Avatar

The story of success wih Avatar

The 2010 blockbuster film Avatar turned out to be a phenominal success. Although it used some different methods to some other typical blockbusters, such as it wasn't full of massive 'A-List' stars so it didn't have the masive effect where the film people wanted to watch the film just because of the actors and actresses that are involved and starring in the films.

First off the film is based around the planet that is called ‘Pandora’ and the main plot of this that the marine Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington who isn’t actually a massive star himself) and the story is that he must decide whether he part of mankind and the human race or whether he is to stick to his roots and stay and stay on the moon planet Pandora, which he still has strong ties with. Whilst on the subject of actors, virtually the whole cast of the film was unknown was when the film was made, but quite obviously many of them became well known due to the success of the film. This proves why the film used ‘untraditional’ methods to become a success.

It has to be said that one of the major reasons why Avatar had was a great success because of the size of the budget that director James Cameron had been given, which was an estimated $310 million, therefore this gave Cameron the opportunity to use many high quality special effects throughout the duration of the film. Maybe a reason why Cameron was given a enormous budget was because he was the director of the ‘Titanic’ which was a blockbuster film. So Cameron would have been trusted to create a spectacular film. Plus he made the film a four quadrant picture so I could stereotypically appeal to male and female genders who are both young and old, it also had 12A rating and plain 12, this attracted more viewers as now parents would be able to legally take their children to watch the film.

One other gigantic reason why Avatar was a massive economic success was because it was the first major blockbuster film that was available to watch in 3D, this attracted and many intrigued many viewers who wouldn’t use usually watch film like Avatar just so they can experience a film in 3D.

The distributors also managed to give the film a high amount of advertising, using both above and below the line techniques, below the line when they would advertise the film on the side of social network websites such as Facebook, they had been working with google and knew if people had been researching the film, so now they could give the film further advertisement. Above the line advertisement was used in scenarios such as in some specialised cinemas 15 minute previews of  the film were being shown, this worked because it tempted viewers to watch the film as the preview had made readers interested in what would in the whole of the film.

Altogether Avatar was a monstrous success, as it’s expenditure was $310 million, the overall profit that the film made was an astounding $760,505,847, so it’s proven that the film was a massive success and talks of a sequel are in order, so just to repeat one more time, the film was a huge success.

 

The Film-Kick Ass!!

The film Kick Ass is based on the Marvel comic books Kick Ass, it was relased in the United Kingdom in April 2010. The films actual director throughout was Matthew Vaughan, although worldwide famous actors like Brad Pitt played parts in directing the film. To compromise for making the film the producer Michaeal Vaughan had to change the basis of the film, pretty much he was told he wasn't allowed to give the film a sad ending if he was going to make the film. So in one of the final scenes when Dave Lizewski told Katie that he was he in the mood for having sex her, as he'd had a thing for her for many years, in the comic she told him to go away, and never spoke ho him, whereas in the film he was forced to make Katie take Dave up on his offer and said she actually wanted to have sex with, and their relationship built form there. Vaughan was forced making this ending a reality against his will as he actually wanted to give the film a sad enging. which resulted in an issue with producing the film itself.


The film was based on the American Marvel comic books, when they realised they wanted to use one of the characters from the film they were struggling to get the copyright and funds together to be able to pay Marvel to even be able to use one of their lower card characters, they were struggling to even get a 'C-grade' character This eventually led to a problem when financing the film, as distributors etc. weren't sure why this film starring the the lesser known Marvel chracters as it's main faeature would bring the audience and the money in.

Controversy surrounding the film, was the amount of explicit language and voilence used by the films young cast. First off 'Hit Girl' is quoted as saying ok you "c***" when she comes up against some criminals, this was opposed to by some viewers because they didn't young children to be influenced by Hit Girl as she was seen a hero in the film, and people didn't want children to imitate this behaviour.

A big reason why the succeeded is because the films rating did not entirely mean it was intended for that age audience because there were different aspects of the film which appealed to a wide ranges of audience, it wasn't just a film that intruiged violent teenagers, it caught the imagination of many peoples eyes and they saw a difference to other films in Kick Ass, this illustrates that unrealistic feautures in films can still be popular, and it can also convince people that comic books still have a life to lead and can remain successful.

