Gogglebox

Audience:

Gogglebox targets families from teenagers up. This is because it is post water shed and can often include swearing and sensitive topics. The diversity of the families in the programme mean they can target a wider audience to relate to.

Representation:

This show is relatable to the majority of Channel 4's regular audience. Its showing the audience themselves, everyday families sitting in their front rooms thinking the same opinions that most of us think. It represents everyone from upper class to working class, those of different ethnicity, sexuality, gender and relationships from family to friendship. This is seen through the surroundings of the homes that the show is filmed in.

Message:

Channel 4 uses this show as a mouthpiece for everyone's shared opinions and reactions to everyday TV. They use realistic normal people to convey their opinions on shows which Gogglebox's audience either agree or disagree with, both of which make the audience want to watch on. From the programme it is clear that there are shared opinions amongst all the families on the show and that age, race and class is irrelevant when it comes to opinions. 

Production Value:

It is suggested that the families are in their own front rooms with just a camera in front of them, and in the first series this may have been the case. However now the show uses different shot sizes and close ups to show reactions and therefore get more from their audience and for their audience. This limits the idea that a single camera is used and also the idea that the families forget that they're being filmed. The show could be seen as a reality show as some believe that is constructed as the filming is edited and the families may be acting up to the camera like when they are nicely dressed with tidy homes, because they are aware they are now on a popular TV show.

Production

I’m also looking to design some ideas with ‘meet us by the river...’ on them because this could be the tag line as it is to do with how Hannah only ever meets them there and never sees them anywhere else.

Todorov

Tzevetan Todorov believed that all narratives have four stages.

1. Equilibrium 
2. Disruption of the Equilibrium 
3. Recognition of Disruption
4. Attempt to repair the Disruption
5. Reinstatement of the Equilibrium

Todorov's theory applied to The Hangover:

Equilibrium:

One of the main characters is getting married and go to Las Vegas with 2 friends and his brother inlaw for his stag do.

They arrive in Las Vegas two days before the wedding and stay at Caeser's Palace, celebrating with drinks at the casino.

Disruption:

The two friends and brother in law (Phil, Stu and Allen) wake up with no memory of the night before and the groom missing.  They find a tiger in their suite, a baby in their closet and their Mercedes replaced with s police car.

Recognition:

The three friends go to hospital and learn they have been drugged. They get told they came to hospital from a Chapel and so begin to retrace their steps to find out what happened the previous night.

Attempt:

After retracing their steps they meet with who they think is Doug's captor and pay him the ransom money. Only to realise that they are talking on cross purposed before the memory that they left Doug on the hotel roof as a practical joke,is triggered.

Reinstatement:

Harmony is restored as Doug is found and although later than planned makes it to his wedding in time to be married.

Development

Sixteen year old Hannah starts her summer with a big move to a new town. The town is small and old fashioned, and its as if everybody who lives there is stuck in their ways and moreover stuck in the past. The house she moves into is big and old to contribute to the eery sense of the move and as an obvious component of a horror.  Hannah goes out to familiarise herself with her new surroundings and begins to resent her parents for the move as she doesn't like the new place and how quiet and conformist it is. She meets some people of a similar age down by a lake in a forest on the edge of town. She begins to become good friends with them and soon the summer has gone by and she has spent the majority of it with her new friends. Eventually summer is over and it is time to start school so she looks for her new friends on Facebook and finds it strange when she can't find them. After starting school she looks for the friends she spent summer with whilst in school but never sees them during only after when they meet by the lake. Her parents begin to worry when Hannah is never home and always out with her 'new friends', although never seen with them by the tight knit community. After being told that Hannah is often seen wandering and sitting alone her parents worry more and the school gets involved. Waiting outside for a parent teacher consultation about her she begins to look at the old photographs of previous school years on the wall by the office. Peering closely on the bottom left row of a photograph labelled 1972.. she sees the familiar faces of the four friends she's been searching for.

