Zodiac

Zodiac

The film Zodiac is based on a true story, The zodiac killer was a serial killer who operated in northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970s and the morale of the story is the killer was never found and he was known to have killed 37 people. The film is based on what happened in the real story with a few changes, they include the letter solving the letters that come in from the zodiac killer him self with his coded letters which have to be solved by the detectives. 

The Main Stars:  Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo

Box Office: $80m

In this clip of the beginning  scenes of the film which lasts for about 5 minutes  we see a young man and young women in a car making there way to a restaurant but when they see its full they change their mind and go to a quite place in the woods. They get approached by some teenagers which throw fire crackers at them which looked like the real threat. Then a car pulls up with car lights shinning into there car. A man goes to there car window with a bright light and shots both of them to death.
 They use lots of different camera angles which include over the shoulder shots, high angle, low angle, long shot, pan shot

Continuity Editing

Continuity Editing 

Retains a sense  of realistic chronology and generates the feeling that time is moving forward.  The director or editor may use flashbacks or flash forwards but the narrative will still be seen to be progressing forward in an expected or realistic.

Example of Eye-line match 

  

Eye-line match 

We see a character start looking at something off screen and then we cut to a shot of what they were looking at.

Match-on-action

We see a character start an action in one shot and then see them continue it in the next shot.
Example of Match on Action

Graphic match

Graphic match is when two shots are linked with a similar shape or composition of an image.
Example of Graphic match

180 Degree Rule 

The 180 degree rule is a basic guideline that states that two characters (or other elements) in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other.
Example of 180 degree rule

Shot/Reverse Shot 

Shot/reverse shot is used to show conversastions/arguments.
Example of Shote/reverse shot

Preliminary Task

Preliminary Task

The preliminary task was to show a demonstration of continuity editing and we must show the following camera shots which were match on action, shot/reverse shot, 180 degree rule and eye line match.The dialogue scene should be  a conversation and the sequence should be, character A walks towards a closed door then Character A enters through the door and crosses a room where character B is seated then Characters A and B have a small conversation and there should be at least one eye line match and lastly character A exists room.

In this video we can see everything i have said about the dialogue and this is a great example of how it is presented. 

cinematography

In this clip we cover all of the shots that are in a thriller and many other movie genres.

The shots that were included in this clip were:

Long Shot
Medium Shot
Close Up
Extreme close up
Point of view
Over the shoulder
Low angle
High angle
Crane Shot
Rolling Shot
Pan shot
Tracking shot
Tilt

All these shot have a meaning in cinema like, the high angle shot is to make someone look strong and powerful and the low angle shot is top make someone look weak and small. The Extreme close up shot is to be able to see all the emotions on someones face. Over the shoulder shot is used if you are having a conversation with someone. Point of view shot is when it looks like it is from your eyes and the camera can see everything you see. Tracking Shot is when someone is walking or running and the camera is tracking them. Long shot is used to be able to see the whole shot in the scene.

No Country For Old Men

No Country For Old Men

This Film starting scene is with a deputy sheriff arrests a man in the Deseret but also right at the beginning for about 2 minuets there is a narrator speaking about the settings and the crimes that have gone on around there also the narrator was an old sheriff. Then after the deputy sheriff has put the guy in the car he goes back to the station where he calls the sheriff to let him know about the bazaar gas tank he found with the guy, as soon as he puts the phone down the criminal creeps up behind him and strangles and cuts his throat with the cuffs and kills the deputy sheriff. Then the criminal carries on and kills another man pretending to be a police officer with the police car he stole and pulls over an innocent man and tells the man to get out of the car an  he puts the gas pipe to his head and the gas pressure shoots thorough his head an kills him.

Sound

Non-diegetic: The non-diegetic sound is the narrators voice 

Diegetic:  building up music before the officer is attacked 

Camera Angles 

over shoulder shot

low angle

high angle

medium shot

Box Office

The budget of this film was $25m

It made $171.6m

The first 4 minutes of the scene is explained at the begging of the blog.

The Birds

The Birds

This is another Alfred Hitchcock thriller which was directed in 1963. The stars of this film are Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren and Suzanne Pleshette.

What aspects of a typical thriller does it contain?

The birds contain a constant thrill throughout and it also has a Macguffin like most thrillers have had  

This thriller is really different because it is an attack from the nature which are birds and birds are known as peace loving creatures and not violent. 

The film begins like a normal busy day in New York.
This thriller is the story line is  a women pretends to work at a bird shop she is looking around to buy birds, she only pretends to work at the store when a gentlemen enters looking for love birds for his sister which will be having a birthday and he wants to get her the love birds as a present. Then the women pretends to serve him and the man does not buy the love birds he forgets and leaves. A few days later she buys the love birds and goes to where the guy lives also taking the love birds to him. After this she decides to stay there for the weekend, this is when all havoc starts to begin as birds start to attack her. When they get trapped in the dinner after the biggest attack of the birds in the town which causes an explosion of the petrol station and then they speak of But the film cannot solely be interpreted in a scientific manner, because as the actors (the old women) in the film discover in the long discussion scene in the Tides Restaurant, there is no solid, explanation why the birds are attacking. They are not seeking revenge for nature's mistreatment, or foreshadowing doomsday, and they don't represent God's punishment for humankind's evil.

