Friday, 11 May 2012
Welcome!
Hey, I'm Joely Holder, candidate number 6668, and this is my media evaluation blog! All of the questions are on this page, so please scroll down to see them all. Thanks!
Thursday, 10 May 2012
Wednesday, 9 May 2012
QUESTION 2
We wanted to make our film realistic, and show that teenagers aren’t just crazy drug taking sex addicts, as many teen horror films portray them as. We wanted to show that they’re all different, some are sensible, some are silly, etc, but also give them some depth. Representation in films is mostly done for profit- what audiences will pay to see, but could also be said to be a representation of how society sees them. Teens are represented throughout the media as lazy, or trouble making, and we wanted our film to represent how we know our generation to be, which is more then the typical steroetypes.
This could also be shown in the race of characters in films. Having white characters could be a technique to draw in more audiences, as production companies and film makers believe white characters will appeal to the audience more. This results in films containing mostly white characters, with a few token people of another race to represent minorities. However, it could also be said to represent what society deems as most desirable. The rest of our film would contain a range of races, which we felt would really represent society today. Even subconsciously, people are drawn towards films that they feel are related to their own lives. Our mix of races is what we, as film makers, identify with, but for audiences that it isn't representative of, there are other factors for them to identify with. As our target audience is mostly teens, they can still identify with the gender and age of some of the characters. However, in our opening sequence we only had one character, who was a white blonde girl, generic to horror films.
AGE
The girl in our film is about 17 years old. She represents teenagers as being irresponsible. She is alone in the woods at night, apparently without anything to defend herself. The use of close ups of her looking scared, combined with a high angle shot, show how silly she was in allowing this to happen. Although high angle shots are linked with power, and authority, in this shot it makes her appear vulnerable, as her throat is exposed, and her she is looking aimlessly around. Also, shots taken apparently from a hidden person (see second image), make you realize in how much danger she could be.
GENDER
She follows a typical gender representation: Girls run away, boys fight. This is shown in most horror films, such as Scream. As soon as the girl hears a noise, she runs away as fast as she can. A medium long shot allows us to see her body turning. The pace of the film then picks up as there are more cuts. Combined with her body movements this shows her fear. She falls over and trips alot; this is a convention in horror films, where girls can't seem to run without falling over!
This increases tension and shows how frantic she is. The camera does not move in the shots of her, she either moves past, away, or towards the camera. Running towards the camera, and thus towards the audience gives the audience the sense of the girl's panic. When she falls over in front of the camera, she is literally falling at the audiences feet, which shows just how vulnerable and lost she is, and allows the audience to feel her fear.
The shot from the camera in her hand of the ground as she runs is also a device to show her fear. The camera jiggles around widely, making the audience feel as disorientated as she is. this is a device first used by the Blair Witch Project to allow the audience to feel the isolation and disorientation felt by the characters.
BLAIR WITCH PROJECT
OUR PROJECT
She represents girls as being lost and easily scared. This is shown as she starts to panic when she finds she is alone. Close up’s of her face as she looks for her friend show this, as does her voice, which sounds scared. The lighting also helps the audience to see and understand that she’d be scared. All around her is pitch black, with only her face illuminated with low key lighting, which makes the audience feel sorry for her and understand why she’d be scared. The lighting also makes her appear pale, like the blood has drained from her face in fear. As soon as she hears a noise she runs off as fun as she can.
SOCIAL CLASS
Although the setting is completely ambiguous, the girls voice is slightly posh, which hints towards her being middle class. This could go towards the representation that middle class teenagers are always out looking for fun and partying. The fact that she lists names of hers friends, shows that she went there with more people, indicating this was a group of young people out to have fun. This is ironic, as in the search for fun she ends up being abducted. Shots of her with a pitch black background show how completely alone she is.
Tuesday, 8 May 2012
Monday, 7 May 2012
Sunday, 6 May 2012
Saturday, 5 May 2012
Friday, 4 May 2012
QUESTION 7
For our preliminary task, the only camera we had to film with was of very low quality. Because of this, we decided to use a member of the group’s iPhone to film it. Because of this, it was not possible to use a tripod, so the finished product was shaky. We also had problems with matching up shots, as the camera didn’t stay in one place. This was a big problem, as the shots felt like a nasty jump from one to another as they didn’t match up. We knew from this that using a tripod would be very important.
We also didn’t use our storyboard correctly. We did a very basic plan, which didn’t detail every single shot. We also changed our ideas throughout. However, this led to us breaking the 180 degree rule, and switching sides on a shot of one person. This looked clunky and ruined any professionalism of our film. It also stops suspension of audience’s belief, and reminded them that this is a film. We also didn’t plan framing properly. For example, in a medium close up of the mafia boss, we cut him off at the shoulders, which didn’t look right.
We had to use a lot of lighting in our preliminary task, and this prepared us a bit for our main film. However, we learnt that we needed a stand for our light, as the light moved in our film, which lost some realism of it. We also realised how important the lighting was, as when we filmed darker scenes, the shots were grainy and flat. We learnt that for our final, we would need to do a practise runs through of each shot and where the lighting should come from, in order for the whole scene to be properly lit throughout.
We learnt the importance of time and having extra time spare if needed. In our preliminary task we weren’t able to start shooting straight away, as we didn’t have the right setting for it. We were then left with only an hour to film it, which meant at the end, we could only use the scene’s we’d already shot. In our opening sequence, we hired the light out for 3 days, so if we couldn’t film it all in one go, we had extra time. This proved useful, as our first day of shooting turned out to be far too dark, but we had another day to get it done.
Similarly, we learnt the importance of doing a few takes of each shot, in order to get the best one possible. Often, we would find that the lighting wasn’t quite right, or the actor laughed, but in another shot it all worked.
Although it ended up mostly irrelevant, as we filmed in the woods, which we couldn’t tamper with much, we realised how important mise-en-scene is to a scene. In our preliminary task, the ‘mafia boss’ was in a room with objects that would be very unlikely to actually be there. This distracted from the authenticity of the film, and may make it amusing rather than serious (although it was humorous anyway).
We realise post-its aren’t very ganster!
Wednesday, 18 April 2012
Tuesday, 27 March 2012
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