Saturday, 27 November 2010

Avatar

The stars of the film include  Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Joel David Moore, Giovanni Ribisi and Sigourney Weaver.


The films Genre is both Sci-fi and Adventure.


The production budget of the film was $237,000,000.


The films gross takings was $2,778,527,559.


Other things that made the film successful are:
The film was released for traditional 2-D viewing, 3-D viewing and 4-D viewing. The stereoscopic filmmaking was touted as a breakthrough in cinematic technology.  The film broke several box office records during its release and became the highest-grossing film of all time in the U.S. and Canada and also worldwide, overtaking Titanic, which had held the records for the previous 12 years and Avatar had also become the first film to gross over £2,000,000,000.  the film wasn nominated for 9 Academy awards including best Director and best picture an won 3 of these awards which were for for Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, and Best Art Direction.  it had also become the top selling Blu-ray of all time.

Kick-Ass





For the script the director, Matthew Vaughn had asked Mark Miller, writer of the comic book to write the comic and he would write the script.  the script and comic did have differences,  for example the actor who plays 'kick-ass' in the film is acting to be gay and trying to get a girl and when he confesses to her she then 'likes' him but in the comic she tells him to 'fuck off'.  the film was shot in a school and there were over 300 extras who were each specifically chosen for a certain look.  the film took about a year and a half to shoot.

The film was based on the comic book which had previously been released in 2008 and also the last comic which was released about 6 weeks before the film came out. 

the problems that they face when making the film was that they had to make it a certificate 15 and as the film was supposed to be aimed at audiences of 14 year old boys, this caused a problem, another problem was that they cast a 12 year old girl who swears quite a bit in the film and this caused people to disagree with both the swearing and the fact that the target audience couldn't view the film.

the directors view on the british film industry is that he believes that britain could have the largest film industry in the world and in only a few years time, he says about 3.  the way in which he says this can be possible is for film directors to stop taking high levels of £20,000,000 up front, and take only £5,000,000 and also says that we have the best films just not the best industry.

the film is set in Manhattan and to save money they decided to shoot the film in the UK.  for this to be possible they had to use high resolution pictures of Manhattan and put them onto large green screens to make it seem as if the film was actually filmed in Manhattan, this saved money as it would cost quite alot to have the strrets of Manhattan closed down for filming which is why they decided to shoot in the UK.

The technology they used were high resolution pictures as i have previously said and tese were put onto huge green screens to make the setting of Manhattan in the UK.  they also used the best sound recording so the actors never have to try and re-create the emotion of the moment on a stage later on.

As the film is rated a 15, it is not a 4 quadrant film,  and also as the audience it was aimed at were unable to see it, they found it difficult to get into the screenings, they had to purchase a ticket for other films such as 'how to train your dragon'.  however even though this was the case, the film did quite well as it made back its budget and had a tidy profit of about $7,000,000 and was seen as a successful film.

there were no major controversies concerning the film except some little ones about how the girl swears alot and that the film seemed to advertise weapons as two of the characters of the film had a room full of weapons on the wall and these two characters were the good guys.

the creators of the film saw the marketing and promotion of the film to be bad as they belived that it was marketed wrongly.  For example, audiences who saw trailers of the film only saw the humor parts of the film as this was all that was put into the trailers and so when they went to see the film they thought it was just going to be another funny film like Date Movie etc.  the reason for this was maybe because the comic was not well known and so unlike spiderman or hulk comics, the audiences didn't have any previous knowledge of what could be shown in the film.

there were many different artists music put into the soundtrack of the film, from artists like Elvis to The Prodigy.  although this added to the dimensions of the film it was also seen as not being the films own music.  also the opening scene of the film begins similarly to superman when the writing is in the clouds and this may have been seen to others as a copy of superman.

Monday, 22 November 2010

Ethnicity In A TV Drama

I have chosen to look at Eastenders as a t.v drama.  One of the ethenic groups within Eastenders is Zainabs family who are Muslims.  They are represented as an average day to day family within the show except within their house they encounter many problems.  For example one of the sons Syed is gay and this is not acceptable within the Muslim Community and so his family disown him as their son as they do not want him to be like this, even though he cannot help what he is.  As they follow the way of Allah they feel they must not let him into their life which is sad as he is a nice person but it is their religion which they feel they must follow more than anything else.  The mother Zainab is quite a fierce and strict woman, which helps to keep her family in line, the father Massood is represented as a nice guy and hardly ever gets angry but when he does he sticks to his point and never really backs down, and the other son Tamwar is represented as a normal teenager with normal teenage problems and his real goal is just to have a girlfriend. 

Ethnicity

In TV drama the ethenic minorities are portryed through their stereotypes which are;

Mexicans; they are regarded as having ponchos, sombreros, eating nachos, drinking tequilla slammers.

Irish; they are known to drink Guiness, growing potatoes, being gypsies, having Leprecorns associated with their nationality, an Irish accent and being called Paddy.

Indians; they tend to eat curry, also wearing Hijab, having Henna tattoos, arranged marriages is popular within their culture, also they have many kids.

Americans;  there are different sterotypes for Americans as there are white Americans and also Native Americans.  The native Americans or 'Red Indians' as they were formally known tend to be very spiritual and believe in sprits.  Americans on the other hand tend to be quite fat and eat alot of junk food, they also are quite ignorant, racist and quite patriotic.

English;  they are represented as being snobby, drinking tea all of the time, chav's, posh, fish and chips, driving mini coopers.

Black people;  they tend to wear bandanas, be quite athletic, be hooligans, violent to their girlfriends, drug dealers.

Muslims;  they tend to be represented as being terrorists, they also cover there faces with what is religious clothing.

