Short films-Pudding Bowl/Ginger Cake

In media, we have watched two short films. One is called 'Pudding Bowl' (shown above) by Vanessa Caswill and the other is 'Ginger Cake' made by Charley Deakin (A2 student). 'Ginger Cake' was made with 'Pudding Bowl' as its style model so we were asked to look out for the similar conventions used in both films. Here is what I found:

• Both films start with the camera panning over the girls work. There is some relaxing non diegetic music being played in the background and the titles of the films appear in the corner of the shot. The sound continues in the background of the next scene creating a sound bridge.


• The film both uses a variety of shots to show the girls working hards on their projects (e.g. close ups mid shots, zoom ins, etc.


• They also both emphasise the silence and the diegetic soundswhen they are working.


• Both films have minimal dialogue in it. Instead they use camerawork and major and minor key music to give the charcters more depth.


• They both have a twist in the tale to prevent the main character fulfilling their dream (hair being cut off/massive spot on face).


• There is a mirror for the main characters to look into in both films.


• The ending of both films have happy music playing to the end credits.

History of film genres

For homework, we were asked to find films of seven different genres from as early as 1910 to present day. Here's what I found:

Western:
1910-1920’s: By Indian Post (1919)
30s-40s: Billy The Kid (1930)
50s-60s: The Hellbenders (1967)
70s-80s: Once upon a time in Texas (1988)
90s-present day: Wild Wild West (1999)

Horror:
1910-1920’s: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1920)
30s-40s: Dracula (1931)
50s-60s: Psycho (1960)
70s-80s: The Exorcist (1973)
90s-present day: Paranormal Activity (2009)

Crime/thriller:
1910-1920’s: The Lodger (1926)
30s-40s: The Man Who Know Too Much (1934)
50s-60s: The Killing (1956)
70s-80s: Jaws (1975)
90s-present day: Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Action adventure:
1910-1920’s: 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1916)
30s-40s: King Kong (1933)
50s-60s: From Russia With Love (1963)
70s-80s: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
90s-present day: Jumanji (1995)

Romance:
1910-1920’s: Fools Paradise (1921)
30s-40s: Casablanca (1942)
50s-60s: Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)
70s-80s: When Harry Met Sally (1989)
90s-present day: Titanic (1997)

Sci-fi:
1910-1920’s: The Mysterious Island (1929)
30s-40s: Man Made Monster (1941)
50s-60s: Dr. Who And The Daleks (1965)
70s-80s: Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983)
90s-present day: Inception (2010)

Documentary:
1910-1920’s: Grass: A Nation’s Battle For Life (1925)
30s-40s: A Diary for Timothy (1945)
50s-60s: Don’t Look Back (1967)
70s-80s: Imagine: John Lennon (1988)
90s-present day: Aryton Senna (2011)

Early music videos

In todays lesson, we looked at an early music video, 'Tell Him' by The Exciters. As far as we know, it's probably one of the first promo music videos. It was surprising to see some conventions in the music video that are still around today. These conventions included:

Young women on screen
Some choreography
Singing to camera
Lip Syncing
Tracking shot and a pan away shot

However, there are some aspects that are a bit dated now such as:

The choreography (it's too simple)
Lip syncing wasn't as good as it would be today
Location was at a zoo
Animals were put on screen for a variation of shots
Song itself is dated

Ideas that I have thought of...

Last night, after having a reasonably bad day, I managed to turn my bad experiences into scenes I could possibly use for a trailer of a rom-com or a comedy. If I created this trailer, I would have called it "Life's Too Short", but of course with my luck, I went onto youtube to find that Ricky Gervais is creating a sitcom for the BBC with exactly the same title! So I may have to create another title...


I'm still undecided which task I want to do, but now that have more ideas for the movie trailer task, it is possible that I may decide to this.


The movie trailer would be about a girl who experiences bad luck on daily basis. She decides that "life's too short" to be in bad mood and tries to think more positively by fighting her negative thoughts. This is all I have thought of so far but if I decided to do this project, I would develop the plot line later on.


The scenes I have thought include:

• Getting stuck in a toilet cubicle and having to climb out. Then someone walks in when she's climbing.
  


• Kicking a fence out of anger and getting barked at by dogs.



• Wanting to throw something out of anger but only having a phone to throw. She decides to throw the back cover of her phone instead because her phone is too precious. The throwing failed and it might as well been a frisbee.



• Almost getting run over by the bus she's wanting to get on.
  

As I said, these were bad experiences that happened to me yesterday that I've developed for comedic effect. Not sure which one's I would use either as some of them may not come across as funny on screen, but I'd definitely use the one with the toilet cubicle!

And just to prove it to you, here is the evidence that Ricky Gervais is making a sitcom called "Life's Too Short"...






It's fair to say I'm annoyed about that...

Conventions of Music Videos

In our lesson, we created a mind map of the different conventions we had noticed in music videos. Here are our results:

• MTV Cutting
• Editing matches beat
• Tropes and Memes - challenging
• Multiple locations
• Multiple situations
• Multiple costumes
• Choreography
• Purpose: promote song/band
• Purpose: Sell product (shifting units)
• Purpose: iTunes (£2 videos)
• Symbolism
• Montage, anchored by music
• Lip sync
• In concert - live footage (more naturalistic)
• Pastiche - copy but not exact - style thieves
• Parody - mocking copy
• Homage - tribute
• Intertextuality
• Narrative/mini-movie approach - compressed narrative
• Interpretive abstract approach - surrealist
• Artificial performance (non-naturalistic) like musicals - pre-planned, spontaneous bursts of song
• Direct address by performer - breaking the fourth wall
• Act out story of the song
• Genre affects style

New blog!

Hello!

My name is Sophie Oliver and I am currently studying A2 Media Studies. This blog will document my coursework for it, as well as lesson work, homework and any private research that I find interesting. The coursework is a choice to do any of the following:

1. A short film in its entirety (5 minutes). This will also include doing a film magazine review DPS of the film, a poster or a radio trailer.

2. A music promo video. This will also include doing a magazine advert for the digipack of the band as well as the digipack cover itself.

3. A film trailer. This will also include a poster for the film and a film magazine front cover.

Initially, I would like to do a music video. I like the idea of creating one and also creating a digipack sounds very interesting as well.

Hope you all like it!