Laura & Lauren

Jonathan Kramer: postmodern music theory.

2010-03-01T09:52:00.002Z

Media Theorist Jonathan Kramer says "the idea that postmodernism is less a surface style or historical period than an attitude. Kramer goes on to say 16 "characteristics of postmodern music, by which I mean music that is understood in a postmodern manner, or that calls forth postmodern listening strategies, or that provides postmodern listening experiences, or that exhibits postmodern compositional practices."

According to Kramer (Kramer 2002, 16–17), postmodern music":

1. is not simply a repudiation of modernism or its continuation, but has aspects of both a break and an extension
2. is, on some level and in some way, ironic
3. does not respect boundaries between sonorities and procedures of the past and of the present
4. challenges barriers between 'high' and 'low' styles
5. shows disdain for the often unquestioned value of structural unity
6. questions the mutual exclusivity of elitist and populist values
7. avoids totalizing forms (e.g., does not want entire pieces to be tonal or serial or cast in a prescribed formal mold)
8. considers music not as autonomous but as relevant to cultural, social, and political contexts
9. includes quotations of or references to music of many traditions and cultures
10. considers technology not only as a way to preserve and transmit music but also as deeply implicated in the production and essence of music
11. embraces contradictions
12. distrusts binary oppositions
13. includes fragmentations and discontinuities
14. encompasses pluralism and eclecticism
15. presents multiple meanings and multiple temporalities
16. locates meaning and even structure in listeners, more than in scores, performances, or composers

Jonathan Donald Kramer (December 7, 1942, Hartford, Connecticut – June 3, 2004, New York City), was a U.S. composer and music theorist.

Active as a music theorist, Kramer published primarily on theories of musical time and postmodernism. At the time of his death he had just completed a book on postmodern music and a cello composition for the American Holocaust Museum.

Casablanca

2010-02-19T15:58:00.004Z

Clip one - Strasser Interrogating Ilsa and Laszlo.
The scene is of Strasser, Ilsa and laszo in an office, the two men are distinguished in contrasting clothing, Strasser is wearing a dark uniform, Laszo is wearing a cream/white suit which connotes a good guy, peace keeper and war hero. There are a lot of long stills which are shot close to the face while they talk, the camera doen't look down/up at the charcters showing no hierarchy. Isla is seen very little, showing lack of importance in this particualr clip. No music is played, showing the seriousness of the dialogue. "I was in a German concentraion camp for a year" this is important dialogue for the audience to get to follow his character. "If I wasn't going to tell you in a concentration camp why would I tell you here" this connates Laszlo to be a strong character.

Clip two - Ilsa and Rick in Paris.
In this clip we see iconic attractions in Paris such as the Eiffel tower, in the background you see a sterotypical French man on the boat wearing a beret and a stripey top. This instantly sets the location, with outdated sterotypes nowadays, but would have been more convincing of that time. Rick waits at the pianno for her and pours his and her drink which show he is in control romantic etc. Again still camera angles slow zoom to a close up of Ilsa's face where her eyes glisten, connotes her feeling emotion. Lighting always shines on Ilsa, showing romance love, the music played is romantic 'As time goes by' foreshadows furture events. "Kiss me as if it was the last time" shows Isla's character to be really needy, typical lady of the time 'damsel in distress'.

Clip three - The Marseillaise
The scene is set at Ricks bar, really busy, posh bar trendy of that time, again there is use of close up shots of Isla's to show emotion that she is proud of her man. Lighting is on Isla showing passion, the music is men singing the German national anthem which then he makes them sing the French one connotes him to be a strong character convincing.

Clip four - 'I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship'
The mise en scene is that of an airfield/garage, bad weather conditions adding to the gloomy situation foggy and rainy. Used a car of that time, again slow zooms, Isla is light using lighting, showing emotion, special effects are used on her eyes to make them appear watery like she is crying, throughtout the film Isla is represented as this emotion women who is confused and vulnerable. Dramatic music is played when they walk away together to the get on the plane. "We'll always have Paris" Rick persuades her into thinking that the memory is enough, "Inside we both know you belong to Victor" shows that Rick is the dominant chacacter realistc. "Last night you said I had to do the thinking for both of us" this again shows that the man is the dominant role, that she can't even make her own mind up.

Final draft of coursework

2010-01-25T10:45:00.000Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVcMVKBqf4M

POSSESSEDTHEMOVIE.WEEBLY.COM

HOME

ABOUT THE FILM

CAST & CREW

TRAILER

GALLERY

DOWNLOADS

what were doing to the film, date filming, music, voice over, change in story etc

2010-01-25T09:45:00.031Z

When you love someone,
You want to keep them safe,
And never let them go,
But life doesn't always work out the way you want.

She couldn't keep him safe,
And she had to let him go,
For Katie, that summer was a nightmare.

But time goes by and life moves on,
Friends are there for you,
And slowly the nightmare fades away.

But do you really know your friends?

For Katie the nightmare is not over,
It's only just begun.
[Scream]

Origen Music Artists - Dance of the clouds.
http://www.jamendo.com/en/search/all/background%20music

Website research

2010-01-25T09:45:00.030Z

One of the feedback points for our website was to research more into other film websites to get the right idea of what we need to do to make it look more proffessional.
We decided to do more detailed research into our first inspiration for the website, 'Prom Night'. Because the film is distributed by Sony Pictures the website is based within their URL of sonypictures.co.uk/movies/promnight/

The above screen shot is of the first page of the films website. It has links to the homepage, to watch the trailer, register for email updates, and the films Bebo page. The main image is from the poster with just the film title, the tagline and release date. We are thinking of making an opening page for our film leading to the main website but aren't sure whether we have enough time. Another way of incorpreting the style of this website is to have a similar layout for our homepage, using the poster image with the title, tagline and release date and having a few links maybe to a facebook page etc.We will also have to put the institutions and rating, which we already have anyway on our website at the moment.

