Letter To Self: Part Two

Well, well, well, look who it is…

You certainly seem to know more about what you’re doing now don’t you! You’ve made quite a collection of new mates and appear to have settled in well with your course.

I used to agree with you, this letter to self task seemed quite odd at first, however, having read what I/you wrote at the beginning of the year, it’s proven significantly useful in seeing how me and you have developed as a person. You’ve done well in producing some interesting and worth-while work.

You have definitely become more aware of what is expected of you throughout the course of your modules and have adapted well with the equipment that has been introduced to you. You have met interesting and inspirational people within the media industry, including famous writers, producers, journalists and directors and have been given advice from them of how to go about your work.

You have been introduced to a variety of new programmes, including editing software, such as AVID and FinalCutPro meaning you have been able to produce some more advanced films. You have learnt a vast amount in your first year, but as the media industry is always changing, there is still much to learn yet. The things you have learnt and will learn will be not only down to your tutors, but also you.

This year you were introduced to studio work and television broadcasting. This has had a huge impact in terms of inspiring you to follow your dream of having an influential role in a television comedy series. Strangely, you have enjoyed being in front of the camera more than being behind it. This is something we must work on… to see if you are actually going down the right path!?

Lastly, you have become more confident this year, particularly when talking to people you have never met before; you are no longer worried about what other people think of you and tend to do your own thing in these situations.

Let’s see what next year has in store for you!

All the best,

You

Under-Represented Groups in the Media

Firstly, representation within the media refers to the construction in any ‘medium’ (most commonly the mass media) focusing on aspects of ‘reality’ such as people, places, objexts, events, cultural identities and other abstract concepts. It is important to mention how it is not only how identities are represented by the people sending out the ‘message’, but also how this representation is received by the audience, of whom will more than likely be part of another demographic group.

For instance, the issue brought about by feminist Laura Mulvey in the late 20th century: ‘the male gaze’; how are women perceived by men, as an object of desire, or as an image of beauty? She declared that in patriarchal society ‘pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female’ (Mulvey 1992). According to her findings ‘Men do the looking; women are there to be looked at’. This issue has been around since before even the Renaissance period, however theorist John Berger argues that since the Renaissance onwards, women have been depicted as being ‘aware of being seen by a [male] spectator’ (J. Berges, ‘Ways of Seeing’, 1972). Within this dominant representational tradition the spectator is typically assumed not simply to be male but also to be heterosexual and often also white.

Under-representation within the media has been an on-going issue ever since the media industry was first established. Of course, there have been certain individuals who have been victimised my the media, but particular groups of people have been subject to scrutiny and have been unpopular with the vast majority of those controlling the flow of the media. I have been doing some research and have found that over the past few hundred years, ever since the media was first recognised as an industry, it has unfortunately been people of ethnic minority or females who have been victimised the most by the media and the viewers themselves.

In terms of racial representation, theorist Stuart Hall, added his views to the issue of cultural under-representation within the media (see video bellow).

The media cannot present the world to us, despite their assertions of truth, reality and verisimilitude. In practice, the individuals who have influence over the media (for example media mogul Rupert Murdoch) offer us perspectives or selected views on our world. They represent that world to us by constructing images and behaviours for lots of different groups within, and indeed outside, our own society.

Looking at representation in another particular area we can see that many organisations and groups are keen to portray youth for purposes of commerce or social comment. The problem with the youth market is that it is a very difficult one to address because youth’s level of engagement with the mass media in general is less than the average with the exception of film and music.

The youth market audience is one that is also characterised by continuous change. So, how accurately can the issues and concerns of youth be shown by these media producers? Are these people responsive and sensitive in reflecting the shifts in youth culture? The press also its times in under-representing young/teenage groups because it tends to aim towards selling products to adults and when they target youth they see them as students, jobseekers or other consumerist categories. However many press stories do involve youth (yob culture, club scene, drug stories) and the accuracy of these portrayals needs to be addressed. Films such as ‘Kidulthood’ and Television series such as ‘Skins’ can evidently portray and reinforce this ‘yob culture’; a major issue in terms of the representation of this demographic in modern contemporary media.

Film Review: Shutter Island

Yesterday I went to the cinema to watch Martin Scorsese’s latest film ‘Shutter Island’ starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

I viewed the film having known nothing about it in advance, apart from that it was directed by the great Scorsese. This being my only previous knowledge in regards to the film itself, I was already expecting something fantastic. And wow, it sure was something.

Set in 1954, Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) is a US Marshal assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Boston’s Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital. The film opens with Teddy and his new partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) on a ferry making their way toward the island. I found this unusual, as the audience is thrown straight into the heart of the story almost instantly. I only realised at the end, as to why it was done.

