EDITING

Before you edit your clips, we watch and discuss editing technique using !3 Creative Editing Techniques.
We discuss continuity editing and the 180 degree rule.

AUDIENCE THEORY

Are audiences passive or active? Both MediaKnowall and BBC Bitesize are useful resources.
The Uses and Gratifications Model of Audience Behaviour positions an audience as active:

The Hypodermic Syringe model positions an audience as passive:

Reception theory (reader response theory) positions an audience as active

PRELIMINARY EXERCISE

Plan, shoot and edit a very brief piece of moving image.
Include a two- shot, a shot-reverse shot, an over-the-shoulder shot and any other shot types that are necessary.
Edit in Final Cut. Add sound if you have time.

THE FILM INDUSTRY: MARKETING

We draft together the first part of the exam essay on marketing which you hand in on Friday 28 September.

THE FILM INDUSTRY: MARKETING STAR WARS

Assess the importance of marketing in the media area you have studied. [50]
(CIE 9607/02 Key Media Concepts Section B 2015)

Your exam essay might ask you to write about marketing films, so we prepare detailed case studies that are interesting to read and easy to remember. Here is Disney's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. We pick a Disney film as Disney is a prime example of the Hollywood 'Big Six'. This case study can be used to illustrate Dalecki's 4S megafranchise model (sequel, synergy, story, spectacle).

We read the article The Force Is Strong With 'Rogue One: A Star Wars Story' Marketing and learn the key points of the marketing strategy.

What is synergy?

Synergy refers to the horizontal integration model, films whose core value is their deployability across multiple media platforms, as well as their “sequelizability” and ability to be cross-promoted with other media texts. Top decision makers within contemporary media conglomerates understand that every piece of media under the same brand-umbrella promotes every other piece of media under that umbrella. (Dalecki, 2008)

How is Disney a good example of synergy?

As former Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner put it, “The Disney Stores promote the consumer products which promote the [theme] parks which promote the television shows. The television shows promote the company. It’s constant ideas.” (Miller 1990). This can also be described as constant media synergy, wherein everything within a franchise promotes everything else. (Dalecki, 2008)

Read the article below by Julia Greenberg in Wired (2015) entitled

'How Disney is making sure that you will never be able to escape Star Wars". 

Print out the chart and learn the key headings: 

media networks, parks and resorts, studio entertainment, consumer products, interactive.

"WHEN IT COMES to marketing, Disney has it almost too easy.

"Just consider the past few weeks. The entertainment giant launched a Pixar clip where the characters personifying emotions in Inside Out react to the Star Wars trailer. ("I love this trailer!" Joy says.) On Disney-owned ABC, Good Morning America’s anchors revealed new Star Wars toys and dressed up as Star Wars characters with their very own recreated trailer. ("This is awesomeeee!" Jesse Palmer shouts.) The company has also released Star Wars clips during evening programming on ABC and ESPN.

"For Disney, such cross-promotion—known in corporate-speak as synergy, where two or more divisions of a company increase value by working together—is business as usual. After all, the company owns not only one of the biggest film franchises ever but a major sports network and a major broadcast network, not to mention Pixar, which has made some of the most popular movies. With so many outlets available for promoting Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the question isn't "Where can I see more Star Wars?" but "Where can I not?"

Article by Julia Greenberg in Wired (2015)

TV DRAMA: ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK

This week's practice exam question is based on an extract from Orange Is The New Black (2011, season 1, episode 1). It is an award-winning drama.
It is based on a memoir of a woman's experiences in prison. The series received critical acclaim and many awards and nominations including 12 Emmy nominations.

In point: 32.50 "Seriously, shut it off!"

Background: Sentenced to 15 months for a crime committed 10 years earlier, Piper Chapman leaves her supportive boyfriend Larry for her new home: a women's prison. She grapples with the racial dynamics of prison life and learns some of the rules.

Extract: "I wasn't Ready" 
In point: 32.50 "Seriously, shut it off!"
Piper Chapman is on the beach with her boyfriend Larry shortly before she is taken to Lichfield Penitentiary in the prison van along with other new inmates. She travels with Marollo and Watson. 
Out point: "I wasn't ready"

Out point: "I wasn't ready."

Look at the extract as a whole first, noticing the use of contrasts:

• the contrasts between the two settings (beach and prison)
• the ways in which characters are represented (Piper before incarceration / Piper in prison; the optimistic prisoner and the cynical prisoner; the aggressive officer and the sympathetic officer) 
• how the two photographs are taken (act of love, act of domination)

THE FILM INDUSTRY: MARKETING LEGEND

Assess the importance of marketing in the media area you have studied. [50]
(CIE 9607/02 Key Media Concepts Section B 2015)

Your exam essay might ask you to write about marketing films, so we prepare detailed case studies that are interesting to read and easy to remember. Here is Legend (Dir.  2015) Working Title. We view the WT website and the Legend trailer.

Read Mark Kermode's review  TOM HARDY DIVIDES AND CONQUERS AS THE KRAYS

Then read this article from  Screen Film Summit: marketing Legend 

10 December, 2015 | By Tom Grater

Insight was given into three of the year’s standout British film campaigns.

The people behind the releases of three of 2015’s standout British film camapigns discussed their processes at the Screen Film Summit today (Dec 10)
Hugh Spearing, head of marketing at Studiocanal, presented Legend, which stars Tom Hardy as the East End’s notorious gangster twins Ronald and Reggie Kray.
The film opened to £5.1m over 5-days and went on to take £18.2m in the UK, the company’s second highest-grossing film behind Paddington. 

A legendary concept

When approaching Legend, Hugh Spearing and Studiocanal believed from the start that they had the concept for a hit.
“The reason we got involved in the film was the central idea of Tom Hardy, who was becoming an iconic British actor, playing both of the Kray twins, iconic figures themselves,” said Spearing.
The company took the project to Cannes, showing rehearsal footage of Tom Hardy in character at the festival, an approach Spearing described as highly successful: “It sold incredibly well before it even started shooting.”
In the first week of production, the company released a still of Tom Hardy in character as both Ronald and Reggie Kray; even though the image wasn’t a part of the actual film, it proved very popular, particularly online, and is still used to promote the film today.
The next step was releasing an initial teaser trailer for the film, which quickly became Studiocanal’s biggest trailer ever in terms of online interest. “That meant we knew there was interest” recalled Spearing.
As a result of the buzz generated, he said the company felt confident utilising “a big budget across all types of media”.
In particular, the social media campaign for Legend proved highly successful. “It was our most successful and engaged campaign to date,” recalled Spearing.
The company also managed to make use of the burgeoning stardom of Tom Hardy, who Spearing notes is often reluctant to do much press or social media but in the case of Legend was very engaged.
The resulting hype saw the film open strongly and go on to be one of 2015’s top 20 releases in the UK.  “It didn’t just work in London,” noted Spearing, referencing the film’s success in locations such as Portsmouth, Norwich and Sheffield.

Finally, read how Benjamin Lee's two star review (The Guardian, 9.09.15) was spun into movie marketing gold.

TV DRAMA: SELF/LESS

Today's textual analysis for TV drama is actually a film extract, but the skills are the same.
Find SELF/LESS on Netflix and analyse the opening. We start in class to practise the skills together then you complete for prep and email it to me. 

The characters are Damian Hale (a dying tycoon)
Martin (Hale's right hand man and friend)
Baldwin (the young man summoned to the restaurant; he has insulted Hale)
  PREP 

Section A: Textual analysis and representation (50 marks) Candidates answer one question based on an unseen moving image extract.

1 Analyse how the extract from SELF/LESS constructs meaning, including the specific representations of individuals/groups/events/places, through the following technical elements:

•• camera shots, angles, movement and composition

•• sound

•• mise-en-scène

•• editing.

MARKING SCHEME

Use of terminology: 10 marks …………………………../10

Use of supporting examples: 20 marks………………/20

Explanation / argument / analysis: 20 marks……….../20

Total /50

In point: start of film

Out point: the end of the lunch

THE ART OF THE TITLE

DAYS OF HEAVEN (Terrence Malick, 1978)

Set in 1916 and telling the story of a tragic love triangle, this film evokes both the period and genre in its opening sequence, which reflects Malick's knowledge of photography and willingness to use little studio lighting. 


The film's cinematography by Morricone models itself on silent films, which often used natural light. Malick also drew inspiration from painters such as Johannes Vermeer, Edward Hopper (particularly his House by the Railroad), and Andrew Wyeth, as well as photo-reporters from the turn of the century, such as Alfred Stieglitz, Weegee (Arthur Fellig) and Jacob Riis. The street scenes capture the urban poverty of the period and explain the desperation of the film's protagonists whose future is precarious . 


We have studied Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange as an example of the power of photography as reportage and its use in social change; the close-up of the infant's and young woman's faces exert a strong appeal and tug on our heart strings. The films concerns with social difference and the need for financial security are hinted at by the stills of the girl in the wedding veil and the three young women drinking tea intercut by shots of manual workers of various kinds.


The subject matter gradually moves from the urban to more of the rural, reflecting the narrative trajectory of the film.


The enchanting orchestral music echoes the use of musical accompaniment in silent film to suggest emotion.


Period colors (brown, mahogany and dark wood for the interiors) and period costumes from used fabrics and old clothes to avoid the artificial look of studio-made costumes. The colours create the illusion of period photographs, street journalism: an essential part of creating verisimilitude or 'real life' on screen. As a result, the footage is imbued with the quality of documentary truth, of scientific 'fact' which allows the viewer to engage fully with the world of the film. 


Art of the Title comments: Firing a mix of critical thought and mesmerizing immersion, Dan Perri's title design for Terrence Malick's Days of Heavencombines street level photojournalism and credit-to-character inferences drawing the curious eye at will, the ears aswoon with "Carnival of the Animals - The Aquarium" by Camille Saint-Saens. You are nowhere if not here, with these people, in the Gilded Age of American history.'


'And then the last shot of the opening title sequence] subtlety shifts us from photos and into the world of the film. In a masterful move, the last shot perfectly replicates the same look of the previous images, but...it is one of the actors, Linda Manz (in a photograph taken by Edie Baskin.) It’s through her perspective that we will take this journey so it is fitting that she is the one who bridges the gap from the opening credits into the first shot of the film'. Read the analysis by Cinema Sights

SHERLOCK HOLMES (Guy Ritchie, 2010)

Watery cobblestone logos and longitudinal linotype layer, lace and lash Prologue Films’ opening and end credit work for Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes. Key visual codes include pen-and-ink line wash drawings that emerge from live action film, handwriting in ink in a flowing Victorian hand complete with ink spatters for authenticity, sepia colour tones and the quality of foggy London pea-soupers that conjure up a shady, dangerous underworld where crime lurks in the shadows.

SE7EN (David Fincher, 1995)

Se7en is a 1995 American thriller film, which also contains horror and neo-noir elements. The now classic opening sequence to Se7en that helped rejuvenate title design in mainstream cinema. The dvd has a long video about the making of this sequence. Title Designer: Kyle Cooper