Warp Films Fact Sheet

Lutterworth AS Media Filming and Editing

Seven Key Area's of Representation

Media as the seven key areas of representation

View more presentations from Jack Colegrove.

Generic Conventions Tv Drama

Generic Conventions  Tv Drama

You will find that TV dramas all have the following ingredients:

Characters – even particular kinds of characters: eg, at its most simple, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ characters.

Stories – they all tell stories, whether those stories involve adventure, crime or romance and they often, but not always, end happily.

The stories are told against familiar backdrops: – eg, homes, police stations and offices (for crime dramas), hospitals (for medical dramas) – most of which are created in studios. However, most dramas also use outside locations to create particular effects.

Camerawork – particular kinds of shots are used: eg, sequences involving establishing shots followed by mid-shots of characters, shot/reverse shots to show character interaction and, in particular,close-ups to show the characters’ emotions.

Stories use dialogue to tell the stories. Occasionally, monologues are built in (as voiceovers, a character telling a story).

Music is used to punctuate the action, create effects (suspense, tension) and underline emotional moments.

Particular subgenres tend to have items which make them immediately identifiable – police cars, blue lights, operating theatres and scalpels, triage/reception areas in hospitals. Icons of the genre, they symbolise the (sub)genre.

Analysis of the conventions used in the Making of the Magazine Cover

Analysis of the conventions used in the making

View more presentations from Jack Colegrove.

Film Creation

 The Showdown

In class, we where given a target audience- our groups target audience was middle aged men. We where then told to create a film for our target audience and we chose to make an action film. The plot line for our film was, a man's daughter was kidnapped by a gang, he and his brother try to hunt down the gang that kidnapped his daughter before it was too late.

The key selling point for our film was our A-list cast, the lead role was too be played by Samuel L. Jackson who is famous for many films including Star Wars and Snakes on a Plane. His brother was too be played by another A-Lister, Denzel Washington who also has been in many famous films such as the 2010 film "The Book of Eli". The leader of the Gang that kidnapped Samuel L's daughter was Bruce Willis, we decided to cast his due to his experience in the world of action films (Die Hard etc.)

Here are my Original notes on the film making
 The Showdown : Samuel L Jackson's daughter gets Kidnapped, he enlists the help of his brother Denzel Washington and local Gypsy man (Jacky Chan) too go on a vast search for his daughter, the search takes them across country and the showdown begins...

Our tag line to go with the film was "If testosterone could mate with explosion, this movie would be it's offspring" We thought that this Tag line would appeal to the audience.

Financing
We where given a pre sales (which means we are selling the distributing rights to the film before we have made it) budget of $70m from 20th Century Fox, The majority of out above the line budget went on our cast, we calculated that the total cost of our a-list cast would be in the region of $35-40M which is a huge chunk of our budget, we then had to finance a director, who we chose should be John woo, who has directed many successful films such as "Mission Impossible", next we chose our cinematographer Jeffrey L Kimball who was behind the filming of Star Trek so has vital experience when it comes to film making, and finally our editor was Ken Blackwell, who edited "The Expendables" which is also an high-action film.

We calculated our Above the line costs as totaling 65M which is almost all of our budget, the rest of the budget would go on Below the line costs, and marketing our film.

American Beauty (Opening Scene Notes)

American Beauty is a film made in 1999, it is written by Alan Ball, and directed by Sam Mendes. American Beauty tells the story of Lester Burnham a depressed husband and father who is currently going through a mid-life crisis.


In class we watched the opening scene of American Beauty and where asked what our impressions of Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) where. From the opening scene i could tell that Lester was a very depressed man, even in his opening dialog he says "i am 42 years old; in less than a year I will be dead. Of course I don't know that yet, and in a way, I am dead already" The way he says "i am dead already" shows that he hates his life, and he has no ambitions anymore.

He leads a very sad life and is hated by his wife, I can see he is hated by his wife because during the opening scene Lester is walking to his wifes car and she gives him a look of utter hatred. His wife is a very uptight charector and is portrayed as a business woman who is head of the family.

We can see that Lester has no ambition in his life by the way he talks, this could mean that he has already achieved all his goals, for example he has a very nice car, a big house- he looks like a very sucessfull businesman, but this does not stop him from being depressed. Another sign of the boredom and depressing life Lester leaves is what he narrates whilst he is in the shower, he says "Look at me, jerking off in the shower — this will be the high point of my day. It's all downhill from here" This, to me, says a lot about Lester, it shows he has a defeatest attitude and he can be very pessimistic.

Also during the opening scene we where told to look out for the colour scheme of the film, i noticed that the colours used where red, white, and blue- which are the colour of the American flag which could be a sign of patriotism and they link in with the title of the film.

Doug Bilmaier (Stereotypes)

In class we where discussing Stereotypes, and how peoples opinions on others can be constructed within a matter of seconds, based on appearence, body language etc. We where presented with a picture of this man and where told to write down some notes on, who this man was, his appearence, and possible occupations.

 

This is the picture we where shown, the notes i made where "The man looks homeless and very tramp-like, he obviously has a smoking addiction which could possible mean he is addicted to other drugs, alcohol perhaps, which could be why he is homeless.

Here is another image of the man and he quite clearly isn't homeless. We discovered that this mans name is "Doug Bihlmaier" and that my orignal perceptions on this man were completely wrong, he is infact head of the Vintage department at Ralph Lauren, his occupation involves travelling the world in search of artifacts and other items that Ralph Lauren could use, he is an incredibly rich man. This goes to show that Stereotypes that people have in there head could be completely false, i thought this man was a tramp, just because of what he wore, but infact it turns out it is his own style, and that he is quite the opposite of what i thought.