Christmas Homework / Private Study

RESEARCH AND PLANNING
Use your grid to catch up and update your blogs and develop your research. There are many items to research - just tick off the list as you go.

1. Research:
INDIVIDUAL BLOG: Find and embed extracts and grabs that inspire you or that you'd like to emulate in your work. You might focus on camerawork, editing, lighting, mise-en-scene etc...
Similarly, research soundtracks! Embed as you go...
INDIVIDUAL BLOG: update / complete your Narrative Research, specifically by applying the theories to existing films and to your own opening.

INDIVIDUAL BLOG / GROUP BLOG: Audience Research - questionnaires (general on thriller genre and specific to test your pitch), interviews (filmed) and figures/ stats to establish exactly who your target audience are. You should publish your results on the group blog along with a description of one of your typical audience member ( make it visual - example to follow).

2. Planning:
GROUP BLOG: Pitch (and feedback received), shotlist and storyboard should be posted as a bare minimum. Completed TIMELINE strongly welcome.

INDIVIDUAL BLOG: ideas for costumes, props, mise-en-scene, lighting.

3. Planning:
INDIVIDUAL AND/OR GROUP BLOG:
Recce shots, test shoots etc... Pictures of potential locations etc...

4. Research:
INDIVIDUAL BLOG: Research Production / Distribution Companies in more detail. Some of you have started some research but now dig 'deeper' and give examples of what they do / films produced / distributed.
In class, we briefly looked at some production companies - you might want to start here but explore further on your own.
Blast!
Coffee Films
Hammer Film Productions

Here is an example of one student's research into the question.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

View more presentations from Stephanie.

OF COURSE, WE WISH YOU ALL A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!! Find the time to work, rest and play

Research and Planning. Due in.

Research and Planning should be well under way.
Post your Narrative notes on your Individual blog. You should also apply the theories to existing films.
You should also have a post there on how you thinkthe pitch went and what feedback you were given.
Someone from each group needs to post the pitch on the group blog.

You should be working on final script, shotlist and storyboard. These will need to be finished in the next lesson.
On your individual blog, you should be gathering film extracts and screengrabs from which you take inspiration, with a few bullet points on what it is that you like: mise-en-scene, costumes, props, lighting, shot frames or angles, editing techniques etc.

Finally, you should take recce pictures of possible locations.

Lots to do! Work as a team but don't forget to show how well you engage individually as well.

Here is an example of the kind of storyboard you need to be aiming for (though this one is for a music video). You'll be creating the animatic next week:
http://m.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=%2F&gl=GB#/watch?v=XKmGn9565hA

Planning your treatment, ready for your pitch and other research tasks

Initial research and planning should be well under way by now. You have a list of things to include in your pitch and both your individual blogs and group blogs should be filling up.

However, this is not happening (except for one student). Very worrying.

From Tuesday 6th December, compulsory 'catch up' sessions will take place at lunchtime in the pod, then every Tuesday for targeted students, continuing on Wednesdays if you are still behind.

Failure to attend will be followed by a Negative Referral and phone call home.

Yasmin Treatment task from last yea

yas on Prezi

Please keep on top of things and remember that you are working towards 50% of your AS grade.

Other research tasks: Narrative, Todorov, Barthes, Propp's character roles.

Early research and planning - group and independent study

1. Picture of your initial ideas + more detail - Plot summary in a few points, ideas for the opening, mood board, conventions of your chosen sub-genre(s) with embedded examples (screen grabs, trailers, opening sequences)
2. Each member of the group needs to complete a detailed analysis of a third film opening but this time, you choose the film; it should be a similar product to the type of opening you want to produce.
3. Film production name and ideas for a logo + research into UK film production companies that produce thriller films.

Thriller Genre

Found these useful PPTs. Read them to consolidate your understanding, including the different ways in which Thriller sub-genres are categorised.

The Suspense Thriller

More PowerPoint presentations from Jon Champion

Thriller sub genres

View more presentations from Agon Koshi

Home Learning/ private study due in 22 or 23.11 - for week beginning 7.2.11

- Research Thriller sub-genres and different ways of categorising them. Focus on 2 or 3 sub-genres and illustrate with film extracts, film posters, and screen grabs from films.

- Read the sheet on Thriller Conventions very carefully and start finding examples to illustrate the different conventions highlighted. This should be on-going from now on.

