BRITISH BOARD OF FILM CLASSIFICATION

1. State what the BBFC does.
2. Show the classification categories GUIDANCE HERE
3. Give a brief account of one case study LOOK HERE
4.  Look at past decisions such as on 'video nasties', The Evil Dead, The Temple Of Doom, Romancing The Stone, Day Of The Dead, Terminator 2, Psycho, Batman, The Exorcist FOR INFO CLICK HERE
5. Give one recent Video Game rating + reasons
6. Listen to this PODCAST

CASE STUDY: SKYFALL

We discuss the article below on product tie-ins:

A view to an advertising killing

Analysis by Lucy Bannerman,  The Times, October 13 2012 

“Pierce used to say that it’s like being responsible for a small country,” Daniel Craig tells Vanity Fair in this month’s issue. “It’s like you have to look after it diplomatically.” Three films into his tenure, however, and Blond Bond seems more like CEO of the most powerful company in ad-land.
The franchise has amassed more than £3.1 billion at the box office worldwide over the past 50 years. Quantum of Solace made UK box office revenues of £50.3 million. Casino Royale took £65.9 million. Skyfall is predicted to beat them both — no small thanks to the onslaught of luxury brands rushing to bask in Bond’s glory through product placement. Heineken, which has paid $45million to make Bond a lager drinker, has covered nearly a third of the movie’s $150 million budget.

While Dom Pérignon, Rolex, Aston Martin and Walther PPK have been serving Brand Bond for years, other new tie-ins include Sony’s new flagship smartphone, the Xperia T, also known as “The Bond Phone”.The phone is apparently pre-loaded with Skyfall content including the 007 ringtone.
Coca-Cola’s Coke Zero tie-in is also predictably Bond-themed, while Sky TV has been running ad nauseam its advert featuring a car chase with all the men who have played Bond, to build up a following for its all-Bond channel.
Procter & Gamble has launched a 007 scent for men to celebrate the 23rd film and VisitBritain has launched its first international movie ad, which encourages foreigners to “Live Like Bond”.
But product placement is nothing new — Red Stripe was the first lager in a Bond film, in Dr. No in 1962 when Sean Connery punched an adversary into a pile of Red Stripe boxes in a bar in Jamaica.
Kentucky Fried Chicken made a sneak appearance in Goldfinger in 1964, while a BP petrol station had the honour of playing backdrop to an assassination in A View to a Kill.And in Tomorrow Never Dies, Q intercepted Pierce Brosnan’s Bond at an airport disguised as an employee of Avis car hire.

STUART HALL AND CULTURAL STUDIES

RECEPTION THEORY focuses on the scope in textual analysis for 'negotiation' and 'opposition' on the part of the audience. This means that a text ( a book, film, advert, poster or other creative work) is not passively accepted by the audience but that the reader / viewer interprets the meanings of the texts based on their individual cultural background and life experiences.
Stuart Hall’s encoding decoding model; dominant, negotiated and oppositional readings; why Hall says he studies culture instead of media specifically, and media hegemony

Summary: The mass media function to maintain the ideology of those already in power. Corporate controlled media provide the dominant discourse of the day that frames interpretation of events. Critics should seek not only to interpret culture, but to change it. Media audiences do have the capacity to resist hegemonic influence.
The mass media impose the dominant ideology on the rest of society, and the connotations of words and images are fragments of ideology that perform an unwitting service for the ruling elite.
Simply put: The media only speaks for those who have power—mass media shapes our perceptions in society. Corporations control media and thus, they can interpret things the way they wish. They do this by encoding messages in, for example, an advertisement. But, Stuart Hall says we can reject these messages, which is why he doesn’t really study media, but rather studies cultures. Meanings come from discourse (social interactions with one another) and so he’d rather study how these meanings develop from discourse.
Encoding: the process in which the media puts messages into an advertisement.
Decoding: the process in which we, the audience, formulate meaning. Meaning can be formed in 3 ways.
1) Dominant reading: this is what the media wants us to have, also called a preferred reading.
2) Negotiated reading: this is when I’d accept the advertisement, but not in the way it’s shown.
3) Oppositional reading: this is when I reject it completely.

G322 TELEVISION DRAMA: REPRESENTATIONS OF ETHNICITY

Extract from Hotel Babylon BBC (January 2010 exam) Accessed on YouTube  CLICK HERE TO WATCH

Discuss the ways in which the extract constructs representations of ethnicity using the following:

·      Camera shots, angles, movement and composition

·      Editing

·      Sound

·      Mise-en-scène

The exam allows 2 hours for this analysis. After completing the task, we look at the examiner's report. The examiner drew particular attention to candidates' failure to analyse editing:

 'As with the January and June 2009 series, this technical area proved to be the most problematic for candidates and the one technical area of analysis that was often omitted in candidates’ answers. Many candidates ignored editing altogether and only a few of those that did cover it were able to make meaningful links to representations by, for example, showing how the editing created particular viewpoints which we are encouraged to identify with or how screen time indicated the shifting relationship between characters in the sequence, for example through the discussion of the rule of thirds.  

'Most candidates made reference to the pace of editing to reflect the frantic situation and emotions of the immigrant characters. The use of shot reverse shot and cuts to aid continuity were mentioned by many candidates, as was the use of cross cutting between the two situations to enhance tension. More able candidates demonstrated the ability to link the use of editing to the representation of characters, such as the use of long and short takes to represent power and the use of eye line matches to reinforce a sense of dominance. Most candidates who addressed editing were able to address the type of transitions used and could comment on the pace of the editing.  There was evidence on occasion where students engaged with the rule of thirds and juxtaposition of characters in the narrative using editing devices, which is very encouraging.  

'However, many candidates’ responses seem to be very limited in address of the issues of editing and all too frequently it was absent from their responses – which does not enable candidates to reach a level four on the marking criteria for the use of examples.  Weaker candidates often omitted any discussion of editing or offered quite simplistic accounts of how editing was used, for example in the use the shot reverse shot sequence between characters. A common error in the terminology of editing continues to be with the use of jump cuts.'

ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL

Open creative brief: 

• listen to the lyrics of Another Brick In The Wall (Pink Floyd). 
• Pick images to accompany this track 
• The aim is to present it in a new light and bring it up to date.
• You could go with the preferred reading and be anti-Establishment (children should not be thrust into subject positions)
• You could subvert the preferred reading and challenge the lyrics (children need education but many do not receive it)

Another Brick In The Wall 

 We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
 
 

JOHN BERGER: WAYS OF SEEING

Venus (Roger Michell 2007)

Daniel Chandler in Notes on the Male Gaze writes:

In Ways of Seeing, a highly influential book based on a BBC television series, John Berger observed that ‘according to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome - men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at’ (Berger 1972, 45, 47). 

Berger argues that in European art from the Renaissance onwards women were depicted as being ‘aware of being seen by a [male] spectator’, Berger adds that at least from the seventeenth century, paintings of female nudes reflected the woman’s submission to ‘the owner of both woman and painting’. He noted that ‘almost all post-Renaissance European sexual imagery is frontal - either literally or metaphorically - because the sexual protagonist is the spectator-owner looking at it’ . He advanced the idea that the realistic, ‘highly tactile’ depiction of things in oil paintings and later in colour photography (in particular where they were portrayed as ‘within touching distance’), represented a desire to possess the things (or the lifestyle) depicted . This also applied to women depicted in this way . 

Writing in 1972, Berger insisted that women were still ‘depicted in a different way to men - because the "ideal" spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him’. In 1996 Jib Fowles still felt able to insist that ‘in advertising males gaze, and females are gazed at’ (Fowles 1996, 204). And Paul Messaris notes that female models in ads addressed to women ‘treat the lens as a substitute for the eye of an imaginary male onlooker,’ adding that ‘it could be argued that when women look at these ads, they are actually seeing themselves as a man might see them’ (Messaris 1997, 41). 

Such ads ‘appear to imply a male point of view, even though the intended viewer is often a woman. So the women who look at these ads are being invited to identify both with the person being viewed and with an implicit, opposite-sex viewer’ . We may note that within this dominant representational tradition the spectator is typically assumed not simply to be male but also to be heterosexual, over the age of puberty and often also white.

LAURA MULVEY: VISUAL PLEASURE AND NARRATIVE CINEMA

Marilyn Munroe

Daniel Chandler writes about film spectatorship and Laura Mulvey's gaze theory:

'Film has been called an instrument of the male gaze, producing representations of women, the good life, and sexual fantasy from a male point of view' (Schroeder 1998, 208). The concept derives from a seminal article called Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema by Laura Mulvey, a feminist film theorist. It was published in 1975 and is one of the most widely cited and anthologized (though certainly not one of the most accessible) articles in the whole of contemporary film theory. Laura Mulvey did not undertake empirical studies of actual filmgoers, but declared her intention to make ‘political use’ of Freudian psychoanalytic theory (in a version influenced by Jacques Lacan) in a study of cinematic spectatorship. 

Such psychoanalytically-inspired studies of 'spectatorship' focus on how 'subject positions' are constructed by media texts rather than investigating the viewing practices of individuals in specific social contexts. Mulvey notes that Freud had referred to (infantile) scopophilia - the pleasure involved in looking at other people’s bodies as (particularly, erotic) objects.



Rita Hayworth

In the darkness of the cinema auditorium it is notable that one may look without being seen either by those on screen by other members of the audience. Mulvey argues that various features of cinema viewing conditions facilitate for the viewer both the voyeuristic process of objectification of female characters and also the narcissistic process of identification with an ‘ideal ego’ seen on the screen. She declares that in patriarchal society ‘pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female’ (Mulvey 1992, 27). 

This is reflected in the dominant forms of cinema. Conventional narrative films in the ‘classical’ Hollywood tradition not only typically focus on a male protagonist in the narrative but also assume a male spectator. ‘As the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look onto that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look, both giving a satisfying sense of omnipotence’.



