Skillset - business

Really good website to help me understand the production process involved in a film.

Production Process Flow Chart

Production Process Flow Chart

Representation:

Representations

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Notes on Eva Mendez image

Features:

Hair: Messed up, no attempt to sort it out, wet, post-coital.

Look: looking away from camera, looks distracted, looks away (middle distance), doesn't care whose watching

Arms: authoritive, hands on hips, dominant

Stance: Sunbathing

Body: Sweating, looks more sexy, perfect - maybe too small

Lingerie: draws attention to her, attracts attention to the clothing which is being advertised.

Legs:  Good legs, open - sexual element, inviting

Shoes: alongside lingerie - 'kinky'

Feet: On tip toes, to look taller, makes legs look longer

Posture: Open stance, autoritive (hands on hips)

The Male Gaze Lesson

Marjorie Ferguson vocabulary:

1. Chocolate Box: half or full-smile, lips together or slightly parted, teeth barely visible, full or three-quarter face to camera. Projected mood: blandly pleasing, warm bath warmth, where uniformity of features in their smooth perfection is devoid of uniqueness or of individuality.
2. Invitational: emphasis on the eyes, mouth shut or with only a hint of a smile, head to one side or looking back to camera. Projected mood: suggestive of mischief or mystery, the hint of contact potential rather than sexual promise, the cover equivalent of advertising’s soft sell.
3. Super-smiler: full face, wide open toothy smile, head thrust forward or chin thrown back, hair often wind-blown. Projected mood: aggressive, ‘look-at-me’ demanding, the hard sell, ‘big come-on’ approach.
4. Romantic or Sexual: a fourth and more general classification devised to include male and female ‘two-somes’; or the dreamy, heavy-lidded, unsmiling big-heads, or the overtly sensual or sexual. Projected moods: possible ‘available’ and definitely ‘available’.

Trevor Millum vocabulary:

1. Seductive: similar to the cool/level look in many respects - the eyes are less wide, perhaps shaded, the expression is less reserved but still self-sufficient and confident; milder versions may include a slight smile.
2. Carefree: nymphlike, active, healthy, gay, vibrant, outdoor girl; long unrestrained outward-flowing hair, more outward-going than the above, often smiling or grinning.
3. Practical: concentrating, engaged on the business in hand, mouth closed, eyes object-directed, sometimes a slight frown; hair often short or tied back
4. Comic: deliberately ridiculous, exaggerated, acting the fool, pulling faces for the benefit of a real or imaginary audience, sometimes close to a sort of archness.
5. Catalogue: a neutral look as of a dummy, artificial, waxlike; features may be in any position, but most likely to be with eyes open wide and a smile, but the look remains vacant and empty; personality has been removed. (Millum 1975, 97-8)

Notes on Freddie Ljumberg image:

We were asked to write notes about several points on the following image, about several points:


Hair: Short, 1 all over, more masculine
Look: Interdigective, inviting, determined, engaging
Face: Not much emotion, strong jaw line, 'chiselled', high cheek bones
Lips: Pouting slightly, shining
Stubble: Masculine, rugged
Body: Sweating, more sexual, attractive skin tone, possibly just worked
Abs: Toned, draws attention away from face towards rest of image
Pubic area: Almost shown off, almost 'teasing' female audience - shaved
Hand: suggestive, cheeky, fist - aggresive
Underwear: Tight, 'Calvin Klein' - advertising
Tatoo: sexual, ferocious, animal
Necklace: Relates to females, sensitive, religious
Background colour: Red! sexual, romantic, passionate
Bicep: Large bicep, attractive look
Bar: suggests he's just worked out

Who is the image aimed at? Men, to get sales
Who does it appeal to? Women, due to the context of the image. Also metrosexual and homosexual men, as they would have looked at the image and aspire to change themselves to look like the model on the advert.

Notes on lesson:

The Gaze: Used in film theory in the 1970's to refer to the ways viewers look at images of people in any visual medium.

'The Male Gaze': Can be described as a feminist reference to the voyeuristic way in which men look at women.

Forms of Gaze:

• The spectator's gaze
• The intra-diegetic gaze
• The direct address to the viewer
• The look of the camera (usually in the place of where a man stands)

The fourth wall: Used to involve the audience. Where the character looks at the audience (camera) and in some cases starts to interact with the audience.

