My top track right now.

This is my favourate track roght now, Cousins by vampire weekend. The reason why i like this song is because of the unstructured guitar solos that make a edgy and different sound than just regual pop that we see every day. The bass creates an irreagualr heartbeat that sticks into your head and makes your head move to the music.The lyrics in this song mashed together and dont make much sense but somehow you make it make sense to you, they make you fell happy, if a song cant do that then whats the point. 'Dad was a risk taker. His was a shoe maker. You greatest hits 2006, Little listmaker. Caught in the melody, You wait in the car. You were born with ten fingers And you're gonna use them all.' these words sepreatley would make no sense but add it to a catchy melody and you've got a great song maybe not to everyones taste but it's mine.

Representation. The seven key areas.

7 key areas.
- Gender
- Age
- Ethnicity
- Sexuality
- Class and status
- Physucal ability/disbility
- Regional identity.


*Disability.


Disability in the MediaThe word "disabled" causes much debate.

The 'dis' suffix is a negative one, implying reversal, and disabled heads a list in the dictionary of many negative words - disappoint, discard, disconsolate, discourage, disintegrate, dismay, disrepute etc.

That same dictionary defines the word "disabled" as meaning "Made ineffective, unfit or incapable". Quite rightly, those members of the population who find themselves labelled feel tarred with a distasteful brush.

Verbal codes aside, the iconography surrounding the word suggests a similar plight, hence the European Union symbol:Here is someone who is not simply "in" a wheelchair (are all disabled people in wheelchairs?, but who relies on the structure of the chair to give them arms. It is small wonder that the word "disabled" immediately connotates wheelchairs, and concepts such as broken, dependent, pitiable etc.

Given the semiotics of the situation, it is small wonder that media representation of the disabled is limited and largely stereotypical. If the word "disabled" can be represented in such a simple symbol as the one above, we are reducing a large and diverse group of human beings to something less complicated than your average road sign.

While great strides have been made in recent decades in the representation of gender and race, there are still many prejudices attached to the representation of disability.In magazines, the only images of the disabled we tend to see are those in charity advertisement. Often we are encouraged to pity the person represented, or give them support in another way. Ideologically speaking, disabled is not considered sexy, and does not sell stuff.

*Regional identity.

Regional Identity presentation

View more presentations from Tim Andrews.

even thought this presentation is not done by people in my class i think it gives good examples of identity in the uk.

Representation.

Representation.
' the process by which the media presents the 'real world' (Rayner)

key points in the selection process.

-The decision over what is chosen to be represented and what is rejected.
-the choices made when organising the representation.
-The options taken to focus the audience in a certain way.

Questions we would ask when analysing representation
-Who or what is being represented?
-How is the representation created? (mise en scene)
-Who has created the representation?
-Why is the representation created in that way?
-What is the intention?
-What is the effect of representation?

Gatekeeper.
A theorist called White (1961) spoke of 'gatekeepers'- this is the people who are part of the decision making process in the construction of media text.
-Parental control
-Commisioners
-Law makers
-Directors
-Producer
-Editors
All of these are mostly white middle class men.

The construction approach.
1. The representation is constructed with a set of ideas and values (producers intent/intended meanings)
2. context of the representation (Media language choices,anchorage, media form, placement/location, genre expectations etc.)
3. The audience reactions to this representation and this depends on their own personal interpretational context: age, gender, political, religous beliefs, nationality etc.

Richard Dyer- 'the matter of images'

Dyer said: 'how we are seen determines how we are treated, how we are treat others is based on how we see them, how we see them comes from representation.'

Commando, repersentation.

Schwarzenegger in this film is shown in two different ways. one is a manly man and the other a loving father, both of these are exagerated to full extent in this film.

These points that show an extrem version of what an kind of a man is.

- Carrying a tree on his sholder (phallic symbol)

*phallic symbol- objects which represnt/compensate a penis.

other phallic symbols in this opening scene are the big house with three big chimanies also when he is using the chain saw, all of these could show that they are over compensating for things that he lacks.

