Compare and contrast the film adaptation of 'Billy Liar' with the stage play. Discuss the ways in which they differ and how each affects the audience.

TWENTIETH CENTURY DRAMA GCSE COURSEWORK COMPARE AND CONTRAST THE FILM ADAPTATION OF 'BILLY LIAR' WITH THE STAGE PLAY. DISCUSS THE WAYS IN WHICH THEY DIFFER AND HOW EACH AFFECTS THE AUDIENCE. The play, Billy Liar was written in the early 1960s by Willis Hall and Keith Waterhouse. The play was set in Northern England in places like Manchester and Sheffield. The story is about a teenager, Billy Fisher who is a lonely and discontented with life. He does not have many friends and imagines being real high class and having a luxurious life. He is always getting trouble for causing mischief and telling lies. Billy lives with his parents, Alice and Geoffrey Fisher and his grandma Florence. He has three girlfriends, Liz, Barbara and Rita, two of whom he is engaged to. Willis Hall and Keith Waterhouse directed both the play and the film. The play and the film are quite similar, but in the film there are a few additional characters and scenes. In the play there is a lot more dialogue than action and also it is set in the same place (lounge) whereas in the film there is a lot of talking and action. The film is not set in the same place but instead it follows the characters. The majority of the audience would probably prefer to watch the play as a film instead of watching it in a theatre because in the film there would be more special effects and it can be watched in a big screen. There

  • Word count: 1371
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
Access this essay

How does Peter Medak gain the viewers sympathy for Derek Bentley in the film 'Let him have it!'?

What is bias? Bias is when a person is one sided. Like only believing there is one side to a situation and that that IS the correct side to the situation. Well you could say Peter Medak was bias while making this film because he only shows us his view of what he thinks happened in the Derek Bentley situation and by doing so makes us believe that his view is right. Peter Medak is famous for directing recent films like species II and Romeo is bleeding, but we have been looking at his earlier work 'let him have it'. Unlike his recent films it was based on a true-life experience that happen in 1953 with a boy called Derek Bentley. In 1953 Derek Bentley, a London boy, was hanged for the murder of a policeman. But how he came to be in this situation was because of his newfound friend Chris Craig. Chris become Derek's best friend after he is brought home from approved school for trashing a neighbour's shed. He influences Derek in to do stupid things like robbing the butchers, which goes horribly wrong and is the beginning to a trail in court for the two boys. But why did peter medak want to make this film? My opinion would be that he wanted to show the rest of the country his view about the trail and the hanging. There is also another question on my mind, should Derek have been hanged? My opinion to this question would have to be that the hanging was unreasonable and that the case

  • Word count: 1795
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
Access this essay

How does Hitchcock create and maintain suspense in his 1960s film 'Psycho'?

How does Hitchcock create and maintain suspense in his 1960s film 'Psycho'? Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" is a classic thriller, one of the best movies of all time, and was a groundbreaking film when it was made. It was known as the "mother of the modern horror movies" because it single-handily ushered in an era of inferior shocking killings, blood letting graphics and screen "slashers". "Psycho" was produced by Universal studios and released through Paramount in 1960. Hitchcock was the director and producer of the movie and was given a budget of $800,000; he deliberately wanted the film to look cheap and so he had to use the crew who shot his television show. In the time when the movie was made there had not been many scenes of women with hardly any clothes on and this came to a huge shock to the audience, as having just a bra on was a very rare thing. However Hitchcock explained the reason for filming a woman only in her undergarments in the opening sequence of Psycho: "Audiences are changing....The straightforward kissing scene would be looked down at by the younger viewers....Nowadays you have to show them as they themselves behave." We also see the camera taking us into the toilet, the toilet is known as a very private place and not many films have shown someone when they are in the toilet, they normally show a person either going in the toilet, or coming out the toilet.

  • Word count: 2316
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
Access this essay

How does Hitchcock create suspense and tension in the film "Psycho?"

How does Hitchcock create suspense and tension in the film "Psycho?" Alfred Hitchcock's fantastic thriller "Psycho" was made in 1959 and was released in 1960. Horror movies were very popular in those days. Alfred Hitchcock bought the rights to Psycho, he then sent his assistants out to bookstalls to buy up as many copies of the book as they could. Hitchcock wanted Psycho to avoid the ending being common knowledge. This also made more people come and watch the movie in the cinemas, which would've increase the rate of the movie and money. Alfred Hitchcock creates tension and suspense by lighting, music, camera angles and shots and also by the clever use of limited dialogue. Throughout this essay, the different techniques Hitchcock used to create tension and suspense will be examined. Hitchcock used several techniques to promote Psycho. An example of one of these would be the publicity of the poster. The poster made the audience think opposite to what the film was really about, this was what exactly Hitchcock wanted. However, Hitchcock wanted the ending of the film to stay a secret. Hitchcock insisted that no one would be allowed into the cinema once the film had started. This led to huge queues and lots of publicity. The actors were made to swear an oath of secrecy when filming. This was because he wanted to direct a film that would be new to the audience and create suspense

  • Word count: 3267
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
Access this essay

How did you plan for a range of responses from the audience?

5) How did you plan for a range of responses from the audience? There are 3 main categories involved in the audiences overall enjoyment of the play: - entertainment, education and aesthetic experience. Entertainment: We wanted the audience to empathise with the characters we created, we wanted to create the characters in such a way that the audience would feel like they had stepped into the characters shoes. So that they could escape their problems and enter our world for the duration of the play. Humour is also a key element in the enjoyment of a play - and in retrospect I feel that our play could have done with slightly more humour - not so much that it detracted from the message, but just enough to lighten the mood slightly in places. The humour in our play - such as in our doctor flashback - was well received and definitely appreciated. Education: One of our main aims in the play was for the audience to learn something from our play - to be educated in the ordeals that some people go through everyday. This was particularly true with my character; where I used the theme of euthanasia. I researched the topic and found out about a real euthanasia clinic in Zurich, called Dignitas. Euthanasia is a topical subject at the moment and is the centre of many ethical debates - so by including it in my character I hoped the audience would think about it themselves. Aesthetic

  • Word count: 1267
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
Access this essay

How do the film makers of Chicken Run use presentational devices to reveal the good and evil in the characters of Ginger and Mrs Tweedy?

How do the film makers of Chicken Run use presentational devices to reveal the good and evil in the characters of Ginger and Mrs Tweedy? This essay is going to investigate how film makers use presentational devices, to create more meaning to the film for the audience. I will look at how camera angles, close ups, music, scenery and lighting are used to create the desired effect. Specifically I will try to explain how they use presentational effects, to make the audience see Ginger as the good character and Mrs Tweedy as the evil character. There is a definite theme of good and evil throughout the film, this is shown by the contrast of Ginger and Mrs Tweedy, who are both determined; Mrs Tweedy, in becoming rich and Ginger in freedom for her and her friends, showing them a better life. Ginger's motives are selfless in contrast to Mrs Tweedy who is selfish and only interested in profit. The title sequence displays a repeating motif; of Ginger's escape attempts, which are always foiled, followed by her being harshly thrown into the coalbunker, for five days of "solitary confinement." She marks each day on the wall, in a tally. We see various other tallies next to the one she draws, showing us this happens often, and she knows exactly how long until she will be let out. This gives the audience an idea of the extents to which Ginger will go to, to escape and her determination to

  • Word count: 1244
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
Access this essay

Blue Remembered Hills

COMPARING AND CONTRASTING This year our practical assessment in Drama has been a three month project, from September until December, on 'Blue Remembered Hills' written by Dennis Potter, who also wrote other popular television programmes, films scripts and plays such as "The Confidence Course" that he wrote in the early part of his career in 1965, onto things like "Sufficient Carbohydrate" in 1983. Although he mainly wrote a lot of his scripts for television and films, script such as Blue Remembered Hills, originally written by Dennis Potter in 1979 for a small television programme telling the stories of a group of seven year olds adventures in a forest, on a summers day during the Second World War. However the tale was so popular that it was re-written as a theatre production suitable for the stage. Since then it has been made into a number of different films and theatre productions across the world. One example is an amateur production that we went to see in hove performed at 'The Barn Theatre' in Hove. The production was very successful, with sell out seat every night, proving it to be a very popular play to this day, not only to perform but also to go and watch. The themes of Blue Remembered Hills are very well shown through out the play, the themes include; Friendship: The string that holds all of the children together as friends. Pain: Something that in various form,

  • Word count: 1258
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
Access this essay

Blind Date.

Blind Date As the sequence is of a brand new series, we clearly notice new attraction-based features to the shows content. The CGI at the beginning has been updated, now showing heart-shaped images within each letter of the words 'Blind´ and 'Date´ proving to relate to the show. It also seems a lot brighter and more colourful than previously. This was done intentionally to portray a new freshened look for the show, as if it has been spring cleaned, so looks cleaner, fresher and contains new content. We join the sequence from an advert break, yet the adverts continue into the show as a quick sponsor message appears, when 'Blind Date´ show their latest feature, the fact that they are now sponsored by 'BT´. Proving that the new series must be good as it already has a sponsor. The BT image is intertextuality from the shows content showing a couple relating with each other, though the image of this couple is just a simple outline, filled with the letters 'B´ and 'T´. This is 'BT´ advertising themselves, symbolising to the shows audience that 'BT´ can bring people together. Associating with the target audience, which is families who will be very likely to own a house phone so are also a big part of BT´s target audience. Other than just families, the target audience is mainly made up of middle age and above people of around the middle-class section. This is proved from

  • Word count: 1042
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
Access this essay

How does the first eight minutes of Baz Luhrmann's 1997 film version 'Romeo and Juliet' appeal to a modern audience?

Romeo and Juliet - Media Unit How does the first eight minutes of Baz Luhrmann's 1997 film version 'Romeo and Juliet' appeal to a modern audience? Shakespeare's famous play Romeo and Juliet was first printed in 1597 and was performed, on stage, before Elizabethan audiences. While the speaking parts are faithful to the original. Baz Luhrmann's 1997 film version is very different because it uses a variety of techniques to appeal to a modern audience which include fashion, setting, sounds, music, visual effects and the styles of editing. The film opens with a prologue. The prologue uses Shakespeare's language with a modern context. The prologue has uniquely adapted to a modern audience in various ways including: using the media, print on screen and a voiceover. The media is represented as a TV news report which is broadcast in a television screen with a black American woman, news reporter. I think Baz Luhrmann is trying to reflect that the film is set in a multi-cultural society by the news reporter being a black American woman. Shakespeare's original fourteen line sonnet for his Romeo and Juliet play is repeated, as the news that is read by the reporter in the film version. Baz Luhrmann is showing the prologue in the format of a television screen, so it can appeal to a modern audience because in our days we watch the news everyday to provide us with updated information. In

  • Word count: 2383
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
Access this essay

Brecht Portfolio

A- level Theatre Studies Portfolio "Fear and misery of the III Reich" Bertolt Brecht . Dramatic Aims "Show, don't be." Our aims for this production from the historical point of view are to present the lives of people in Nazi Germany as they were and to show that because the past has changed, the present is changeable. However our main purpose is to make the audience realize how the play is related to their lives today and that if they want to change the world they have to start from themselves. "Proper plays can only be understood when performed. (...) The production has got to bring out the material incidents in a perfectly sober and matter- of- fact way. Nowadays the play's meaning is usually blurred by the fact that the actor plays to the audience's hearts. The figures portrayed are foisted on the audience and are falsified in the process. Contrary to present custom they ought to be presented quite coldly, classically and objectively. For they are not matter for empathy; they are there to be understood. Feelings are private and limited." ("Brecht on theatre" Conversation with Bert Brecht) "Fear and Misery of the III Reich" is an episodic play consisting of 24 scenes related through the political message (life in Nazi Germany 1933- 1938) but able to exist separately. This is one of the aspects of Brecht's idea of Epic Theatre which shows the world as it is- full of

  • Word count: 3742
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
Access this essay