Marshal Daniels been pushing for an assignment on the island for personal reasons, but it isn’t long before he suspects that he has been brought there as part of a twisted plot by hospital doctors whose radical treatments range from unethical to illegal to downright evil.

Evidence and clues begin to appear but not before our hero seems riddled by psychosis himself. “You act like all this madness is contagious” Daniels says to one of the guards. The audience may question this themselves; after watching this I sure did. He soon uncovers the tip of the iceberg and it’s not only painfully intimate with his own past but also a mass conspiracy. The Nazis had concentration camps and the Americans have Shutter Island.

Teddy’s in-depth investigating skills soon provide a promising lead, but the hospital refuses him access to records he suspects would break the case wide open. As a hurricane cuts off communication with the mainland, more dangerous criminals escape in the confusion, and the puzzling, improbable clues multiply. Before long Teddy begins to doubt everything – his memory, his partner, even his own sanity.

Scorsese is a genuine master of film; his specialty in the past has been more character-based rather than on story-telling, however this is a fresh balance of both. It’s a mix of noir and thriller, and it does not disappoint.

Having said this, there are critical points to make, as there are with all films. There are times when the plot gets extremely confusing; times where the audience is asking “Is this a dream or reality?” It’s one of those movies where you don’t want to miss a couple of minutes for a toilet break or you will become lost and not know where you are in the plot. Another point to mention is the use of overdramatic music, especially in the opening section where our two “heroes” approach the island. It’s just unnecessary and makes it seem as if you are being forced to find it scary.

To conclude, the plot surely has its twists and turns and I won’t spoil it for you, but the ending is definitely worth the wait!

9/10

The trailer can be found here.

Lev Manovitch: Hybrid Forms

Reflecting on this article, I have come to realise how much of an impact convergent media has had on the ever-growing world of media. It is all around us, even if we do not notice it at first, it is there. Every time we turn on the radio, television, or use mobile telephones, iPods or send instant messages on social networking sites.

Manovitch mentions how sometimes media items can switch between different media so quickly that the shifts are barely noticable. He gives and example: GMC Denali “Holes” commercial by Imaginary Forces, 2005). This can possibly refer to well-known editor Thelma Schoonmaker, who has mentioned how ‘if you can see the edits it’s unsuccessful’.

Over time hybridity has taken a step further which I believe has allowed the industry to create new and interesting products; initially animation was a collection of singular images put together in order to form a moving image to push a narrative along and now it is used on a number of platforms just as an icon or phrase and not to portray a story or meaning.

Manovitch goes on to say how particular aesthetic solutions vary from one video to the next and how the logic embedded in them all is similar. They all share the simultaneous appearance of multiple media within the same frame. It does not matter whether these media objects are openly juxtaposed or almost seamlessly blended together, but it is the importance of the ‘copresence’ itself.

An example of a hybrid formula would be Larry and Andy Wachowski’s Matrix series (1999–2003) whereby almost all of the film is filmed in front of a green screen, leaving it down to the editors in alliance with up-to-date computers to deal with the ‘real filmmaking’. Though these films do not juxtapose their different media in as dramatic a way as what we commonly see in motion graphics, instead they explore the space in between juxtaposition and complete integration.

To evaluate, I have come to understand that although these new hybrid inventions look great as a result, what happened to the natural style? What happened to capturing footage on a camera and showing everything that is in front of that camera to the viewers? These days it seems that because of the improvement of technology, even the slightest stunts are not performed by ‘real people’ but from a computer that is transforming the virtual into what seems to be reality.

Blu-Tack Challenge

Bostik is inviting amateur filmmakers, schools and colleges to create an advert extolling the virtues of Blu-Tack for a campaign to mark the brand’s 40th birthday next year. The company is looking for entrants to devise, script and produce a Blu-Tack film up to 30 seconds long and promises prizes for the winner and runners-up. It plans to feature the winning work as part of its anniversary marketing.

Blu-Tack said it has been inspired to hand over the reigns to consumers because of the plethora of user-generated films featuring the adhesive which have been uploaded to websites like YouTube. An example of stop motion is shown bellow:

Although this is done with plasticise and not blue-tack, this shows the level of detail that goes into creating the illusion of fluent movement, which is what I hope to produce when shooting my mini-movie.

Spokeswoman Michelle Hayman said:  “You only have to type Blu-Tack into a search engine to find loads of little Blu-Tack-inspired movies all over the web.