If anything, when talking about about the music used in the film, it seems to be that there was a hint ofb laziness used when composing the music. I mean sometimes there can be nothing wrong with re-using music but sometimes the music has a lasting rememberance with a certain film, so when being reused it could just being linked with a previous, therefore giving Kick Ass less independance. So personally I believe if you get the music right then it can define your film, giving it a lasting legacy, which is one thing Kick Ass could lack.

Identify the audience for 'Moon' by using examples from the film

The film 'Moon' which was created in 2009 was a stereotypical Sci-Fi film which was directed by Duncan Jones. Straight away we can tell that Sci-Fi will take a strong interest in the film as it is set around the moon. The Film predominantly contains one actor throughout the whole sequence of the film so Sam Rockwell who has the biggest part in the film would usually straight away appeal to Sci-Fi fans because his the star in the Sci-Fi comedy film 'Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, this could mean that once again Sci-Fi fans will take an interest in the film but also now some comedy film fans may show an interest in the film and may want to watch it. As throughout the film he has the visable mans role to play (along with a computerised screen) so the viewers might have been interested in how the director Duncan Jones managed to use one actor to play two different roles and what special effects he used and how he portrayed them, most the time I believed he used a split or double screen, where he filmed two seperate shots and then placed them together in the film. The most expensive scene to film was where the two Sam Bell's were playing table tennis, it was the most expensive scene because Jones had place a computerised Sam Rockwell in the scene, and it was also the most expensive part of the filming. Quite often they used body doubles, so when you thought there were two Sam Rockwell's in the scene, you could just not see other of the characters face, so in fact they made his body look just like Rockwell when it was actually another, this was done to keep the costs down, there was an exception on the table tennis though.

The two actor that can be recognised as famous faces in the film are Sam Rockwell who played Sam Bell, and had the majority of acting to do. Other than this, Kevin Spacey who is a worldwide recognised actor, he was payed more than anybody else for his part of the film, even though he only worked for one day, and only did the voice over for the robot Gerty.

Also there wasn't a massive amount of advertisment for the film, and the main reason for this was because they didn't have the funds to do so. The Budget for the film was only £5,000,000 and this was for everything including advertising the film and not just for the filming. Duncan Jones couldn't even let his film be nominated for some awards as to do this he would have to take money out of the budget for the film and send copies of the film out. Which by no means he could not afford to do.

Although the Film 'Moon' was altogether a success, and was given the award of the 'Best Independent British Film of the Past 10 Years' and made a profit of plus £4,000,000 which shows the film was worth creating.

Merlin-Male Representaion.

What representations of gender are constructed by the extract through the use of mise en scene, editing, use of camera, sound?

As soon as the trailor starts we can see Merlin sat in what seems to be a big castle, he is sat on his own in a relatively large room, the camera angle looks to be a long shot, which is also similar to when he is stood on his own in some case. This could be done for the two reasons, the first is that it could have been used to show that the male is the dominant, and has superior strenth compared to the female. The other is that the director is trying to show that Merlin will have to deal with some tricky situations on his own, and when it comes down to it, he will have nobody to rely on.

We then see a close up on Merlin's face where we see that there is a sparkle in his eye, this could be used to show that Merlin will be unique to others and do what nobody else can do, and produce magic, which could mean he will once again be dominant and can over power others.

Also usually they the camera pointing upwards when looking at the men e.g. when one of the men is pointing up at the castle, which once again could be used to show that the women had to look up to the men.

The voiceover throughout is a man, this to me sounds like it could be a 'wise man' (maybe like Merlin when he's older) trying to spread his knowledge, but it once again look like the man is dominant, and everything that a man says is more important than whatever a woman says, almost as if a male would make all the decisions and would be seen as more important than the woman. The music also builds up expectations and builds up tension, and it playing as Merlin and somebody else are in a confrontation, this once again makes out men are superior as they are the ones who go and fight battle, and can be more physical.