• Were in the head teacher class
• went missing shortly after the photo was taken (1972)
• never found. (possible title)
• also could include romance with one of the friends.

Episodes to have different names like I found in my research of teen series.

I.e: 

1st episode - The Move.

2nd episode - 1972

Themes:

Supernatural

Horror

Mystery

Love

Friendships

Family

Character development:

Hannah - sixteen years old

friends:

Amara = eternal

Adriana = dark one

twins Scott and Wade = wanderer

I chose to base the series in a school to relate to my target audience of teenagers. The majority of characters will be teenagers as well, including the protagonist. The remaining characters will still be relatable to teens as they will be teachers and parents. I wanted the series to be more supernatural than horror with an element of mystery and the fear of the unknown. To keep it interesting the protagonist will realise something is wrong within the first few episodes and her parents and teachers before, even in the first episode. This is to keep it within the supernatural genre otherwise it would be at risk of being a teen drama. In my research I looked at a few american teen dramas within the supernatural genre such as twisted, the vampire diaries and pretty little liars. All of these seem to be based in a small town in America, with a group of friends, a romance and a school setting. These shows seem to get a lot of interest from teenage audiences and so i followed their conventions.

Tyrannosaur and character development

How can you enrich your narrative?

What elements can you add to bring your characters alive?

How will you actively seek to serve your chosen audiences?

In Tyrannosaur the characters develop throughout as we learn more about them and their pasts. It becomes known that Joseph lost his wife and this could be the reason for his anger and self destruction, whilst Hannah seems to have the perfect life but is really a victim of domestic abuse.

I can use this film to enrich my narrative by following its idea of character development. I liked the way that the audience found out more and more about the characters as the film went on. It's linear structure helped with this and I can follow this as well to help with character development. In Tyrannosaur the ending is the main part of the film as we are then certain that she killed her husband, I like the dramatic ending and will try and use this in mine.

The characters explore all different emotions throughout, from depressed to happy, and I think this helps keep the audience interested. I will make my series relatable  to teens and therefore help in serving this audience. The narrative is mainly based in a school and centred around making friends which everybody can relate to.

Christmas, Consumerism and the role of the media

In class we watched three Christmas adverts:

• John Lewis
• Boot's
• Sainsbury's

We talked about how each advert targets a specific audience and manipulates its audience through the advert. The John Lewis advert entitled 'Monty the penguin' takes the audience back to their childhood and their memories and excitement of Christmas. It explores the themes of love as it is about the penguin wanting to be loved on Christmas.  The 2 minute advert would have spent lots of money on production  but also the merchandise to go with it, including a £90 stuffed toy penguin that the audience now feel compelled to buy. 

The Boot's advert is relatable to most people as it explores the themes of not only love but family at Christmas. It shows a family coming together on the early hours of Boxing day to be able to have a Christmas with the mum who is a nurse working Christmas day. Out of the three adverts this was the only advert to feature their store in the filming as we see a girl walking into one to buy her Christmas presents.

Sainsbury's were very clever in that their advert told the story of the Christmas day truce during world war one and started showing it during November of this year - the 100th anniversary - to show that their shop is patriotic and supporting. The advert was targeted more at an older audience who knew of the story before hand and unlike the Boot's advert there was no obvious advertising.

From the adverts we can tell that the media plays a big part in the manipulation of the adverts consumers. All three of the adverts are aimed to attract customers and use the themes of love and relatable feelings at Christmas to do so.

Coursework Idea and Research

Teen horror series – post water shed:

20 episodes

Half an hour each

Supernatural/ thriller

• 
  
• ·         Autumn weekend, a teenage girl moves to a new town with her family and enrols at local school.

• ·          She argues with her parents about the move and leaves the house to see the new town.

• ·          The setting of woodland and a lake, she meets a group of people her age who say they attend the school she is due to start.

• ·         Spends a few hours with them and goes back home.  Starts school on the Monday and all week looks for the friends she made.

• ·         Goes to the same place the following weekend and they’re not there so begins to ask around about them.

• Looks through an old year book and sees them, 1970...

• ·          Asks her teacher about them and the teacher tells her that she went to school with them and  the 4 friends ‘went missing in the 1970's’.  Newspaper article - mysterious disappearance.

• ·         Leads to series of supernatural events, dark woodland settings as she meets them again and loss of real friendships.

Research:

Similar to ABC’s teen series twisted. The same sort of idea with a small town and mysterious happenings and events.  Also a group of friends with a school setting and a  female protagonist to appear more vulnerable and therefore scarier.

Similar to Sixth Sense in that as we watch the film the audience believe the people Bruce Willis are meeting are real as does he. The end of the film is when the audience find out that they are ghosts however this will become apparent in the first few episodes of mine to keep it interesting.

Grayson Perry: Who are you?

This 50 minute episode was the first in a series and focused on Perry's interest in identity. Grayson Perry is a portrait artist who believes that portraits are 'distilling life in one image'. The aim of the show was to create portraits for 4 subjects and display them in the National Portrait Gallery. Grayson Perry pointed out that most of the portraits there are mainly white heterosexual men and he chose 'a parade of the unusual and the troubled in amongst these seemingly impervious icons of British solidity.' I liked how Perry wanted his subjects to be people 'experiencing the extremes of life' in order to do their portrait

I like how Perry decided to explore different types of people and how he wanted his work to stand out from the rest at the National Portrait Gallery. He chose his subjects based on gender, fame and religion. His first was Chris Huhne former cabinet minister whom Perry described as  a 'white middle aged, middle class man facing a collapse of status.' He wanted the portrait to reflect Huhne's bulletproof mask that he seems to wear in public and so the portrait was a vase smashed and then put back together to show his vulnerability.

He then met Rylan who he described as 'famous for being famous', and I liked how Grayson managed to get Rylans true opinions of himself out and Rylan realised that he changed himself so much and called himself 'all fake.' 

"I'm not really Rylan am I"

Grayson then went on to talk about how celebrities identities are heightened through the lens.

Kayleigh is a white woman Muslim convert whom Perry met to understand how identity can be transformed by religion. She was an unemployed single mother of four in her twenties. Grayson wanted his portrait to show a clash of civilisation between Islam and the modern world, such as shopping. He discussed how people buy their identies through designer brands and from shops whereas some people like Kayleigh get there identities

from their religion. His portrait of Kayleigh was a silk 

hijaab telling her story and those of 'western capitalists

 buying their identity.'

Perry then explored the modern metro sexual society and how people say they are accepting but really advertising suggests women should be feminine and wear high heels, whilst men need to have a six pack to be masculine. Jaz was born a girl but later became Alexander after feeling male from the age of 4. I think Perry was clever to visit a school and get young peoples opinions on the topic and discuss how it is easy to succumb to pressures and conform. He decided

 he wanted Jaz's portrait to be heroic as her transition

 was 'building an identity and not just surgery', 

therefore he wanted it to be a declaration of manhood.

Overall I really like all the finished portraits and I think he was clever in spending 18 months getting to know the people and their lives and then showing this through his work.I think the order of the programme was good as we met all of the subjects and learnt about them before we saw the final portrait. This way the audience went with Perry through his thought processes and how he ended up with the art work he did.

Prezi

Prezi

BFI London Film Festival: Testament of Youth - Review

On Thursday 16th October we went to Leicester Square Odeon cinema to see the debut of James Kent's new film Testament of Youth based on the book by Vera Brittain. Afterwards we sat for a q&a with him where we learned why we he chose to work on the film, the reasoning behind the way he shot certain scenes and heard some on set stories.

This film is a historical drama based on the memoirs of Vera Brittain written in 1933. Vera, played by Alicia Vikander, was a girl unlike the others of her time and dedicated herself to study opposed to finding a suitable husband. She does however go on to fall for Roland ( Kit Harrington ) and after he signs up to fight in World War I she postpones her studies at Oxford to serve as a nurse in London and later on France. 

