Genre Documentary

JUDGE DREDDDD PODCAST *INSERT EXPLOSION* aka Lo2

JUDGE DREDDDD PODCAST *INSERT EXPLOSION* aka Lo2

Podcast.

LO2

Hollywood:
Their production will have a lot bigger range of resources. Their budgets will be much larger and will have a lot more access to high end props. Resources can also count as actors as hollywood films will have a lot more access to big movie stars to star in their films. This is a way of the rich staying rich and increasing consumerism.

A perfect example is the film grown ups. Bringing in the biggest comedic actors in a less than original piece of film but because its produced with these actors under this agency then they have the power to advertise and promote as much as they like.

Bollywood:

They are very specific in that their films will be filmed in their largest cities e.g. Mumbai. With their very low budgets they aren’t able to produce many films a year, so they have to be very serious with the film they make and make a true meaning within it and have underlying emotion.

It’s very stereotypical to have a rags to riches film and then also having quite a large musical notion to it and will empower the film.

British Films:

The sad thing to say is to say British films do not have much of a budget to them as they are in a recession and difficult times mean a lack in British films. The main conventions of a British film is to just have it in Britain as that is more convenient and you’re not having to use other countries cultures and just show their own. British films will have a somewhat access to big British actors who also feature in Hollywood films like James McAvoy, Jim Sturgess, Gerard Butler.

Developing Countries:

Obviously in a developing country they are not going to have as much of a budget, equipment, props and so their films are very to the point and simple. Their films will usually have a point to them that is similar to the country and their problems and they have something to relate to.

Line in the dust, A film example of a developing country. In revolutionary programs in Northern Ghana and India, gender roles are challenged, and illiterate adults educated.

International Co-productions:

This is when a production of a film will come from more than one country and they will collaborate. This will be done as the budget independently from one country might not be enough so they may need funding from another. This allows a vary in actors, that can be multi-cultured. They can visit many different countries. Problems with it there are going to be extra costs with dealing with different governments. An example of it would be The boy in the striped pyjamas as they had an English producer and a German Director. They were getting across a very important message with this Jewish Screenplay of the struggle in the World war.

 

Independent:

An independent film is a film that is filmed out of Hollywood, all the production and shooting will be done elsewhere. They obviously will not have anywhere near a budget like a hollywood film and they won’t be able to source main actors.

Crazy to think that a production such as Black Swan was an independent film, but shows clear indication that an independent film can create as much buzz a hollywood film. Black Swan was a very basic film that didn’t consist of many locations but put together perfectly. Mainly done through trick of the camera and not big end CGI.

LO4

Active spectatorship:

• An audience come into a comedy expecting a certain level of immaturity and ridiculous actions and a comedy will always provide that. An audience will know exactly what they want from a comedy film.
• Very active audience as viewers will constantly quote the film and all of its famous lines. Comedies are famous to have unique and witty catch phrases to be repeated.

 

Pleasure:

• how does the audience gain pleasure? People go to watch comedy to get laughs and being brought to tears by jokes and gags
• Comedy can be taken many different ways in which you may want your comedians to make fun of a social trend in which we can relate.

Interpretations:

• comedic style can have different interpretations but is usually very simplistic. A joke can usually only be taken one way but depending on age and culture you can change the situation of a joke.

Media Literacy:us your level of competency/ ability to recognise and analyse, evaluate and create messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres and forms.

• For a comedy you must be a good media literate because you must be able to take in the dialogue in the right way to get the full experience from it. Innuendos and puns must be understood to fully get it.

Intertextuality:

• Knowledge of present culture and trends
• will have plenty of innuendos from sexual references and so you must be of the right age to understand
• may feature spoofs of recent media and present culture, including celebrities, news, religion etc.

Preferred readings:

• all of the jokes are understood and are at the right maturity level

Effects:

• Comedy is not a usual genre to have to use visual effects but comedic directors and writers like to go over the top with their films and using ridiculous stunts and cgi the audience will take it in a positive way and will find it funny.

Fandom: is a term used to refer to a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of sympathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest

• Comedy is more of a love and infatuation but not as far to where you can dress up. People will make memes, pages, t-shirts, posters etc.

Interactivity:

• Comedy will make a big effort in social media and will spread all over youtube, facebook, twitter etc.
• Fans will go to make their own spoofs : videos, memes, tweets, blogs.

Social Networking:

• Comedians will do a lot of social media. Interacting with fans and giving them material through twitter and a dedicated facebook page.
• You’ll get a lot of promos from actors on youtube to promote the film.

 

Pre- and post viewing experiences:

• Fans will usually blog about potential sequels to films, like the hangover series and will have discussions
• Fans will share links to trailers and art and more all around and will keep spreading due to work of mouth.

Comedy fans aren’t as much as a unit but casual people quoting films, you will not get massive series of comedic films apart from spoof series. But fans can get very serious when it comes to their comedies and wish for them to be at a certain level of maturity and ridiculousness.

 

Of course where you watch the film changes the experience. Everyone knows if you watch a comedy by yourself, you most likely won’t laugh out loud as much but in a group of friends or even at a cinema, you have uncontrollable feeling to laugh.
It is more memorable when it comes to watching it in the cinema as there are no breaks and you are experiences something new with a group of strangers who all appreciate the same thing.

 

 

LO3 – This Is The End

I’ll be analysing and reviewing the This is the End as I believe it has one of the best publicising campaigns and is doing very at the moment in reaching a larger target market.

The publicity and marketing strategy for the film (LO3)

• Advertising-how has it advertised itself?
  http://www.thisistheend.com/site/ – Website. Able to download twitter skins, ringtones, facebook covers: selling ringtones of the main actors catch phrases throughout the film.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgCx2mofGfc

  Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg “This Is the End” interview – Kidd Kraddick in the Morning- Very good publicity going on a morning talk show that has many listeners.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPzzomLSJhk- Behind the scenes- giving viewers sneak peaks into the film.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW67OiY7xVw- Spoof made from the film- This brought in many views believing it was real but to find out it was an April fools joke and one of the largest trolls to the internet community. I don’t believe anyone was saddened by this practical joke.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_the_End – Poster of the main actors

• Does it aim for critical acclaim? This film was made because it was a fantastic idea to bring together some of the biggest stars in the world to build one of the biggest film fan base. Yes, they be aiming to bring as much revenue as possible but they are aiming to make a comedic gold film by having all the stars represent themselves, which is a great original idea.
• Seth Rogen (Director/Actor) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPV9EYnX2Fc went on Jimmy Kimmel, one of the most viewed chat shows in America.
• They tie-in the film Pineapple Express as a stunt to get people watching the trailer.
• The Gangnam style song is featured in the film, which is the most listened song/video on youtube.
• The aim isn’t looking for the best film or the best cinematic. They are purely looking for a hilarious unforgettable film. They are nominated for the most original trailer.
• It has one of the most over taking youtube campaigns there has ever been. They are constantly doing one on one interviews. Bringing out new trailers and spoofs.
• The producers knew exactly who there target audience were by designing a film with the most trending comedians of this generation. People who watched superbad, pineapple express, hot tub time machine and films that star these actors. This is using psychographics by choosing the same audience of people and targeting the film at these people. The Geo-demographics is important for a film like this because you need to aim it at people who understand the American culture and can understand the humour it represents
• They hit the internet hard by making a facebook page by with constant media being posted to the page with posters, clips etc. Having the actors tweeting about the production of the film and giving hints and teasers.
  They are able to get back audience feedback from potential fans, as they have the ability to comment/tweet/share/discuss about each thing they post. They could post ideas and show their excitement for the film.
• This is a massive hollywood budgeted film so they have the expenditure to put their film wherever they like. They will hit all the mainstream cinemas.

They are reaching many platforms of the media to promote their film and they fully understand the audience they predict to have and that is who they aim for. This film will do well purely on the comedic style of an end of the world scenario and the actor they have within it.

Lo2-

Financial determinants:

How much money was available to film makers?

Who was the funders?

What did financiers want in return?

How did it get funded?

Was it made during a recession?

Culture and politics of the country where they are produced:

Culture= behaviors and beliefs characteristics of a particular social, ethnic, or age group.

Politics= science of governing people/ practice of profession of conducting political affairs.

Technologies of the time:

Is equipment now cheaper?

Can anyone make a film?

Is it only film studios who can make films?

Distribution and Exhibition:

Distribution is about releasing and sustaining films in the market place.

Exhibition of a film = Where it is shown.

A common place, shared cultural activity visible in every city and town in Britain, constantly feeding the popular memory.

Trending:

What trends are prevalent in the industry?

Did that influence the two films you are looking at?

• were sequels popular at time?
• Was a particular genre popular?
• was a star particularly popular at the time?