This is the homepage of the website: sonypictures.co.uk/movies/promnight/site/

After clicking on the 'ENTER THE SITE' link on the opening page the official site opens in a new tab. They've used the same image but enlarged to fill the page with the text in a different layout with the release date above the title. The background is moving, although it is difficult to see what the image is of, it looks like hands with light flares and is obviousley quite dark so not to draw attention away from the main image of the girl. The sites navigation is at the bottom of the image with pages such as 'About the Film', 'Cast & Crew', 'Trailer', 'Gallery', 'Downloads' and 'Soundtrack'.
The ideas we have interpreted from this page are using the poster image as the main focal point, and we've also chosen similar pages, as in other research we found most websites use these headings. Our navigation is at the top of the page however using a consistent font to the rest of the website.

The 'About the Film' page has information on the story, production notes, the making of, and the cast and crews prom stories. For our 'About the Film' page we will just have an outline of the story with some images.
On the 'Cast & Crew' page, detailed info about most of the cast and 'The Filmakers' is given. We will just write general info about the main characters/cast and about us the 'filmakers' perhaps with profile pictures also.
The trailer page obviousley just shows the trailer in the centre of the page. The theme throughout all the pages is the same, background, and text of the title and release date stay in the same place, the centre picture changes to various stills from the film with text boxes overlayed.

The 'Gallery' ^^ shows important images/stills from the film of characters and crucial scenes. The images come up as thunmbnails at the top of the page, when you click on one it shows up underneath but larger for example like in the screen shot above. Our gallery page will have the pictures from the photo album and important stills from the film.

'Downloads' has downloadable backgrounds and buddy icons. Our site will have the poster and backgrounds as downloads.

The 'Soundtrack' page links to a Myspace page with the soundtrack available to listen to and other information available. We've decided not to make our soundtrack a page as we feel it isn't necessary, because the 'Prom Night' soundtrack is a well known song and ours isn't.

We also researched 'The Crazies' website: thecrazies-movie.com
HOMEPAGE HERE!
The homepage has the film title in the top left corner with the release date underneath and also in the centre of the page above the trailer. The background is obviousley a setting from the movie with a sign to the right saying 'HELP US'. The navigation is at the top of the page with pages such as; 'ABOUT', 'VIDEOS', 'GALLERY', 'DOWNLOADS', 'CAST & CREW', and 'BATTLEMAIL'. Below the trailer is the institutions, release date, a phone app link, 'register' (email updates, promos etc), Facebook and Twitter links, and 'find show times' for local cinemas.

The 'ABOUT' page just includes the storyline with the same background as the homepage. (Similar to our idea)
'VIDEOS' has a few different versions of the the films trailer,our trailer page will obviousley just have the one trailer.
The 'GALLERY' has scattered polaroids on the page and when you click on one, similar to the 'Prom Night' website, it comes up larger.
'DOWNLOADS' includes wallpapers, screensavers and buddy icons.
'CAST & CREW'
'BATTLE MAIL' is an interesting idea, at first you have no idea what it is. It is an interactive game. You type in your email and a friends email and start an email battle, obviousley linking to the idea of the films story. Your friend can email you back and so on, continuing the battle. This is a good device to interest the audience and make them more involved and attracted to the film.

How we've changed the website

2010-01-25T09:45:00.025Z

On the homepage we changed the font to fit in with the institutions at the bottom of the page (Agency FB)

We also used our research from the 'Prom Night' website, which inspired us to use our poster image with just the title and release date on the first page. We made it on Photoshop and used the same font for the release date as the website.

The 'About the film' page has the new storyline on it:
'Last year a perfect holiday turned into a disaster that would affect Katie and her friends would find hard to forget. Four friends went away, but only three came back.
Losing her boyfriend was the worst thing that could have happened to Katie, and is something she will never get over but she is slowy starting to get back to normal.
Katie is slowly getting her life back together again, he will always be in her thoughts. Time and good friends can help you forget. But not everyone can forget and go back to normal, someone thinks about it all the time, all he wants is to keep Katie safe, and by doing this the nightmare will start again.'

'Cast & Crew' page, we decided to make one because the two websites we researched both had one and it gives a bit of extra, personal information about the cast and crew for the audience. Here is an example of the kind of thing we wrote for the cast:
CHARLOTTE LOCKTON (SAMANTHA GATES) HAD HER FIRST ROLE STARRING IN ST TRINIANS IN 2007. POSSESSEDD IS THE SECOND FILM SHE HAS STARRED IN, PLAYING THE LEAD CHARACTER OF 'SAM'. KNOWN TO HER FRIENDS AS CHARLIE, SHE HAS ALSO MADE APPEARENCES ON TV, GETTING A SMALL PART IN EASTENDERS IN 2006.
CHARLIE WAS BORN IN GRAYS IN ESSEX AND MOVED TO LEICESTER TO PERSUE HER CHEERLEADING HOBBY. BY THE TIME SHE WAS 15 SHE WAS LIVING IN LONDON TO TRAIN AS A PROFFESSIONAL YOUNG ACTRESS AT LONDON'S PERFORMING ARTS COLLEGE.

Trailer
gallery
downloads.

Beastie Boys.

2010-01-24T20:08:00.001Z

Beastie Bowwiiss

View more presentations from laurenlaura.

Feedback

2010-01-09T14:31:00.000Z

Feedback from the class

Trailer

Music works well
Writing is good
Music is good
The flashlight looks effective
Good begining, good end
Just need a faster, clearer middle
Some more shorter shots from different angles while their in the house
Maybe a scene where they take her hostage
Needs a bit of the male at the begining
1.02 does not flow with continuity, cuts from light on to a different
Voice over maybe to make it look more like a trailer
Male laughing maybe?
The bedroom scene could maybe be cut out altogether
Start and end is brilliant, middle is a little bit of a let down for the piece-perhaps leave the 3 girls out an have the bits of main girl being watched as they are good aswell

Poster

Overall really good
At the top in the blank space maybe put the stalker pictures across the top all jizjazzed? or a quote. Space needs filling
Originality?