- There is no expression on his face showing that he is not a caring man and is focused on the job in hand.

- Camera angles- most of the angles that are shown are ones of muscles or on the genital area e.g shost moving from the genital area to then moving to muscle all in one movement not showing his face or any sign of his muscles hurting when carrying a hole tree on his arm.

From one extreme to the other, when the daughter is introduced Schwarzenegger becomes a hole different person, a loving and over protecting farther. Their relationship is not like anyother farther and daughter relationship, it is a relationship that is rediculous and over exagerated, these are the points that show there relationship.

- He treates his daughter well e.g. ice cream (looks like a date)

- when he see's his daughter he puts more clothes on because he has to look more farther like.

- He teachs his daughter to fight and saying that women are weak and may need fighting skills later on in life.

- Theres is a sensitive binary opposite from the strong man at the begining to now feeding a dear.

- He and his daighter are both wearing nutural colours and matching clothes.

- He talks to the dear

- Him and his dauhter are always touching never apart.

- Kisses his daughter twice abit insest.

- Pours drink for her before himself.

- He spends all the day with his duaghter, having fun in the pool at sunset this would be something that a couple would do

- She makes the lunch and is shown as a mother figure.

Research

This opening scene from train spotting gives a clear narrative and is a great way of introducing characters. Our group could use this to may be introduce the different dance styles and the characters that go with each one e.g hip hop, ballet, ballroom. all though this isnt a dance film it has relevance to how we would like to opening our film. I also like the way one character talks about there life and its ups and downs. through out this film there are many interesting shots used e.g the toliet scene. Hopefull me and my group will come up with some interesting way to grab the audiences attention.

Research

the trailer above shows lower and mid shots which we are concidering in using for our film, this is because dancing is focused on feet mainly but also incorpirates different body parts to show the movement of dance. The use of clever editing creates a flashing effect which emphasises the differnt shots in different places.

Research

This trailer is a perfect example of a transition to black, which me may use in our film. we like this because each time and image is shown it could be a different part of the body and is an elegantand smooth way of making the transition it can be fast and sharp to create a more explosive effect. The titles on each blak section will have our names or actors names, maybe also quotes or a line out of a peom to get the understanding about the film.

Shameless :)

In one of the lessons this week we anaylised the use of representation in the Tv series Shameless. We looked at how the characters dress and what it says about their personality and make assumptions about what kind of preson they are.

frank is dressed in a green rain mac, worn out jeans and a casualo dirty t-shirt; this can show him as a dirty man, thats unstable and is generally very uncaring about his apperance. His Hair is greasy, long and untamed agaion giving the impression that he doesnt care about what people say about him.

The sedcond character i am going to write about is Steve; Steve is dressed smart in a suit and shirt which is gives the impression that he is a waelty man another factor to support this is that he has a different cars everytime we see him; we can either take this as him being a thief or a rich man. Steves speach is posh which again focussing on the fact that he is not from the chatsworth estate.

Evaluation. video.

1. Who did you work with and how did you manage the task between you? In the filmed element of the task I worked with Olivia Kimberly, Vicky Packwood, Emily Jones and Hannah Scoular. I believe we worked very well together and made a great minute video. We all contributed to get the end result which in my opinion was great. :)
2. How did you plan your magazine cover? What element did you use for your inspiration? For the short film we first made a story board with the shots we were going to use in sequence. We also discussed what angles would complement the shots, how long to hold the shots and what each shot could add to the short film. For inspiration we looked at past attempts at this task and evealuated them to see where they could inprove and hopefully pick out points that we could improve on our own video and how to make it sucessful.
3. What technology did you use to complete the task, and how did you use it? We used a camera to film and imovie to edit the scenes. Both of these where easy to get hold of as our school offers the technologies out. we had to upload the footage we had taken onto the apple computures then edited on imovie, this enabled us to cut the footage to make each scene as if we had not edited itand shot it clip by clip.
4. What factors did you have to take into account when planning, shooting and editing? When figuring out the filmed piece we had to ensure that we didn’t include too many shots and those we stuck to the 180 degree rule. We also had to get all the shots in one lesson there for we had to have good time keeping luckily we did all this in the time limit asked. we had to take into account the time it would take to set up each shout and how many times we might need to try these shots e.g the shot where jack and olivia are talking we shot that about 4 times, we could only do this because we gave time frames for each shot.
5. How successful was your short film? Identify what worked well, and with hindsight, what would you improve/do differently? The final cut was good and the acting was well thought out. I think if doing the film again I may have edited it a little more; this would have created a much more refined look. I would have also gave more time toword making each shot the best it could be by organizing it to every little detail there for i would have known if i missed anything out. The thing that work well in this task is the group, we all had the same ideas but also indervidual ideas that we each contributed to make our film individual to us.
6. What have you learnt from completing this task? Looking ahead, how will this learning be significant when completing the rest of your foundation coursework? I have learnt how to edit a piece of film using imovie, which I had never used before now. I will use the skills I have learnt when using the camera will be very useful in the foundation course work.

