TEXTUAL: ANALYSIS: THE HISTORY BOYS

PREP: hand in on paper by Thursday 26th September

Answer the following question using BBCiPlayer to view the opening of a well-known film The History Boys: How does the camerawork, mise-en-scene, sound and editing construct representations of age? MAKE 15 POINTS including completing the sentences below.

THE DVD IS ALSO ON MY DESK for use ONLY IN THE MEDIA STUDIO! Help yourself during a free period.

Mark scheme:
Use of terminology /10
Use of examples /20
Explanation, analysis, argument /30

1. The long tracking shot of the opening cycle ride shows... and is used to...
2. The hymn sung inside the church is an example of diegetic sound that marks the prayer of one of the school boys and serves to... 
4. The wide shot inside the church allows the viewer to see a contrast in ages which underlines the fact that.....and the very low number of worshippers shows....
5. The mise-en-scene inside the Church of England and the grammar school creates an environment that is very Establishment: traditional, conformist and rigid. The boys are represented as individuals who....
6. In the scene in which the boys crowd around the notice board to discover their AL results, there is a series of rapid straight cuts. These are used to..

FILM INDUSTRY: TRENDS

Trends:
Breaking Bad wins its first Emmy award for best drama 24.0
Director David Fincher was named best director for House of Cards, Netflix's remake of the political drama. Mark Lawson interviews Netflix chief Ted Sarandos about current trends.

HERE ON BBC RADIO 4 FRONT ROW

"Last night (23.09.13) the Netflix drama House of Cards became the first internet streamed programme to win an Emmy Award, as its director David Fincher picked up Best Director of a Drama Series. And Breaking Bad, also available on Netflix, won Outstanding Drama Series. Mark talks to Ted Sarandos, head of content for the video on demand service, about the change in how we consume entertainment."

You also have a video of Kevin Spacey discussing House Of Cards below:

Ted Serandos- chief content officer for Netflix was interviewed by Mark Lawson on Front Row (BBC4 radio September 2013 after their success at the Emmys.

Says Sarandos: ‘Netflix - The beauty of this on demand model is that it is whenever you want to watch it, wherever you want to watch it and whatever device you want to watch it on.’ He claims it is good for these long form serialised story telling

Sarandos continues on production and  distribution: ‘We thought a lot about how people would behave in a world where most programming was delivered over the internet, maybe the eureka moment was the advent of YouTube and the idea that you would press play and video would just start. That possibly was the moment where we said this was going to work because if you had to download and manage files for everything you had to watch that didn't seem like a very mainstream behaviour but pushing play is as simple as turning on the television and at some point it would be cheaper to stream a movie then to put a post stick stamp on it and put it in the post, and that was the other kind of reality check moment of when we should be getting into this in a meaningful way.’

‘We can forecast a potential audience size better than anybody. You can take the element of a show, the massive amounts of data hat we have about viewing behaviour and say that if this show is executed well, this show with these elements, that the potential audience for this show is x, and therefore we should invest x against it, that we can be right more often then wrong.’

‘We had the viewing data and rating data from our subscribers and the original House of Cards, we had the viewings and ratings data of David Fincher’s entire body of work , Kevin Spacey entire body of work, the history of every political thriller ever produced and we crunched all of that data to determine that if the show is executed well then the audience potential justified a very large investment in that show. ‘

‘There’s no passive viewing on Netflix: you press play and you push stop and you watched everything.’