Hurren Blogs

For those students who missed today’s lesson - shame on you!!

The tasks you missed are as follows - you MUST do them as soon as possible to catch up as they are all essential in developing your understanding of the film:

1. For each of the 4 main characters in the film, write down their first name, last name, any issues or problems to do with being able to name the characters, a description of each character (which could include adjectives to do with their appearance, their personality, or their actions in the narrative), the name of the actor/actress who plays the character (one of the actors has appeared in 2 other films directed by the director of Fight Club - name those 2 as 2 of the 3).
2. Which of these characters is the protagonist, which is the antagonist? (If you don’t know what these words mean… look them up!)
3. Name the director of this film.
4. Name as many films as you can remember that this director has directed.
5. Name the film he is currently directing and what it is about.
6. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much did you like Fight Club?
7. Find out what suspension of disbelief means.
8. Was your ability to suspend disbelief broken at any part of the film?

For students studying AS Film, working on their photographic storyboards, here is the blank storyboard sheet, and an example:

blank-storyboard-sheet

blank-storyboard-sheet-example

Remember the following:

• 15 - 25 images
• images can be repeated but do not count as a new image
• plus up to 5 found images of shots which we cannot reasonably expect you to take yourself (such as the establishing shot of a spaceship, or a car exploding) - these found images can be used from the internet, screenshots from movies, or commissioned artwork
• You must acknowledge the source of your found images - what website they are from, what film they are from, etc.

Any problems please ask Mr. Hurren

If you are working on movie trailers, here are 3 images which may help (click on them to make them bigger):

This page has a very good example of an evaluation for the AS Media Studies coursework. When you click on the page, scroll down to where it says

Wednesday, 11 November 2009

This is from the 18 January 2010 edition of The Guardian newspaper:

So how many times can The Sun find pretexts for mentioning James Cameron’s movie Avatar in its news pages? Answer: quite a few. “Rugby in a 3D first… 3D fever, begun by the film Avatar“, “3D set to go seedy… adult film makers have jumped on the Avatar bandwagon”, “District 9 review: James Cameron’s £300m breathtaking Avatar is currently taking cinemas by storm…”, “Ava-Ta Very Much… The huge success of 3D blockbuster is helping Cineworld to battle the recession” and so on. The Sun is owned by News International, part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which also owns Twentieth Century Fox, which made… Avatar.

generating-ideas

Here are also some links which might help:

 http://www.moviepitch.com/good_idea.htm

 http://levilarringtonlives.blogspot.com/…

 http://yacomink.com/reblog/2006/10/the_1…

Teaser trailers are usually short in length, typically 30 to 60 seconds long. They often come out long before the film itself. For example the first teaser trailer for the 2009 movie Star Trek came out in cinemas 2 years before the film itself was released.

Students have just started studying Bollywood. We will have presentations from Ben, Bonnie, Shefik next Tuesday. Here is what they need to be researching:

BEN: the Indian caste system

BONNIE: Religions in India, particularly Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism

SHEFIK: Arranged marriages (possibly mentioning forced marriages too).

REGULATION OF VIDEO GAMES

For the exam you are to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the regulation of TWO forms of media. We have done a lot of work so far on the regulation of film.

As the BBFC also regulate video games it is worth using video games as the second form of media we are going to study.

To begin, using the internet, research the regulation of video games. The information you need to find it listed below. Post your findings on your blog.

Wikipedia has lots of information about regulation of video games, on these three pages:

BBFC

Video Game Controversy

Video Game Content Rating System

You can use other sources too.

WHAT YOU NEED TO FIND OUT:

The BBFC also rate video games - what is the difference in the law between rating film and video, and rating video games?

In what circumstances MUST the publisher submit the game to the BBFC for rating?

In addition to the certificate, what else does the BBFC ‘award’ to a video game that it rates?

What was the first computer/video game to receive a 15 certificate? An 18 certificate?

Why were the cases in which these computer games sold covered with certificates emphasising that they were not suitable for children?

Which was the first game to be refused a certificate? What was the reason for this?

What are the issues surrounding video games?

Are video games classified in other parts of the world? How? What are the differences to UK classifications?

Oliver Stone is a highly respected filmmaker. This is what he says about the film Taxi Driver:

“At the time it was so extreme, it was considered too violent. But not to New Yorkers, or people who’d gone to Vietnam, so Scorsese hit a nerve, which was the increasing violence in urban American life, and violence was just getting to ve acceptable to the mainstream.”

This quote is from the featurette “Influence And Appreciation: Martin Scorsese Tribute” on the Taxi Driver Special Edition DVD.