Daisys short films

All links to films are in titles

1. Spring Clean. The bakery. Virgin media shorts.

A man finds a spray bottle of blue liquid, when he sprays things they disappear, so he goes to clean up the place in getting rid of yapping dogs, traffic wardens, anyone who annoys him, only to find they have been moved to the cupboard in his kitchen.

Representation is a big thing in this film, mostly because of how we view people, and what social class they are, for example at the start of the film the man who gets jam on his tie is rather low status,as we can see his kitchen is in a mess, the food in his fridge is not the best quality, and so on but as he gets the bottle of magic liquid he climbs higher in status because he controls who goes where. and as he starts to make a list we can see who he thinks has lower status than him.   


 2. A favour. a_favour. virgin media shorts

Two families are shown getting ready for the day, having breakfast. one family is an Asian Muslim family, the other a British white London family. on the fathers way to work they meet in a car park, the white man asks the Asian male to phone his mobile because he's lost it, the phone doesn't ring so its assumed lost, later the Asian male is in a very heavy traffic jam because of a bomb that's been set off remotely by a mobile phone.

 This film plays with our ideas on representation. the film maker shifts our views on stereotypes, for example in most films we see an Asian is the supposed terrorist, films like four lions plays on this idea by turning it into a parody. but in this short the tables are turned, for the white male is implied to be the terrorist by getting the Asian male to make the phone call to set off the bomb. the enigma code is used in a favour, we know this because we do not know that the man has set off a bomb, we also have no idea how it happened, but from what we have heard of bombs that have been set off remotely we know they can be triggered by a phone, so from this previous knowledge we can deduce that the white male has given the other man the phone number to set the bomb off. we have restricted narrative in this film, we are seeing this as the Asian male rather than the white male because if we were viewing it through the white males perspective we would know that he is planning to set off a bomb.

3. Cargo. Ben Howling & Yolanda Ramke. YouTube.

Stranded in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, a man sets in motion an unlikely plan to protect the precious cargo he carries: his infant daughter.

 This film is a good representation of genre. the genre that this film falls into is horror and drama. it falls into the genre horror because of the zombie aspect but i feel it fits more into drama because the storyline is following the father and child. there is an appeal for using genre codes is quite high if you want to keep the storyline fairly simple because you have guidelines to follow there for making the writing task rather more simple.


4. The Date. edrigg. virgin media shorts

a man prepares for a date with a girl and attempts to impress her with his magic abilities.

in the first section of this film where the man is getting ready for the date the narrative is not linear, it jumps back and fourth throughout this sequence. this affects how we view the film, from the way it is edited we can guess that we are watching it with the mentality of the man preparing, he keeps revisiting the different aspects to make sure they're all perfect. but once the girl appears the narrative becomes linear, showing that he may have relaxed.

5. PJ, Tiny Planet Explorer. kickthepj. Virgin Media Shorts

Pj wants to find some new planets to explore.

this film won the peoples choice award 2012, i think the reason for this is that Pj is also a youtuber with over 399,000 subscribers on his main channel. i think one of the main reasons he won this award is because his video has a certain charm about it, whilst being so naturalistic and at the same time completely mad. the target audience of this film i would expect to be 14-25 year old males purely because of the aspects in the film, it pleases the audience because the aspects in the video are so quirky ie the jetpack rucksack with all the pokemon gym badges on.

Reece's Summary on Representation

Representation -

"This is not a pipe"

Representation mostly refers to how the real world is organised into a media text and RE-presented for viewers. Anything that is seen on television or in film is never a true representation of real life as someone has sat down and edited and put things in a logical order to make it better for the viewer whereas the real world is nothing like that, it doesn't always follow a logical pattern and is random and unpredictable.
TV and film reconstruct these images and texts to serve their own purpose in a competitive environment.
A Documentary is the media text that is closest to showing a true representation of real events but even then these are still short condensed snippets of a huge degree of filming showing only the sections that the editor wishes to show, these can also be manipulated to be biased to a certain cause or point of view and could show whatever is being filmed in a positive or negative light dependent on how it is RE-Presented.
Most films especially blockbuster epics are generally completely fictional in the way they represent social groups, although they can be what is considered an accurate representation they are still completely fictional as the situation, the character, the personality, everything that is with that media text is fictional and will conform to certain stereotypes so the audience can easily identify and relate to the character, characters that are difficult to interpret or are being attempted to be portrayed as a too specific and small social group will not pull in as many viewers.

Although change and differentiation within the representation of social groups such as the representation of women in film is welcome to change ,much like genre different styles or not conforming to stereotypes is welcome but it must be a gradual process within the industry, the representation of women is a great example as if you looked back a few decades most women in film were useless damsels in distress needing to be saved by the main male character (also male representation has changed but not to the degree of female characters) or were the stay home wife or mother while the man went to work and brought home the money, whereas now we are seeing more of women in empowered roles and roles equal to those of male counterparts and we see more social realism films where the creator is trying to give the absolute most accurate depiction of a social group like women as possible of course the actual social group would be far too varied to depict the entire group accurately but can select certain realistic attributes.