“We have used Blu-Tack to make giant spiders and flower baskets before, so we thought the time was  right to give amateur movie makers the ultimate challenge.

“We aren’t looking for unbridled praise or anything like that, just for people to make a little movie featuring Blu-Tack. Our own website is pretty irreverent so we are keen to see movies with a sense of humour, ether using Blu-Tack or about it, whether animated with Blu-Tack models or live action. It’s the creativity that counts.”

Entrants have until the end of May next year to send their entries and the winners will be chosen by admen and an animation expert from Aardman Animations. The winner will receive £2,000 worth of computer equipment or software of their choice.

I have recently installed iStopMotion on my computer and purchased 5 packets of Blu-Tack and thought I’d give this a go. Obviously I’m not expecting to win, I just thought it would be fun to give myself this task.

Stop motion interests me as I have stated earlier in my blog, and I am inspired by media items such as Wallace and Gromit. I will be using a Cannon 450d and 3 artificial lights set up in my room to produce my stop motion film. Looking forward to posting the final piece on here soon!

Photographer Phil Brooks

I recently attended a brilliant and inspirational Coventry Coversation with creative photographer Phil Brooks. He spoke of how he has always been fascinated with extreme locations around our planet, in particular the Northern regions such as the Greenland, Iceland and the North Pole itself.

He thrives off the excitement brought about by the adventurous landscapes and marvellous views that only a small few local inhabitants regularly witness. In order to define his view on the “North” he decided to go there himself and explore the countries, landscapes and communities that are found 60 degrees north of the equator.

It is this adventure which influenced the name of his latest work, “60 Degrees North”, which we were privileged to view throughout his speech.

He mentioned how he embarked on a physical and spiritual journey that began on the Siberian border with Norway, through Scandinavia, to the Scottish Islands incuding Orkney and then continued on to the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Northern Canada and Southern Alaska. He showed us some of his most recent work too, from when he visited the cold and desolate country of Siberia. Phil told us how it was this country which truly completed his journey.

Through Phil’s extraordinary photographs, we were able to share some of his experiences and develop a greater understanding of the lands and the people who occupy this northernmost part of the world.

Not only this, we can engage with the awe-inspiring, sublime landscapes he encountered on his journey; as well as being introduced to individuals and communities he met along the way.  Through these compelling images, he raises questions about stereotyping and westernisation.

Overall, his work reveals the complexity of this environment and his own passion and affinity for the North. He is truly an inspiration in terms of how to take photographs with depth and meaning.

‘Breathless’

Today I went to a pre-release, exclusive screening of the multi-award winning South Korean film by first time director Yang Ik-june. It is to be released in January 2010 and was shown here in Coventry specially to us in order to survey whether it is suitable to be released here in the UK.

In the film, Ik-jun Yang plays the role of the main character, Sang-hoon, who works as a low-level gangster collecting money from debtors to creditors. Sang-hoon seethes with rage due to his troubled childhood and abusive father. At any moment, he can lash out at relatives, friends and strangers with the only way he knows how to solve problems and satisfy his needs: savage violence.

One day, Sang-hoon walks along a residential road and spits on the sidewalk. He unintentionally hits a brash young high school student named Yeon-hee (Kkot-bi Kim). When Yeon-hee tells Sang-hoon to clean up his mess, he knocks her out with a punch to the face. Sang-hoon then sits across from her until she regains consciousness. He offers to buy the girl a beer and the beginnings of an unusual friendship occurs. Both of them soon realise they are very similar, in having gone through an unhappy childhood with torn families.

In terms of the issues and debates the film arouses, regarding its expected release here in the UK, the sheer level of violence and strong language the film contains would instantly require an 18 certificate. Women are seen brutally beaten, blood is graphically portrayed and teenagers are shown to copy this violence. Yeon-hee’s brother proves he thrives off violence by following in Sang-hoon’s footsteps as an upcoming gangster. Many English viewers would watch this film and find it inappropriately offensive and shocking, due to its treatment of women, students and children. Yang Ik-june successfully and realistically portrays the social background of the characters and where other directors would neglect and remove the ‘grimy’ bits, he exposes these and elaborates on them. He focuses on the brutal struggles of working-class South Korean families and the problems within the society, which the government overlooks. The subject matter is gruelling, shocking and not for anyone with a sensitive disposition. It is an emotional film, and looking around me I could see the shocked expressions on peoples faces. Towards the end some were even crying. A film that arouses this kind of response from an audience deserves a place in the cinema.

