PLANNING: TRELLO

I have created a Trello account which is a very useful organizational online tool so that I know what I have done and what needs to be done. It helps me keep track of my work and what I am doing. 

Below is a screen shot of my Trello which I will update as I work.

SEPTEMBER CHECKLIST

PREP: Three tasks by Monday, please. You can use the class blog and those of previous students for guidance.

1. Create Twitter account and 'follow' relevant media people like Pete Fraser (pete'smediablog), Jenny Grahame, MediaMagazine, Julian McDougall, Learnaboutfilm, OCR Media and Film, Casey Neistat, Film School Shorts, Future Shorts, Disney, Warner Bros, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, MGM, British Council Film, NationalFilmTVSchool, Sony, Edusites, ScreenInternational, Film London and so on...
2. Complete first analysis of a film opening, with illustration, using The Art of the Title site.
3. On PowerPoint, complete 2nd analysis of a film opening, with illustration, using The Art of the Title site. Sign up for SlideShare and upload your 2nd analysis to your blog.

NEXT PREPS: (in case you wish to get ahead) Ensure that you have posted them on your blog.
set Monday (for Tuesday): Read up about Disney (one of the Big Six) and familiarize yourself with some of their products, in order to support your response to the exam question on the film industry that we discussed in class today.
set Tuesday (for Wednesday): Find out how to use Emaze and complete 4th analysis of a film opening, with illustration, using The Art of the Title site
set Wednesday (for Thursday): Now that you have researched how film opening sequences work, you can summarize your knowledge of this genre's codes and conventions. You sign up for Piktochart and organize your learning about film openings into a Piktochart. Title: Film Openings Codes & Conventions.

SIXTH FORM REVIEWS Your forthcoming grade will be based on

• your oral work

• written work such as The Night Manager and Hustle

• your blog work (see Trello list): we aim to complete September tasks by half term!

Today, create a Trello. Screenshot it and make a post on your blog. Title of post: PLANNING: TRELLO

Start to use the Trello and take another screenshot. Update the blogpost with the second screenshot.

THE BRIEF

I am doing the video brief:

Main task: the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source.

TV DRAMA : HUSTLE

ANALYSIS of GENDER using the OCR exam paper for 2011.


Answer the question below, with detailed reference to specific examples from the extract

only.

HUSTLE Extract here

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

  • Camera shots, angles, movement and composition

  • Editing

  • Sound 

  • Mise-en-scene [50

LOVE ACTUALLY and DIRTY PRETTY THINGS

Watch the opening sequences of Love Actually and Dirty Pretty Things to analyse contrasting genre codes and conventions. 

Write a series of paragraphs based on contrasting points drawing attention to how genre is signaled through such issues as:

• mise-en-scene (setting)
• lighting
• editing
• representation of the airport in each film opening
• representation of the protagonist in each film opening (Okwe the taxi driver and doctor; Hugh Grant as the narrator / Prime Minister and Bill Nighy as Billy Mack the singer)
• contrasting representations of London in Dirty Pretty Things (drive into London and the hotel guest-side and below stairs)
• soundtrack: music, voiceover and dialogue

Source material:
Prime Minister: Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around.

RESEARCH: THE ART OF THE TITLE

We watch then analyse an opening sequence, drawing attention to the following codes and conventions:

• GENRE  how it is signalled
• TITLES  who is mentioned in the credits and how the credits are presented
• PRODUCTION COMPANY
• MISE-EN-SCENE period, colours, props
• EDITING sound and vision
• NARRATIVE and CHARACTERS how is the audience drawn in

PREP You are going to do textual analysis of an opening sequence. You may use PowerPoint which we will take into SlideShare when it is ready.

You may find it easiest to use the 9 frames selected in The Art Of The Title and analyse each frame in a separate slide in PowerPoint.
Start with a screenshot of the nine frames together with the title of the film.
Then copy/paste the first frame into slide 2 and use one of the bullet points above to analyse it. 
The examiner is looking for 'critical awareness'. This means analysis not just description (why it is done like that). An example follows below:

DAYS OF HEAVEN (Terrence Malick, 1978)

Set in 1916 and telling the story of a tragic love triangle, this film evokes both the period and genre in its opening sequence, which reflects Malick's knowledge of photography and willingness to use little studio lighting. 


The film's cinematography by Morricone models itself on silent films, which often used natural light. Malick also drew inspiration from painters such as Johannes Vermeer, Edward Hopper (particularly his House by the Railroad), and Andrew Wyeth, as well as photo-reporters from the turn of the century, such as Alfred Stieglitz, Weegee (Arthur Fellig) and Jacob Riis. The street scenes capture the urban poverty of the period and explain the desperation of the film's protagonists whose future is precarious . 


We have studied Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange as an example of the power of photography as reportage and its use in social change; the close-up of the infant's and young woman's faces exert a strong appeal and tug on our heart strings. The films concerns with social difference and the need for financial security are hinted at by the stills of the girl in the wedding veil and the three young women drinking tea intercut by shots of manual workers of various kinds.


The subject matter gradually moves from the urban to more of the rural, reflecting the narrative trajectory of the film.


The enchanting orchestral music echoes the use of musical accompaniment in silent film to suggest emotion.


Period colors (brown, mahogany and dark wood for the interiors) and period costumes from used fabrics and old clothes to avoid the artificial look of studio-made costumes. The colours create the illusion of period photographs, street journalism: an essential part of creating verisimilitude or 'real life' on screen. As a result, the footage is imbued with the quality of documentary truth, of scientific 'fact' which allows the viewer to engage fully with the world of the film. 


Art of the Title comments: Firing a mix of critical thought and mesmerizing immersion, Dan Perri's title design for Terrence Malick's Days of Heavencombines street level photojournalism and credit-to-character inferences drawing the curious eye at will, the ears aswoon with "Carnival of the Animals - The Aquarium" by Camille Saint-Saens. You are nowhere if not here, with these people, in the Gilded Age of American history.'


'And then the last shot of the opening title sequence] subtlety shifts us from photos and into the world of the film. In a masterful move, the last shot perfectly replicates the same look of the previous images, but...it is one of the actors, Linda Manz (in a photograph taken by Edie Baskin.) It’s through her perspective that we will take this journey so it is fitting that she is the one who bridges the gap from the opening credits into the first shot of the film'. Read the analysis by Cinema Sights

WOMEN ON TV: THE GOOD WIFE

The Good Wife (CBS/C4: 2009-present)

The Good Wife has run for seven seasons. Alicia Florrick is a politician's wife who has to return to work after her unfaithful husband has been imprisoned for paying for prostitutes with public money. She is constructed literally as 'the good wife' who stands by her man at a press conference, shoulders her domestic responsibilities for her two children singe-handed after his conviction and also holds down a skilled job as a respected lawyer.

As well as Alicia, the series features a powerful female boss, Diane, who holds her own in the cut-throat  world of the boardroom where she plots to remove her opposition and secures her own position of power. She is so successful that she is eventually on track to become a judge. Diane is childless and intially uninterested in marriage.

An unconventional female representation is that of Kalinda, the law firm's private detective who is fearless in uncover investigations and unafraid to use her sexual power to manipulate people. Bold, cunning, intelligent and ambitious, Kalinda nevertheless nurses a dark secret: before she ever met Alicia, whom she comes to serve devotedly, she slept with Alicia's husband. Kalida values her independence and guards he privacy ferociously. She trusts no-one.

All three representations are of strong, accomplished women in the world of work. Only Alicia is seen in the domestic sphere.