Current trends…

• superhero
• 3D action
• ensemble
• apocalypse

Genres:

Why of all the genres that they were most popular?

 

Star Power and Representation:

What sort of power did stars in your film have?

Were they the major selling point?

Were they owned by the studio?

What did they represent to their audience?

Did they reflect their tune?

What do they tell you about the time the film was made?

 

Social Issues:

Do your films deal with any of the soical issues taking place at the time of their production.

 

Regulatory Issues:

Have laws changed?

What could your films get away with?

Are films now more lenient in their depiction of sex, violence, gore etc.

 

Synergies Between Films:

Sequels, prequels, reboots, re-makes, adaptations etc.

Has there been a change between the decades you are looking at?

Is there more synergy now?

Why do you think there is a growing trend in synergy?

 

Nature and structure of the industry:

In the practice of Hollywood and other forms of industrial cinema, the phases of production, distribution and exhibition operate most effectively when ‘vertically integrated’.

Production

Distribution

Exhibition

MGM, Warner brothers , 20th Century fox, paramount pictures, RKO – THE BIG 5

Vertical integration has been a main focus of policy maker because of the possibility of anti competitive behaviors.

Laws are put into place to make thinks fairer for producers outsides of big studios.

 

2 films in which I will be comparing:

The GodFather

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Reception Theory

Stuart Hall is the theorist. Media appear to construct a reflection of reality but changing it to what audiences wants to see.

Hall said we don’t passively accept the text as the audience and we are individuals and we’ll interpret text to our own original life experiences.

Hall focused on the scope for “negotiation and “opposition on the part of the audience. Social situations of readers/viewers/listeners may lead them to adopt different stances.

Three ways:

Preferred/ dominant reading: the reading media producers hope we will take from it. ‘encoding/decoding’ argued that the dominant ideology is typically inscribed as the preferred reading in a media text.

Oppositional Reading-

audiences from outside the target audience may oppose or reject the preferred reading. Does not share the text codes and rejects this reading, bringing to bear an alternative frame of reference. (Radical, feminist, marxist etc). Reader thinks opposite to what the media producer wants you to think.

Negotiated Reading-

The ‘third way’ is one in which audiences acknowledge the preferred reading, but modify it to suit their own values and opinions. negotiated readings are produced by those who adjust/modify the preferred reading to take account of their social position and see it their own way.

the reader partly shares the texts code and broadly accepts the dominant/preferred reading.

Psycho

The Shower Scene-

Close shots, shot cuts- to create a close violent scene.

Soft music and diagetic sounds to set the scene like if it was a normal day- Equilibrium

Psycho coming into the room with the build of music and the pull of the curtain with louder diagetic sounds- Disequilibrium

The slow drag down pan of the character keeping her body out of shot to not show cuts to show her innocent self still and then see her die – New Equilibrium

New noise of the shower drowns out any other sounds to build suspense for the psycho coming in to the bathroom unheard by the woman in the shower. We see what is going to happen before the woman see’s whats coming to her and us as the audience are outraged that we can see it but she can’t and the horror builds. The term to describe this is foreshadowing. Then with the reveal shot of psycho this with a low key lighting upon his face to shadow his/her identity.

Nakedness-

She’s alone and vulnerable. To catch you at your must vulnerable is the most horrifying kill of all as they have no defense. You’re powerless, without strength.

 

 

 

Conventions-Fantasy: Abstract, light, mythical, imaginative, happy, dream-like, fantasy

Conventions-

Fantasy: Abstract, light, mythical, imaginative, happy, dream-like, fantasy worlds.

Sci-fi: futuristic, abstract, space, aliens, outer planet  experiences, weapons.

action: fighting, blood, explosions, guns, fast paced, quick cuts.

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Metaphor: An exaggerated term to describe something.

Levi-Strauss Binary Opposites:

Shutter island : Usa vs Nazis, man vs mind, sanity vs insanity

inception: reality vs fiction, love vs right, power vs power

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Queer Theory

“A quality related to any expression that can be used as “anti straight”. “

The hetero-normative manner of life can no longer really be called ‘normal’.

Increasingly films are satirising our cultures ignorance/ awkwardness/ lack of education.

Theories of anti-racism, feminism, and post colonialism are becoming more modern and currently used.

Homophobia has become as ugly as racism or class hatreds.

Dichotomy= binary opposites/ splitting of a whole into exactly two non- overlapping parts, two opposite parts.

Broke back mountain.

I love you, Phillip Morris.

I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry.