Discovery: Rona

Chase: Framing Evaluation

Chase: Framing Evaluation 

In this evaluation I am going to be talking about the different framing techniques that I used in my short chase drama. In my group included Jazz, Tom, Tyree, Barney and Josue. We can came up with a concept of a guy (Jazz) getting stalked/chased by 2 people (Josue and Tom) because he downloaded some important file and they follow him to the car park where another member (Barney) of the kidnapper blocks him off with his car and he ends up getting kidnapped and put in the trunk of the car. We filmed this in the resource centre, Coulsdon stairs and the car park.  

The first shot we had was a point of view shot of Jazz watching the laptop screen and waiting for something to download. We used this shot because it sets the scene and it also tells you why Jazz is about to get chased. After you see Jazz taking out the 'memory stick' and then a point of view shot of the laptop. We did this to show again what the chasers want and to show you the expression on Jazz's face. This shot also shows Jazz walking off and chaser number 1 standing there watching and then starts to follow Jazz. The next shot is a long shot of Jazz walking towards the stairs and Tom closely following behind then we showed a shot panning so we could see Tom following behind. This show you more about the story that we are trying to develop and you can see the chase starting to form.

The next shot is a wide shot and it shows Jazz and Tom (chaser 1) coming down the stairs also in the frame you see Josue (Chaser 1) waiting and as soon as Tom walks pass Josue joins the chase and it pans to the second set of stairs. We did this to show that the chase was becoming more intense. The next shot was a long shot of Jazz walking out of the college into the car park with Josue and Tom right behind him. Then we also had a panning shot going vertical so it was at a high shot and this was to show Jazz, Josue and Tom walking into the car park. We chose this shot because we wanted something different and when we tried out the shot it looked good. Our next shot is a low shot of Jazz running so you could only see foot. We chose this shot because you see that he is now starting to become more aware that someone is chasing him so he starts to run. The next shot you see is Jazz running and then he sees the car and then runs back towards the gate. Then we see a long shot of the two chasers and the car blocking Jazz from running. We used this shot because it shows what is about to happen and concludes the scene. The next shot is a close up of Jazz's face. This is to show the emotions that Jazz is feeling which is scared. The final shot is a low shot of the trunk and the car driving. This shot is suppose to show that Jazz has been taking away in the trunk of the car. The audience have to use a bit of imagination but I think this shot makes it clear that Jazz is in the trunk of the car.

We tried to make this drama very serious crime drama but some of the acting like the close up of Jazz's face expression was a bit comical. My main role in this production was camera operator alongside Tyree. In this role I thought of different positions we could shot a certain scene so we didn't also stick to the storyboard. I think that this drama was success, I think we included a rage of different camera shots to make the drama seem interesting. If I was to change something about this drama, I would add more close up to show more of the character's emotions and I would also make the story more clearer. 

Chase

New Jack City: Poster Annotation

Selection of content of poster

The words in this poster is very similar to Scarface because it has that short paragraph describing a little bit about what the film is about. It also has a the name of the film at the bottom of the poster and the actors names at the top of poster.  The main image in this poster is of Wesley Snipes and he takes up most of the page and then you see the three police offices at the bottom who are important but not as important as Wesley Snipes characters. The colours in the poster is mainly black and blue which makes the poster seem like the film is going to be dark and something bad is associated with this film. The font colour of the title is red and the little paragraph and the actors names are in white. The title of movie is bigger than the rest of poster so it attracts the audience. The name of the actors are also fairly large so the audience can see the major stars that are going to be in this movie.

Iconography

In the poster the gun is shown and the bigger the gun the more powerful the main character in the film is. The gun is also fairly larger and takes up some of the space in the poster which makes it stand out.

Scarface Journal

Scarface: Who do you feel is the target audience 

for the film, and why?

In this report I am going to be talking about the different conventions that Scarface has, the way the characters are portrayed and the narrative. Scarface was a mainstream film, it was aimed for a large audience because it had well known stars at the time e.g. Al Pacino, Michelle Pfeiffer and Steven Bauer. This film has many conventions of the gangster genre. When watching Scarface I thought the target audience would be aimed at males because gangster movies are generally watched by males and also the content of this film is very violent e.g. when you see constant fast pace cuts between a close of Tony's face and a close of the man holding the chainsaw closer and closer towards Tony's friends arms and eventually we get a extreme close up of Tony's friends face a gory blood splatting everywhere, this will appeal more to males than females. Also some males might look up to Tony because even though he become paranoid like when Tony sees Gina with a male and it zooms into a extreme close up of his face and cuts repeatedly from Gina to Tony and we hear high pitched non diegtic music, and also very violent towards the end of the movie, he still shows loyalty and some morals through-out the movie like when they are supposed to assassinate politician but the wife and children were in the car so he didn't go through with it and also because Tony stuck to his word this is why I think that males particularly would be the target audience for this film.

The main target for film for me was gangster film fans but as the years have passed, the hip hop community have seem to embrace the film a lot. A lot of Hip hop artist have made Scarface reference in their songs like Nas – The World is Yours (Tony Montana’s motto), Raekwon – Criminology (has dialogue from the movie at the beginning), Big Pun – Leatherface (samples from the movie in the song) and more. Hip hop artist have said that this is more of a ghetto tale then a drug movie and I feel that they can relate to this movie a lot becoming it is about coming up and becoming big and making a name for yourself. Eve, a female rapper has said she ‘loved that he (Tony) was so determined to get where he needed to get’. In some way the hip hop community seems to idolise this movie even using a slang word ‘yeyo’ meaning cocaine which was featured in this movie.

The hip hop community also says that Scarface shows how society treats the ethnic minorities and also show that the ‘American dream’ can come true, so you don’t have to ‘conform to society in order to make it’ says Mekhi Phifer. Hip hop is also about the come up of a rapper which is similar to what Tony Montana was doing. A lot of hip hop like the fact that ‘Tony Montana embodied being an opportunist, having morals and loyal’ and even this Tony was a drug lord he was ‘genuine’, ‘stuck to his word’ and ‘to respect his drive’. The hip hop community liked this film because they felt that this film was relatable and had a lot of things that they could learn the positives and the negatives.

One of the main conventions of a gangster genre that Scarface incorporate is the ‘the rise and fall’ of the gangster. The rise and fall is when the gangster slowly becomes rich and power after being very poor, then things starts to go wrong and then end up dead. This is something that you will see very often in gangster movies. Tony comes from being an immigrant from Cuba to a drug lord then he started taking drugs and then things started going downhill from there. Another convention of gangster film is that there is always some type of discrimination towards an ethnic minorities like black people, Hispanics, Native American and Asians. Most gangster films are about these ethnic minorities who started out poor and work their way to the top, you never see a middle class white person as a gangster in this genre, they seem to be a person working in law enforcement.

Also in this genre there is also the guy that falls in love with the boss’ girl, kill the boss and take over. Elvira Hancock was Tony’s love interest since he saw her coming down from the elevator. In that scene you see a low angle shot of Elvira getting in the lift then pans to a middle shot of Tony looking up at Elvira, who is wearing a silk aqua blue dress, you could see by the way the camera was close up to Tony's face expression that he was interested in him. Falling in love with the gangster's girl happens in almost every gangster movie, he gets the girl. But in another gangster movies the girl generally seems to be interested in the gangster whereas with Elvira Hancock I felt that she went along with the person who had the most power at the time. This genre is always based on the life experience of a male, this is because these films tend to show a lot of strength and power which I feel is more of a male aspect. The males want to more masculinity whereas I feel that females are shown to be more emotional and this wouldn't fit into these type of films. There is also a lot of violence in this genre which leads to the death of the main character, this is to so a message that what goes around comes back around. This is a perfect example of Tony because he kills a lot of people in this film for example in the scene where you see an over the shoulder shot of Tony's face expression when he sees Gina at Manny's house and the scene goes in slow motions and the it cuts to middle shot of Manny falling on to the floor, this was the beginning of his downfall. You also hear a non diegetic music in the background suggesting that something bad has happened. This shows that there are consequences to the things that you do. This can also be an anti-drug as well saying that no matter how much money you could make of drugs, it will also lead to death.