Throughout the trailer we say that men are treated with more respect, and look like they're more domiant and much more important.

Disability- Tourettes

Monday, 8 November 2010

Disability

Tourettes is now a well known disability but once it was seen a rude and hinderance to society. Nowadays tourettes is accepted by the general public. Big Brother winner Pete Bennett who also suffered with exposed the illness helped explain the misconceptions of the illness, and was a very popular chartacter. This particular clip is taken from a channel four documentary on tourettes.

Animoto Video attempt one

Not 100% sure why I chose this film, i'm not a massive fan of the sequal!

Original Theorists

VLADAMIR PROPP

Propp comes from the country of Russia, the main theory of his work is that always believed that to every narrative there was a 'hero' 'villain' 'false hero' 'helper' and a 'donor' contained inside. This can be related to life on mars because Sam Tyler can be seen as the hero because of his determination and inspiration to get the job done, Colin Reams can be seen as the villain as he is the one who Tyler is trying to convict and Gene Hunt is looked at as the false hero because he can be seen as being a popular character for all the wrong reasons.

Todorov

He originates from the country of Bulgaria. As well as becoming known for his theories he was also a keen author. Most of his work is from the 1960's and he is seen as being very influencial. His main theory was that every narrative had three periods in it, first of all was an introduction where everything is in balance and some cases 'happy' but then something 'big' or disasterous happens with changes things so everything becomes 'pear shaped' finally it will then have an ending where the disaster goes back to how it originally was. In relation to life on mars, we see it when Tyler is doing his normal everyday job when a disater happens and he is took back to te 1970's and he then must work his situation out and get back to the present, which he eventually does.

Levi-Strauss

Strauss who comes from the country of France lived until he was one hundred years old. He main theory was that all narratives contain a feature of Binary Opposites. This is where you two completely opposite things the same narrative for example it can be related to life on mars because during the programme Tyler is living in the present day when suddenly he is hit by a car and taken back in time to the 1970's and this can be seen as binary opposites because there is a complete contrast in settings for Tyler. 

FILM DIRECTORS!

Last week in AS Media we studied for careers of  6 different directors, we looked at the breif background of these directors, the style of filning they used, what audience they usually appeal too and what famous films or music videos they have directed in the past.

Wes Anderson

• He has directed films such as The Royal Tennenbaums and the American Express Advert.
• He ususally uses classic folk music or british rock for the soundtrack of his film.
• He often directs 'up market' films, so usualy they would be watched by a wealthier audience.
• He was born in Texas and he is 41 years old.
• Anderson takes things such as props very seriously, and they must always be in what he believes to be 'perfect' position

Shynola

Shynola is not one person but a group of four men, they all met at Kent Institute of Art and Design.

Gideon Baws, Chris Harding, Richard Kenworthy and Jason Groves were the men involved.

They produced the film 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy'

Did advertisments for Playstation

Also music videos for Coldplay and BLUR.

Spike Jonze

• Was born in Rockville, 41 years old.
• Has recieved an Oscar for his work on the film Adaption.
• He also recieved Golden Globes for this project.
• He has created advertisments for companies such as Ikea and gap.
• He also created American programma jackass.
• An effect of his work is that he tries to make his work look cheap and easy to make with no special effects when it is complete opposite, expensive with a high amount of effort put into it. 

Sorry this is not completed! I had to finish off my English Coursework, I will complete as soon as I get another chance.

Todays Media Lesson 13.10.10

Today in Media we studied the 'Britishness' in films. We looked at how directors give films bristish stereotypes to show countries like America what it is appartantly like to live in Britain. We looked at Hot Fuzz at saw how things like the police ringing bells going from a siren to a bell to a ringing showed how the police force has changed over years. We also looked at regular features of British films, and what is associated with Britain. Such as often we see a film based around an urban run down estate, to show working class.