- Now the groups have been agreed, each group is a now a production company - it needs a name and a logo. Come up with a name and designs for your logo. Look at existing examples of Film production companies as part of your research to get some inspiration.

ALL THE ABOVE COUNT DIRECTLY TOWARDS THE RESEARCH PART OF YOUR COURSEWORK. Look at the mark scheme for clarification (in your guidance packs).
LABEL YOUR POSTS CLEARLY WITH: THRILLER GENRE RESEARCH

- Finally, your documentaries on genre should be exported by the beginning of next week so that the other class can watch and evaluate them.
This means that the edit must be fine-tuned and exported by the end of Monday 21.11.11.
I'll upload them to YouTube so that you can embed them into your blogs.

Blog of the Week...

Some superb work from Aymen! Well done!

Others have produced some good quality posts too, Mathura and Komal amongst others. Keep it going!

Homework and private study for 15 or 16.11.11

Make sure you read your pack on Genre and Genre Theory again carefully, particularly the bits we did not read together in class. You also need to post your notes from the 2 lessons if you haven't done so already.
Finally conduct a bit more research on your own and post a few notes on what you found out about genre. A good place to start is MediaKnowAll.com

Blog of the week

Carmela's blog looks like a good contestant! Well done and keep it up!

Some of you are working hard right now to catch up and improve your blogs. That's fantastic. The grades will move up fast if you keep it going!

Can I remind some of you about the NICCS task and your notes on the first Genre lesson (see post below)? It's missing from some blogs!

classwork and homework - genre DUE IN 8 or 9.11.11

We have completed the NICCS grid on Blade Runner. Now complete one for The Bourne Identity trailer and one other trailer from the list below.
Due in next week.

Generic Conventions AS task
Secondly, you should post your class notes on Genre. Why did you learn? What are the debates around genre? What is the importance of star association with a genre? What can we look for to identify a genre?
What about the triangular relationship?

You could write some bullet points to sum up your responses.

Cause for Concern: Where is your work, boys and girls?

:( Not one of you in group 1 is up-to-date despite the fact that I hadn't set any new work last week.
Catch up sessions for all at lunchtime - Tuesday and Wednesday, plus after school if necessary!
Phone calls home from Wednesday if you're not on the ball...

Tasks include Mr Molloy's and the earlier one on this blog (past students' videos).

For those who haven't posted their film poster analysis, this might help. If you have finished editing the video for it please post it.

Open publication - Free publishing - More analysis

Half-term Private Study - Thriller genre research/analysis

1. Complete the analysis two thriller openings.
You will consider and explore:
• How does the opening engage/create interest for the audience?
• Does it establish characters? How?
• Does the opening introduce themes, mood or story/narrative? How?
• How are the opening titles displayed?
• How is enigma established?

What you will need to analyse:
• Mise-en-scene;
• Use of soundtrack;
• Use of diegetic sound;
• Editing;
• Camera shot, movement and position;
• Use of special effects.

A. Analysis 1: Silence Of The Lambs

The first is the opening of "The Silence of the Lambs" directed by Jonathan Demme (focus on the first 6 min).

Watch carefully and write a detailed analysis of this opening sequence.
Create a 12-frame board of the key shots to accompany your analysis and number the frames for cross-reference.


Need help with analysis? Read the example below on "The Shining" to see a model of a good analysis.
Here is an interesting analysis of the opening sequence for The Shining which appears on the Long Road Media Blog (thank you, Long Road). Read it carefully to learn some tips.

You might want to watch the sequence first!

The film opens with a series of shots of panoramic landscape vistas showcasing the bleak desolation of the snowy mountainous surroundings, which will provide the backdrop for the film’s subsequent narrative developments. Various bird's eye view shots intermittently cross dissolve into one another, and depict an expansive clear blue lake, a snow-capped mountain range, and a densely populated forest of evergreen trees. The camera moves swiftly through its surroundings in each shot, sweeping past the breadth of the natural environs below it, and thus conveys to the audience a sense of the massive scale and large land span of the location depicted.

During the camera’s continual movement, it occasionally captures its views from distorted angles, which undermines the idea otherwise created by this series of shots of the benevolent purity of natural beauty and the wintry American landscape. It thus uses spatial manipulation to contradict the principal connotations of the images of nature captured in these shots, and hence foreshadows the heavy deployment of themes and imagery centred upon the supernatural that will follow.

