THE GOOD WIFE, LIE TO ME & FRANKIE AND GRACE: TV DRAMA

We analyse the representation of gender, sexuality, disability, ethnicity, regionality and age in three television drama texts. We identify terminology (camerawork, editing, mise-en-scene, sound) and how film language constructs representations, using our 3-point exam strategy.

How does the mise-en-scene create the representation of gender and ethnicity?

 

How do tracking shots construct power? How do motivated edits reveal intelligence and assertiveness? How is gender constructed through dialogue and costume?

Cal Lightman is constructed as boorish and provocative, rather an anti-hero at times. How and why?

FACEBOOK

Create as a group (or just design in PhotoShop yourself) a Facebook account for your group's film. If it is live (best) keep it up to date and each member of the group should take responsibility for uploading some content. Post under Evaluation q. 5 Attracting and addressing audiences. Justify your strategy by drawing attention to the similarities between your work and a real FB film page for A Field in England. This film was special in that it was released on 5 July 2013 on multiple platforms simultaneously, including cinemas, home media and video on demand.

Add caption

TUMBLR

Create a Tumblr social media connection with your audience for Evaluation question 5 Attracting and addressing audiences. Here is the Tumblr for Wolverine which built a strong relationship with its target audience prior to release. Post your work under
Evaluation question 5 Attracting and addressing audiences.

SNAPCHAT

The Shorty Awards recognise the best social media campaigns for attracting and addressing audiences. Wolverine was the first home entertainment campaign on the social platform Snapchat. Use Snapchat to publicise your film. Alternatively, mock up (using PhotoShop)  the design of a campaign using Snapchat that you would use to publicise your film. Explain why you would attract and address your audience in this way (quoting your research into The Shorty Awards and Wolverine's use of Snapchat). Post under Evaluation question 5 Attracting and addressing your audience.

INSTAGRAM

Create an Instagram account for your film for your Evaluation question 5 Attracting and addressing audiences. Upload images. Copy professional practices such as the Instagram for Suffragette. Take screenshots and place them in the answer space for evaluation question 5. Explain also that fans use hashtags to create communities of fans, which is an example of viral marketing. For example, #wolverine gathers together over a million fan pics!

TWITTER

Make a Twitter feed like this one for your film (link opens so that you can scroll down). Keep it up to date. Take screenshots at different times. Post the screenshots on your Evaluation question 5 Attracting and addressing audiences. Even if another member of your group is making a Twitter page for your group film, there is nothing to stop you going for the extra marks by doing it yourself!

TWITTER

Last year you set 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 interets them, it may well be of interest to us. 'Follow' wisely.
• To invite feedback: your third Evaluation question. You may get a completely fresh, honest opinion. That's worth having. Potentially, you have access to millions of people.
• To track the band that you have chosen for your promo pack.

See why the journalist Alan Rusbridger values Twitter in The Guardian newspaper here.

Movies and Social Media: Marketing films with new media Why filmmakers use social media: article by Caitlin Neely 03.06.15

Pete Fraser writes:
So who is worth following for A level Media?

@julianmcdougall wrote the OCR textbook and he tends to use his tweets to send out useful links for the A2 exam in particular

@henryjenkins is the American academic who wrote 'Convergence Culture' and has done a lot of research on fans

@ainnucci Armando Iannucci the creator of 'The Thick of It' and Alan Partridge, amongst much more, is always amusing and interesting


@petesmediablog is me- I don't say much but you might find other people I follow quite interesting!


Get yourself on there, add a few people then have a hunt around for comedians, actors, film-makers, politicians, journalists you find interesting. It could open you up to a whole load of interesting stuff!  

CINEMA 2015: A YEAR OF CHANGE AND REINVENTION

From The Guardian 
We look at cinema in the year 2015 and note in particular:

• blockbusters / franchises / superhero films
• independent cinema / arthouse cinema 
• Kodak 'saved' so past and present technologies co-exist (35 mm film stock)
• trends such as the advent of laser projection has helped to overcome some of the light-loss issues traditionally associated with stereoscopy. 
• women filmmakers
• trends such as animation: more than any other area of movie-making, animation demonstrates perfectly how the old and the new, past and future, can coexist. Aardman’s Shaun the Sheep finding a firm foothold in the multiplexes, Tomm Moore’s Song of the Sea taking inspiration from the hand-crafted 2D artistry of Ghibli , and Laika studios continuing to blur the line between the physical and the digital with scrungy delights like The Boxtrolls, it’s hard to remember a time when ancient skills and newfangled advances were so intertwined. Inside Out: a possible contender for best film 2016?
• trends such as simultaneous release (theatrical and Netflix) Beasts of No Nation
• for example, Ben Wheatley’s ground-breaking A Field in England, released simultaneously across a range of platforms (free-to-air TV, video-on-demand, DVD, cinemas) “enabling viewers to decide how, where and when to view the film”.

A FIELD IN ENGLAND

ESTABLISHING SHOT & MASTER SHOT

From FilmEscape

TREME: ETHNICITY

View the extract here. The focus is on the representations of ethnicity.
You analyse the extract under exam conditions and hand in your written answer for marking. The examiners' report is below: