Film Review

Another Ancillary task requires me to make and construct a magazine review for my mask task of making a film. To get an idea of how these are constructed I went online and looked at current film magazine reviewers such as Empire.

Something all of my research tells me to do is learn the content thoroughly so I can talk about absolutely everything. This is where I have a advantage because I was the one creating the film and the ideas behind it are all my, so I already know about all the connotations and preferred meanings behind the films meaning.

The next tip I received was to form a specific opinion on the film that cant be misleading, like rating the film 3 stars out of film as a example. Although this could be difficult for me because I am biased towards my own film so after I have completed my audience research I will show them the film and ask to perform a anonymous survey rating the film. I will take an average from these results.

Another tip is to grab the reader immediately so briefly review a key feature of the film by quoting it and then leading it on to relevant points, but I have to make sure that I look out for spoilers because if the audience thought that I was ruining the film they wouldn't read the review.

This leads on to the next point of briefly recapping but not too much so that the user gets bored, I will have to find the balance between recapping but not over-recapping.

The next point is obvious but worth mentioning and it is to make sure you are keeping your reading interested. I can achieve this by reviewing the key points of the film not all the small talk shots. Another way is to use metaphors, paragraphs, adverbs etc. This is used to make the image of the films purpose inside the readers head indulging them even more.

Finally it is key that in my film I will stay honest throughout trying to completely reject the idea of being bias in any way possible.

Animatics

I started of by creating the storyboards with pen and paper to get the initial ideas out in physical so I can further improve the ideas. After consideration to changes I made my animatics by taking the pictures as stills and uploading them to the macs so I can edit them in Final cut Express and iMovie.

I was already familiar to using iMovie because I used it in my AS project but Final Cut Express was a new program to me buy luckily I already new how to use Sony Vegas Pro. These programs are very similar but just organised a bit differently but once I had figured my way around I had it sorted.

Posters

For one of my ancillary tasks I have chosen to make a poster for my film that will express the nature of the film without giving away too much detail. I don't have any knowledge about posters so I decided to research about some of the 'great movie posters'.

Two posters stood out particularly for what I want to achieve in my poster, here are the examples:

The 'Casino Royale' poster uses various shadows and different focuses to help make specific images of this poster stand out. For example the title of the film along with his face half shadowed which could be a connotation for having a good side but also a evil side to him.

This poster for the 2nd Matrix film film in the trilogy focuses on being very simplistic featuring mainly only black and white shades on the foreground and background. This not only helps the text stand out because of the green glow around the edges symbolising the Matrix code, but also the character 'Neo' can stand out a lot more who is very recognisable for being this character.

When making my poster I will use techniques that they have used to make a great poster, and one thing I have learned is to attempt to include semiotics with several connotations with a proffered meaning.

Analysis of Inception

Inception bases its idea on multiple levels of reality that the viewer has to distinguish the real from the dream world. The complexity of this film leaves the viewer lost in the media causing them to contradict themselves to think ‘Are we in a dream?’ and ‘How can you tell?’. Inception thrills the viewer with action, but because inception is constantly changing and switching from reality it draws us, the audience closer and more indulged to the film.

Inception is a dream in a dream in a dream but it gets you to think perhaps that the whole story is a dream and all those other dreams are just contained inside one dream and none of the story is actually happening. Leonardo dicaprio could be dreaming the whole thing up but we as a viewer don’t know. Throughout the film there are hints to this and against but most noticeably is the ending where Leonardo spins his ‘totem’ to see if he is dreaming or not and the film cuts out before we know. This is very similar to the film blade runner where Deckard is hinted that he also could be a replicate but it is up to the audiences opinion to whether he is or not. This in some ways breaks the 4^th wall because now it is up to the audience to not just watch the film but to participate in the creation of the film.

Trickery is used to its full potential in Inception because it doesn’t have a real villain of whom plots against the ‘heroes’ other than the humans sub conscious, who will attack everyone but its self. I think this is key because does this link us humans back to our primitive state, in that will instinctively believe every man/woman for themselves. It makes the audience wonder whether us as a human race are just selfish and don’t think of others just to get benefits for ourselves.

The film also surrounds it self in ‘Hyperreality’ with effects such as warping the world to a preference the ‘architect’ creates and the multiple worlds that the characters venture of whom can seamlessly travel through using little if no effort. Also time is constantly distorted depending on the ‘Level of the Dream’, so the deeper in they go the fast time travels creating not only more Hyperreality but also the complexity of the story which you can only understand if watched multiple times.

This film makes the viewer wonder if they are dreaming watching this film or if they are actually there watching the film. Could it be the sub conscious telling the viewing they are in a dream by creating a film about dreams?

All these ideas make Inception incredibly postmodern with trickery, complicity, lack of a villain and the delivery of the film.

Theories & Theorists

Per Aage Brandt

What is semiotics?

Semiotics is the study f signs, their forms of expression and contents. So what is a sign? Maybe the best definition is the one that just states that signs in the non-metaphorical sense are phenomena produced intention

ally b humans and taken by humans to show the intention of the producer, and its content.

S is a complex, linguistic and gestural sign. The speaker-signer shows to the

listener-observer by performing it, namely by his grammatically organized words and his accompanying movements of fingers, hand, arm, trunc and face (especially his eye movements), that he wants to direct his addressee's attention to an item present to his mind. This item - here apparently including a bird - is then the content of his sign; the content of the sign is the part of what is present to the speaker - signer's mind that he wants the listener-observer's mind to also attend to. That part is expressed by S, which is therefore considered to be its expression.

If S only uses pictures, that is, photographs, drawings, and the like, or

gestures that 'draw' the contours of things in the air, in order to refer to things, events and

their circumstances, then these pictorial references to the content make S only consist of icons, or iconical subsigns. If S also uses imitations of facial expressions of affective and cognitive states of mind, or imitations of yawning, snoring, coughing etc. it includes indexical subsigns, meaning it has a direct relationship to the sign. Such signs, indices, are intentional versions of spontatneous bodily reactions that are not signs (but that are often called 'signs' metaphorically: "Fever is a sign of illness").

Furthermore, S can include gestures of politness, paramusical sounds like claps, clicks, cmall jingle-like songs, whistling, etc. to indicate modes of addressing the other; such subsigns

Marxist Theory

In Britain and Europe, neo-Marxist approaches were common amongst media theorists from the late '60s until around the early '80s, and Marxist influences, though less dominant, remain widespread. So it is important to be aware of key Marxist concepts in analysing the mass media. However, there is no single Marxist school of thought, and the jargon often seems impenetrable to the uninitiated. These notes are intended to provide a guide to some key concepts.

Marxist theorists tend to emphasize the role of the mass media in the reproduction of the status quo, in contrast to liberal pluralists who emphasize the role of the media in promoting freedom of speech.

A central feature of Marxist theory is the 'materialist' stance that social being determines consciousness. According to this stance, ideological positions are a function of class positions, and the dominant ideology in society is the ideology of its dominant class. This is in contrast to the 'idealist' stance that grants priority to consciousness (as in Hegelian philosophy). Marxists differ with regard to this issue: some interpret the relationship between social being and consciousness as one of direct determination; others stress a dialectical relationship.

n fundamentalist Marxism, ideology is 'false consciousness', which results from the emulation of the dominant ideology by those whose interests it does not reflect. From this perspective the mass media disseminate the dominant ideology: the values of the class which owns and controls the media. According to adherents of Marxist political economy the mass media conceal the economic basis of class struggle; 'ideology becomes the route through which struggle is obliterated rather than the site of struggle'

Creating 'Joe Media' Graphic

I decided to go ahead a bit with schedule and create a graphic not as a final but as a work in progress. Here is the final result

So how did I create it?

First I had to make a 3d sphere and extrude its shape;

Second I created a camera so that the sphere was in the centre of the screen;

Finally I made the text and added all the materials to the layers, ending with this, then I set it to render out into high quality formats;

Media Plan

This Video was made and created using Adobe After effects with everything in it being original. I screen capped me using Windows 7, Adobe Photoshop and Cinema 4d.

Inspiration for Creativity

http://creativity-online.com/

Being creative needs inspiration and one of the best in the world to admire in creativity is James Dyson.

James Dyson

You know the feeling when some everyday product lets you down. 'I could have designed this better myself', you think. But how many of us turn our thoughts into actions?

James Dyson does.

He is a man who likes to make things work better. With his research team he has developed products that have achieved sales of over $6 billion worldwide.

