Friday, 7 December 2012

Warp Films- Info

Warp Films


  • Founded by Steven Beckett and Rob Mitchell
  • Created with financial help from NESTA- Where they then created a number of short films
  • Rob Mitchell passed away in 2001, Steven Beckett gave the position away to Sheffield friend Mark Herbert
  • First film Chris Morris' My Wrongs (Shot in 2002)- Won award for best short film in 2003

Thursday, 22 November 2012

Disability clip - Touch Of Frost


Within the clip for touch of frost, our main focus is on Billy. Billy is quite clearly disabled. The first scene of the clip is billy wiping down his jeans, then we see that there’s police with dogs obviously looking for someone. These two things put closely together could show straight away that Billy is suspicious. The music within this is quite suspicious, mysterious music to add to the tension. At this point, we don’t know that Billy is disabled. We then discover straight away that his, we get a close up of his face, and we see that he notices the police lights and he panics, there is then a panning shot as the police begin to chase him down when Billy runs. This could give the audience a sense of feel like they are also chasing him along the screen. The music is now stopped at this point, and we here dogs barking and police shouting instead. We then hear billy speak for the first time, telling them he hasn’t done anything, we can sense he sounds scared. The camera angle at this point is looking down on billy, making it feel as though he’s very vulnerable at the minute as he’s been caught by the police and he can’t get away.

Next, we are shown the police car outside a house, with all the neighbours hanging about. The camera pans across showing the extent of the situation. We are next introduced to an old man, and the investigator. The camera angle at this point in the clip, is up from above slightly right, and this could suggest that as they are having an important secretive conversation, that we could get a sense that we’re kind of eves dropping on the conversation. In this conversation, we get the first comment about Billy’s disability where the inspector describes him as “mentally subnormal” and the old man corrects the investigator to describe him as “handicapped”.  The inspector then suggests he needs someone in the room with him, to keep an eye on billy. We’re next introduced to an older woman, by now we could think this is Billy’s house, and that their Billy’s parents. If so, then his mother, the older woman, brings up to the door a bowl of soapy water and tells the investigator billy would feel better if he was cleaned up first. This could suggest that Billy is less abled as well. Investigator refuses and speaks to billy first. We see billy sitting on a chair inside a room, his dad speaks to him like he’s a child, and billy keeps saying that he hasn’t done anything. The inspector also talks to billy as though he’s a child.

As the investigator talks to billy, the camera shots show shots of Billy’s face close ups, shots of billy with his dad sat behind him, and shots of the investigator, but there are no shots of billy and the investigator together, these shots could show, billy is alone in this, but then it shows also that his dad is going to be there to speak for him and help him out. The fact that billy is sat in the middle of his dad and the investigator puts him in a position where he looks vulnerable, over-powered, and targeted. The way that the investigator talks to billy, is not only in a childish manner, but he’s sort of trying take advantage of the fact billy might not fully understand or tell truth as he’s scared. So the investigator talks to him and says things to try and catch billy slip up, and say something wrong, because he knows billy is vulnerable because he’s disabled.
At this point, I would say I wouldn’t know as an audience whether or not to believe billy. Understanding he’s disabled, I feel sorry for him and I believe him, but I also have a feeling he could have done something accidently and freaked out and is now scared.

By now, we see the investigator becoming agitated that he’s getting nowhere with billy. Billy’s dad interrupts and says that billy said he was going out to “play”, billy corrects him and says he was going to walk by the river. Just by this sentence or two, we see more of younger, childish with billy.

Thoughout the clip we see that disability is treated differently with lots of emotions because of their disability.

Class and status essay



                                
The clip from the street represents class and status. We see two families. Living on the same street, there’s some kind of affair going on between the adults. The first family we see, arguing, 3 children, a mother rushing and a father obviously angry about something they can’t afford to replace. We then see him go to work, and he obviously works at a building site. Then we see the mother has a bit of an accident in the kitchen, where a pipe bursts and she’s run to get her neighbour, who she’s actually having an affair with. Next we then see him go to work, in a suit, more upper-class job than the building site man. In the office man’s house, we see his family with children, a little hectic but not as hectic as the family from the start. He then rushes out because he’s probably late for work, and in the rush he runs down the child of the woman he’s having the affair with. The mother of the child accuses her husband of being selfish because he was watching football, and not watching his children.

Through this, I’m going to analyse firstly the two men who contrast with each other a lot. They both have different jobs, one man in an office, and one man a builder. Just through how they dress we can already see that one is more upper-class than the other. The office man, for example, wear a grey suit, he’s quite slim also, for work. The builder wears a vest, he’s a little chubby, and he doesn’t look like he can be bothered to take pride in his appearance. Just through these two men, we see a huge contrast in not only gender factors, but also their class and status.

When we look at the two mothers, there are not many differences. Both are or could be housewives, do the cleaning, go shopping, take children to school and look after them whilst their husbands go to work. The mothers both seem to be run off their feet. The fact that we can see this shows us that both families are not extremely rich. Although, then we can say that one family is probably a little more wealthy than the other.

The first scene of the family arguing and the little girl looking through the gap in the door, could suggest she’s scared, she doesn’t want to see it and the music we hear is quite jolly, and obviously to a TV or a radio. This could more effect to the fact of the hectic morning before work and school.

Hustle essay


Introduction

We watched a clip from Hustle. Within this clip we analysed the characteristics of male and female characters. We focused on four main characters; Sarah, Shop assistant, older woman, and the con man. Through analysing this section I discovered that the men and women were portrayed very differently. It showed a sophisticated woman, and a working class woman. Both were acting as I'd expect a woman to act, but each differently to one another. It showed the men as different people as well. The con man was portrayed as quite street wise because of his strong London accent, but with a lot of money show by his suit. Whereas it showed the shop assistant as a feminine, stuck up, self-obsessed man, but very well spoken.

Within the clip of Hustle we see a much contrasted set of characters that display different assets of gender. This is a good clip to compare gender. Taking the two women we see for example. The older woman and the younger woman. The older woman is wearing more down to earth clothing, casual usual clothes, with scraggly going-grey hair. The younger woman, looks more sophisticated in the way she dresses, in her grey stone suit, and perfect hair, blonde, takes pride in appearance. This gives a contrast already on the two women and their gender, and how women can act differently. The men that are represented in the clip, the con man and the shop assistant, seem very different. For example, the shop assistant, he acts quite feminine, and he clearly loves his job. The older lady shopping in the shop, he asks what they want and he rushes her out of the shop, being quite rude, and judgmental. After this he practically runs over to the younger lady, because he can obviously tell she’s going to be a big spender. He picks out a dress for her, again showing his feminine side, and she tries it on. He comments on how she looks etc. Next we see the con man, who compared to the shop assistant is a lot more masculine. His language is quite normal, London cockney language and we see a contrast of this as the shop assistant speaks well spoken. The con man is in a suit which I would say doesn’t contrast with the shop assistant, but we can tell that the con man looks well off with money. He seems to be a little over-powering over the shop assistant. You can tell a lot about gender within characters and contrast them well, just by looking at the clothes they wear and the languages they speak in and accents. The fact that the shop assistant is working in a high-end woman’s clothes shop, suggests to us that this could also be pointer that he is very feminine.

Friday, 14 September 2012

Attack The Block

Attack The Block was produced by a company called Big Talk Productions. BTP also produced films such as Shaun of the Dead and Hot fuzz. They also produced along side Film4, The UK Film Council and StudioCanal. Overall the film was shot across many different estates around London, as Joe Cornish the producer explains in a quote. But They used an opening scene shot of a birds-eye view of an estate to use as the map for the film. interior shots were filmed in a studio. 
Attack The Block was based upon Joe Cornish, coming into contact with a very realistic gang himself. Due to being previously mugged, Cornish decided to investigate into large gangs and estates around London, and this influenced and inspired him into making the film.
Cornish went on to say in an interview that he thought "In the UK there are a lot of hood movies. They're usually quite depressing." Joe claimed that he wrote from his instinct and wrote what he thought about were his genuine ideas.
The soundtrack in attack The Block was composed by Simon Ratcliffe and Felix Buxton from the Basement Jaxx and also Steven Price. They did actually use a song or two that was a Basement Jaxx song. So they brought their own work into the film.With money saving problems, driectors only used CG effects when necessary, and had an extreme budget on how they did their special effects with the aliens, using puppets and even people in alien costumes.
Problems Whilst making attack the block, they didn't have the correct budget to have 3D animated aliens so had to improvise.

Tuesday, 11 September 2012

5x5


5 Favourite Bands/Artists

You Me At Six
Two Door Cinema Club
Blondie
Fleetwood Mac
Chase & Status

5 Favourite Actresses

Evangeline Lily
Emilie De Ravin
Kristen Stewart
Mila Kunis
Maggie Grace

5 Favourite TV Programmes

Lost
Desperate Housewives
How I Met Your Mother
Ghost Whisperer
CSI

5 Favourite Actors

Johnny Depp
Jason Statham
Matthew Fox
Josh Holloway
Michael Emerson

5 Favourite Films

Titanic
The Twilight Saga
Harry Potter
Fast & Furious
Jurassic Park