Evaluation. magazine cover.

For the cover as i stated above we were advised correctly to use a limited colour pallet, this creates an eye catching covert that wont confuse the reader at first glance. It gives the cover a simple look but still looks stylish.



Myself and jack both thought the picture of Miles fit perfectly for the purpose of our magazine, being a relevant student body.
The Cover stories we decided to use we joint decisions, we thought they were slightly humorous but still had relevance.
We were both extremely happy with our magazine cover.


Contents --- For the contents page we again chose a limited colour palette for the reasons above. This time we thought to give out contents a more realistic effect we would use a different shot of somebody else. This shows we have backups and have thought further into the design process before hand. We also thought Dani (who we were originally using) has the right look for editorial pieces as she is extremely photogenic.

MYself and jack were extremely pleased with the outcome of our contents page and believe we followed the brief well.


1. Who did you work with and how did you manage the task between you? In the magazine cover. Jack and myself worked extremely well together as we both had the same idea as what we wanted to do.

2. How did you plan your magazine cover? What element did you use for your inspiration? We planned our magazine cover my deciding what kind of person would represent the school well and I think that miles portrays that well and how we were going to set the cover out e.g. where the title would go, how many pieces of text we would use. Then we moved on to what message we would give off with the cover. We decided that is best to work individually, as in I did the lay out and jack did the titles and writing. The first thing we had to do is get the image then we spent three lessons in the computer making the cover.

3. What technology did you use to complete the task, and how did you use it? We used photo shop on the computers to complete are task. When taking the photo we used a digital camera. To get this image of miles I stood on a chair to the right side of the image because that was where the light was coming in from. I did this because it gives off the look that professionals use.

4. What factors did you have to take into account when planning, shooting and editing? We had to take in the time factors when doing this task because we only had a certain time to do this.

5. How successful was your magazine cover? Identify what worked well, and with hindsight, what would you improve/do differently? I think our magazine cover worked very well it fit the brief and conveyed everything that we wanted it to. The only thing I would do differently is maybe doing more of the work at home but due to email it was hard to send work back and forth, also maybe we should have planned out what we were going to write on the cover before we started.

6. What have you learnt from completing this task? Looking ahead, how will this learning be significant when completing the rest of your foundation coursework? I have learnt in this task many skills to do with photo shop as at first I found it hard to use but now I know what I am doing and can use it in other subjects as well as media. This will help later on in my foundation coursework if I chose to do the print project.

Trevor Millum (1990s)

Trevor Millum (1990s)

Seductive
- Similar to cool/ level
- Eyes less wide
- Expression is less reserved but still self
-confident.
- Milder

Carefree
- Nymph like
- Active
- Healthy
- Vibrant
- Outdoor girl
- Often smiling/ grinnig

Practiacal
- Concentrating
- Engaged in a business in hand
- Mouth closed
- Eyes object directed
- Sometimes a slight frown
- Hair often tight back or shot style

Comic
- Delirately ridiculous
- Exaggerated
- Acting the fool
- Pulling faces

Catalogue
- A neutral look as of a dummy, atrificial, wax like.
- Eyes open and Wide smile most of the time but the features can also be in any position.
- Looks remain vacant and empty with personality removed.