Website

Gallery isn't relevant-wouldn't see them sort of photos on a professional website
Gallery is good, a very original idea

Teacher feedback

Trailer

Less shots of girl tied up at begining and end
Cut out shot where males identity is obvious
Speak when tied up-'Why are you doing this?', 'I know who you are'
See the film the girls are watching
Leave at night
Could be another character doing the kidnapping
Better acting-more shots in the bedroom/angles
More scenes-different locations
Last scream needs to be longer
Focus on main character when she screams at film so we know shes the main character
We see her actually being kidnapped-quick shot

Poster

Tagline
Make the photo stand out more

Website

About the film-actors, location, detail
Pictures-main character-stills from film, scary, more/better stalker phots (leaf photo-more zoom, rearview-see eyes)
Pictures-male and other characters
Do more research

FIRST DRAFT COURSEWORK

2009-12-11T14:53:00.014Z

Main Task: Teaser Trailer

click link to see bigger screen - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DizvggAD5Pw

Anciliary Task: Poster

For our final design we made the image a lot darker than the original to make it look more effective, to give it this mysterious look we can only see a section of the characters face, so it doesn't reveal their identity I think it makes more of an imapact to the viewer.

Anciliary Task: Website

WWW.POSSESSEDTHEMOVIE.WEEBLY.COM

Music

2009-12-11T14:46:00.003Z

Todays workk

2009-12-09T10:46:00.003Z

sdokjgdj

gfbjgjfg

fgjcjkky

gjytdykc

FINALLY THE NEW AND IMPROVED STORYBOARD!!

2009-12-08T15:03:00.000Z

Titles research

2009-12-08T15:02:00.001Z

Looked at titles of 'the strangers', 'the grudge' and 'prom night'. All have institution at begining and title of film at the end with a quick film clip after and then 'coming soon' website and institutions. Then sometimes after that the institution again, actors and directors etc.

Found the music

2009-12-08T14:58:00.005Z

http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/181830

Filming DONE! Poster photo DONE!

2009-12-08T14:55:00.003Z

We filmed the middle scene of the trailer on Saturday, and the end clips on Monday and todays media lesson! So everything is done hopefully. We have booked out an emergency camera for wednesday just incase we feel some bits need improving or more needs adding in. We also took the photo for our ancilliary task of the poster and edited it in todays media lesson on photoshop... Here is what we did...

^^ Original photo ^^

For this one ^^ we changed it to black and white, flipped it horizontally and changed the contrast and brightness

^^ Original photo ^^

^^Black and white, contrast and brightness changed and coloured the eye in black

This one isn't completely finished but we basically wanted it to be black and white with just the eye still in colour.Sowe had to cut the eye bit out to keep the colour then change the image to black and white and copy the eye back on. We also enhanced the colour of the eye to make it a brighter blue.

Most of these photos will also go on the website.

Stalker photos

2009-12-07T13:04:00.001Z

These are the photos we took in the style of the stalker. They aren't great but because of how little time we had, it's better to have something rather than nothing. I think most of them look legitimate but they won't be seen for a long period of time so they're just for effect really. We are also going to put them on the films website.

Old test shots

2009-12-07T12:26:00.003Z

These were some shot idea/tests we did before changing the storyboard.We tried it in two different rooms to compare lighting and space. When we did film these shots, the characters were slightly different and we chose to film in the pink/white room. This test also helped us decide how to place the camera as the quality of these test shots arn't very good, for example the first two.We used the same shots we tested in the blue room when we filmed for real in the other room.

Peeps

2009-11-30T09:44:00.006Z

The Cast

Charlie plays the main character in our film - Abbey

Jack plays the stalker

Hannah plays one of Abbey's friends

And Jasmine also plays one of Abbey's friends.

To Do List...

2009-11-30T09:31:00.003Z

Ancilliary Tasks. - Website & Poster.

Pre Production;

Research into existing horror posters, looking at conventions, aspects we thought looked good etc.
Research that went in for the website was looking at websites such as the tormented, prom night to look at typical thermes.

Post Production;

We need to edit the website and make sure it looks proffessional and real.
For the poster will need to make sure it has all the relevant and promotional information on it. Overall does it look like a real horror poster.

Distribution;

The website is going to be on weebly so, anyone will be able to view the website.

To Do List...

2009-11-30T09:17:00.001Z

Main Task.- Trailer.
Pre Production -

Research; We looked at different horror movies to get inspiration and ideas.

Post Production -

We need to edit the filming to make it trailer. -9th Dec. 09

Distribution -

For distribuion we are going to put our trailer on youtube for viewing and of course our blog. -11th Dec. 09

Filming.

2009-11-30T08:57:00.002Z

On saturday we completed 1/4 of our filming! We followed our new improved storyboard that will be uploaded onto the blog shortly. We tried to do a variety of shots so we have enough. We did the filming in my garage, the 'kidnapped scene.' This was our main character tied to a chair in distress, frightened and scared this hopefully comes across in our filming with the types of shots we have done. We got our actor looking scared, doing close up shots of the face and eyes to capture the fear. For lighting we used a torch as the room was in darkness. We flashed the torch and experimented with the lighting for dramatic effect.

Research for new storyboard

2009-11-26T14:09:00.004Z

After realising we would have to scrap all the filming we had already done (although it wasn't that much) I decided I was unsattisfied with the opening scene we have for our trailer. I spoke to a few people, some who also do media, and they said maybe we should start it with scary shots, not the calm atmosphere we had before. I think this is a great idea and will really improve our trailer. I did some more research into trailers to get ideas of how to do this new idea.