I really enjoyed this film as it told a coming of age story and was believable to the time period it was set in. Its use of costume and non diegetic sound is what I think helped make this convincing as both were familiar to that era.  I think the actors chosen played the parts well and Vikander made it easy for the audience to get attached to her character through showing realistic emotion in every scene she was in. Although the film told Brittain's memories how she recorded them I feel the film was a bit long and tried to include too many of her experiences and not focusing on the most important part of the film for long enough.

I would give the film a 7/10 as I was kept interested the whole way through and think that its important that people like Vera Brittain be remembered, however for me the film was too long and hard to understand. For example, at times it was hard to tell the difference between Roland, her brothers and their friends also her relationship with Roland developed quickly through various letters without us really seeing when it began.

Magazine Evaluation

Our magazine was called 'Inspire' and aimed at 16 -19 year olds. We aimed to target everybody and realise now that it may have been best to target a specific audience as although we covered fashion, sport, film, current affairs and music, we didn't include much more than 2 pages on each. The first thing we did was plan what we wanted to be in our magazine and then gave an article to each person with 5 articles in total and me and Denise working on the front cover, contents, photographs to be taken and editing.

 We started with the contents page and looked at other magazines such as 'Marie Claire' and followed their layouts as guidance. At first we decided who we wanted on the front cover and so went and took some pictures of Hasan for his fashion page and also for the front cover. We then took these and imported them into photo shop and worked around them adding in article titles. I found it hard using photo shop and editing text boxes that I had earlier put in and so switched to using Illustrator. I preferred working on Illustrator because it is software designed for making magazines and so I found it easier moving text boxes and images round to make them look more like a magazine. To also help with this and make the magazine look more clean and professional, next time I would stick to a colour scheme throughout the magazine as we chose the colour scheme of burgundy and white and although we kept to this on the front cover and contents page, there was all different colours on the pages inside.

The contents page didn't turn out how I had pictured it to look but I do like the way the articles are numbered with their titles. Next time I would include more pictures linked to articles inside and caption these, also change the back ground so that its not block colour.

Prezi

Prezi

'Telling lies' and 'Love does grow on trees'

Telling Lies (2001) - Simon Ellis

Telling lies is an animation focusing on 'the morning after the night before'. A series of animated words flashes up on screen, acting as subtitles for the conversation we are hearing, however the subtitles are the thoughts of the speaker rather than what they are actually saying. I thought this short film was very clever and it made me laugh because it was so different from anything else I've seen before. My favourite element of this film would be how the lies being told flashed up in white writing to represent white lies. 

Love does grow on trees (2008) - Bevan Walsh

Love does grow on trees is a coming of age short film. I liked the narrative of this film and how it was shot to show time passing and the boy changing. I liked the directors use of non diegetic sound, for example the fantasy/ magic like music that played when the boy discovered the tree.  I think it was really effective how we didn't hear the boy speak until the end of the film, almost marking his transition from a boy.

60 second video evaluation

  

Evaluation:

I filmed my video on my phone (i phone) and it took a few takes because I'm not used to being on camera. I didn't like being filmed but I liked the idea of a post being different from just writing. I got my friends to film me and the video and sound quality was good, however when I posted it on here it didn't come out in such good quality.

It was filmed from straight on in front of me, and behind me was the park. I think I could have chosen a more interesting backdrop and been more creative in filming. When talking on camera I need to be more confident and plan the points I want to talk about before filming. This would help avoid hesitation and thinking on the spot such as when I was talking about my interests being 'shopping'.

Film Review – Ralph (2008)

The genre of this short film would be a romance as the story is of sixteen year old Ralph (played by Ralph Laurila) travelling to France to tell his friend he loves her. The film is shot well featuring different shot sizes to help tell the story and connect the audience with the characters.  This film follows a story that has been told lots of times before, therefore I think this film is targeted at people that have an interest in media and film making as these people can make the most out of it and appreciate the director’s work more.

