Thursday 25 March 2010

Inglorious Bastards 2009

Audiences expectations on Inglorious Basterds, set during WW2 we expect their to be violence, war, terrorism, hitler, thease are all themes we regognise from war film and have become used to watching when watching a war film.
Brad Pit, the expectations of Brad Pit is hear throb. He is america's star, he represents the hero, handsom, swarve, we expect him to save the day, the audience already has this view of him from his other films before going to see Inglorious Basterds, so it becomes shocking when we see him (although being a hero and defending Jews) being ultra-violent towards nazi's, swearing and killing.
The last expectation the audience will be thinking about is the direction, Quentin Tariteno, his films are to a very high standerd, its always worring for the audience to watch his films and be scared of disapointment, we expect violence from his movies, as well as comedy, and stars.
Overall a film made by this kind of Director with this amount of stars in with the content has a lot of expectation from the Audeince.

Barton Fink 1991

Coen Brothers choose to set this film in Hollywood, self referential to themselves, they are writers working in Hollywood themselves with a Jewish background just as the character Barton Fink. The film follows the writers struggle with writers block, he encounters stereotypical fat loud American businessmen which you find in a lot of Coen Brothers films, The hudsucker proxy for instance uses similar characterisation which gives the films they make a black comedy feeling. The use of John Goodman in their films gives a happier feel but when finding out his true character the audience is left in shock.
The hotel Barton stays in is a reference to the film "the shining" although it isn't parodied, it keeps the audience suspicious of the hotel and of the people who occupy it. When seeing the end of the film it is clear why.
Their is only one main woman in the whole film, and she is placed in the role of love interest. She also ends up dieing, this could show the role of women in the 1945's, or simply that Barton is meant to be alone. Its the representation for the Coen Brothers point of view, their incite into the 1945's. The use of brown and green colours make the film look dull and dreary, pathetic fallacy is used. The most colourful scene is the one on the beach, this is very surreal as we have the same image in our heads from the picture on Barton's wall in his hotel room. This shows his release, he can write again.
The Coen brothers use a lot of the same themes in all their films, Barton Fink and A Serious man have a lot in common, both about a man lost trying to find their way with no help and many awkward situations.

Monday 15 March 2010

Insite into The Coen Brothers directing methods

Practice essay questions: Online Media

Explain how online media affects traditional media platforms?

Online media has had a massive impact on the world especially in the 21st century with the rise of broadband and 3G internet, before all media had to be paid for in the form of newspapers or magazines which have been around since the 1600’s. Play’s had to be paid for as well as films in the 1900’s but now we can get all of this for free or pay a monthly fee, but to the internet provider not the media distributers, this is the largest effect the internet has, the ability to watch films, TV shows, read news practically anything for free. Even the TV channels are providing us with programs to watch for free online, this is a subject of large debate as even people without TV licences get to watch the shows for free on BBCiplayer and 4od, this stops people buying the TV shows from traditional shops such as HMV and the Recent Virgin megastores which has seen the effects already and has shut down. This is a huge part of money making for the shows and cuts there funding by thousands of pounds and is all due to online media. Another problem the internet and online media is causes traditional media platforms is by allowing people to download material online, this can be legal but in many cases very illegal, people copy and upload anything from films to eBooks and it can all be free to some people. This is the biggest problem of online media.
Newspapers are also highly affected by online media, the news is provided everywhere on the internet, and newspaper companies have been forced to start websites to provide information for their newspaper, this is very expensive and has to be updated hourly in some cases costing the newspapers millions of pounds and stopping consumers from buying their product. This is where 3G internet takes its toll, why buy a newspaper when you can read the news on your phone/blackberry?
Not all the affects of online media are bad, promotion of new films and new music is much easier on the internet and can even be free if you know what you’re doing, for new bands there are websites to promote themselves as well as YouTube where they can upload and share new music. The internet is a great way to promote your film, it is a great contributor of advertisement, pop up’s of the films trailer’s as well as free downloads of posters and game demos are all great ways to promote you’re film as well as a website. However as this is good for the film it may become annoying for the internet user. Constant advert pop-up’s can get in the way. But generally it is a good thing for traditional media platforms such as films.
Overall the online media has taken over; around 57.2% of the British population have internet access in their homes, let alone the internet in cafe’s libraries and schools. Some people simply have no need for traditional media platforms such as newspapers’ and magazine’s this is a shame but inevitable and soon they may be lost forever.