Paranormal Activity
This trailer is really effective, it shows the first audience who ever watched the film in the trailer. Seeing their reactions is quite shocking and I think these shots scare you more than the film itself. However in the film a good technique they used was infrared. Most of the film was recorded at night so obviously a night vision camera was used. We originally wanted to use this technique in our film but decided it would be too tricky, but now I think it would be worth giving it a go. Another film we watched at the begining of our research also used infrared, it was called Quarentine.

Skin Walkers
The start of this trailer uses taglines to introduce the story. It also shows quite graphic shots which makes you keep watching. I found this was quite an action film and not exactly horror but they did use intersting techniques to attract the audience and tell the story. Flashing/quick editing of shots is used which creates the action feel and also throughout I noticed a copper theme in most of the shots like a tint, maybe to link in with the characters eyes which were copper coloured.

Thir13en Ghosts
The begining scene of the Thir13en Ghosts trailer has a spooky atmosphere, a blue tint to the shots make this. It also shows that it is dark and looks cold. A white flash is used to skip to a more coloured scene and then as the action comes back into play more white flashes skip between different shots. I think the first flash makes it seem like theres a flashback.

The Strangers
This trailer starts with a calm atmosphere and uses taglines to introduce the story. MUSIC. It also shows the views of the characters having double takes, in the first shot you see a person and in the second you don't. When I watched this it was really creepy and definately worked at scaring the audience. Also the use of masks for the other characters really adds to the atmosphere, not being able to see their face, and you can imagine how scared you would be in that situation.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
2-4 second clips are used for the first part of the trailer to set the scene. Then 1 second clips which fade to black are seen, these start to set the pace and atmosphere. I liked the use of freeze frames to show the panic on the characters faces and then faded quickly to white. The last sequence of shots at the end of the trailer are short with quick editing, the clips are also quite dark and the speed of the editing creates an action feel and makes the audience interested.

The Grudge
This trailer really creeped me out. The main element I like about it was how they used a wave of hair to bring the text/titles in and out of the frame.

The Unborn
This trailer also starts off slow and uses white flashes inbetween the scary shots. I really like the titles for this trailer and the background they used. I think the characters really show the genre of this film and just looking at them scares you.

Shaun Of The Dead
I love the trailer for this film, I really like how they've managed to mix together funny and scary and be able to laugh and be scared at the same time.

Looking at all these trailers gave me a great idea for the storyboard. The trailer is going to start with quick editing so you see very short clips, almost flashes, of whats going on like in some of the trailers above. The shots will be of our main character, already been kidnapped, tied to a chair in a room, it will be dark with just a light on her. There will also be shots of the stalker/kidnapper but you won't be able to see all of their face and there will also be pictures he has taken of the girl when she didn't know. All these shots will be interspersed with each other creating a mix up of the shots and hopefully creating a scary/anitcipating atmosphere

Major problemoosss

2009-11-25T11:17:00.000Z

Our actress who is the main character in the trailer has dropped out, so obviousley we can't use the shots we have already done with her in as the main character. We have found someone else to use and plan to film on saturday hopefully getting at least half of the clips we need for the whole trailer as time is running out. Also on saturday we will take the photos for the poster and website. Obviousley the blog I posted yesterday is now irrelevant. We have also come up with a new storyboard to make the trailer more scary as I feel it wasn't good enough before.

POSITIVE BLOG

2009-11-24T11:30:00.003Z

3 positive things :)

we are filming tomorrow
also tomorrow were taking photos for the website and poster!
&& if we take the right photo the poster will be done!!!

Jamendo & Filming

2009-11-19T09:29:00.002Z

Signed us up to jamendo.com, free legal music, because we really need to sort out music for the trailer ASAP

Andddd we forgot to say we did filming for the opening scene of our trailer on monday. We uploaded the footage yesterday and it all looked fine and are editing it in Mrs Hammond's pratical lesson todayyy!

Representing gender homework

2009-11-19T09:26:00.004Z

'The representations of men and women can never illustrate the 'truth''
They can never illustrate the truth because they are just representations. Representations are like stereotypes, so group people together and say their all the same and don't take into account peoples individual traits. If they don't take into account their individual traits then they are not what the representation says they are, so the representation isn't the truth.

'Hollywood mainly operates in gender binary opposites'
I don't agree that Hollywood operates in gender binary opposites because this means the male and female roles are separated. Male and female roles have blurred together and both roles/attitudes/behaviour are used by both sexes in Hollywood media.

'Gender can only be understood in relation to the culture that produces it'
I agree with this statement because in different cultures gender is represented in different ways so only the culture that produces that representation would understand it. Like in some cultures females are used for children, looking after them and their husband. In other cultures women can go out and hunt for food with the men. They are considered and treated in different ways because they are seperate cultures.

'Gender stereotypes are a useful way of understanding culture'

Inspiration/Ideas

2009-11-18T11:34:00.001Z

Jay-Z & Alicia Keys-Empire State of Mind

This is a music video that we thought was effective in terms of how the photographs are displayed artisticly in time with the music. Even though this is a music video we thought about having our stalker photographs maybe displayed like this obviously in a much more horror way with scary music. We may be able to do something similar, but obviously not to this standard, as the macs don't have this effect available.

