Mamma Mia

I think that Mammia mia is a fantastic film that is funny and light hearted. It uses a varitey of different shots that keep the film flowing quickly and keeps it interesting. It also uses many slow motion shots and lots and lots of zooms/panns. This film is a musical so lots of digetic music is included.

I recommend if you have not watched to watch. Here is a clip of it on you tube : http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=TGNtimrtGiI

our preliminary video

here's our video

Step Up

The film Step Up opens with a shot of an empty dance studio. As the soundtrack kicks in and the credits are displayed, students begin to enter and limber up, we, as the audience assume this is in preparation for a dance class.

The camera then cuts to a shot of street dancers practicing at night outside. As the clips progress and the music grows steadily louder, the dancers begin to perform. The camera cuts between shots of the very different scenes, demonstrating the contrast of the characters surroundings through lighting, costume, and, most importantly, their style of dance.

The music used is specifically selected to fit to each dancers style, fitting with the ballet dancers complex steps but also with the street dancers movements.

Once the story begins we are shown a wide shot of a car in a darkened street, drawing steadily towards the camera. The way in which this is shot instantly unsettles the audience, allowing them to subconsciously accept that this is an unsafe atmosphere, setting them up for the fight which is to follow. The car stops before a house in which a party is taking place and the camera sweeps upwards into one of the upstairs rooms where the first dialoge of the film is spoken, and the story begins.

Rebecca

Rebecca was filmed in 1940 and was directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It was his first Hollywood project and the only one to win a best picture oscar. It has been decribed as a psychological thriller/romance and is based on a novel by Daphne Du Maurier. Hitchcock wanted to keep the dark atmosphere of the novel so insisted that it be shot in black and white.

The film starts with the soft and urgent voice of the unnamed heroine of the film, it is a voice over as she decribes Manderley as if it is like a dream and then states that they can never go back there in person, only in her dreams. She then says 'I do go back to the strange days of my life which began for me in the south of France' this statment ends the 'dream' opening and starts the film.

While the unamed heroine talks the camera movement are very origanal, the camera pauses at the tall iron gates of Manderley, an English country mansion, and then moves through them. The camera then twists up the drive that has become overgrown with plants. At the end of the drive, the camera tracks to the right through Manderley. The mansion's forbidding, burned-out ruins are seen silhouetted in the mist, viewed in shadow and moonlight. This makes the audience feel uneasy and makes then want to know what happened at Manderley that was so bad to make it look as it is now. A fire had happened but why could they never go back? The voice over also makes the audience want to watch more as the unamed heroine sounds uneasy also as if this place holds bad memory's for her but she is still drawn to it (as she visits it in her dreams).

After this and her last line 'the strange days of my life which began for me in the south of France' You the see a rocky coastline where waves crash against the rock cliffs, the camera pans left and then up to a well-dressed man wearing a black suit, he stands at the cliff's edge, staring at the sea and he also appears to be distracted. As he moves toward the edge you then see the woman who was talking in the 'dream' opening as she is walking near by and shouts 'No, stop!' as she fears he is going to jump.

You can tell the genre of this film by the uneasiness of the womens voice, how Manderley looks and how distracted the man is. Also you get the idea that is could also be a romance and the two main characters are interduced.

I really enjoyed this film though while watching it i got a bit freaked out, it is very effective on making the audience feel uncomfortable.

The Number 23

Camera Shots:

• Establishing shot to show the location
• Shot of the cake to show the significance and a hidden meaning to it
• close-up to show facial expressions

Indicators of Genre:

• horror/ thriller hinted by the creepy music played in the background
• the rewinding shot shows it doesn't have a simple narrative

Sound:

• non-diagetic of Jim Carrey narrating
• non-diagetic music
• dialogue

Body Language:

• low angle shot of man in the van because he is shifty as he is bored and winding up a dog
• the clock has a significant meaning because his body language doesn't change
  

Daddy Daycare

The Camera Shots:

• There is an establishing shot of the house at the very beginning so the audience are familiarised with the location.
• There is mid shots around the house showing the different rooms where the character goes.
  

Indicator of Genre:

• There are lots of bright colours which shows that the film is suitalbe for kids.
  
• There is 'happy music' which creates a family seen when the boy wakes up his father.
• The tolet scene shows that the genre is comedy.

Sound:

• happy upbeat music, sound track
• diagetic music of him peeing and flushing the loo before the music restarts

We liked the opening for daddy day care . We thought that it would be fun light hearted movie !!