Thursday 25 February 2010

Monday 22 February 2010

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We found many ways in which to get audience feedback using a number of different media texts, for example the comment section on youtube, or sending a link via Email, even commenting on the blog and discussions in class.
We had many positive comments for our 3 media texts, the poster, magazine cover and trailer. The most talked about being our film trailer had the most useful comments.
It was important for us to get feedback as sometimes our creative look stooped us from seeing what was wrong with the film. The way people read it was also different from how we saw it.
We've learnt that its important that the story is absolutely clear, there were a few comments about how the plot didn't make sense to them, this was in our first edit when we had not edited Lucy's voice over of "When I met Ben on the Internet, everything changed" This was a key line on telling the audience exactly what the story was about. We've learnt that sound is very difficult and what may sound good to you may not sound good to others, e.g the song we choose went very well with our moving image to us, but other people may have found it to loud or not be able to hear the dialogue over the music.
Another important piece of feedback we had was the comment on the indoor shots, we agree with the comment in that they don't quite flow as well as the outdoor shots, we re-edited them so they were a little shorter, but found that we needed the dialogue and the sense of friendship between Lucy and her friends to be shown in order to give the film a purpose, a reason for being.
Audience feedback also gave us inspiration for our magazine cover, we were advised to have more colour and experiment with media language, catchy quotes to get the readers really interested in our film and magazine. We shouldn't have to focus on just our film, but other films as well in order to sell the magazine, promoting just our film would be bad marketing for the magazine cover, audiences want to compare films with other films. We took this information into account and agreed our magazine cover could be improved on, we've learnt that the magazine cover is a very different type of advertising, its separate from our poster which relies on the picture and tag-lines of our film and the trailer.
Over all we have learnt a lot for audience feedback, it's very important in improving our media project. Its the best way of learning what the audience want and really, its all about targeting them so we can adapt our texts for them.

Monday 8 February 2010

Explain how you used digital technology to adhere to or deviate from the conventions of real media texts?

The media projects that I produced for my a-level are both very different from each other, the first Max Kill is of the horror genre and was the opening of a film whereas Accidentally in love is a trailer of the rom-com genre, the contrast in our texts is very clear and we had to use digital technology to show the reasons why the films genre was the genre.
For Accidentally in love, the most recent of the projects I have made, we spent a long time looking at other rom-com trailers, we found that editing was a big part of the process, the film edited to the beat of the song, we did just that and found a song that went perfectly with the text. When editing it was easy to see where an edit would go, and because half of the trailer was montage we simple had to edit to the beat.
When shooting the film we had to think about what would have come before and after the clips as if we were making the whole film not just a trailer, we came out with some bright colourful shots, the outdoor ones being clearer than the indoor ones because of lighting, we found that in rom-coms it was conventional to show the couple being couple-like, as well as the humorous elements such as Ben’s friend setting him up, its important to show both elements to establish the films genre like conventional media texts do.
With Max kill we couldn’t do a montage of clips, we had to make sure the audience knew what was going on, so that they understood and became involved in the text, we looked at the openings of other horror movies such as Scream and Psycho, the music in these films wouldn’t be as funky and upbeat as a trailer, so we couldn’t cut to the beat, when editing we found that the text should flow into each scene, everything had to fit together, we used cross cutting between the two characters to show the audience what they were both up to so that they could observe them both. When using the camera we had to be more careful with light as we shot at night, we found that in most good horror movies the movie is set at night so we went with this idea and stuck with it even when having to re-shoot because we felt it essential to our genre that the audience be aware of the dangers of night. Night to the audience should become something to be wary of in this film.
With both texts we spent a lot of time researching real films, both trailers and openings to really establish what makes them what they are. Using the technologies was easy once we knew what we were doing, film filming making sure we had the conventional shots, outdoors and bright for the rom-com and dark and dingy for the horror then cutting to the music in the trailer and making the music flow with the shots in the opening.