The Gaze

2009-11-18T11:30:00.000Z

Used in film theory - 1970's
Refers to the way viewers look at images of people in visual medium
'The Male Gaze' - feminist reference to the voyeuristic (for pleasure) way in which men look at women
Jonathan Schroeder (1998) - 'to gaze implies more than to look at' - psychological relationship of power - 'gazer is superior to the object of the gaze'

Forms of gaze:

spectators gaze
intra-diegetic-people looking at each other within the media text
direct address to the viewer
look of the camera
gaze of a bystander
gaze of an audience within a text

Direction of gaze
Attention directed:

towards others
towards an object
to oneself
to the reader/camera
into middle distance

Laura Mulvey - 'Male Gaze'

'Visual pleasure and narrative cinema' 1975

Criticisms

Doesn't consider men looking at men or women looking at women in admiration
Failure to account for female spectator (women looking at men)
Only a heterosexual view (homosexual-men looking at men)

Catagorising facial expressions
Women:

Chocolate box-half/full smile, hardly any/no teeth on show
Invitational-emphasis on eyes, looking at camera, head to one side, hint of a smile
Super-smiler-cheesey grin
Romantic/sexual-pouting

Men:

Carefree-small smile, relaxed (sport, health)
Pratical-concentration (handyman)
Seductive-pout, broody
Comic-smiley, foolish, exaggerated
Catalogue-looking in distance, vacant

Consider Laura Mulvey or Tessa Perkins in relation to your coursework

Stereotypes

2009-11-18T11:07:00.001Z

Stereotypes are:

a simplified representation of a group/people
groups people together
says they are all the same

Media use:

reinforces the stereotype
narrative shortcut
reflect stereotypes that exist
criticised for creating stereotypes, but they are usually part of the audiences way of thinking about the world anyway

Tessa Perkins
Stereotypes usually have an element of truth to them to make them plausible.

Butler
The boundaries are blurring between men and women, the relation between the two is fluid. 'A man can demonstarte feminie qualities the same as a woman can demonstrate masculine qualities and can change from one to the other depending on the context'. Butler calls this a 'sliding scale of gender'.

Negatives of stereotypes:

judgement-basis is usually negative
don't allow for individual traits
exertion of power for people outside the stereotype

Positives of stereotypes:

countertypes
media texts attempted to construct new approaches to old stereotypes

What makes a stereotype?

Appearance - physical/clothes/voice
Behaviour - typical things people are assumed to do
Attitude - the way people are percieved as thinking

Task - choose a well known stereotype and list the characteristics

Our chosen stereotype:GEEK

Appearance:

glasses
shirt & tie
too short trousers
big rucksack bag (laptop, books)
posh voice
high pitched laugh

Behaviour:

really clever
do homework as soon as they get it
no social life/friends
read LOTS
maths as a hobby (sudoku, algebra)
in a band (trumpet)

Examples from media:

Gretchen (Recess)
Milhouse (Simpsons)
Napolean Dynamite

Memento

2009-11-16T11:22:00.003Z

Memento (2000)
Directed by Christopher Nolan

Conforms to many of the the conventions of a typical noir film (a type of film popular in the late 1940's, early 1950's)
Typical noir film characters - world weary private eye/femme fatale/princess-girl in danger/the patsy or stooge/other assorted dishevelled characters
It could be argued that this is a postmodern film noir

Memento Storyline

Leonard’s wife was assaulted by two men. He got hit on the head trying to save her and suffered memory loss from this and couldn't make new memories so forget things quickly. To remember his condition he had 'Sammy Jenkis' tattooed on his hand. Leonard’s wife had diabetes and he had to inject her insulin for her.
His wife wanted to believe he could get better so told him to give her the insulin 3 times to see if he'd remember but he didn't so she died. Leonard doesn't remember this as him but as Sammy Jenkis, he believes that his wife died when she was assaulted because this is the last permanent memory he has.

The story starts with Leonard on the phone to a police man. He tells him about the Sammy Jenkis story and then about how his wife was raped and murdered and he wants to find the person who did it and kill them. The police man tells Lenny that the murderer is going to be at an abandoned warehouse. He says his name is Teddy and Leonard takes a photo of him so he can remember him.

Lenny goes to the warehouse and kills the man, Jimmy, he thinks murdered his wife.
(This part of the film is all in black and white, is shown in chronological order and put in between the coloured scenes which are in reverse chronological order until the two time lines meet)

Teddy then shows up at the warehouse and tells Lenny that Sammy Jenkis isn't real, that he killed his wife and that Lenny already killed the real John G a year ago with Teddy's help and he thought he would remember it but he doesn't, so Teddy has been using him to kill people by telling Lenny that they are John G.

Lenny takes Jimmy's clothes and car and sets himself up to kill Teddy by taking down his car license plate number to get a tattoo of it so he thinks that Teddy is the John G. He gets the tattoo and then finds a note in his pocket, forgetting he is wearing Jimmy's clothes, to meet Natalie in Ferdys bar thinking it’s for him.

Natalie offers to help Leonard but tricks him into going after a man called Dodd. Lenny assaults Dodd and gets him to leave town. Natalie then traces 'John G's' license plate number and his driving license photo matches the one Leonard has of Teddy. He thinks Teddy is the person who raped and murdered his wife, because obviously he has forgotten what Teddy told him and who he is.

Lenny takes Teddy to the same abandoned warehouse where he murdered Jimmy, and kills Teddy.
(This is the first thing that happens in the film, and works backwards through the events that led up to this).

Poster Update

2009-11-13T14:36:00.003Z

This is an update from the previous mock up of our poster, we changed the contrast of the background photo and filled the background with more black so it's darker, this makes the poster look more scary becuse persons is hidden in the darkness so you can't fully see there facial features and surrondings. Having done this the title looks brighter making it the main focal point, this is want we wanted to achieve. to fill the black space at the top of the poster we going to put a tagline for the film here, we also need to add more information to the bottom credits.

Possessedthemovie.com

2009-11-13T14:19:00.003Z

http://www.possessedthemovie.weebly.com/

This is a print screen of our website so far, we have created it on weebly. We started making some links to the other pages. We have made all the pages black, following conventions, as all the other horror movies use black backgrounds. We also put the title of our film 'Possessed' at the top of every page so it looks consistant.