Analysis and pictures will be added at a later date due to internet loss.

Marjorie Ferguson (1980s)

Marjorie Ferguson (1980s)

Freguson identified 4 types of facial expression on the front of british women magazines.

Chocolate box
- half/full smile
- Lips together/ slightly parted
- Teeth barley visible
- Full/three
- quatures of the face to the camera
Effects- blandly pleasing, uniformity of beauty and devoid of uniqueness.

Invitational
- Emphasis on the eyes
- Mouth shut with hint of smile
- Head to one side or looking back to the camera
Effects- suggestive of mischief or mystery, hint of contact rather than sexual promise.

Super-smiler
- Full face
- Wide open, toothy smile
- Head thrusted forward or chin thrown back
- Hair often wind blown
Effects- aggressive, look at me attitude.

Romantic or Sexual
- includes male/ female 'two-somes'
- Dreamy
- Heavy lidded
- Overtly senual/ Sexual.
Effects- possible or definitely available.

Analysis and pictures will be added at a later date due to internet loss.

The male gaze. Lara Mulvey.

The male gaze. Lara Mulvey. "visual pleasure and narrative cinema."

What is the gaze?
This can be thought of in 3 ways.
-How men look at women
-How women look at themselves
-How women look at other women.

Gaze and feminist theory.
- Laura mulvey coined the term 'male gaze' in 1975. She believes that film audiences have to 'view' characters from the perspective of heterosexual male.

Features of the male gaze
- The camera liingers on the curves of the female body, and events which occur to women are presented largely in the context of a mans's reaction to these events.
- Relates women to the status of objects. the female viewer must experience the narrative secondarily, by identificaion with the male.

Criticism of the Mulvey and gaze theory.
Some women enjoy being 'looked' at e.g beauty pagents.The gaze can also be directed towards members of the same gender for several reasons, not all of which are sexual, such as in comparison of body image or in clothing.there are flaws in the arqument.

Analysis and pictures will be added at a later date due to internet loss.

Editing.

Editing.
Continuity (hollywood editing)- the viewer should not notice the cuts, and shots should flow together naturally. Hence, the sequence of shots should appear to be continuous.

Montage- This style of editing has twon functios. The highly political soviet style of the 1920's which sought to create a new mwaning out of seemingly unconnected shots.The audience are very aware of the cuts. (invented by Sergi Eisenstein)

Holly wood montage- in classical Hollywood cinema, a "montage sequence" is a shot segment in a film in which narrative information is presented in a condence fashion.

Transitions- is the fterm for how an editor moves from one shot to another. the use of an inappropriate transitions can be destroyed the mood or pace of a scene.

Crosscutting/parrelle- editing that altemates shots of two or more lines of action occuring in different places, usally simutaneously.

Dissolve- A transition between two shots during which the first image gradually dissapears while the secon image gradually appears.

Wipe- A transition between shots in which a line passes across the screen, eliminating the first shot as it goes and replacing it with the next one. Dramatic and noticeable transition.

Analysis and pictures will be added at a later date due to internet loss.

Camera Shots.

Camera Shots

Long shot- Opening thats you know the important info.

Medium Shot- To show characters interaction. Simialr symitry.

Close up- Something or some one important to show the audiance.

Shot reverse shot- used to show dialoque. Focus oncharacter talking. Position camera over their shoulder, this makes you you feel part of the conversation.

High angle shot- A high angle shot cannote power objectyou are viewing. women have traditionally been 'shot' in this way to make men look more powerful.

Low angle shot- A low angle shot is designed to make a character or object appear stronger.

Tracking shot- Camera is parrelle to the action and follows the object 'subject or action' Pan shot
Tilt

Analysis and pictures will be added at a later date due to internet loss.

The Narrative Theory

The Narrative Theory - Vladimir Propp.
Valdimir studied over 100 Russain fairytales on th 1920's and he proposed that it was possile to classify the chracters and their actioins into clearly defined roles and functions. Propps character roles.