A personal favourite style of British film is films based on the British cultural movement. Films like trainspotting that I believed peaked during the Britpop era which dealed with th concept of drugs. Plus films like Quadrophenia starring Phil Daniels which looks at the Mod scene and plays classic and iconic music such as The Jam and The Who

Magazine Post-Production

After reviewing the outcome of my magazine, I am slighly disappointed with the outcome, as I feel that it looked bland and bleak. Although as the focus of this was to get used to working with photoshop, I suppose in some ways it was quite good that I gained experience and realised and that if one thing goes wrong then the whole of your project can go wrong. So I have learnt how important it is to have a different layer for everything single thing you do. If there's one thing that i was happy about with my magazine though, it was the images. I thought they had been cut to a decent standard and there wasn't too many jaged lines in the cut- outs.

Overall I believe I have learn from this first part of the cousrse and will look forward and try to relish it when we get another chance to do it.

Magazine Production

I was very inexperienced with photoshop and had only used it briefly on my induction days. I started off to my complete suprise slighly comfortable, because with some help I managed to import my cover picture and chop down to size and put it on the blank page. I then started to write the sub-headings on my page and had managed okay to set them out around the page. The reason for this was because I remembered to keep layering my work. That's when I made a real blunder, which to an extent did ruin some of my work. I had coloured the background, but it didn't look particularly good, and I had also just put my title on as well. The issue was that now I had locked the title and background so I change or remove. The problem was that the sky blue was a terrible contrast and ruined the rest of the cover and made it look very generic and plain. I also spent too much time trying to fix this problem, until I was told it was unchangable so because of this I had to rush through my contents page.

As for contents page, I at least learnt from my previous mistakes and concentrated more throughout and carefully layered everything. I quickly (with some help though) managed to cut out and import some images onto the contents page. I then added a new layer and put on a dark blue background. With the final outcome of the cover in the back of my mind, I kept remembering to add new layers everytime I did something, I was rapidly running out of time, so I had a quick look at my plan and listed all the page numbers with a brief description of the whats on the page.

My magazine was now completed and though after a good start i finished off disappointed with it, I had learnt a lot from it, I then just had to upload the magazine onto my blog.

Magazine Cover and Contents Pre-Production

Recently the main focus of our AS Media lessons has been to create a magazine cover and a contents to go with it. First of all we had to a draft of covers on some A3 paper, and there were a few features that needed to be included on the article. First off the articles needed to be based on the school (Lutterworth College) so because of this we had to create articles and these articles had to be true, and actually be the talk of the school at the present time, as long as it wasn't offensive.

At first I stuggled to come up with a title and basis for my front cover, but I knew what other sub features I was going to use, as much there much interesting talk about, so the choices were narrow. We had to annotate everything to do with the cover, so I decided to call my magazine 'CULT' this was purely on the basis that I take an interest in british culteral films, and the british movement in culture, such as the Mods. I also decided to interview one of my classmates as put him on the front cover, and I advertised this as being an interview with a cult figure, so it kind of bode in with my title.

I then decided to use a sky blue colour as my background for my cover, and use 'ariel' as my font, and use the dark blue as the colour. Whilst the colour would be red for the title which would positioned at the top of the cover, so that if it was actually being sold in a shop then people would be able to see the title and what they are buying straight away. I then in a quicker period of time planned the contents, but we had to involve extra features to stretch the length of the magazine. So I included thing such as the weekly announcements. I also decided to do my contents darker shade to the magazine cover.

I now believed that I was ready to start photoshopping my magazine and bring it to life.

storyboarding.

For the first time I had to do a pre-filming storyboard, in groups of four we had to create storyboard for a person walking down a corridor, opening a door and gonig to meet another person. which on first instance sounded simple, but for newcomers it wasn't!
During the film had  to include severn camera angles which were: - A Long Shot -Close Up -Mid Shot-Shot Reverse Shot-Match On Action - 180 Degree Rate -Extreme Cut.

close up shot of a flower

As a group we all took on a different scene to create the storyboard for, I was given the task of doing the door scene, which I also offered to do. It was slightly confusing at first, because nothing exciting springs to mind when looking at a door. All in all I decided to use a Mid Shot of the actors hand on the door, followed with close a close up of the actors hand as he pulled down the door handle to give emphasis on him opening the door. Then the third shot of the door was use a reverse shot from the other side of the door, to show the actor as he is coming through the door on the other side, and the final shot of the door used was the 180 Degree Rate of the actor as he had come through to the room on the other side of the door, this was used so that when the filming was done you could the actor coming through the door and also see the chair he was going to sit on.