Also indicative of this theme is the use of slow, sombre, unnerving and deliberate electronic music, which in conjunction with the seemingly oppositional images suggest a malevolence to the surroundings shown and imply an unknown danger amongst them.

Eventually the camera finds a road snaking through an aerial shot of a thickly forested area then picks out and follows a lone car in extreme high angle long shot, making its way along the road. The camera gradually moves increasingly closer maintaining its birds’ eye view position, but also gradually rotates to distort the angle and create a sense of unsettling foreboding in the manner described above. A series of shot changes track the car’s journey and depict a range of different natural backdrops indicating the traversal of time and space. As the camera finally tracks speedily in to a mid shot of the car from behind, revealing it to be a yellow Volkswagen Beetle, credits rise up through the frame from below in blue typeface, and each gives way to the next, departing the frame by rising out of it.

The moving camera overtakes the car and veers away to the left, aerially crossing country before again finding the car and tracking its journey, once again with another series of extreme high angle long shots, while the eeriness of the electronic score continues to aurally unsettle the viewer.

The camera’s point of view eventually shifts to depict an extreme long shot of a remotely located building amongst the mountains, trees and lakes. It slowly circles the building, getting gradually closer. This building is the Overlook Hotel, and will be the yellow car’s final destination, and the principal location for almost all of the film’s subsequent action.

Overall, the opening sequence has been gradually building up to this elaborate establishing shot of the hotel, and has served to highlight its isolation and remoteness and communicate an implication of danger, that the audience should by now have associated with this idyllic yet spectral location and its backdrop.

Remember that to achieve higher grades, you need to be ANALYTICAL rather than just descriptive. Don't simply tell me that there is a close up at this point or a tracking movement at that point. Explain how it helps the narrative and how it is supposed to affect the reader.

B. Analysis 2: Choose one from below.

For your second analysis, you may choose one of the following (or get 2 done now! You will have to do a couple more anyway...). Again create a 9 or 12-frame board to illustrate your comments.

Opening scene of The Usual Suspects (couldn't find it with the opening credits)

The first 2-3 minutes of Memento:

The first 4 minutes of Enemey of State (though a look at the credits that kick off then wouldn't hurt!)

First 5 minutes of What Lies Beneath
(embedding disabled so link provided instead) http://youtu.be/3WrycZRmIcs

Please note: Bring a hard copy of your analysis (text only) to the first lesson after half-term - 2.11.11

2. Do some research on a successful film director who has directed some Thrillers. You need to explain why the films are successful, what the director's "trademark" is, and embed trailers and screengrabs of interesting or memorable shots with some comment on technique and mise-en-scene.

Create a moodboard for that particular director's thriller style!

Extension: Try your best to re-create one of these shots yourself or in a small group, making sure that you get the atmoshere of Thriller right. Aim to choose a shot with at least one or two characters in the frame.

3. Complete the task that should have been done in class in lesson 3. Details and questions to answer are below in the previous post. It is a short extract from Enemy of State - Watch from 1:03 onwards.

Classwork 18 or 19.10.11 - Editing

Lessons 1 and 2: The Prelim- Complete the edit of your preliminary task. Screengrab key shots and your work in FCE. Embed your video.
- Then evaluate using these questions:

1. Discuss how your group came up with the idea for the script. How efficient was the discussion? What key decisions were made? Embed your script.

2. Reflect on the planning / storyboarding stage and upload the storyboard.

3. How efficient was the shoot?

4. What were the key elements from the brief you had to demonstrate and how well did you handle each one? Did you make any mistake? What are you most pleased with and why?

5. What did you learn during the course of this production? What did you learn to do or do better with Final Cut?

- Finally embed another student's sequence and offer some peer-assessment:
What is most successful and why?
Are there any mistakes and where?
What could you suggest for further improvement?

Lesson 3:The art of editing

Watch the clip below from 1:03 to the end then answer the questions that follow.

Enemy of the State, Tony Scott, 1998






1. What is the point of this sequence? Describe briefly how tension is created through the editing.
2. Look at the use of CU or Medium CU. Why are they primarily used here? Refer to specific shots (screengrab them) and embed them within your post.
3. Choose 15-20 seconds from anywhere in the sequence and describe each shot in detail, explaining its effect / function for the audience, as well as commenting on how the cuts (the editing) add to the meaning.
4. How far does the editing of this sequence fit in with the genre of the thriller? Justify your opinion.

Above all, do your best to engage with the sequence and the task.