Film language

in my media lesson we started to look at film language. we looked at 

• the characters and how they are portrayed, 
• the location of the scene is it immediate, geographical or historical, 
• we also looked at what context is the film in, where in the film does the scene take place,
•  what is the genre of the film 
•  the story line.

we watched the opening scene from the film 'American gangster' we looked at what we could see and find out just from the opening scene. 

we were asked to analyse the scene and to see if we could identify those 5 main things. from this short scene i picked up on that the there is hierarchy happening in the 4 characters shown in the clip. the first character we notice is the foreign man in the chair getting the oil poured over his head he is a key character as it instantly shows that there is some sort of business involved and that they may have owed something or that the character has tried to steal something. then we move on to see the man pouring the oil, however we only see this character for a few moments, this shows that this character has little importance and that they have a lower status. whereas, the two African american characters have a much higher status, we can pick this up from how the characters are placed and by the clothes that they are wearing. for example in this scene they are placed close to the camera however one character is slightly more important and is key character than the other.

we also picked up on how the placement of the character in the hat in the start of this scene is placed purposely behind where the fire is placed as this is then foreshadowing what is about to happen to this character also

Camera shots and movements

in my media lesson we started to look at camera shots and movements, we watched a number of short scenes from the film 'superman' to see if we could identify any of the different camera shots and movements. Then we looked at the film 'moonrise kingdom' directed by Wes Anderson. We noticed that he uses little camera movement in his work. for example in this short scene:

the camera moves along with the character all the time with the same shot. the camera never zooms in onto characters faces and we hardly see any cuts between different scenes, the only time that we see the camera move is when it zooms out to look at the tree house and also when the camera moves down to reveal the boy holding the fire to kill the pests.

Ethnicity on TV

in the TV programme 'Hotel Babylon' we looked at how ethnicity is presented by looking at mise-en-scene. firstly, the lighting helps us represent how the characters are feeling. for example in the scene where the characters are locked in the little room, the lighting is dark. This shows that the characters are under a threat and that they need to remain quite. however, the only time that there is lighting  lit up when it is on the characters face. This helps us get clearer understanding of the characters emotions. this also helps us with ethnicity as it shows that these immigrants are illegal and out of place. this shows the stereotypical representation of immigrants

we also looked at how sound helps us with the representation of ethnicity. for example, when the staff at the hotel are trying to gather the immigrants together to hide them, the music is very upbeat and fast pace. this is so that it shows the audience that they are in danger and that they need to get hidden quickly. the fast music shows the stereotypical representation of illegal immigrants as the music shows the panic and the rush that they are feeling.

Sound - The Hobbit

sound makes up 60% of what is happening place on screen. however, 70% of that sound is added after the filming. some of these sounds are produced by Foley artists. a Foley artist someone who recreates everyday sounds with everyday objects the recreated sounds can be anything from the swishing of clothes to footsteps, these are then added into, after the filming. sound is key for filming because without sound people would not know what is happening in the films. sound can set the scene in many different ways for example:

•  sound can create the environment - forest,the seaside etc
• it can create the atmosphere, this is usually done by the soundtrack e.g fast pace music and will have a more than one instrument playing, this would be for an intense fighting scene
• can set the characters emotions, this is also usually done by the soundtrack e.g if the character is sad the soundtrack would be slow and with just one instrument playing .
• sound can also help us explain what is happening in the scene with diegetic sounds (sounds the actor can hear) e.g dialogue. 

   this is a clip from the film the hobbit on how they created there sound and why sound is important.

sound terminology

in my media lesson we started to look at sound terminology, we looked and learnt at all he different types of sound. we watched the airport scene from casino royale and tried to identify as many of these sounds:

• music

1. environment/location
2. theme

• atmospheric sound - mood,tension
• diegetic and non-digetic
• sound effect- explosions,car screech, wind 
• Foley sound- human sounds 

cuts and transitions

Camera movements

we looked at different camera movements, we looked at two different clips from the film superman and we made notes on all the different camera shots that we could identify.

editing task

in my media lesson we were given a task to take videos using different camera shots and then were told to edit them into a short clip

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