Reece's Summary on Genre

Genre can be used to denote different types of storytelling extending across a range of different media such as fairy tales, plays and TV soaps; simply different types of storytelling. But it can also be used to refer to the classification of films into types such as horror, comedy, science fiction or thriller.
In film there are some clear definable genres:

Romance
Horror
Thriller
Science Fiction
Comedy
Fantasy
among others

And also other subgenres that could be made from a combination of any of the main genres and also more than a combination of 2. Most blockbuster films are a large variety of genres and subgenres due to the length of the film it helps to have a diverse way of telling a story to keep the audiences attention.
Genre does not rely simply on what's in a media text but also on the way it is constructed.
This can be important, for example, when distinguishing between a horror movie and a thriller, which can deal with similar subject matter, and look the same — lots of action set at night — but belong to separate genres, a horror film takes the audience into a supernatural place, where a thriller sticks to reality.


Steve Neale declares that 'genres are instances of repetition and  difference' (Neale 1980, 48). He adds that 'difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre': mere repetition would not attract an audience.
This is true as for example horror has been one of the most varying genres over the years because a lot of things that scare audiences or entertain horror enthusiasts is based upon current events such as when people were a lot more scared of the super natural in the early years whereas now although supernatural is still prominent in current cinema the supernatural horror has changed itself so now there is less monsters in the woods horrors are more commonly set within homes and neighborhoods now and include a representation of real people with no supernatural  powers or include a more subtle kind of horror, also when there is a big natural disaster such as a volcano there are generally films based around that disaster closely followed after.




Also variations include where genres combine or hybrids as they are called. Rarely is a film seen nowadays that does include a multiple number of genres such as romance comedies or Sci-fi thrillers these give films a lot more depth and variation even between films with similar topics and are kept entertaining.




Rick Altman, in a 1984 article, proposed a
semantic/syntactic
approach to film genre. His aim was to ‘problematize’ the discussion of genre within film studies. He recognised that the development of film studies had seen a swing from ‘genre as history’ -- an approach which often used the film industries’ own terms to describe how genres changed over time -- to ‘genre as  semiotic) theory’ – an approach which largely ignored industry practices. Altman pointed out that genre (up until the 1960s) was often discussed in either ‘inclusive’ or ‘exclusive’ terms. Critics could refer in an almost tautological sense to a genre as comprising all the films that fulfilled a particular simple definition, e.g. westerns were films set in the American West between 1840 and 1900. But most analysis by scholars concentrated on a much more ‘inclusive’ list of ‘canonical’ films, which appeared to utilise the ‘essential’ elements of the genre. Altman initially proposed an approach which would combine the ‘inclusive’ and ‘exclusive’ via a general semiotic/structuralist approach. Thus the semantic approach to genre attempts to take abroad definition of a genre repertoire and to include for potential study all the films that appear to share the elements of the repertoire or ‘common traits’ such as characters, locations, shooting style etc. By contrast, the syntactic approach looks at the relationships between these elements and how they are structured in narratives. Altman’s example of this is the western in which the semantic approach concentrates on identifying the constituent elements and how they are presented, whereas the syntactic approach (e.g. via Jim Kitses, 1969/2004) concentrates on thematics such as the opposition of ‘East’ and ‘West’ or ‘garden’ and ‘desert’. In his 1999 book
Film/Genre
, Altman admits that the straight semantic/syntactic approach is lacking because it ignores the crucial key concepts that have since been re-inserted into film and media studies -- audience and institution. He adds a further ‘
pragmatic
’ approach which seeks to ask questions about exactly how producers conceive of genres and cycles etc. He also recognises that as ‘fluid’ groupings of elements, genre texts are open to a diversity of readings -- so audiences may, in effect, create and re-create genres through 'reading'. Earlier approaches had tended to see audiences as passive and to consider genre as formulae through which Hollywood ‘peddled’ its ideologies.

 

Audience by Daisy Hook

Audience is whoever views or receives the product. All products that are produced have a target audience for whom the assume will view the text, these are mostly crated from previous knowledge. audience can be defined by demographics and psychographics.



Example of a film demographic.

Psychographics is a generic term for consumers’ personality traits (could indicate what type of film they would like to watch), personal interests (music, sports, movie going), and film orientations ( comedy, horror, romance ).
Demographics are much more about getting to the point than psychographics, for psychographics get to know the person rather than just their age and what they like to see.

Target audiences.
Target audiences differ from film to film. for example the film Twilight will have a target audience of teenage girls, comparing to the film despicable me. The film twilight will have the audience of teenage girls whereas the film despicable me will have a family orientated audience.

Foundation Portfolio Evaluation - Reece,Daisy,George

Miscommunication on the editing and majority of post production, 2 people doing editing in different ways and the rest of the groups idea were not always taken into consideration. Resulting in a rush towards the end of the project when this was finally realised so the end product suffered as a consequence.
Next time we shall make sure our point is being communicated and keep more regular communication with not just the person(s) doing the postproduction but also with any other area of the project. Group members will also not be left to do work alone when possible or we will check on each other at regular intervals.

More time needed to be spent researching into sound and finding royalty free sound as the soundtrack added to the film was not exactly what we wanted it was a compromise as we were starved for time again.

Also there was a lot of saying we were going to do something and then not acting upon it then forgetting it and having to rush it at a later date. We need to take action upon something as soon as we decide what we are going to do.

When it actually came to filming our project we pretty much improvised most of the shots. We really needed to construct a better, more detailed story board for us to be successful in our filming.

Group management and sticking to set times! for most of the last month we were left stressing because a team member who had done most of the editing decided to not show up for the rest of the term, didn't tell us where they saved the work and also set up a ridiculous filing system that was impossible to navigate with files named inappropriately.

We also had technical difficulties with installing and applying font styles in the titles and in the end ended up with a default font by accident. the left was the font we got and the right was the style of font we were going for.