Budget

$2,500,000 (estimated)

Gross

$11,403,529 (USA)

Rentals

$5,090,371 (USA)

Filming Dates

5 March 1962 - 10 July 1962

Stars
Rod Taylor
Tippi Hedren
Jessica Tandy
Suzanne Pleshette
Veronica Cartwright

In this scene below we see the women traveling to the other side of the river to get to the man and we see that the first attack happens when a random seagull attacks the women and hit her on the head once and then fly's away. This foreshadows what will happen in the upcoming scenes of the film.

BERKE CAKIR AS MEDIA

History of violence

History Of Violence 

A History Of Violence is a filmed directed by David Cronenberg. This film is based on a man who kills two robbers in self defense who tried to rob his small diner and this then leads to his violent past.
It was ranked the best film of 2005 in the Village Voice Film Poll also the film had a budget of $32m and it sold over $60m and it is minutes long.

Camera Analysis 
The first 4 minutes of the film is all one continuous shot, which tracking cam is used in to follow the car and also there are extreme close up shot of the gun when the guy is about to shot the little girl and this shows that the gun is the most powerful thing in the shot because it is the biggest. There is also a pan shot during when the guy goes to get water from the phone box its a pan shot as it carries on going towards the right and there is also a low angle shot when the guy bends down to shot the little girl.

Sound Analysis 
There are many types of sounds in this first starting scene which include diegetic and non diegetic sound. There is the sound of the radio which is a diegetic, also there is the sound of the truck which is a diegetic sound, sound of the gun shot and many more. There is also one non-diegetic sound where the music builds up the tension. 

Editing
Slow editing but they also had one whole continuous shot in the first 3 minuets of the movie and there was about 5 cuts in that first scene.



  
In this key opening scene we see there are not a lot of cuts because the director wants the audience to focus on the scenery and on specific character for the time being because in that same scene the first character who was driving the car at first kills a little girl around 3 mins into the film which he plays an important role in the first 4 mins of the film.

Genre

Genre

Genre
Genre is what films are split into because of the type of film they are e.g. Comedy,Horror,Thriller and many more.

Narrative
Narrative is when there is a set up for the play e.g. Begging Middle and End.

Narrative is the made up of two components and these are the way the story is presented and also the second component is the process of how it is told and how it is narrated. Narrative can be organized in a number of formal categories: non-fiction creative non-fiction, biography, fiction and many more.

Genre was made to be able to split films into different categories and for it to be easier for people to watch the right type of genre that suits them and genres are made for a specific type of audience e.g. thrillers are made for people who want a thrill out of the movie.

Genre can also be be combined to make hybrid genres like also romantic comedy which is comedy and romance combined, this can happen with many genres to create the film and this is also called cross genre, genres can also be done by categorising the target audience.

North by North West 

One of the greatest 1950's thrillers

North by North west is an American based thriller film which was directed by Alfred Hitchcock, this film includes the following stars Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason. This thriller film had a budget of $4.3m at the box offices it made over $9.8m.

In all films Hitchcock has directed he has planned every scene visually in advance. In the 1950's there was not a lot of technology that was accessible by the directors to add different effects to films it was mainly camera work and pre planned scenes, not a lot of editing or film effects were added in those times. Hitchcock believed the stress on the visual makes cinema accessible in different languages.                                                                                                          


Blog 2 Laura Mulvey,representation of women in North By North West
Laura Mulvey had a theory, which was Laura Melvey's theory of male gaze. This theory was about the erotic scenes in films and how men were always seeing women as sexual objects and the audience is forced to identify when there is a male gaze scene. Cinema reflects patriarchal (male dominance) e.g. in cinema guns=phallus (penis)=power.
  
Her two theories she has are visual pleasure and narrative cinema.


Camera Work in North By North West
In North by North west there are many types of camera angles including wide shot,steady cam,tracking,pov and many more.

In this fight scene in North by North west the camera is focusing on them in a type of wide shot from an angle. The camera is in that angle because it gives a more intense and wider scene to be able to see more on the background and the scenery.



Another camera shot, this is a tracking shot when the supposed Roger Thornhill is being attacked by a crop duster plane and it shows the intensity in the actors face and also tracks so you can see the speed and closeness.

Media Theory 

Engima (mystery) - 'Engima codes' Roland Barthes.

Heroes and Villains 'binary opposite' Levi Strauss.

Todorov Narrative Theory

In 1969 Todorov produced a theory which he believed to be able to applied to any film.

Roland Barthes

Born 12th November 1915 Cherbourg, France.