The Hero (seeks something)- In this short film the hero is the sheep because he seeks happiness when his wool which is his vanity is taken away.
The vilain (opposes the hero)- The Villian in this is the shearer due to him taking the sheeps fure away.
The donor (helps the hero by providing a magic object)The donor is the jackalope because he helps the sheep through the power of boucing.
The dispatcher (sends the hero on his way)- Again this is the jackalope because he tells the shepp to start dance and stop worrying about the loss of his fur.
The false hero (falsely assuming the role of hero)
The helper (gives support to the hero)
The princess (the reward for the hero)- The Price the sheep wins is inner contentment.
The father

analysis and photos will be added at a later date due to internet shuting down.


The Narrative structure.

-3 part narrative
Begin (Equalibrium)A state 'of normality' in the narrative.
V

Mid (Disequalibrium)Something disrupts the normality and protagornist/hero must go on a quest to restore normality.
V

End( new equalibrium)A new Normality is created.

In this short film there is the structure that is written apove e.g the equalibrium is when the sheep is dance joyfully at the beging with all his fur. When the sheep is getting shaved that is the disequalibrium because that is the turning point in the film. Last but not least the new equalibrium is when the sheep find new joy in bouncing hair less rather than dancing with vanity.

Narrative Theory Roland Barthes.

There are two types of narrative, open and closed. Open narrative is when the story unravelles in different ways like a soap e.g eastenders, hollyoaks. Closed narrative is a movie. The only execption to this rule is serial/series which are closed narrative with an open narrative arche. which is like skins.

The 5 code.

Action code - Applies to any action that implies a further narrative action. For example, a gunslinger draws his gun on an adversary and we wonder what the resolution of this action will e.

Enigma Code - Refers to any element in a story that is not explained and therefore, exists as an enigma for the audience, raising questions that demand explanation.

The Semantic code - Any element in a text that suggests a partticular often additional meaning y a way of connation (denotation - one meaning)

The cultural code - Any element in a narrative that refers " to a science or a ody of knowledge" in other words the cultural codes tent to point to our shared knowledge aout the way the world works.

The Symloic code - To understand the symolic code you need to first understand Binary opposites. Levi Straus elieved that the world was split into a series of ' binary opposites? essentially one thing can only e defined in relation to something that isnt. For Example, A hero is only a hero if there is a coward. Therefore the symbolic code is the middle of the hero and coward.

Ideology code - An ideology is an organized collection of ideas. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things as a belief which helps explain the world around us. My way of looking at things is... when i die i will be reancarnated.. people who kill should be killed... child abusers should be torcherd.

School Magazine Cover.

Also another part of our inroduction to the course and introduction to all Photoshop we were asked to create a School magaxine cover in pairs of our choice. I decided to go with Jack Reid. For out cover we thought that it would be a good idea to use the image of Miles Splevings because he has a strinking look that will entise the 'Reader' of the magazine. At first we find it a great difficulty to cut out our chosen image so we were then asked to take another which would have an easier outline to cut out.

The text we chose to put on our cover and into out content's page we thought was very relevant and can reach out to all students at our school. We strongly believed in a limited colour pallet as we thought that it stands out to the reader much more, and is also much easier to produce in a short amount of time.

Here is the image we started with.

:~)

Moving Image Prelim.

As part of our opening taks to the course, we were asked to create a moving image of no more than 15 frames in a group of our choice. We were told it was necessary to have somebody walking into a room sharing a bit of dialogue and then sitting down, the short film having to contain numerous camera angles. We thought that it would be visually interesting to create this scene in the Library as there is a lot of background happenings. unfortunately when talking to the Lirbrarian she said that it would cause mild difficulty as we would have to ask for everybody's permission to star in our moving image. Instead of re-creating our story board we shot the first half as normal and then took the later half up stairs and filmed it in the E-Learning centre. Overall I found our end product very good, as a group we were very pleased at our first attempt in making a short movie.

when our group has fully completed the editing process of our short movie I will post it onto my Blog page.

:~)

HEYA.