Poster Mockup

2009-11-13T14:09:00.000Z

This is a mockup of what we are doing for our poster. To test out the colours, fonts and layout. We think this image is most effective and we will do our own photo inspired by this one. We got the idea for the credits from the new Saw movie poster. We chose to use the same colour and style of writing for our poster that they used because Saw is also a horror film, by Lionsgate like ours. When we do our own photo for the background we will make it darker as in this photo the face is too bright and takes the attention away from the title.

Memes

2009-11-06T14:15:00.002Z

Where The Hell Is Matt

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Problemssss

2009-11-03T10:41:00.000Z

Unfortunately we couldn't film on the 13th as a few of our actors didn't become available. We also didn't have time to film in the holidays as Lauren was away. We have fell behind last week not posting for a while but we will hopefully be back on track next week after filming (fingers crossed) on Sunday.

Filming.

2009-10-13T14:11:00.002+01:00

Tonight we are going to start filming, one of the scenes from our trailer this is the opening scene where Karlie and her friends are getting ready for the party. The location is going to be at Lauren's house in her bedroom. The actors are Amay Campbell, Jo Noble and Charlie Lockton.

This is Amay, she plays the charcter Daisy.

Website Hosting Search.

2009-10-13T11:12:00.000+01:00

Today's lesson we looked at different website makers which are free to set up our own website, for our horror film. But most of them have a clause were you have to pay, so we are going to continue looking.x

Title

2009-10-12T19:13:00.005+01:00

Titles

These are the titles we designed on a graphics website, interactimage.com, as you can see the title we have chosen is 'Possessed'. The reason we chose this one out of our choices is because it gives a twist to the story perhaps making the audience think someone is possessed in the psychiatric/paranormal sense when in fact we mean that the boy wants to own the girl and wants her as a possession. We asked a few people which of the title designs they liked best and which would be best suited to a horror movie poster and the majority of them chose this one:

We will do a mock up of the poster next week when we have a few ideas and samples of images we will use for the background.

Picture Ideas For Poster

2009-10-12T18:47:00.003+01:00

Here are some pictures I found on deviantart.com in the photography/people&portraits/expressive section. I looked at portraits because we want our photo to be of the main character on her own, and I looked in the expressive section because we didn't just want a plain portrait of the character we want it to be showing something about the film. These photos have given me lots of ideas and inspiration of how we can do our poster photo and it's also given me some ideas for shots we could use in the trailer as well.

I like this photo because of how they've layered a few different positioned photographs. I think using the same technique of this but using a close up of our characters face would work well for the kind of effect were going for on our poster, a distorted view.

This photo doesn't really relate to our theme exactly but i think it looks really effective and real, but obviously wouldn't be right for the style of image we're going for.

I like this image because of how close up it is which is what we are doing for the photo on our poster, I also think just showing the eye shows more expression but keeps the identity of the person hidden. If we used the same setup for our poster photo as this I would probably want to have the eye look bigger and probably make it black and white and with the eye a little further down so the eyelashes aren't cut out of the photo.

This is my favourite of the photos I looked at, it gives off an obvious vibe of horror which we want and it also draws you in and makes you interested and look closely. I think the fact it's black and white with the blood drip in colour is really effective and makes it fit in with the horror genre. I think this image would be easy to achieve just using a good camera and the editing tools on photoshop. I think maybe combining this photo idea with the first one using layers of photos could also work really well.

I also really like this photo because it's quite scary, a close up version of this maybe of just one half of the face would work really well for our poster. The girls expression makes her look terrified but it also makes the person looking at it scared as well because the eyes are like popping out which scares me but I really like the black going down her cheeks.

This image was created by scanning the face directly onto the computer. I think it gives a really good effect of being trapped but I don't think we would want to use this technique or layout as there are a couple of other effects that look and would work better.

Miss Hammond's Lesson

2009-10-12T10:48:00.000+01:00

'A Collective'
*Relationship
*Togetherness
*We-ness
*Connection
*Shared status
*Community
*Positive feelings for each other

"A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue, or interest, or work together on a specific project to achieve a common object."

'Identity'
*What makes you who you are?
*Your own comprehension of yourself- how you see yourself.
*How others see us
*Appearance
*Attributes
*Clothing
*Experiences
*Rituals

Area's of 'collective Identity.'
*Gender
*Ethnicity
*Sexuality
*Occupation
*Disability
*Social class
*Religion
*Nationality
*Celebrity
*Age

Theory's

On the one hand, identity is something unique to each of us that we assume is more or less consistent (and hence the same) overtime.. our identity is something we uniquely possess: it is what distinguishes us from other people. Yet on the other hand, identity also implies a relationship with a broader collective or social group of some kind. When we talk about national identity, cultural identity, or gender identity, for example, we imply that our identity is partly a matter of what we share with other people. Here, identity is about identification with others whom we assume are similar to us (if not exactly the same), at least in some significant ways.
David Buckingham (2008).
He argues that identity is complicated/complex.

"Identity is complicated. Everyone thinks they've got one. Magazines and talk show hosts urge us to explore our 'identity.' Religious and national identities are at the heart of major international conflicts. Artists play with the idea of 'identity' in modern society. Blockbuster movie superheroes have emotional conflicts about their 'true' identity. And the average teenager can create three online 'identities' before breakfast."
David Gauntlett (2007).

Gauntlett is talking about identity in relation to the media, I think that he tries to explain how ordinary people aspire to be like the people in the media like celebrities. I agree with him somewhat, but I don't think everyone is influenced by someone in the media, or maybe secretly they are. Other things such as parents, family, friends and life experiences also influence your identity, not just the media. However I think even under privileged countries are still influenced by the media, for example they may look up to great athletes, that have come from their country.

David Buckingham 2008.
"A focus on identity requires us to pay close attention to the diverse ways in which media and technologies are used in everyday life and their consequences both for individuals and social groups."

In a summary in order to look at identity you have to look at the media impact. What consequences the media has on people- on the individual.