In Scarface, the men and women are represented differently. The men are showed to be more superior, aggressive, stubborn and fearless. These aspects show the men's masculinity, the men in Scarface would rather die than to seem weak. On the other hand Frank Lopez (Tony's mentor) was seen to be weak at his last moments in his death because in this scene you see a long shot of Frank begging for his life and . Frank Lopez was represented negatively at this moment because it show that he was weak and fearful compared to the other characters in this film. Tony and Manny were represented to be what I described earlier which is fearless, aggressive and stubborn, their goal was to become powerful so they could gain wealth and women. The men treated the women in this film as objects, the women are only there to look good especially with Manny but towards the end you see that he develops genuine feels for Tony's sister Gina. Tony was represented to be good guy with good morals at first but when the power and the drugs came, you could see Tony beginning to change. Tony started become more paranoid as we see because he install camera everywhere in his house so he can view what is happening outside. He also started to develop at short temper and started to become over protective especially with his sister for example in the scene where Tony slaps Gina because he saw her go to the toilet with a guy.

The women are portrayed to be sexualised every time we would see a women in Scarface they all seemed to be wearing bikinis. The women were seen to be properties and the things with wealth and power. The women in this film are also seen to be very emotional especially Gina, she let her emotions control her for example when she starts shooting at Tony at the last scene because Tony kills Manny. In this scene you get a long shot of Gina so you could see the revealing bathrobe she was wearijng Elvira Hancock was seen as something that came with power. When Frank was at the top, Elvira was there and then when Tony had power Elvira married him. Elvira seemed to be what Tony was telling Manny that 'In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women'.

The narrative in Scarface is very similar to a lot of gangster movies. We see how Tony and Montana were refugees and they were poor with no power in society then you see them slowly become more and more powerful and rich then as soon as they get to the peak of their power things seem to go wrong ending in the death of the main character, in this case Tony Montana. The typical conventional narrative for gangster movies is for the main character to fall in love with the boss' girlfriend or family member which is seen in movies like ' Married to a Mob', 'Spike of Bensonhurst', 'The Fast and Furious' and many more have use this narrative in their movies. Another narrative that you would normally see in gangster movies is a drug deal going wrong resulting in a lot of people dying.                   

Scarface

Scarface: Part 1

Target Audience: use the different ways of defining audiences from your audience profiles to identify who you feel is the target audience.

The target audience for this movie is mostly males because are most likely to watch violent, dark films like this. To watch this movie you would have to enjoy a lot of violence because even in the first 10 minutes of the movie there is violence already shown in the movie. The women in this movie are very sexualise and they women that we see in this movie are either in bikinis or in tight clothing, this would attract a male audience to watch this. Also all the lead characters are male and would appeal more to the male gender. This movie is also a very long movie so the target audience would have to have a good attention span. This movie could also be targeted at Al Pacnio fans.

Genre Conventions: identify the genre conventions of 'gangster films' reflected in the film. Is there anything unconventional about the film?

Gangster films tend to be very violent which this film has a lot of for example when the man used a chainsaw to slice a man to pieces.  In a gangster movie you always see tension between two groups of people which normally ends up in a shoot out. All gangster films are based around men because they are seen to be more stronger and fearless. Another genre convention is also the rise and fall of the main character. You see the main character starting from a poor background with no money then they slowly climb become more and more powerful then once they are at the top thing begin to fail and ends up resulting in the death of the main character. Discrimination is also a another genre convention, in gangster film you normally see a particular race like black people, Latinos, italians and etc discriminated by white people. 

Representation: how do you feel men are portrayed? Identify stereotypical aspects of 'masculinity' that is highlighted.

The man in scarface are represented to have a very big ego especially Tony Montana and Manny. The men in this film especially Tony as seen to be very aggressive, stubborn, fearless and to have quick tempers. It also seem that when things don't go their way they result to violence. They rather die then to seem weak against other people. The men are also seen to be rich and powerfully e.g they are dressed in suits and live in big houses. Tony Montana treats females as object because he said to Manny that 'you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power then you get the women' this makes it seem that for you to get women you have to have money. 

Narrative: identify what you feel are the key conventional narratives of gangster films reflected in this film?

In gangster some typical narrative is based on a drug deal that goes extremely wrong and resulting in a lot of people dying. There is always the main character (Tony) that falls  in love with the bosses girlfriend and starts having a relationship with them. The main characters (Tony and Manny) also start of poor and have no power in society and then becomes rich by the end of the movie. There is also someone in the film that teaches them everything they know about the business. Tony Montana takes over and eventually kills his previous mentor.


Scarface: part 2

Target Audience: How Tony Montana in the film might appeal to the target audience?

Tony Montana becomes more and more confident as he gain more power, he also tells the truth and sticks to his words. Even though Tony does some very crazy and violent things he sticks to his moral and is very protective of family. This could appeal to some of the target audience because even though he is a very violent and stubborn person he can seen to be some type of role model. 

