THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

We analyse the opening of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (David Fincher 2011)

GUIDANCE: FOUNDATION PRODUCTION

Research and Planning

• Have an equal measure of research and planning: see this as an ongoing process, representing the journey of the project. In some cases, there was an imbalance, with lots of research and little planning, or vice versa. The best work is comprehensive and shows strong evidence of candidates reflecting on the process of the production in their blogs. 

• Your research should be a personal exploration and therefore almost always link to YOUR final products.  

•  There must be solid research into titles in particular as well as effective research into codes and conventions which impacted upon the construction of final products

• For film openings, often research from weaker submissions relied too much upon trailers or filmposters, whereas the better work tended to come from candidates who had looked closely atopenings and the ways in which they worked for audiences.
• 
  
  Video work:
  There were several exampes of highly proficient/excellent editing and more work is being done
  on creating an opening with some sense of enigma rather than trying to create a condensed
  narrative. 
  • There was still an over-reliance solely on actors’ names and film title to constitute film
  titles, showing a lack of understanding of the range of titles expected of a film opening and of
  their construction, appearance and timings. 
  • Candidates need to be encouraged to create their own soundscape rather than sourcing an existing well-known track, which is not permitted for this specification.
  • There were some excellent examples of film openings where candidates had clearly worked hard to establish a sense of enigma and atmosphere. 

  • However, more often, candidates did not focus well on what the narrative was. Many film openings ended abruptly; candidates had put some thought into what they wanted to show in the opening sequence but not enough into how they would close the sequence.
  • The combination of effective use of images and sound, titles and lighting worked extremely well in some of the better work. 
  • There were many examples of highly proficient editing and excellent camerawork, the outcome of work on skills development.
  • However, in some cases there was little sense of control of the camera,
  with an over-reliance on zooms and shaky material without tripods. 
  • Mise en scene was oftenwell chosen, but weaker candidates still tended to focus on the chase in the woods. 
  • Some submissions were very short- the target should be as close to two minutes as possible; there is no penalty for being either over-length or significantly under, but candidates cannot expect to do themselves justice in a piece as short as one minute unless it contains immense complexity. 
  • Some openings contained far too much action - centres could advise candidates not to be over-ambitious in this regard.
  • Titles were still often rather limited in terms of understanding of institutional conventions, and often featured non-existent job roles.

 

 

G322 TV DRAMA: FINGERSMITH January 2012

Textual analysis this week is the January 2012 exam extract Fingersmith. You have a copy of the extract, the exam question and the examiner's report. 
Please hand in on PAPER (the header contains your name, the exam extract title / year and today's date). Due Wednesday 11 December

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DISTRIBUTION TECHNIQUES

Distribution techniques: the build up to Spiderman (on release April 2014)

 

48 FPS THE HOBBIT

Director Peter Jackson used 48 frames per second to shoot The Hobbit in order to achieve greater depth and clarity. He hoped that younger audiences would be attracted to view the superlative spectacle on the big screen. Source: Cinema Blend

the effects look amazing; others say it makes the sets look cheap and the whole thing feel like a BBC series. Reactions are definitely mixed, and we will probably have to see a few more movies in the format before we know for sure if 48 fps is sticking around. 

PLANNING: SOUNDTRACK

I researched music for the soundtrack: we want to create thriller sound codes of enigma, suspense and jeopardy.

PLANNING: PINTEREST and INSTACOLLAGE

Using online pinboards like Pinterest, Tumblr and Instacollage helps me to organise my props and the ideas for my mise-en-scene.

Today I worked on the props for the scenes that show our protagonist's obsession with children. We plan to show how she dreams of having a child of her own, a dream that will lead her to kidnap unless brought under control.