Sunday, 21 November 2010

Kidulthood

The first camera angle of the film is a close up looking at the feet of a person kicking a football.  this shows that it is a school playground as we can hear noises in the background of a school and also immediately after this shot there is a shot of girls in a school uniform.
Another shot used is a panning shot which is used to see different students in the playground and the camera moves from group to group at about eye level.
There is a shot in the film of a drill and for this shot an extreme close up camera angle is used and all we can see is the drill, and we are not sure why the drill is being used or what is actually being drilled which causes slight tension as an audience would want to know what is being drilled.
About 4 minutes into the film there is a scene where a girl is being bullied in the classroom and at one point we see a POV shot where we can see the bullies in the point of view of the person getting bullied and this lets us know how 'in your face' the bullies are being and how nasty it is to be in this situation.
We also have an over the shoulder shot while the fight is happening and this is over the shoulder of a student who is about center of the classroom and this lets us see the fight as if we were standing in the classroom with the other students.
At 5 minutes into the film when one of the bullies shouts at the girl for 'answering back' we see the bully in a low angle shot to make her seem more superior than the girl, and shows that she is dominant over her and can do what she wants, whenever she wants and the girl cannot stop her.

Sunday, 14 November 2010

Moon


The film Moon was created by Duncan Jones and stars Sam Rockwell as the main character and also Kevin Spacey who does the voice of Gerty, the robot. Spacey  was only on set for half a day and yet still got the highest pay as he costs a lot to hire and Duncan Jones needed to keep costs down so tried to limit how long they had Spacey for.  Duncan Jones wanted to use Sam Rockwell from the beginning but Sam didn't think it was for him but still wanted to work with Duncan so Duncan later came back with the script and cast Sam.

Moon had a small budget of $5,000,000 and to cut costs Duncan had a very small cast of 2 main characters and the film was finished in 33 days.  Bill Pearson created a  360-degree set of the moon for the shooting. Duncan cut some corners during editing by using companies such as Cinesite which is well known for having cheap costs for its independent films. They finally kept costs down by not sending any reales to the OSCAR committee and so it was hard to see what the professional world thought of the film.

overall the film took in  $9,747,108 worldwide and the UK was almost a 5th of that. it may seem that they made a profit but in-fact they didn't as Duncan had to pay off his debts and so all the profit had to go towards this and this is because he had to borrow quite a bit of money and he borrowed it from a variety of places and so the intrest on top of this would add to his debts.

Casualty

The first episode of series 25 of Casualty is called 'No Place Like Home'.
there are many different kinds of characters in this episode and so i can apply this to Vladimir Propp's theories e.g. the hero, anti-hero and villain, donor and many more up to 32 different types.
the character Nick Jordan played by Michael French i would say is the hero in it because he  has some authority over some of the others but uses it in a good way and doesn't act superior to the others, he just gets on with the job and does his best.

Tess Bateman played by Suzanne Packer i would say is the donor of the program because she has been in the program for about 7 years and she doesn't have high authority like Nick Jordan and her position is to help the doctors which helps understand why she would be the donor. we see in the show that she is always helping people even when she doesn't have to which reinforces the theory of her being the donor.

Wednesday, 10 November 2010

Moon - Audience

The film Moon is not a 4 quadrant film as it has a certificate of 15. I think that the films audience would mainly be males as it is a science fiction film, based on the moon itself, and it tends to be males who watch sci-fi films, and also there are no main female roles in the film and so this would decrease female audience.
the main actor Sam Rockwell is not a well known actor in the movie business and so the film would not appeal to some people, but as they know Kevin Spacey is involved in the film then the film will be more appealing to poeple.
the film, directed by Ducan Jones, son of David Bowie, never really advertised the film properly and so this kept his costs down, however this meant that the public couldn't find out about the film through television or cinema and had to hear it from other people.
Duncan Jones was unable to afford good special effects and the highest amount he spent on special effects which was also the highest costing part of the film was when Sam was playing table tennis with himself and the scene was only a few seconds long, and for the rest of the film he used a double so we never really saw his face when they were together as much e.g. when they were fighting.

Sunday, 7 November 2010

Vladimir Propp & other theorists.

Vladimir Propp

he believed some narratives have character roles and functions.
he analysed a whole series of Russian folk tales in the 1920's and decided that the same events kept being repeated in each of the stories, creating a consistent framework.

Main Theories:
the villain; who struggles with the hero (formally known as the antagonist)
the donor
the helper
the princess,
a sought-for person (and/or her father) who exists as a goal and often recognises and marries hero and/or punishes villain
the dispatcher
the hero; who departs on a search (seeker-hero), reacts to the donor and weds
the false hero (antihero or usurper) who claims to be the hero, often seeking and reacting like a real hero (i.e by trying to marry the princess)

Life On Mars
Hero- Sam Tyler
Villain- Collin Reams
Princess- Myia
False Hero- Gene Hunt



Roland Barthe


- born: 12 November 1915
- died: 1980
- French theorist, philosopher, critic and semiotician
- he had a license in grammer and philosophy
- 1953 he made his full length work writing degree zero
- theories: cultural, action, symbolic and enigma


Todorov


- born: 1 March 1939
- he had influences from the 1960's and further
- published 21 books
- theories: - stories start with an equal balance of opposing forces
- the balance is then thrown by an event
- this causes a problem which needs to be solved
- for life on mars: gets trapped in the past through the car crash and then he tries to solve the problem by getting back to thecurrent day


Levi-Strauss


- French theorist
- dies at the age of 100
- around the war period he was very influential
- theory: there are always binary opposites in films
- life on mars: the obvious contrast between the 70's and the present day