G322 Tommy Jessop Extract - Representation of Disability

How disability is represented

Sound

Disability has been represented in this extract through the voiceover of the person with the disability since he certainly speaks in a distinctive way and possesses a distinctive tone in comparison to Frost and Billy's father since his dialogue sounds slower compared to when Frost interrogates him in a more swift and concise tone.

Secondly, the speaker with the disability speaks with more aggression or concern through his voice (although this could, once again, be linked to the situation itself) whereas Frost attempted to interact with him in a more calm, down-to-earth tone especially since the disabled person should never feel or be discriminated no matter what the situation may be.

However, Frost does use sound as contribution to how representation of disability is represented, or should I say misrepresented, as he and the father had engaged in conversation prior to the interview and the father is asked whether Billy would be considered mentally abnormal and is corrected with the word, "handicapped", which represents the able-bodied as ignorant towards the people who have physical/mental disabilities.

Movement

 The acting of the cast within this extract all contribute to the representation of disability as Billy's mother requests Detective Frost if she can 'clean him up' as she is holding a bowl of water and this links to the fact that this seems like a childlike approach towards Billy which represents disabled people as being treated more like children by their parents hence why the father is also there within the duration of the interview looking over him as if he is his 'guardian angel'.

Avatar: James Cameron's marvel being brought to life

Production
Avatar has been in the mind of arguably the greatest Hollywood visual artist of the entertainment industry for a decade and a half as James Cameron wrote an 80-page treatment for Avatar using every science-fiction book he had read throughout his childhood, as well as novels from the greats -- Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard, as motivation and inspiration for the biggest-budget Hollywood movie to make it to the silver screen.

In 1996, after completing Titanic (which would become the highest-grossing movie of all-time with a record-breaking $1,843,201,268) -- Cameron claimed that he would produce and complete Avatar and would use computer-generated actors for the movie due to its science-fiction nature but had used CG actors in such a distinctive way that it seems like only James Cameron would be able to craft and use this filmmaking trickery to his own advantages.

The project would cost $100 million dollars and involve at least a minimum of six actors who would be 'non-existent in the physical world' with production beginning in the summer of 1997 to lead to a 1999 release but had felt that the technology was not advanced enough to be able to utilize for the movie and had decided to use patience as his virtue until January 2006 where he officially began production for the groundbreaking...Avatar.

The director had planned to make use of photorealistic CG characters and crafting new motion-cap technologies never before seen in the film industry to ensure that his movie would be able to recreate every inch of detail from the greatest screaming facial expression possible to the most miniscule skin wrinkle you would be able to discover on a Na'vi humanoid.
 
Marketing


Promotions
The first photograph of the movie was released on August 14th, 2009, along with Empire-exclusive images of Avatar in its October issues leading to more interest from audiences and film critics alike due to the fact that more people wanted to know about this James Cameron project that he has invested 15 years of his Hollywood career in.

To further the marketing promotion for Avatar, James Cameron announced that on August 21 at the Comic-Con Avatar Panel that it would be 'Avatar Day' and this led to the official video game trailer, toy line of the film and an 129-second trailer (being 2:09 worth of Avatar anticipation footage) only to lead to another trailer, being a 210-second trailer (which would be 3:30 worth of footage) that would be premiered in cinemas and online on Yahoo! to much positivity from the audiences who have been keeping up with the anticipation of Cameron's next big movie magnificence.

An extended IMAX 3D version would be released to critical acclaim which was seen as a definitive step in the right direction for Cameron and the crew as they had received little-to-no criticism for their movie, whether negative or constructive, whatsoever at the time.

In order for James Cameron to be able to connect with the audience more, which is certainly an increasingly challenging task for a computer-generated movie to do in comparison to a live-action movie featuring real-life characters, McDonald's had promoted a tagline which would read 'Avatarize yourself' which would lead to people taking a photograph and transforming themselves into the Na'vi species. Clever move indeed, Jamie boy.

Books
If you thought that only the production of the Avatar movie was going to be a lengthy piece of work itself, you certainly haven't seen the amount of content within the books that had been used to promote this bad boy as Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora consisted of 224 pages worth of guidance information based on the fictional setting of Pandora itself (therefore, bringing the setting to life -- a task which Cameron and the crew executed well rather than having Pandora just be a 'fictional sci-fi setting for a bunch of aliens'). 

Knowing that computer-generated movies had been brought to the movie screens specifically for children, James Cameron wanted to reach out to an immense audience with his immense working project and this led to the release of James Cameron's Avatar: The Reusable Scrapbook. You know, because the movie's so great, you'd watch it again...and again...and again.

Other book releases were The Making of Avatar, being a 272-page illustration containing over 500 color photographs and illustrations (yes, even when it comes to books, James Cameron's gotta make sure it's as big as big can become which is why he even planned to write an epic novel that fills in all of the gaps possible.)

Distribution
The film distribution of the 237+ million-dollar movie had finally premiered on December 10th, 2009, 15 days shy of Christmas and was originally scheduled for a May 22, 2009 (two days shy of my birthday) release during production time but was pushed back to allow post-production time as well as all of the theatres time to be able to use the 3-D projectors for the worldwide premiere of Avatar and in total -- 90% of all ticket sales, in advance, were for Avatar's 3-D screenings.

Internationally, Avatar opened on a total of 14,604 screens in 106 terrorities, of which 3,671 were showing the film in 3-D (producing 56% of the 1st-weekend gross.) The IMAX release that had premiered worldwide was the company's widest to date, opening up in a total of 261 theatres worldwide.

The Making of The Hunger Games

This blog post is based on how the Hunger Games movie had been produced, distributed, marketed and how the consumption of the movie from the viewers has had perhaps one of the greatest movie grossing impacts of all-time.




Production:
The Hunger Games was produced by North American independent company, and the most commercially successful independent film & TV distribution company in the States, Lionsgate. Lionsgate had obtained worldwide rights to the Hunger Games book series in March 2009 with Color Force which is Nina Jacobson's production company.

With potential risk hazards such as poison ivy and a chase across fast-running water, a risk analysis would need to be utilized for the movie in order for the production process not to stop progression at any time possible. The budget for the movie was initially meant to be $75 million before increasing to $90 to $100 million and then being reduced to $78 million after subsidies (contribution of money).

They had also ensured that their movie would be faithful to its roots by including a teenage/youthful cast in the movie itself with Jennifer Lawrence portraying herself as the role of Katniss, the main protagonist of the novel series too. This way, it would not only appeal to teenagers who have yet to read the Hunger Games novels but would also be produced with the right execution as it would make readers enthusiastic knowing about how the film does not stray away from the novels (similarly to how potential summer blockbuster, The Amazing Spider-Man, is being produced with more attention-to-detail being based on the Amazing Spider-Man comics due to the Gwen Stacy character being in the movie as she was in the Spider-Man universe before Mary Jane's arrival.)

Distribution:
Lionsgate Entertainment had distributed The Hunger Games which would then be rated a 12A by the British Board of Film Classification due to the intense threat, moderate violence and gore which would occur not-so-often throughout the movie.

However, the movie was distributed for the teenage audience due to the fact that all of these aspects which had deemed the movie to be a 12A/PG-13 are all done and shot within scenes which all include teenage actors which reflect the target audience they had initially wanted to aim the movie at (as well as also distributing the movie for the adult audience too as The Hunger Games is not entirely aimed at teenagers but a broader audience as well as readers who were critical fanatics of the novels made by Suzanne Collins. The film was also distributed to the audiences with early screenings which would be available for consumption by these audiences a mere amount of hours leading up to the much-anticipated release of the novel-based novelty.

Marketing:
In celebration of the countdown to The Hunger Games, Lionsgate Entertainment would display 24-hour early screenings prior to the release in an attempt to successfully market the product so that if they receive early positive reviews, or critical acclaim from the viewers, this would likely lead to an increase in the box-office made for the movie as well as any box-office records (as box-office expectations, from box-office watchers/predictors, were expected to exceed $120 million) and had made a large amount of money that it became the third-highest opening weekend grossing film of all-time.

The film had Lionsgate's stocks powering up to over 75% this year after the release of The Hunger Games due to the fact that Lionsgate had a different marketing strategy in comparison to other film companies which had distributed movies based on comics, books or novels as they ensured that The Hunger Games would be a stand-alone film and not be entirely compared to the novels and they had also done this with the promotional material used to advertise the film as this material would shift the focus away from the story elements in the novel series.

Furthermore, the fact that they had a female protagonist play the "revolutionary hero" character manages to appeal to, both, male and female audiences due to the fact that, according to 2003 research by young adult librarians Dawn Cartwright and Patrick Jones (now a teen author), young males would tend to gravitate towards comic books, magazines and informational texts (e.g. Batman Begins, Spider-Man series, Iron Man) whereas females would tend to watch narrative fiction more (e.g. the Twilight series).

OCR G322 Monarch of the Glen - Representation of Age

In this blog post, I will be crafting a detailed analysis about how each of the key parts of crafting an edited video (mise en scene, camera angles/shots/movements, editing and sound) all highlight the representation of age within the extract - a factor which can be simply overlooked yet possibly one of the biggest factors within the video itself.

Camera shots, angles and movements:
The camera shots that are taken within this extract are mainly close-up shots or full-body shots which are used to show the contrast between characters i.e. when the godfather is sending the 16-year-old goddaughter away because of her not taking a single examination (2:47-2:53), the over-the-shoulder camera angles that are taken over the girl's shoulder is used to display the significance of the father as he is the older character and that the goddaughter is seen as a 'little girl' despite the fact we gain a few hints at her seeking to be more mature i.e. her clothing and the sense of attitude we see from her throughout the extract.