Different medias which I believe have an impact on identity:
*Magazines
*Newspaper
*Films
*Soap Operas
*Adverts
*Radio
*Music
*Celebrities
*Internet-MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter
*Video games
*Self-help programmes

Music Research

2009-10-05T09:28:00.000+01:00

Audience Wordle

2009-10-05T09:14:00.000+01:00

This is a wordle of the audience type we are going for.

Title Ideas

2009-10-05T09:11:00.000+01:00

This is a wordle of the possible titles we could use for our film.

Music I Like

2009-10-01T12:43:00.001+01:00

This is a song that I like at the minute, I think we could use music like this but if it was toned down if you know what I mean. For the beginning of the film we want to have dance music something your able to dance to, to get ready for night out. This is a dance track something similar to what we want to have, I think maybe the beginning of the song or the chorus. We looked at the music in the Prom night trailer which was non diagetic when it shows them getting ready and then the music stops as soon as the scary part of the trailer starts, whereas the tormented trailer uses diagetic music in the party scenes. This is something to think about when we decide on our music.

More Music

2009-10-01T12:27:00.001+01:00

To Do List...

2009-10-01T12:00:00.001+01:00

Last weeks to do list:

-Finish storyboard - done about a third of it and has been put on blog
-Research/decide type of music we want - roughly researched but not in detail
-Analyse filming that has been done - not done
-Choose picture for poster background - no research done but had discussions about it

This weeks to do list:

-Do some more of the storyboard
-Research more into music
-Think about dialogue, maybe start script
-Make more detailed shot list so we can start filming next week
-Decide if the filming that's already been done can be used, put a few clips of good parts on blog, decide how we can improve them for next week

We aim to have done these things by next Friday.

Miss Hammond's Lesson

2009-09-29T19:29:00.004+01:00

In today's lesson we did about audience. You need to know as much detail as possible about the audience to be able to attract them, here is the basic information of our target audience which we need to know:
Age of audience - 13-25 years
Gender - male and female
Where they're from - UK, Cities
Socio-economic group - mostly category E, some D's and C2's and possibly some C1's
Existing or new audience - existing
Particular group - students
Interests/lifestyle/values/attitudes - busy, social lifestyle, being with friends/in groups, shopping, cinema, meals, going out(town), parties, driving, Facebook, TV(American shows/reality, comedy shows), fashion, sport, music, drinking, smoking.

We also learnt about the six social categories. I mentioned above that our audience fits into category E, here are the criteria for the six categories:
Category A - professional, higher managerial people ie. MP/surgeon
Category B - middle management, administrative ie. bank manager
Category C1 - junior manager, supervisory ie. personal assistant
Category C2 - skilled manual people ie. plumber/machine worker
Category D - semi-skilled/unskilled ie. cleaner
Category E - casual workers, pensioners, unemployed ie. seasonal worker

These categories help to narrow down who it is exactly that will view your text. This links into the niche market, a specialist/specific market. The niche market is mostly used in advertisement because adverts are aimed at a specific type or group of people. Sky's specific channels like history, sport and drama would use niche market adverts that link to these channels ie. sports channel would advertise energy drinks, sports games, sports clothes etc.

Storyboard

2009-09-29T19:29:00.003+01:00

Here are the first 11 still shots from our trailer. We might change these when we start filming if it doesn't look right or if we have difficulties with the location.

Mr Ford's Lesson

2009-09-29T19:28:00.001+01:00

In Mr Ford's lesson we learnt about post modern media. We see media reality as reality, we can't tell the difference between real things and the images of them. A good example of this that Mr Ford showed us from Mr Smith's blog was René Magritte's Cest n'est pas une pipe. If asked what this is most people would say 'a pipe' but Magritte says 'This is not a pipe' below the pipe because actually it is an image of a pipe, it is a representation and 'does not satisfy emotionally'.

Post modern media is when the representations get 'remixed' and the maker of the text deliberately show that what they have done isn't real. They represent media reality. Quentin Tarrantino is one of the most famous post modern media film makers. In his film Kill Bill in one of the scenes he shows a birds eye view of the setting but this view makes it clear to the audience that they are filming on a set as there is not ceiling and you can see the top of the walls separating each room. Also the use of blood is very fake and dramatised to make it clear it's just a representation and not real. However most of the films audience would probably just see this as funny, to see blood squirting uncontrollably out of someones arm but its done for a reason beyond that, to make it obvious that what you are seeing is fake and not reality.
Other examples of media reality: the Cadbury's gorilla advert, The Mighty Boosh and Pulp Fiction.

It is unfortunate that as we want our trailer to feel as real as possible we won't be able to use this concept in our work but it does really interest me so I may research into it further to see if I can find a way of using or making our trailer post modern media.

Miss Hammond's Lesson

2009-09-29T17:42:00.000+01:00

Last week in Miss Hammond's theory lesson we went over the basic keywords we should know to do with media. There were a few I didn't know about:
Denotation - literal meaning, what you immediately see
Connotation - assumptions, linking what you see to something
Anchorage - linking text to image
Ideologies - beliefs/ideas that are challenged or upheld
I will need to start using these terms when talking about media text including the trailer.
We also recapped the narrative theorists used in media:
Todorov - all films begin with an equilibrium (a calm/normal state), then a disruption, an action or conflict, causes the disequilibrium (unsettled state), and finally the conflict is resolved and the calm state is restored as there is a new equilibrium.
Barthes - suggested narratives use five codes: action, enigma, semic, symbolic, cultural. The most known is the enigma code which means the narrative will create mysteries as it goes along.
Propp - researched Folk Talkes and found they always featured 8 specific character roles: villain, hero, donor, helper, princess, her father, dispatcher, false hero. These can easily be related to films and programmes from today's era.
Levi-Strauss - binary oppositions - the ideologies of the opposition/conflict.

