Evaluation of foundation production - "Obsessed"

Evaluation of foundation production A/S media foundation production "Obsessed" We had the task of producing the opening sequence to a psychological thriller with a video camera. The equipment we were given to film was a Canons XM1 Canons entry level 3. Firstly we had to carry out immense amounts of research into films and especially psychological thrillers. Our main focus was on Alfred Hitchcock as he is renowned for his portrayal of the human mind and relationships between people. We had to research this genre quite thoroughly as we wanted to achieve the conventions of psychological thriller. We chose to make an independent film so that we could express ourselves through the film, rather than taking a mainstream Hollywood view, which would have been a bit opportunistic but we did use some elements of mainstream- e.g. the title music and the conventional killing and psycho set up. Typical examples of mainstream thrillers are 'Along came a spider' 'Seven' 'The Hole'. Their mainstream characteristics cab summarised as being very dark dull and a limited use of colour. They always seem to start in a dark secluded spot and have a hero and psychological villain. Our thriller relates to the established genre as it is about the inner inhibitions of the mind. It creates a bleak but realistic atmosphere, which adds to the psychological aspect of the genre. We intended to target a

  • Word count: 1877
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Media Studies
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Compare and contrast the uses and meanings of symbolism within the book and film - Don't Look Now by Daphne Du Maurier, published in a collection of stories titled After Midnight

British Literature and Film Compare and contrast the uses and meanings of symbolism within the book and film. Don't Look Now was originally a short story written by Daphne Du Maurier and published in a collection of stories titled After Midnight [1]. The story focuses on a couple, John and Laura, who have recently suffered the bereavement of their daughter, Christine, and are on holiday in Venice, trying to return their lives to normal. While there, they encounter two twins, one of whom claims to be psychic, and from there on strange events start to happen. Nicolas Roeg's film follows the main outline of the story very closely, however, many of the specific details have been altered with the result that the film story becomes Roeg's rather than Du Maurier's. The first scene in Nicolas Roeg's film is probably the scene that differs most from the book, and the scene that contains the most symbolism. Instead of watching the film passively as we would normally, Roeg forces us to concentrate and question and argue what we are seeing on the screen. He teaches us that, in film especially, our eyes can literally deceive us. This is the essential point of Don't Look Now; nothing is what it seems and Roeg doesn't want us to believe the illusion - questioning it is all part of his fun. The film contains an amazing amount of red herrings, which send us down the wrong alley in the

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  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Media Studies
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Discuss the role of symbolism in Un Chien andalou.

Discuss the role of symbolism in Un Chien andalou. Jean Goudal writing in 1925 expressed the view that the cinematic experience (medium, message and location) was the 'ideal means for the realization of surreality, of the marvellous' stressing its potential for the recreation of dream: 'The cinema [....] constitutes a conscious hallucination, and utilizes this fusion of dream and consciousness which Surrealism would like to see realized in the literary domain [....]. They should lose no time in imbuing their productions with the three essential characteristics of dream; the visual, the illogical, the pervasive.'1 It was another four years before Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel worked together on Un Chien andalou (1929), a short (seventeen minutes) silent film, that is considered by critics (e.g. Rudolf Kuenzli2) to be one of only two or three truly Surrealist films produced (along with L'Age d'or (1930) and possibly Man Ray's L'etoile de mer (1928) or Antonin Artaud's and Germaine Dulac's La Coquille et le clergyman (1928).) The genesis of the film can be found in Dalí's writings in the Catalan avant-garde literary review L'Amic de les Arts, specifically La fotografia, pura creació de l'esperit (September 1927) and Film-arte, fil antiartístico (December 1927), the latter dedicated to his student-friend Buñuel. Dalí emphasized that film could create visual images

  • Word count: 3454
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Media Studies
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Billy Elliot - Billys struggle against gender roles discussed.

Essay "Billy Elliot" Billy´s struggle against gender role restrictions for the opportunity to dance ballet is compared in the film with Jackie´s fight as a striker against his company. This happens on two narrative levels. To be more precise, the desperate fight of the miners that Billy´s father supports at the beginning, as well as he can, is displayed by the useless efforts to prevent Billy from developing into a good ballet dancer and becoming sophisticated. The industrial progress taking place in the depressed area and the cultural advance in Billy´s family cannot be prevented -neither by his father nor by anyone else as the end concluding scenes of the film shows. A scene demonstrating this parallel quite vividly is the (also) parallel sequence where Billy in a lesson works hard to improve his dancing on the one hand and the police defeat the striking workers in their own neighborhood on the other. Taking a look at Billy´s part in the film, I would even say that Billy does not only achieve a cultural education for himself, but he is the one who who makes culture and new working class values accessible to his family. For instance he does not only start to learn ballet, but he also shows an interest in the content described in famous stories such as "Swan Lake". He is the one who thinks differently. No one else in his family would have the courage to behave like

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  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Media Studies
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HISTORY OF THE BBC

HISTORY OF THE BBC The British Broadcasting Company started life in 1922, when the government licensed the UK's six major radio manufacturers to form the new outfit. It had a staff of four, and was financed by a Post Office licence fee of 10 shillings, payable by anyone owning a receiver, and supplemented by royalties on radio sales. The first broadcast came from London on 14 November, and "listening-in" quickly became a popular pastime. John Reith became general manager a month later, and after the baptism of fire of covering the 1926 General Strike - the company was dissolved and the British Broadcasting Corporation formed with a royal charter. Radio listening spread widely during the 1930s, with people gathering together to listen to national and sporting events, while the BBC also became a major patron of the arts, commissioning music and drama. It also took up home at Broadcasting House in London in 1932, the same year as the Empire Service - precursor of the World Service, began broadcasting. The BBC Television Service arrived on 2 November 1936 - but was suspended at the outbreak of war in 1939. Wartime brought huge challenges for the corporation - having to deal with the government's Ministry of Information while finding itself a target for German bombs. Newsreader Bruce Belfrage was on air when 500lbs of explosives hit Broadcasting House in October

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  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Media Studies
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Does the opening scene of "Mission Impossible Two" clearly show what genre the film is in

Does the opening scene of "Mission Impossible Two" clearly show what genre the film is in? Mission Impossible Two which was made in 1996 stars Tom Cruise in the sequel to the blockbuster hit. Directed by John Woo the film should contain fast paced action and a considerable amount of gunfire. This is proven in the opening scene. The main protagonist, Ethan Hunt, is first sighted by the audience climbing a mountain somewhere in south America with no safety harness. Already there is the element of danger which is typical of an action film. Also, later on in the scene, he seems to be being chased by a helicopter. Another action film then? I'm sure we'd all agree. However, many other types of genre are revealed throughout the opening scene. At the end of the scene a comedy genre is hinted at. The words by Ethan "I'll tell you where I'm going, but it won't be on holiday," show that Ethan could be a funny man. This could make the film a comedy or be a mixture of the two. A mystery genre is also hinted at. From the scene the audience would be able to tell that something needs to be solved to uncover the mission. Also when the glasses state "I advise one of them be Mrs Norduf Hall." This means it would appeal to the audience as the perfect couple and would almost promise a romantic side to the film. This would also make the film better and more appealing to the audience. The

  • Word count: 1074
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Media Studies
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Review of Beloved

Beloved is divided into three parts, each increasingly disjointed or "mad." The first section is told from the narrative present, 1874. Past events are distant and fragmented (albeit intrusive) memories, related in enough detail only to limn that something once happened, that strange behaviors and events in the narrative present are sufficiently motivated by the past. Not until the end of the first section, halfway through the novel, is the pivotal event recounted recognizably: Rather than return to slavery, Sethe takes a saw to her children's throats, killing the "crawling-already" baby girl. The vivid retelling of this murder is confirmed and captured in an old newspaper clipping shown by Stamp Paid, the runaways' ferryman, to Sethe's lover Paul D. With the newspaper clipping, the "mad" narrative voice seems to shore itself up by adding a sane counterpart: objective reportage. The clipping's existence authenticates the oral text, much as white abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips appended their imprimaturs to Frederick Douglass's 1845 narrative. Among other uses, an authenticating text's function was to attest to the narrator's veracity -- and thereby, to his or her sanity. The second section of Beloved becomes more and more absorbed in what Sethe ambivalently describes as "rememory," and in what Paul D metonymically calls a tobacco tin rusted

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  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Media Studies
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An analysis of how television viewing has changed over the last two decades in terms of the frequency of viewing, the nature of the programs view, the viewing times through the day and the number of hours spent on viewing.

An analysis of how television viewing has changed over the last two decades in terms of the frequency of viewing, the nature of the programs view, the viewing times through the day and the number of hours spent on viewing. Over the last two decades (1980-2000), the television channels of United Kingdom increase from the main four channels to the multi-channels nowadays. The two main broadcasting companies are BBC1, BBC2, Channel 4 and ITV since 19th century. The TV channels have increase and improve from the normal viewing to digital viewing since 1990. Consequently, there were also some changed of the viewing of TV arise from the improving in the mass-media technologies. First of all, the frequency of viewing had changed during the last two decades. Since 1980s, there was a radically changed in the cover range of the TV channels all over the United Kingdom. The BBC and ITV had made their effort in the increasing the quality and the variety of the channel programs and the cover area of the AHF and UHF. At the same time, the economy of the Europe country had increase. Many household are affording to have TV at home. However, the frequency of the TV viewing did not have any radically increase during that time. This is because of the TV channels does not have variables choice of program that can attract the audience attention. The frequency of the viewing had increase since the

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  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Media Studies
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How does Hitchcock create suspense and tension in the film psycho?

How does Hitchcock create suspense and tension in the film psycho? Psycho was a low budget movie. It was made in 1962 and was directed by Alfred Hitchcock. This film was to be different it was the first of its kind. It misleads people by portraying a sexy image when really it was to be a horror based on the notorious serial killer Ed Gein. To promote his new film Hitchcock used various techniques, for example the denotations of the poster was a red herring and mislead people in to believing the film had a sexy genre. To get the film better publicity Hitchcock decided to make rules up for the film. These were the following once the film had started nobody else was allowed in. Moreover the audience were made to sit in absolute darkness after the film had ended. Hitchcock believed by doing this he would scare people more this would create more tension therefore giving the film a better effect. In the film Hitchcock uses various techniques of lighting. Lighting defies horror convention in ways. Firstly they reflect the lights off the bright tiles; this was to show a sense of innocence. It made people believe nothing was going to happen. Hitchcock then shown the lighting so it was coming from behind the shower this created suspense, an additional reason was to cause dramatic irony this meant that the audience would see the killer, but the victim would be oblivious. Tension was

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  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Media Studies
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How far are the articles of the Press Complaints Commission's code of practice backed up by the law and therefore enforceable in the courts?

How far are the articles of the Press Complaints Commission's Code of Practice backed up by the law and therefore enforceable in the courts? The Press Complaints Commission is an independent body, which deals with complaints from the general public about the editorial content of newspapers and magazines. In 2000, 2,225 complaints were investigated by the PCC, of which 6 out of 10 complaints were about the accuracy in reporting and about one in eight were related to invasion of privacy. All these complaints are investigated under the Editors' Code of Practice, which binds all national and regional newspapers and magazines. The Code, drawn up by editors themselves and ratified by the Press Complaints Commission, covers the ways in which news is gathered and reported, also providing special protection for vulnerable groups such as children and hospital patients. The Code of Practice is not a legal document and can be amended at any time, if necessary, through parliamentary comment, suggestions from the PCC, editors and members of the public and changes in technology. Since the original code was published in 1991 there has been nearly 30 changes to it. The introduction to the Code of Practice states that: 'All members of the press have a duty to maintain the highest professional and ethical standards. This code sets the benchmarks for those standards. It both protects the

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  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Media Studies
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