But what is creativity?

- Creativity is a mental process involving the discovery of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the existing ideas or concepts, fueled by the process of either conscious or unconscious insight.

- The ability to think imaginatively and originally

- The experience of thinking, reacting, and working in an imaginative and idiosyncratic way which is characterized by a high degree of innovation and originality, divergent thinking, and risk taking.

- Promoting construction or creation; "creative work"

- Using imagination and expressing oneself in art forms.

Action Plan

My Action Plan for September 2010 - January 2011;

September 2010

- Complete research stages, this includes Content Analysis on relevant films, studying the target audience of whom watch/like post modern thrillers and the media technology developments.

- In depth study into Blade Runner

October 2010

- Start planning my production:

- Create the initial opening storyboard for the film on paper

- Create the mock-up graphics on various programs like Cinema 4D and After Effects

- Creating the Custom Animatic from paper to digital

November 2010

- Create a physical storyboard using play mobile to get a better view at what camera angles to choose and setting also

- Research into conventions and think about inter-textual references I could make for example a link to the matrix?

- Start work on the opening of the Live Action Film after all previous stages are complete, this will run along side creating all the digital work like graphics and animations if needed

December 2010

- Continue with making the film and shooting the film

- Start work on the sub category's of my production; the Poster and Magazine Reveiw

- Look at conventions of existing media posters for my genre and start sketch ups on paper

- Study and research film magazine reviews for films like the matrix in Empire and also begin mock-ups

- Start to produce the secondary productions in Adobe illustrator and Photoshop making sure I either obey conventions or disobey with giving reason.

- Show a small group of people my film giving me feed back to my work so I can improve upon it if needed to

January 2011

- Finish the film shooting along with the digital components allowing me to start work on the Editing part of the production

- Finish the Poster to a professional standard and getting it digitally copied to blog and printed out

- Finish the Magazine Review to my liking but also comparing it to relevant pieces

- Finally after all the above is completed upload the film online if possible and create a DVD menu and disc to go along with it

- Start Evaluation.

Planning My Advanced Production

Click To Enlarge

Conventions of existing media texts; In order to get my film to a high standard I will need to look at various present films that are relevant to mine, an example would be Blade Runner.

So what is Blade Runner about and how will it help my production?

Blade Runner is a post modern Thriller, the same as mine so learning of this can not only help my story but my cast, shots, mise en scene etc.

In short blade runner is inspired by a 1950s Film Noir. The original version of the movie has a voice over by Harrison Ford, similar to the bogart movies of the 1950s especially those based on Philip Chandler novels. The replicants are almost impossible to tell from a Human being, so how do you know what is real or fake? In fact Harrison Ford ends the movie with Shaun Young who is a replicant. All the replicants want is to be able to be treated by Humans, so they are trying to cross the artificial barrier to the Human barrier.

Usually in a post modern film they make inter-textual references or parody's, but most importantly they create Hyper reality;- The world inside the film, breaking the rules of realism and trying to represent media reality.

Technology I will use

I am going to use a wide range of technologies that I have, these include Cinema 4D.

This is a 3D software engineering program that allows me create such things as 3D text graphics (like at the start). Another program is Adobe After Effects CS5 which is a editing and special effects program for videos which will be key to my film. I will be using the Apple iMac Pro - snow leopard as one of the OS systems, this is because we have access to them at school which provide the means to edit, add sound and will allow me to piece together my film. Comic Life is a handy bit of software which can allow me to make essentially a 'Comic Strip', which I can use for my story board, plan and other things similar. Illustrator is another program by adobe which can allow me to use vectors accordingly and effectively when needing to export or import. On the Apple iMac's they come with iMovie which is a simple yet effective editing program for videos which I will use to its fullest ability. Adobe Photoshop CS5 is well renown, and I will be using this bit of software to make graphics and text for my video and the poster for my production. Google along with Google chrome is a key feature for my production allowing me to make this blog but also research on the internet and without it I could not do this. Finally the last peice of software I will use is Windows 7, this will be my main OS because it runs on my computer.

Here is a video on demonstrating my technology.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frnKaGefD8M

The Cast

Choosing the cast I will do carefully, making sure that it is the right character to fit for the role. I will look at the props and costumes also very closely because they will be key to making the film work. Some of my inspirations...