Halle Berry

Traditional films present men as active, controlling subjects and treat women as passive objects of desire for men in both the story and in the audience, and do not allow women to be desiring sexual subjects in their own right. Such films objectify women in relation to ‘the controlling male gaze’, presenting ‘woman as image’ (or ‘spectacle’) and man as ‘bearer of the look’. Men do the looking; women are there to be looked at. The cinematic codes of popular films ‘are obsessively subordinated to the neurotic needs of the male ego’. It was Mulvey who coined the term 'the male gaze'.

Read more »

TV DRAMA ANALYSIS

CREATE YOUR BLOG

1. Create your own blog using Blogger
2. Add the class blog and your group's blogs to it
3. Add the gadget 'search engine'
4. First post: your poster MY MEDIA made using Comic Life. Explain how you made it.
   
5. Second post: your film opening 'CHERIE': MAKING A FILM OPENING .Explain how you made it. Refer to seeing Delicatessen (Directed by Marc Caro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet 1991)
6. Create your own Twitter account and 'follow' my suggested links. 
7. Tweet using Twitter ( on a media related topic only, e.g. Skyfall's premiere, your views on the last film that you have seen, the iPhone 5, music/bands/gigs, new technology, TV programmes.....)
8. Third post: a screen shot of your first 5 Twitter posts.
9. Add Twitter gadget to your blog.
   

FOLLOW ON TWITTER
First, we learn why the journalist Alan Rusbridger values Twitter in The Guardian newspaper here.

TWITTER

You are setting up a Twitter page and you will continue to use it this year. What for?

• To communicate instantly and effectively with the rest of your group and your class. You will share your thinking as well as attach information / hyperlinks / pictures that relate to your work.
• To receive new information quickly. It's an amazing human search engine that harnesses the crowd. You'll follow all sorts of movers and shakers. use the hashtag to follow specific threads.
• To start a conversation with strangers as well as friends. Fresh ideas when you're thinking about something.
• To create a community of people interested in what you are interested in: invite responses; follow up ideas.
• To learn from some great minds and experienced teachers in various Media fields. If something interests them, it may well be of interest to us. 'Follow' wisely.
• To invite feedback for your evaluation question. You may get a completely fresh, honest opinion. That's worth having. Potentially, you have access to millions of people.

PREP Create your Twitter account.

'Follow' institutions and individuals who will widen your understanding of media issues.

FilmEdu ‏ @filmedusites

BFI ‏ @BFI

Film4.com ‏ @Film4 

Art of the Title ‏ @ArtoftheTitle 

Mark Kermode ‏ @KermodeMovie

Film London ‏ @Film_London 

TechCrunch ‏ @TechCrunch 

Wired ‏ @wired 

Guardian news ‏ @guardiannews

Total Film ‏ @totalfilm 

Paramount PicturesUK ‏ @ParamountUK 

David Gauntlett ‏ @davidgauntlett 

Julian McDougall ‏ @JulianMcDougall 

Sight & Sound ‏ @SightSoundmag 

Edge ‏ @edgeonline 

Empire Magazine ‏ @empiremagazine 

Universal Pictures ‏ @UniversalPics 

MGMMovies ‏ @MGMMovies 

Britmovie ‏ @Britmovie 
MediaEdu@mediaedusites

G322 RESEARCH INTO BRITISH FILM

PREP due Thursday 11 September YOU WILL PRESENT THIS TO CLASS

1. Pick 3 British films that have been released in the last 18 months or so. Title (directed by.....date e.g. 2011)
2. State which websites you consulted to do your research.
3. Screenshot your films' websites, FaceBook, Twitter pages.
4. For each, write a thoughtful paragraph stating the way in which each film attracts/addresses national, international or global audiences.

CLASSWORK Today we analyse the representation of CLASS in several extracts from Chariots Of Fire ( dir. Hugh Hudson, 1981)

• What is the impact of Vangelis's music in the opening scene of training on the beach?
• How are both Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams constructed as outsiders? (Discuss Abraham's 'welcome' by the college porter; the college masters' scornful observations of the College Dash)
• How is the British Establishment constructed through the use of setting (Cambridge colleges, Kings College Chapel, the freshmen's dinner)
• What is the function of cross cutting from the College Dash to the highland games? What parallels are drawn?

TV DRAMA G322:MARK SCHEME

Your analysis of the scenes from Made In Dagenham is due in today.

Assessment will take place across 3 criteria:

• explanation/analysis/ argument (20 marks)
• use of examples (20 marks)
• use of terminology (10 marks)

A top level answer will meet the following standards:

Explanation/analysis/argument

• shows excellent understanding of the task
• excellent knowledge and understanding of the technical aspects used in the extract
• excellent discussion of the extract’s representations, clearly linked to textual analysis
• clearly relevant to set question

 Use of examples

• offers frequent textual analysis from the extract – award marks to reflect the range and appropriateness of examples

• offers a full range of examples from each technical area
• offers examples which are clearly relevant to the set question

 Use of terminology

•  use of terminology is relevant and accurate

Complex issues have been expressed clearly and fluently using a style of writing appropriate to the complex subject matter. Sentences and paragraphs, consistently relevant, have been well structured, using appropriate technical terminology. There may be few, if any, errors of spelling, punctuation and grammar.