CONSUMING PASSIONS: THE STORY OF MILLS AND BOON

In the big grey file on the cabinet in front of you, under the white board, is the disc that we started watching yesterday: 'Consuming Passions, the story of Mills and Boon'. Please take it out and use one of the Macs at the back of the classroom to finish watching it. 

Then make written notes on how women are represented. PUT THE DISC BACK where you found it at the end of the session. You can start it again as you make notes.

Characters in Consuming Passions (written by Emma Frost, BBC4 2004)
Mary 1920s (marries Charles Boon, emotionally neglected by him)
Janet 1974 (dowdy typist, avid Mills and Boon fan, infatuated with the arrogant surgeon; becomes a full time writer as Raquel Pretty)
Kirstie 2008 (university lecturer, in passionless relationship with Nick, courted by Jake)

NOTES: as usual, on

• how the mise-en-scene constructs representations of women (their clothes, gesture, posture; where they live; their environments; props; their fantasy worlds; lighting)
• how the camerawork constructs representations of women (shot types, angles, camera movement)
• how the sound constructs representations of women (what they say, their accents, their silences; voice-overs; the soundtrack; ambient sounds; non-diegetic sounds)
• how the editing constructs representations of women (how the story is told by, for example, transitions from the real world to the fantasy world, how the writer projects herself into the persona of Violetta Kiss; match cuts between her reality and her fantasy; the intertwined stories of the three women delivered through transitions between their lives)

PRELIMINARY EXERCISE

On Wednesday and Thursday students doing the thriller brief plan, film, capture and edit their preliminary task.

Continuity task: filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room, sitting down in a chair opposite another character with whom she/he exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180% rule.

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.’

FILM INDUSTRY: NEW TECHNOLOGIES

We take as a case study Life In A Day (Ridley Scott 2011) as an example of film production that has been crowd sourced through through social media then made and distributed in the same way.

The trailer: HERE
"On July 24, 2010, thousands of people around the world uploaded videos of their lives to YouTube to take part in Life in a Day, a historic cinematic experiment to create a documentary film about a single day on earth.

Now, it's time to watch their story unfold on the big screen.

Directed by Oscar winner Kevin Macdonald, Life in a Day wowed audiences at the Sundance, Berlin and SXSW film festivals and during its YouTube world premiere in January. This summer, you'll be able to watch the movie in a theatre near you." 

Big Screen, Little Screen: Reading Films Online 
Roy Stafford Media Magazine (issue 45 September 2013 p.20-23)
We study an article about the ways in which reading films may be affected by the platform which the audience chooses.

• payment and legitimacy
• a predisposition to read in particular ways
• reading the unfamiliar: 35 Rhums
• crowds, preferences & social media 

In the exam, you will remember to bring in some evidence of your own media habits and preferences as well as make reference to trends and future developments or shifts.

Trends:
Breaking Bad wins its first Emmy award for best drama 24.09.13
Director David Fincher was named best director for House of Cards, Netflix's remake of the political drama. 

EDITING IN iMOVIE

Today we edit the footage that you have filmed, experimenting with editing the timeline, transitions, cuts, titles, sound. 

PREP You spend an additional 50 minutes in the studio continuing your editing.

STUDYING FILM LANGUAGE: PERFUME

Test first, then textual analysis of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer