Alex Muir's A2 Level Media Blog!

Hello and Welcome to my A2 Media studies blog ! Enjoy exploring my website as I will be constantly updating it every week with lots of media content throughout the year! Media is an important part of our lives as we see it every day on our phones to news papers, media is related everywhere!

Showing posts with label Research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Research. Show all posts

Tuesday, 28 February 2017

The Oscars

14:46:00
The 89th academy awards ceremony which took place on 26th February 2017, was presented by the AMPAS (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.) The oscars event honoured the best films of the previous year 2016.  As this event is hosted in California USA, the event was broadcasted in the UK on only a couple of television channels which included Sky Cinema and NOW TV.




The triple award winning film 'Moonlight' won Best picture, and 'La La Land' won six awards with 14 nominations. 'La La Land' was incorrectly announced the winner of 'best picture',  just before 'Moonlight' was correctly clarified the actual winner.



Moonlight had became the very first film with an all black cast to win 'Best picture' at The Oscars. Despite there were no Action Adventure films that won any Oscars, I was still very impressed with the films that won their well deserved awards throughout the evening.


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Friday, 6 January 2017

The Sopranos

16:04:00













In well-known franchises and trilogies, these films leave the audience asking questions as the films end on cliff hangers. Due to our storyline, we intend to leave our film on a cliff hanger, with ‘Jack Morgan’ escaping in a vehicle which leaves the audience wanting to know what happens next. Films such as Lord of the rings, Star Wars and Harry potter include this ending style in their films. Robert and I decided to look at a famous film that has a cliff hanger styled ending called ‘The Sopranos’. This film ending scene is famously known for the sudden cutting of the last scene just before the character sits down for dinner. This causes confusions for the audience as they are wondering if this was purposely done for the final scene. Robert and I have decided that we want to include lots of enigmas in our short film, so our audience will feel excited to see a sequel of our short film (if we ever made a sequel.)
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Sunday, 30 October 2016

Camera Techniques

11:37:00
For this years A2 short film, myself and Robert want to drastically improve our camera planning and techniques. Even though I am not the camera-man for this years or last years media project, Robert is , and I can still help him plan and advise the best camera shots that will improve the footage and conventions of our film. Therefore, both Robert and I have researched on a social media video website called 'You-Tube' for tutorials on camera techniques which have helped us with the basics to improve the camera works for our short film.

  

This video gives a good overview on the different camera techniques that this person uses. His video has given us ideas on how to improve our camera-works on set. One technique that we intend to implement into our film this year includes 'a shallow depth of field', which helps the viewer focus more on a certain subject within the film.
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Thursday, 20 October 2016

British Films

05:56:00

Robert and I have decided to do a British film for our short film because firstly, American films are purely high budget which we certainly don't have the money to make and we don't know the culture, or techniques to create an American piece well enough compared to British films.

What Robert and myself really like about British films include the way they relate to our culture and the fact that they show hidden meanings throughout including the gritty British background stereotype.

Our British film will include influences from different current popular films including: 'The Kingsman’, ‘Snatch’, 'Kick Ass' (for the action scenes), 'Spectre' and 'Lock stock and two smoking barrels'. We will also look at the film ’Legend’, the story about the Kray twins as we feel that these films present an excellent understanding of the 'British film industry.
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Friday, 16 September 2016

Deconstruction of similar texts exploring their codes and conventions from the Action/Adventure genre

04:11:00
These are two of my own chosen films that are of the same genre of what Robert and myself are going to base our own short film on. These two films are called 'Mad Max' and 'Inception' which are both action/adventure genre based films.



  • 12/15 certificate, maximising youth audiences
  • High production values including CGI FX. Fast paced editing
  • Predictable chain of events – cause and effect
  • Dramatic non-diegetic sound
  • Star Marketing: Audience identification/expectations
  • Use of close up/Insert shots/High Key Lighting
  • Dominant representation of gender
  • A fast moving narrative with constant setbacks that are overcome one by one , leading to fairly complex plots.
  • Exotic locations where the characters have to contend with extremes of climate, aswell as evil forces.

       
  •  Inception is an action/thriller as it leaves the audience wanting more, they want to know more about how about how they can enter dreams and steal information.
  •  Includes names of famous actors and directors to attract the audience including 'Christopher Nolan'.
  •  The target audience for this film are teenagers and young adults.
  •   The interior of the building in this scene of Inception seems to look wealthy with pillars, gloss tables and all of the characters are wearing very formal clothing including dresses and suits.
  •  There are also weapons involved including guns which remind us that this is part of an action genre.
  •  As the film has several scenes of destruction, the film must have high production values which tells the audience thats its worth a watch.
 
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Monday, 12 September 2016

Analysing a section of a movie clip

01:34:00
Kingsman: The secret service - Fight scene 



The Kingsman movie is a graphic novel directed by Matthew Vaughn and has the conventions of a spy film as well as comic senses. The pub fight scene is a good example of what the Kingsman film as a whole is about and why it is a good post modern film.
The orchestral suspense background music which interacts with the actions of the characters illustrates that this is a convention of a spy film. The action violence also backs this statement up of a spy film very well as well as the film having comic book senses due to the slow motion parts which would typically appear in 'Marvel' comic book inspired films.


The slow motion parts in the pub also show that the Kingsman character 'Harry' having 'Matrix' style moves which shows that the director has been inspired by features of the Matrix film. The setting of the pub overall looks like the typical Eastenders setting in London.


The strong use of violent punching sounds, smashing props and fictional props (including the bulletproof umbrella) also links to the comic book senses of the film including the fast paced editing which shows the rapid pace of the fight which is very effective.


What Robert and myself have noticed throughout the Kingsman film is that there are many shots that show the shallow depth of field.


We want to include many shots like this to achieve a film look , if we just used a flat image , our film would look similar to a documentary.
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Sunday, 14 August 2016

Posted by at 08:25:00
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Friday, 12 August 2016

Signs - Media Language

10:45:00
In this post, I have produced a presentation with several slides showing all of the main concepts to do with signs/media language when constructing my product. Media language is the way in which a film product is made which creates meaning for the audience in a text which the audience receive while viewing the film/piece of media.


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Monday, 18 July 2016

Movie posters

02:35:00
This is my Movie poster copy of the film called 'The dark Knight' which I have made on Adobe Photoshop from scratch to show off what I can do to the best of my abilities at the moment on photoshop. I have included techniques/effects like smoke, fire , layers, different contrasts and atmospheric moods.



I also had a tester round with making a little edit of Daniel Craig with some effects including smoke and lighting effects. I did this to get to grips with photoshop as I think the software is complicated because I've never used Photoshop before.


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