Laura Mulvey- The Male Gaze:

• "Visual pleasure and narrative cinema" (1975)
• Active male/passive female
• Women as image/man as bearer of the look
• Voyeuristic
• Fetishistic

Critism to Mulveys theory:
Only directed towards heterosexual males and not towards women.

Shameless Link

Clicking on the image above will send you to the YouTube link which shows Shameless episode 1, which is what I have written about in my last post. (see below)

How are regional identity and sexuality represented in the opening sequence of Shameless episode 1?

How Are Regional Identity and Sexuality Represented in the Opening Sequence of Shameless Episode 1

Fact Sheet for Warp Films

Media Essay Question

Overview of how cuts in budget affect production process

When our original budget of £10,000,000 was cut by a third, we fist realised that we had to change our actors from probable B list actors to Z list actors. Although they were Z list actors, we still managed to work out that we had enough money to give each of our 4 main actors £1,000,000 each. We then had change our director from an A list director to a B list director. With all this in mind, we thought originally that we would have to change alot more, but these factors were what cost us the most, and so we then realised that we had originally given appropriate amounts of money to the rest of our team, meaning that we didn't have to change any other factor due to the cuts.

Magazine cover and contents page Designs

Here are my two original designs for my front cover and contents page. I have made several changes with my final piece but it was originally these designs that inspired the final piece for the prelim.

Rushmore - youtube link

Is Max a stereotypical teenager? - Rushmore (1998)

Is Max a Stereotypical Teenager

Notes on a Video

Media Notes on Video

Analysing American Beauty opening sequence

Analysing opening sequence of American Beauty:

The task given to us was to analyse the opening scene of the film American Beauty (click on picture above for opening sequence). We were told to analyse certain aspects from the opening sequence including body language, voice, clothes, mise en scene and the colour scheme, and how all of these connect to Lester Burnham (main character, played by Kevin Spacey).

Immediately, as soon as we first see Lester, we get an immediate look at his body language. Straight away he takes a deep sigh. Now this could be interpreted as the fact that he’s just awoke, but I think that the director included this action as this sort of attitude – almost given up on life, is the same attitude that Lester will have throughout the story. We then see him leaving the house as he sets off to work, and his suitcase then opens, causing all of his work to fall out on to the floor. As he kneels on the floor, we can see that he doesn’t really care about anything anymore, his body language suggest that he doesn’t really care about life anymore.

                As the film starts, we see the neighbourhood that Lester lives in. He then starts to talk over the top as a narrator, to set the scene. Again, we can get an immediate opinion on Lester, as his voice is very plain, boring and monotonous. It doesn’t really vary much in pitch so we as an audience get the idea that he’s really not very exciting, and therefore probably isn’t a great father figure or husband.

                We don’t see much of the clothing that Lester wear’s. Although, what we do see suggests the same general idea that has come across before. Suggesting that he has no personality, and is quite boring. He doesn’t really wear much colour in his clothing, so we can see that he doesn’t really care about what other people think, and he doesn’t really want to express himself as he doesn’t feel the need to do so.

                The mise en scene is a lot more general and is not as specific towards Lester as it’s everything in the picture not just Lester Burnham. The general colour scheme that is included in most screenshots are the colours red, white and blue, as these are the three colours of the American national flag. These colours are repeated throughout the opening sequence, and throughout the rest of the film. Even when we see Lester’s wife for the first time, we can see that the handles of her gardening sheers are blue, the roses she’s cutting up are red, and house behind her is built up of all three colours. Lester even says over the top that the colour of the sheers which match her gardening clogs are not an accident, but this could suggest it’s not an accident that these colours match because of the character but it could be suggesting that they match because of the director’s choice.

                The opening sequence of this film leads us as an audience to assume that during the following film we will expect it to be about Lester, and how he deals with a non-ambitious life. From the opening sequence I have gathered that Lester has accomplished all that he wants to accomplish from life and therefore has no ambitions left. He is defeated, given up on life, almost depressed. Nothing is going right for him, and so the rest of the film will most likely be about something unusual happening to him, and so it will be about how he deals with it.

Analysing Preliminary Work

Analysing Prelim work

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