Sixteen year old Ralph has travelled to France to find his former friend and girl he loves, Clare. It is clear he is alone and desperate to find her through his desperation to find her right phone number. After failing to find the correct number he leaves the station to try again in a nearby town. With a lack of phone card he asks a local restaurant for one before proceeding to get something to eat there and sparking conversation with the waitress whereby the theme of friendship is introduced and the waitress later invites him out. Nearing the end of the film we see the theme of betrayal from Clare and throughout there is the constant theme of anger as Ralph’s anger grows through frustration at his peers and at himself.

The film opens with an establishing shot to set the scene and show the audience the time period in which it is set. From Ralph’s clothing we can tell this is a modern drama and we can tell his age. The next scene cuts to a close up of the public telephone and the sound of numbers being dialled, not only does this add tension but we can sense the urgency in the character before we see them close up. After this the audience only see the back of the boys head and his emotion is only deciphered through his disappointed tone of voice. To follow are several more close ups, showing confusion on the boys behalf and also a birds eye view which suggests that he is lost.  Throughout the film the camera films Ralph’s search as if being watched, this make the audience feel involved. This again happens through point of view shots throughout including from the waitress when she senses Ralph’s anger in the telephone box.

Throughout the film there is constant bright light which contrasts to Ralph’s defeatist attitude. There is no music played during apart from some French music being played in the background on two occasions. This is because the narrative is mainly in dialogue between main protagonist Ralph and someone else. I like the directing style especially at the beginning the way Winckler shows time has passed by having Ralph sitting on the floor looking frustrated, meanwhile playing the automated telephone voice over and over in the background.

I would give this film a 5/10 because I like its varied camera shots and how these contribute to the story, however I can’t see the films purpose and I think it would greatly benefit from non diegetic sound to help convey the many emotions that are explored throughout.

Film Review - ‘The Parent Trap’

This light hearted, family film from Disney is a remake of the 1961 Hayley Mills ‘The Parent Trap’ starring Lindsay Lohan, Natasha Richardson and Dennis Quaid. The genre of this film would be mainly adventure/comedy but could be interpreted as a romance as well. Although not a film that teaches anything or one that you think of for days after, it’s the perfect choice for an easy going Sunday afternoon viewing. 

Hallie and Allie, both played by Lindsay Lohan, are identical twins who find themselves reunited at a summer camp. Both girls become friends after a fencing match and after a few practical jokes are sent into isolation with one another. Realising they look abnormally similar, that they share a birthday and each have a half of a torn photo of their parents... they come to the conclusion that they are twins. From here on they train each other to act as the other before succeeding go home with the ‘wrong parent’ at the end of the summer camp. Once at each other’s homes they aim to reunite their divorced parents Nick and Elizabeth (played by Richardson and Quaid), so that the new found friends and siblings can have their family back.

‘The Parent Trap’ teams witty writing from David Swift with clever direction from Nancy Meyers. Its humorous one liners such as Quaid’s ‘So how exactly are we paying for this all?’ and Lohan’s ‘I have a brilliant beyond brilliant idea’ make it enjoyable for both children and parents. Whilst its two main protagonists being played by the same actor offer a unique spin on a film. Lindsay Lohan plays both Allie and Hallie well and makes the characters not only relatable but loveable.  However despite Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson playing the separated parents convincingly, this film wouldn’t be one of their best works. Whilst both suited the role of parents their on-off relationship was also very unrealistic, and the film showed no reason as to why the two separated in the first place. However with 'The Parent Trap' targeted at children I can see this was to achieve a fairy tale style ending. Overall, the film's supporting cast was chosen well such as Elaine Hendrix starring as the villain and Lisa Ann Walter as the housekeeper whom we come to know and love throughout the twins' escapade.

This film, rated PG, can be enjoyed by anyone like most of Disney’s others. I like this film because it’s an easy watch with an ending that leaves you feeling content. Overall, I would rate this film 7/10 and would recommend it to anyone who wants to avoid modern films that can sometimes seem desperate to be funny.

60 second challenge