 Died- 26th March 1980 ( aged 64)

Roland Barthes: All texts are 'complex' bundles of meaning

• Engima Codes (problem introduced) - usually in 'disruption' stage.
• Open- not resolved at end 
• Closed texts- resolved at end
• Polysemic texts- lots of different meanings. 

Levi Strauss

Born 28th November 1908 Brussels Belgium.

Died 30th October 2009

Levi Strauss was a big part of the structuralism theory and also the structural anthropology.



Laura Melvy:  
Laura Melvey was a lady who had a theory on males and how they look at women in movies or in general. She believes that 'the male gaze' her theory is women viewed as the objects of male erotic desire in film. Women do not plan this the audience is forced to identify the male gaze. Cinema reflects a male dominated society, – phallus (penis) a symbol of power – e.g. in cinema guns = phallus = power.

Objectification is related to the gaze

The persons gazed at are objectified, treated as an object whose sole value is to be enjoyed or possessed by the voyeur

Objectified characters are devalued and their humanity removed.

Patriarchal society = Men dictate the rules

Mulvey argued we live in a patriarchal society in which men set the majority of the rules and construct and represent the ideal visions, roles and male dominance over woman.

Sound Exercise Media A Level

Sound Exercise 

In this sound exercise, the story line is about two characters from  East London do a bank robbery because one of the characters Wes on the right owed money to  Wayne who had to help with the robbery to get his money back which was £25,000.

The sound techniques we used were:
Non diegetic- For the music in the background where actors did not hear.
Diegetic sound- The actors speak and also the sound around the actors like the school kids in p.e.
Sound Bridge - i also added in music which carried on to another scene which then this was made into a sound bridge.

Rope

Rope Alfred Hitchcock Thriller

Rope is a thriller based on a real life murder story. The writer of this play were Hume Cronyn, the stars in this thriller was James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger. This is based on a true story which occurred in 1924. The film Rope was filmed in 1948 which had a budget of $1.5m. The film was filmed on one set which was the apartment the murders lived in which were Brandon and Philip.

The real killer were homosexual but also this film tries to give clues away that Brandon and Philip are also a homosexual couple because they live together and Brandon is more dominate over Philip which shows a relationship type of status. It was wrong in the 1940s to express homosexuality on TV or films because England in them times were more strict on the secular state they lived in which was christian catholic and it was too explicit they believe even if it was just acting and films.

Rope starts with a really strange  start you see the character David being killed straight away as the starter scene. This shows that Hitchcock wanted to get right into the story and it had a different type of narrative because the main killings normally happen in the middle or at the end and not the first scene and really early.

The film its self is suppose to be a 'continuous play' so he wanted it to be all one shot and no cut scenes. Film reels back then were only 10 minuets long which means when the reel came to an end he would slowly put the camera some where then bring it back up to not make it obvious that there was a break between the reels.

The coffin/chest is never out of the cameras shot and follows the actors that are around the coffin/chest area. The actors are trapped in one area and scene mainly and so the audience are trapped with them. Hitchcock knowing that the actors could do something out of their line by accident which could ruin the whole '' live theater'' idea  or if one of the actors open the chest it could end it straight away.  

As we see in this opening scene there is very mysterious music where you can hear the violins which try to bring out the intensity then you hear a scream before you see what has happened which creates a fear inside the audience.

Camera Exercise

Thriller Convention

Thrillers have, fast pacing,frequent pacing, frequent action. They have resourceful heroes who must thwart the plans of more powerful and better equipped villains. A thriller is a villain driven plot. The villain presents obstacles the hero must over come.

Thrillers use devices such as, suspense, red herrings, cliff hangers. Thrillers often take place in exotic settings such as foreign country's. The heroes in most thrillers are frequently ''hard men'' accustomed to danger e.g. policeman. however, they may also be ordinary citizens drawn into danger by accident. While such heroes have traditionally been men, women lead characters have become increasingly common; for an early example see sigourney weaver character, in the movie Alien, 1979.

Thriller can often overlap with mystery stories, but are distinguished by the structure of their plots. There are all kinds of thrillers legal, spy thriller, action-adventure thriller, romantic thriller and many more.




Thriller can be defined by the primary mood

Brief

Foundation Portfolio: The Brief 

You have been asked to produce the titles and opening sequence of a new fiction film in thethriller genre.

The sequence should last a maximum of two minutes.

You may work in a group of 2 - 4 students.

As acting is not assessed you are free to use actors that are not members of your group.

The film is worth 60% of your coursework grade.

The accompanying blog is worth 40% of your coursework grade

Together the Foundation Portfolio is worth 50% of the overall AS Level.  

Welcome Blog

Welcome blog

Hello, my name is Berke i am 16 years old. I go Robert Clack sixth form and i study business studies,media, sport and ICT also do rugby academy. I like playing video games with friends like FIFA and few other types of games. My favourite TV series is Breaking Bad and my favourite movie is 300 and i like the action genre.

Breaking Bad

300