have taken the fairytale and expanded the story for a modern audience (relating to cultural references such as social networking sites) and using it for a different purpose.
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