Music

2009-09-28T12:05:00.001+01:00

We've been looking for the type of music we want for our trailer and I was listening to this song, Litteboots-New In Town, and thought it fits the kind of feel for the first scene of our trailer where the girls are getting ready.

To Do List...

2009-09-21T09:08:00.002+01:00

By the end of this week we aim to...

-Finish storyboard
-Research/decide type of music we want
-Analyse filming that has been done
-Choose picture for poster background

Practise Filming

2009-09-21T09:01:00.000+01:00

On Saturday and Sunday I did some filming at my friends party. It was mostly just a practise to see if the location and lighting that was available works. I did about 10minutes of filming, whilst I was filming I did notice that in some rooms the lighting wasn't very good/bright enough so not much showed up on the screen. Later today I'm going to load the tape onto the editing computers and look at the quality of the filming and see what I can improve. On the Sunday me and my friend were cleaning up the house and found some leaked berry juice in the fridge which I filmed a bit of because it look like blood so I will also have to see if this looks realistic enough to use in our trailer and maybe just use flashes of it if we want to use blood.

Poster Background Idea

2009-09-18T15:05:00.002+01:00

This is a picture which advertised the most recent Skins series, we are going to look at the skins series to give us inspiration as they experiment with different camera angles, they have a teenage cast and use typical stereotypes for some of the characters. this is similar to ours as we want to have teenagers in our teaser trailer. In skins the friendship group seems to be mixed, you wouldn't like necessarily think that they would all be friends, so this challenges some stereotypes of teenage groups. We have included this poster as we think it illustrates the characters straight away and tells you a little bit about them, we may look at this sort of style of photograph for our film poster, showing you all the main characters. I think what makes the photograph effective is because its an action shot, which makes it easy to recognise with because it relates to the program.

Shot/Editing Ideas

2009-09-18T14:31:00.001+01:00

These two clips gave us an idea to use similar angles and editing for our trailer.

Prom Night

The Prom Night trailer starts with a group of girls in a hairdressers. A range of different angles are used for example over the shoulder, mid shots, and side views. The sequence in which these shots are shown is: side/mid, mirror view/mid, mirror.over shoulder/mid, tagline, mirror/over shoulder/mid, mirror/over shoulder/mid, side view/mid (only focused on one girl), over shoulder/mirror/mid, tagline. This opening sequence helps to introduce the characters and also gives a clue to the story as we hear the girls in conversation. Our trailer will also feature this range of angles of the main character and her friends getting ready for her party. In between two of the shots a tagline on a black background is seen which reads 'The Preparation' and after the scene in the hairdressers the next tagline which links to the next setting is 'The Anticipation'

Mean Girls

Institutions

2009-09-14T12:50:00.002+01:00

Today I researched the different institutions who produce films of the same genre and target audience as our film.

Alliance Films, Newmarket Films, Original Films - Prom Night
BBC Films - Tormented
New Line Cinema - Final Destination (and sequels), A Nightmare On Elm Street (and sequels), The Cell, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (and sequels), Friday The 13th.
Lionsgate - Hostel, Saw (and sequels), Blair Witch Project (2), Cabin Fever, My Bloody Valentine, The Descent, Serial Killing 101, Teeth.

We've decided to use Lionsgate as our production company as we have seen more of the films they make than the other institutions we researched and think they make more films for our age range than the others. We will show the Lionsgate logo at the beginning of our trailer.

Trailer Inspiration

2009-09-14T12:45:00.001+01:00

The 'Tormented' and 'Prom Night' trailers inspired us most when coming up with our storyline, we liked these movie trailers, as they seem pretty normal at the start of the trailers but then things start to happen which makes you instantly recognise the genre of the film. They use quick shots from lots of different angles with quick editing, the trailer picks up in pace, with suspense building music to captivate the audience, keep them watching and leave them wanting more.

Prom Night

Prom Night uses

a teenage cast,
the events happen at a party/prom,
they show the characters getting ready,
use short clips and quick editing for the horror scenes,
suspense building/changing music,
has one protagonist and one antagonist,
the antagonist is a known villain,
tag lines,
white flashes in between shots.

All of these techniques etc we have also decided to use in our trailer.
Tormented

Tormented uses

teenage main characters,
storyline is based on revenge,
uses party scenes,
quick editing,
suspenseful music,
character roles,

All of which we have taken inspiration from and will be using in our trailer.

Pitch

2009-09-14T10:30:00.001+01:00

A2 Pitch

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Here is some of the feedback we got after we presented our pitch to the class.

need to research/think about the kind of music/soundtrack we want
dialogue?
continuity of costumes/makeup because it's all set in one day/time space
distinguishing who the killer is - show obsession

We now also need to think about

institution
film name
poster background/photo ideas
storyboard
list of shots/camera angles
music
dialogue

First Lesson-Induction Week

2009-09-07T09:43:00.000+01:00

In our first Media lesson we chose our groups and which brief we want to do. In our group is Laura Foster and Lauren Harrison.
The brief we chose is a promotional package for a new film, teaser trailer. From the three options of the smaller tasks we chose the website homepage for the film and the poster for the film.

The genre we've decided on for our trailer is horror/thriller. We chose this genre because there are always a lot of horror/thriller films out in the cinema and seeing the trailers in the cinema and on TV inspired us and gave us ideas for our trailer. Horror/thriller is also a very popular genre with the adolescent audiences, 13-25, which is the target audience we want to promote to.

We made some notes on our brief to give us a guideline of want we need to research, and what we have noticed the features are already;
Teaser Trailer- Short clips of film, 2-3 minutes long, Horror- dark, infrared, quick editing/clips, tag lines, quick flashes of white or black backgrounds, fading, suspense building music, not revealing the killer.
Website- Character pages, download wallpaper/photos, games, music, trailer, actors interviews, behind the scenes, competitions, info on directors.
Poster- Characters, still image of film, directors/actors/producers/composers of music/production company names, website.