A2 Media - BANK

Wednesday, 20 April 2016

Evalutation Questions

Question 1 - In what ways does your media product, use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Question 1 - Prezi

Question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product ancillary texts?

Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Question 4 - How did you use media technologies in construction, research and planning and evaluation stages?

Monday, 8 February 2016

Deconstruction of class within 'Kingsman: The secret service'

Deconstruction of class within 'Kingsman: The secret service'

By Connor Taylor

During this task I deconstructed how class is represented within a trailer, mainly with the use of mise-en-scene. Due to our teaser trailers narrative being based business corruption, their will very likely be a hierarchical structure, meaning there will be those of higher status and those of lower status within the business.

In this shot there is the clear assumption that these people are of the working class, they are dressed in casual clothing, with sports jacket and trainers, showing their class clearly to the audience. In addition to that their is also the protagonists and the accompaniments voices and language, which are common and ill spoken, making them appear further as to be a lower class.

There is then the addition of this shot, the protagonist breaking into a hotel suit, which again shows his class to be low (working class) as much of the media present them to thieve and commit petty crime to make a living.

Within this shot there is the main protagonists standing in the same shot, juxtaposing them as they look as if their opposites due to their complete difference in attire.

Then in this shot we have a clear view of the higher class characters within the film, with them all wearing suits within a vintage English styled conference room.

In this shot we have the protagonist (lower class) surrounded by other characters of the upper class, as shown by the clothing, which mainly consists of suits, shirts, ties and jackets.

Then in this shot we have the main antagonist who dons a black suit, pink shirt and jumper, red snap back and a beaded necklace. These when used together make him look formal and informal, presenting his characters personality and life style, which is rich and smart, whilst still with its impractical times.

Sunday, 7 February 2016

Deconstruction of poster genre

Deconstruction of poster genre

By Connor Taylor

For our poster we need to get across to the audience the genre of the film, as it is one of the main objectives of a film poster.

Hot Fuzz:
Hot fuzz presents the genre's of action, crime and comedy. One major way they have shown the comedy is by the line below the title, saying 'A new comedy' which has a sarcastic and silly tone towards it.

There is also the police badge in the main title, clearly presenting crime in the narrative to the audience.

And the action is shown through the use of the tagline, showing action and the use of the tooth pick, which is from another action film.

Nightcrawler:
Nightcrawlers genre is action crime thriller.

The thriller aspect is clearly shown through the general colour scheme of the background which is dark and grey, conforming to media convention.

The setting of a dark street near an underpass also shows the thriller aspect, and also shows the crime aspect as it is considered an ideal place to kill and person or complete a drug trade making it also show action and crime.

The Hangover:
The genre within the hangover is comedy crime.

Crime is shown in the tagline 'some guys just cant handle Vegas' as it is a place were people tend to drink alcohol and take drugs and then do things they normally wouldn't which tend to be a crime.

Comedy is shown by the actors at, with the one character with a tooth missing, and baby with sunglasses that are too big and the tagline also. These then pair with people general understanding of life and the knowledge of Vegas to come to the clear assumption of the comedy within.

Deconstruction of crime props within trailers

Deconstruction of crime props within trailers

By Connor Taylor

A massive part of business corruption and the corruption of money tends to result in four major things, drinks, drugs, money and guns. With this in mind I decided to research and deconstruct this use of props within trailers and crime based narratives.

Drinks:

Alcohol and drinks, tend to be the number one item of use in media materials which contain some aspect of crime. They can greatly range on the type of drink, with champagne being the alcohol choice of richer characters, and whisky being a lower class drink, also used for characters with social or moral distress.

Drugs:
Drugs are another major part of crime within the narrative of films, whether it is the taking of them or the selling of them. They come in many kinds such as powder (cocaine), tablets (rophies) and liquid/syringe (morphine). For our trailer we will most likely use what will look like cocaine and tablets as they seem to be a richer persons drug.

Weapons:
Weapons are another major part of crime in media conventions as they have the most interest in a narrative whether it is action or drama, and therefore can be very useful to portray crime in an easy way, mainly because they are associated with crimes and murder.

Money:
Money in crime narratives are the main drive in the narrative as it is what enables the characters to attain drugs and weapons and is the main reason for corruption in crime and business corruption making it a very important piece of mise-en-scene which we therefore shall use in our trailer.

Camera angles for our trailer

Camera angles for our trailer

By Connor Taylor

Establishing shots:
Establishing shots are one major aspects of our trailer as we need to use them in order to show the audience the area at which the narrative is set which is in the heart of London, the capital of England. They also tend to be very common in teaser trailers in order to present the setting but to also fill time and to separate other shots of the actual narrative, making their appear to be more in the trailer when in fact their is very little.

Close up:
Close ups also tend to be very common it trailers, specifically when mise-en-scene is concerned, which is very important in our trailer to present the ideas of business corruption such as with drugs and drinks which is one aspect which we wish to present to the audience.

Panning/tracing shots:
Panning shots are another method to present the area to the audience and give a more personal view on the characters perspective when couple with a point of view as an example. They can be used to present the shots in a more specific light and make the shot also last longer without showing too much as well, making it very useful for a teaser trailer.

Tracking shot:
Tracking shots are also another type of shot that I wish to include as it can help present the story and make the audience feel as if they are part of the story and that they are following the character in a deeper way.

Drinking Prop Creation

In our genre, a common convention is having scenes of drinking/alcohol and smoking and if we were to not include anything of the such we would be subverting form common conventions which could effect the trailer as a whole.

Therefore, I decided to experiment with some drinks, hip flask and cigars that I had at home to see how effective they would to use in our trailer.

The first three images are the individual props themselves to see what they would look like if filmed with nothing else around them.

From this, it was clear to me that the hip flask works more effectively when on its own more than the bottles of Jagermeister.

I think is because for our genre of film, a hip flask is commonly scene as a man's personal mixture of drink that can be concealed, which conforms to our theme of secrecy within the business sector.

However, the bottles of Jagermeister would most likely work most effectively in the background of an office or study room, rather than being held and used explicitly by a character purely due to the nature of the drink, commonly being mixed in with other drinks rather than drunk straight.

On the contrary, when I experimented with the idea of pouring the Jagermeister into the hip-flask the shot and idea of the shot seemed to work relatively well.
As the aim of including alcohol is to show the dark side of business and the bad ways people handle it and I think a shot like this could work effectively.

Having realised the fact the, if we were to use these props that they would most likely be background mise-en-scene, I tried the approach of placing them in a nice aesthetic order to see how they looked on screen.

As it turned out, they do work together as whole and if they are position correctly, I can imagine them in the cabinet of a persons office or in a cabinet as home. But this shot will depend on location and also more people who store drinks have whiskey and scotch rather than Jagermeister so that is a problem there.

Then having seen some potenial success with grouping them together and concluding they would look good in a cabinet or something like one I did that.
I think this was not very effective because my cabinet/box is not big enough for everything and the shape and colour of it did not work as well as I had hoped, but I think in a wooden cabinet with glass doors this shot would work a lot more successfully.

Moreover, in many crime drama films there are frequent scenes of characters smoking cigars, cigarettes and drugs. As I had some baby cigars I chose to use them as extra mise-en-scene due our narrative being more focused around drinking.

However, it turned out that with the baby cigar it did not really bring too much extra too the shot and would indefinitely work a lot better if our protagonist was filmed smoking one with or without drink/

Evaluation

I believe we need to research more into the types of drinks as Whiskey and Scotch would be a lot more effective for our genre.
The location of these alcohol would be vastly enhanced if it was in a club or bar because we need to present our protagonist as reckless and storing drinks in a nice cabinet subverts that stereotype.
However, if we could obtain an office, placing these drinks or others would increase the creativity of our mise-en-scene while conforming to genre and the conventions within it.

Deconstruction of Sound editing in Focus

The trailer starts with calm, mellow 'coffee shop' like music which is juxtaposing what the audience is seeing on screen.

They are seeing an angry man driving a vehicle extremely fast which is conveyed with the increasing revs of the engine.

Additionally, it contradicts the sound as the character is strapping on a helmet which creates enigma.

Then the music stops abruptly with the scene of the man wearing the helmet crashing his car into the protagonists car.

Leaving no music being played at all for the audience to full absorbed the situation and enigma that has been presented before them.

Next, it switches to a blank screen with the non-diegetic dialogue of the protagonist saying "That is the problem when you hire a con man".

At the precise moment he finishes talking the screen pops up with a man punching the protagonist in the face.

With the sound being parallel to what is happening on screen the fast editing works very effectively in creating enigma.

Then the pass of the trailer is slowed down through calm, slow jazz music being overridden by non-diegetic dialogue of "I can convince anyone of anything".

The shots that follow conform and link to this dialogue is through a mid shot of the protagonist walking the background of the shots changes to symbolise how he is a persuasive characters.

And with this, the music begins to slowly pick up pace and through blurred cross cuts it leads the trailer onto another narrative path creating enigma.

However, at the sequence of blurred cross cuts, the musics becomes fast paced with fast drum beats.

The shots that follow are parallel to what is happening on screen because they have edited to become matched with the beat.

For example, the card holder shot is in sync with the sound as on the change of beat the card shoots out into the characters hand.

This is significant because the sound and editing are represented of the films theme of being faced paced and conning people which is done fast and with precision as demonstrated by the sound and editing here.

Then, after the sequence of precisely edited shots, it sound changes again back to being slow paced and mellow with high pitch, high key keyboard sounds.

Combined with the parallel shot of the protagonist waking through a walk way of bright multi-coloured lights it could be seen as symbolic of his transition between him taking up different persona's to con people with.

Or it could be seen as a turning point of when people finally figure it that he and his persona's are just fake, the sound gives it a sad unwinding end.

This is supported as the music stays the same and the previous shots of the main protagonist looking confident and success change through this low angle mid shot of him looking sad and defeated.

The sound in this scene, combined with the slow editing, really emphasise the emotional revaluation he is going through.

Then the music changes again to a romantic song with the non-diegetic lyrics of "if it brings me to my knees".

This sound combined with the long shot of the protagonists lover and the protagonist looking at her with what can be described as shock and jealously, explicitly depicts the emotional trauma he is under going.

Also creates enigma as the audience do not how why he feels jealous for this woman and also whether or not it is all apart of one of his fake persona's as a con man.