Genre Conventions: How story begins to develop? 

Tony starts to not like his boss/mentor because he thinks he is too soft and he also wants he's girlfriend. Tony starts to create he's own connections with people which helps him to start his own business instead of working for the his old boss. As Tony become more powerfully he starts to become even more arrogant and starts to become a bit mental and even more paranoid. 

Representation: How Tony Montana mental state develops?

Tony starts to be over protective over his little sister and watches every move she does eventually ends up following her and the guy she is with to the toilet and beats him up and also slaps his sister. I think this shows that he is becoming a bit mental because in the begining of the movie you see the bond between and him and his sister and then for him to slap her you can see the clear changed. He also becomes very paranoid for example when the police officer touches his shoulder he the club he quickly reacted. 

Narrative: How the story builds up? and the raise and fall of Tony Montana?

You see that the mother is very distinct towards Tony because she believe that every thing he does involves trouble and does want him to be apart of her life. You start seeing the relationship between Tony and his sister. Tony starts to make more money and more connections. Tony starts to become more powerful and people start to fear him more.

Moving Image Soundtrack Report

Hangover II Scene 1: Pig

In this clip they used non-diegetic background actions music to create a tension and shows that something is about to happen or is happening. In this clip the characters are driving crazy in new Thailand while some men on motorbikes are shooting at them but the scene becomes funny because of the way the character are panicking, the monkey grabbing onto the car and the car hitting into the pig. This non-diegetic music makes a serious situation funny. The dialogue in this movie is also very panicking and everybody was shouting over each other which was making the situation funnier. I think the dialogue in this movie was very exaggerated because with all that background noise you wouldn't have been able to hear the dialogue. I

In a normal action movie, the main character/s are normal fearless but in this scene you could tell by the dialogue and the way they were shouting that they were scared but what they were saying made it funny. There was also a lot of exaggerated diegetic sound effects in this scene like the gun shots, truck beeping, screeching of the car, motorbike sound and the sound of hitting into the pig. These sound effects makes the scene a bit more realistic. Even when I didn't watch the scene, I could still tell that this was comedian movie because of all of these aspects. These aspect makes the audience know that this scene is a comedy movie.

Hangover II Scene 2: Alan Crying Scene

In this scene you hear a quiet sting of  non-diegetic music fading in when Alan says "Chow, are you ok?". This short piece of music tells the audience that something in the film has gone wrong in the film.The short piece of music is also setting the mood of scene. After this you hear ambient sound and this is when most of the dialogue starts taking place. The dialogue in this scene in normal cases is suppose to be emotional and tragic but it is over exaggerated for example Stu starts screaming and picnicking and at the same time Alan starts doing a whiny crying noise, this makes the scene quite comical because two grown adults are sounding like babies and Phil is like the father in this scene he takes control. This is another scene that is making a serious matter funny.

When the dialogue stops that when another non-diegetic background music fades in again and you can only hear the music and the exaggerated sounds of the monkey. The background music starts off quiet and then builds up then suggest to the audience that something is about to happen in this scene.

Fresh Prince of Bel Air Scene 1: Father Scene

 This scene is basically about how Will's father has let him down again after leaving 17 years. In this scene has no sound effect, no non-diegetic music or voiceover until the very end. You can only hear the characters talking and the body movement they make. The dialogue in the scene convey all the emotion in this scene and the lack of sound makes you listen properly to what the character (Will) is saying so it can create a emotional, deep and a serious atmosphere . This program is normally a comedy program  that uses a lot of sound effects and exaggerated sounds to make the episode more funny but this was an usual and different be to the normal conventions of this genre. This scene made the audience have a connection with the characters in this scene and create an emotional response. Even though this scene was set in a studio, this scene used realist sounds. The only non diegetic we had we was the scene is the theme tune that is also played at end of every episode of The Fresh of Bel Air, this reminds the audience what they are watching.

Fresh Prince of Bel Air Scene 2: Sneaking In Scene

This scene is about Will smith sneaking in after coming back late from a party and trying to get to his room without the butler, aunt and uncle seeing him but at the end they catching up at the end. The use of non-diegetic background music was used at in this scene. The audience hear music that you would normal see in a spy movie so they tells us that he does not want to be seen. This movie helps the audience understand the narrative of this scene. There is also another piece of non-diegetic music when the character (Will) was celebrating on the stair because he thought he got away. The music was like a burst of tambourine which made that bit seem cheerful. There were also a few exaggerated sound like when the door open and when uncle phill was snoring. This was to make the scene more realist and also so you could hear it over the background music. 

Task 4

Task 4: Mainstream, Niche and Alternative

In the report I am going to be discussing whether the audience for Bowling for Columbine and The Lift has a mainstream, niche or alternative audience. I am also going to be discussing the technique and differences and similar that these films have used to target their audience.

 After watching Bowling for Columbine I think that this documentary could be mainstream film because it is a documentary talks about an international problem even though it is focus on America. Gun issues are a current problem throughout America and I don’t think that this issue is aimed at one particular race or state. This documentary also talks about another general and current issue which is racism, in the documentary you have a section where Michael Moore show the way Media portrays other cultures as threats to America like the show ‘Cops’.  Another reason I think that this is a mainstream documentary because this documentary talks about how we change America and for you to this you need a large audience for their to be a drastic change, this documentary also did very well in the Box office it earned $58,008,423 not only in America but in other countries like Finland, Australia, UK and Germany which suggest that this documentary is meant for a large scale of people.

Bowling for Columbine could also be a alternative film because Bowling for Columbine also includes contents that wouldn’t be normally in a documentary like this, current affairs documentaries would normally be very serious whereas a Michael Moore made aspects of this documentary very comical for example he includes a south park style clip of how Americans are very paranoid and fear everything that they excluded themselves and bought large amounts of guns. Another reason that I think that Bowling for Columbine could also be alternative is his interview techniques. He uses a bit of sarcasm and is very persistent, he makes some of the people he is interviewing look a bit ridiculous for example the man that work in a bomb factory.

The Lift is an alternative film. This documentary didn’t talk about current issues or was discussing a worldwide issue like Bowling for Columbine but it was simply analysing and finding information of the residents that lived in a flat in east London. I don’t think that this documentary would interest a large amount of people because it simply doesn’t sound very interesting, when asking people if they would watch this type of documentary a large amount of people said they would not watch this documentary. Also it takes a while for the residents in this documentary to open up and build a relationship with the director and I don’t think a lot of people will have patience to watch the whole of this documentary because the director doesn’t cut to the parts where they start interact but he builds up the tension. I also think that this is a niche documentary, I don’t think that a large scale of people would go and watch this documentary.

A technique that shows that Bowling for columbine is Mainstream documentary is that this documentary was released in a cinema, this show that this documentary was meant for a large scale of people to watch this. In the trailer for bowling for columbine he uses a bit of humour I think to attract a teenager audience to watch this at the cinema, this trailer also makes American seem at a bit stupid and gun crazy. At the beginning of the trailer you see Michael Moore acting like he is some type of a police and shows a very funny side to the presenter/directors, which is not normally seen in documentaries like this. The technique I think that Michael Moore is trying to show is that this isn’t just a normal documentary it is different and to also generate people that normally don’t watch documentaries. Bowling for columbine also received many awards for best foreign film, best documentary of all time and best picture of the year, these awards would have brought bowling for columbine a lot of publicity. The poster shows Michael Moore holding a global which shows America and it looks like Michael Moore is about to go bowling, this is a clearly way to show who and where Michael Moore is generally targeting he’s audience at. The poster background is also a map of some of the places that Michael Moore is going to visit of his journey.

The Lift doesn’t have any posters and trailers, I think this shows that this is aimed at a smaller audience because it doesn’t really broadcast and try to receive large media attention. The lift does has a lot of positive reviews from magazines and website like Sick chirpse, Brooklyn film and Gorilla film magazine this show that even though this is a meant for a niche audience these reviews helped this documentary to get some audience. The lift was also realise online on YouTube which makes it easy to access and watch this film and it also show that this documentary was meant for a small audience and is also for normal people like the ones in documentary. This film is more of a word of mouth film, it is not really promoted as how bowling for columbine was. A technique that makes this an alternative is that it is a very weird and bizarre approach to a documentary.

Bowling for Columbine targets their audience by broadcasting on TV, radio and posters whereas The Lift uses the word of mouth to gain it's audience. The lift was shown on channel 4 so it's targeted at a more smaller and British audience, whereas Bowling for Columbine was released at a cinema where a large amount of people from different countries can watch. The lift is also shown at a certain time but bowling for columbine was shown all day at cinemas. 

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