Analysis of 28 Weeks Later

i watched the opening of this horror movie. At the very beginning the camera work is handheld, with very fast shots of all of the action that is taking place. There is obviously a protest or something happening causing chaos for the whole town with locals running everywhere and the police trying to take control. The audience can feel as though they are in the action as the sound is blurry along with the images then the screne starts to flicker. There is a zooming out movement so we can see that there is a monkey lying on an operating table, in a dark underground room, watching these CCTV footage of the chaos from the tv screens. Then with a tracking camera movement we see characters enter this room, walking around , exploring the location, seeing lots more monkeys shut in cages going mad. There is a mid-shot so that the audience can see their reactions to this scene and relate to their feelings. When the fast action picks up again the camera is handheld and flashes to different shots very quickly to make the audience feel the tension from not seeing the while view.

This film opening looks very scary and disterbing suggesting it is like this the whole way through the film however it does looks exciting and uses an interesting variation of shots.
nikki

Atonement opening Scene - by Helen

HI

This scene opens with the digetic sound of type writing, it sounds very harsh and makes the audience feel quite nervous. As the scene continues the typing gets quicker and a non-digetic song starts. The first shot we see is of a dolls house then it continues to show animals all lined up outside the dolls house. This is incongruesous, usually you would expect to sea a boat with animals not a posh dolls house. maybe this is suggesting that this is how the characters feel in the film. The shot then carries on panning through to show us the animals then we see a girl who has her back to us and is what we assume typewriting. The decor of the room is floral and quite old fashioned therefore I assume it is not set in the 21st century. There is a pan round and an extreme close-up of the girls forhead and eyes. There is an extreme close up of her typing- this could represent what she is writing is so important. We then see the words 'the end' on the bottom of the page and she rips it of and puts it in a folder with some other paper.

I think that this is very effective and makes me want to watch the rest of the film.

Pre Preliminary Course work- Jenny and Aaron continued....

so, we storyboarded our ideas and then we had to asked jenny and aaron if they would help us. they agreed! we filmed all of aarons parts first, which was very entertaining as we had lots of outtakes. It was hard to film especially in the corridors as people kept walking down them while we were trying to film.
the problems we faced with editing was mainly with the sound track as we thought we had got rid of the background sound, which it turns out we had not. so we get a mix of music and people shouting. Also in our slow mo bit the background noice also slows down and it sounds rather scary! very hulkish.

Pre Preliminary Course work- Jenny and Aaron

The first filming we did was a love story between Jenny Brook and Aaron Hogdes (sorry for mis spelling your ser-name). It was titled 'The Day Callum Wasn't There'
First we story boarded our ideas

Preliminary Coursework continued...

Once we had chosen the setting we started to film. We wanted to use a range of shots to give our mini movie vareity. We used point of view shot, high angle shots, low angle shots, shot reverse shot, close ups, long shots, over the shoulder etc.
We would have liked to add more to it but Simone and Lucy never remembered to wear the same clothes and the new dining hall either had classes in it or all the tables were set out so therefore we could not add anything more. We did however manage to get a longer shot of the door when lucy is looking at it.
We use two fade to blacks to give a dramatic effect.
The reason we asked two of our friends to act in this production so we could give our full attention to the camerawork so we could get the best results.
We chose to film in the new dinning hall because the lighting was good, this was important as in our pre preliminary coursework turn out very dark. This worked well because by showing simones dark silhuette against the light background it emphasises the fact that she is an evil character.

We watched pycho in our last media lesson. It was creapy and very cleverly done, not really sure what to write about it so im just gonna waffle for a bit...
- camera work was extremely original, our favorate bits were: in the end when Bates's smile fades into the last scene, this creates a disterbing memorable image. Also we liked it when it cut between the victims sister looking round the house to victim boyfriend distracting Bates. The spinning effect in the house we also liked and when the dectivtive fell down the stairs.
- editing - the shots edited in the 'shower scene' we thought were put together amazingly!! you never actually see the knife stab the girl, you just see the effects. There are alot of fades between scene to give the film a nice flowing effect.
- WE THOUGHT IT WAS SCARY!!! especially when we saw bates in a dress! was not expecting that!
- over all very good film!

Preliminary Coursework

Planning:

We arranged for two of our friends (Simone Smith and Lucy Dove) to act in our preliminary coursework. First we story boarded our ideas and decided on a location before we began our filming, also we decided which camera shot we would use.

hello and welcome to our media studies blog!

In our group there is:

Helen Brady
Nikki Stock
Lucy Howard aka Howie
Rachie Petter