At first it took some getting used and you had to try and be imaginative but once we had done one ot two shots we started to get the hang of it, the next job on the list was to starting filming.

Why I chose Media A level

A big reason behind choosing Media AS was because I have a love music, my favourite genre of music is mainly indie/alternative and some of my favourite bands include The Courteeners, Blur and The Cribs.
I also enjoy reading music magazines such as NME and Q. So by choosing Media I hope to get and insight into the basis on how these magazines have been made.

I also enjoy TV and Film and I am interested into the reasoning behind film making and producing for example that everything is done for a reason and that there can be so much thought gone into the decision of using a certain prop for a very important reason.

Hot Fuzz, Nick Angel opening scenes

Nick Angel, looks upon himself as a very skilled policeman of a high ability, and the directors of the film show this in many ways. First of all, during the opening scene, the doors automatically open for him, this is unique because the doors open way before Angel arrives at them, this is used to show that Angel has power and that you know Angel is coming your way from even from a distance far away. Also as he walks closer to the door his footsteps get louder and louder, this could be looked at in a way that he always stamps his authorities wherever he goes and never somebody off lightly. Also as he walk up to the door his body is like a shadow but is also an imposing figure because nobody knows who he is. This is reference to when he is out on duty and he springs up out of nowhere like an imposing figure would and he arrests people.

In many ways he could be seen to be represented as stereotypical man, he's good at sport, he has advanced driving skills as well, but this is also where he proves himself to be a very snobbish man, because he always has to prove himself to be better than the rest at whatever he does, first of all he has to go one step further and take an advanced cycling lessons, just so he say that he has more qualifications than most others. This could also make Angel out to be a sad man in some ways because no offence to advanced cycling lessons but they're not a have accessory for your image. So on the outside he may feel like a winner but on the the inside he is a bit of a loser.

Altough to ordinary citizens he can be seen as over powering because he has the highest arrest rate in the metropolitan police and has had nine special commendations in the last twelve months, he can still be bought down a level by his bosses in the force, which reallys bothers him when push comes to shove as he shows when he transferred to Gloucester.

Both his name and the music played are very symbolic to film because his name is 'Nick Angel' which so 'Nick' is a reference to him always arresting people and 'Angel' because by the victims of crime he can be seen a hero for saving them. The music played is 'goody two shoes' by Adam and the Ants which is symbolic because angel can be seen as a 'goody two shoes' by the way he grovels up to the higher members of the police force and goes around arresting people for fun, maybe as a way in which he could be seen as trying to impress authoritve figures too much and also for a sense of personal pride.

Altogether throughout the opening to 'Hot Fuzz' Angel can be seen as Snobbish character who immediately sets up a bad status with the audience which is purposely meant by the directors.

The 5 C's

The 5 C's are: Camera Angles, Continuality, Cutting (Editing), Close-ups, Composition.

Camera Angles
Usually a film will start with a long shot, this is so straight away we get a description of the surrounding where film or main characters of the film will be based. Then we would get slightly more information on the Characters background. A medium shot is used is the most commonly used shot in cinema and film, it would be used to show the interaction of characters, for instance a couple together would have a medium shot so the audience would get an idea of the relationship between the two characters.

A close up would be used if there was something/someone important that the audience would need to see as it would have a big reference later on the film.

Cutting/Editing
This is an essential for films because otherwise if we didn't have it a fil would run in real time and in some circumstances would never end. The main uses of Cutting are that it allows a director to change locations and to help make the film more exticing especially during dull parts, for dramatic emphasis.

Continuality
This is where a character shows repetitive behaviour, or where there are continual references to how a character. It also refers to visual errors on sceen, such as when the somebodies drink has suddenly gone down.

Composition
This is where the set to a film is done for reason and the props are layed out in a certain way for a reason, such as in 'The Royal Tennanboums' where Wes Anderson uses every prop for a distinct reason as it represents a particular reference for a character.