The main concern I have after watching the film is its unnecessary runtime. 130 minutes is far too long for a first time director to be producing. The storyline could have been easily wrapped up at 100 minutes, or even 90. Having said that, it is certainly the best Korean gangster film I have seen. The trailer for the film is shown bellow:

‘Threat’

A friend and I were asked to do some extra curricular work by our course director for his upcoming book on videography. Within this book there will be a chapter that includes information on how students approach different elements of videography – one of these elements being title sequences.

This being the case we were asked if we were up for the challenge of creating our own title sequence, with could be on anything we wanted. We eagerly accepted and then got cracking on the planning process. We decided the best thing to do was to create an idea for a film that doesn’t exist, thereby giving us total freedom to create the piece we had in mind. Firstly we looked at successful opening title sequences on YouTube, the most obvious one showing up was SE7EN, a 1995 modern horror directed by David Fincher starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. From viewing the final piece you will be able to tell we drew a lot of inspiration from this.

Here is the opening sequence for SE7EN:

You will notice in our opening sequence that some shots are very similar and this was due to curiosity. How difficult was it for the producers of SE7EN to shoot? How easily is that effect created? How effective can we make it look? Whilst shooting our piece we found the answers to these questions.

Here are some photos of the shoot, you will notice that there are three of us, Mick Le Mare and myself directed, shot and edited whilst Alex Hacking helped out with some of the filming and directing on the first day. He also took the majority of the still images on the day.

Me setting up the equipment ready to begin shooting.

Myself and Alex filming the 'download' shot.

We were restricted to making our piece no longer than 30 seconds and having taken over half an hour of footage during three hours of filming we thought it may prove impossible to achieve what we set out to do. However once in edit it became clear how much of the material we had was useless to us and thirty seconds was not a troublesome length.

Our film that doesn’t exist is called Threat, it is a British crime thriller. Feel free to watch it bellow, bare in mind we did not have the budget that SE7EN did, but we tried.

Scriptwriting: A Talk From Paul Abbot

On Tuesday 3rd November, Bafta Award Winning scriptwriter Paul Abbot gave a speech entitled ‘TV’s Shakespeare’ in Coventry. As I am interested in the field of scriptwriting I attended this talk and found it extremely entertaining. The speech itself is available for download on itunes as a podcast under ‘Coventry Conversations’ or on the link provided HERE.

He has been nominated and won several Writer’s Awards and The Dennis Potter Award for Outstanding Writing in Television in 2004. In July of the same year Radio Times magazine placed him at No. 5 in a poll of industry professionals to find The Most Powerful People in Television Drama.

Abbot has produced and written several successful Dramas on British television, most obviously ‘Shameless’ (2004-Present), which he said the characters were based on his own experiences and family life growing up in Burnley. The action of the programme itself was changed to Manchester in the present day.

He stated how “the first draft you produce should be completely different from the final piece”. I found that from this, it is vital that you develop and expand past your usual boundaries when scriptwriting; don’t write something you haven’t thought carefully about.

He mentioned many important things which I thought I would add to my blog. He said “surround yourself with excellence”, which would of course take time, but through a life in the media industry, it is always good to create alliances and friendships with people from all aspects of production.

He also mentioned how before you show a script to a production company, show it to at least five different people and absorb their feedback and often critical responses. It is those negative responses which help you improve and learn from your mistakes. He announced how there was an extremely important need to understand the story you are writing before the plot, and also that when you are writing, you must become your characters in order to fully develop them.

The secret of scriptwriting according to Abbot is “instinct” and “emotional honesty”. He made a point that “if you wouldn’t watch it, don’t write it!”

From his talk I have decided to take on board his advice and to read scripts every now and then, analyse and note down what I like, but also find critical points to make. I am also now reading films as well as watching them; breaking down the narrative codes and decoding the storyline.

Creating Narratives, The Moving Image And Montage

Ideas come from viewing all sorts of media, combining this with the creative thoughts and interests of the individual. Personal experiences may affect the way in which this idea is presented. Also, the web may be an influence on how to form an idea. Songs can create images for the listener, and from that the individual can take what they hear and create physical images. Visual stimuli such as photos, paintings and illustrations can be made into moving images by the use of imagination. Originality is widely respected, but if an idea has already been made, credit is often required.

A ‘montage’ is a french world meaning ‘putting together’ and is most commonly described as a filmmaking technique which uses fast editing, special effects and music to present compressed narrative information. It is, in effect, the combination of two or more similar things used in sequence to create another media artefact, which often differs from the original, to provide a specific or new meaning.

This may be still images such as ones shown above by Peter Kennard, or moving image, best shown in the clip bellow, taken from the action/comedy/spoof, ‘Team America’ (2004):