At 1:49, a MCU (medium close-up) camera shot is taken of the teenage female and her relative and manages to contrast both characters within a single camera shot as the relative seems much more taller and her clothing displays how she is older in comparison to the teenager whose shoulders are barely seen in the camera shot, emphasizing how she may have been displayed with maturity when attempting to drive the vehicle yet that camera shot seems to faithfully tell us that she is the youngest with subtlety.

Camera movements which are used within the extract are movements such as "dollying" (or tracking shots) such as from 3:44 to 3:57 since the camera moves along with the subject before using tilt shots by tilting upwards, to display her youthfulness as it tilts from the shot taken of her denim jeans right up to her casual jacket, and then from left to right as it highlights the emotion on the daughter's face before zooming into a picture on her mirror of her and her family; obviously kept as a memento.

From 4:01 to 4:15, the camera shot which is taken of the godmother displays the contrast between her and her daughter from 2:56 to 2:58 as the goddaughter's movement when she is running seems to be quick and display her youthfulness, once again, as it is more likely that a young female would run in a similar movement whereas her mother runs quite slowly to check where her daughter is and when she is running to tell the father that Amy's ran away.

A close-up camera shot is taken of, both, the godmother and godfather at the final seconds of the video to contrast their goddaughter's facial appearance to theirs as they look much more elderly in comparison (i.e. the mother's clothing or the father's wrinkles).

Editing:
The editing of the video is displayed through several camera shots and angles which are used to retain the seamless flow i.e. from 0:29 to 0:31 when the father throws the vehicle keys to Amy, the camera shot switches to Amy as she catches the keys which shows solid editing as there is no continuity error here and it also links to the representation of age as Amy's reflexes here when she catches the keys are similar to a young woman's reflexes whereas when the godfather throws the keys, his movement here was slower so the editing here is used to contrast both characters here.

Sound:
Sound certainly links to the representation of age within this video as each character has their own distinctive voice which expresses their age in particular i.e. from 2:25 to 2:56 as Paul's voice seems deep, thick and elderly whereas the goddaughter's voice sounds whiny, similarly to how an average teenage female's voice would possibly sound as she even shouts, "I hate you!", emphasizing how teenage females often rant/have mood swings.

Other parts within the video which highlight the representation of age include 0:16 to 0:22 (before they are both interrupted by the godfather) since both of these characters are young so their voices would be similar and the fact that their father interrupts them before asking Amy to do an errand for him also displays their positions within the family.


Mise-en-scene:
The mise-en-scene in the extract links to the representation of age i.e. 1:32 to 1:50, this part of the video displays how the headteacher's clothes contrast the family's clothing as the old male's clothes consist of a coat, sweatshirt and dirty trousers (although not being clean but still smartly-dressed in comparison) whereas the family seem to be wearing denim jeans, t-shirts and casual jackets. The clothing used here for all of these characters also link to the atmosphere and time period set for the extract since they wouldn't be really wearing modern-day clothes or expensive designer clothing that would seem out-of-place/too contrastive to their surroundings.

Monsters Film Commentary

Despite the £500,000 budget spent on the production of the movie, Gareth Edwards and the crew of Monsters had managed to pull themselves together in a valiant effort to set themselves apart from all of the other movies that had come before it, attempting to be displayed at the silver screen in the US and UK yet not amounting to much more than a straight-to-DVD B-movie release.

The acclaim of the movie lies in the fact that Gareth had utilized all of the film's visual effects from home products and software programs using his own equipment which allows for a much better connection between the movie and us (the viewers) as it may not hold a candle to Avatar's special effects yet the true power of the movie comes from how we can feel that the small cast and crew of Monsters had worked hard to produce what can be described as a great sci-fi movie that doesn't disappoint; e.g. "His digitally created beasts, and the exotically wrecked landscape they inhabit, seem to have been created from a kind of social-realist grime. It's strictly 2D: Edwards is the anti-James-Cameron. The effects don't draw attention to themselves: tentacle-waving aliens are all part of the general, grubby absence of law and order," - the official Monsters review from The Guardian specifically highlights this.

This is true as it not only, received £4,188,738 in terms of box office but was also nominated for six British Independent Film Awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor expressing that you do not need big-name Hollywood actors to craft a successful movie. Furthermore, the fact that they had just handpicked random 'actors' to appear in their movie also displays the realism of their acting as acting shouldn't be dissimilar from living a normal lifestyle as you still breath, live and speak like an ordinary character but the only differences are that you may portray a different character which you haven't portrayed before. Monsters was also nominated for the 2011 BAFTA's (Outstanding Debut by a British Director) but ultimately lost to Four Lions.

From the re-created signs to the water effects that were created using computer-generated imagery (once again, on a very low budget stretching how far production could go with the £500,000 used); Monsters is an achievement of excellence and will be praised by viewers more for the fact that this is Gareth Edward's first time film-making yet he proves to be a contender in comparison to big-name Hollywood directors such as Christopher Nolan who also tells stories using their CGI/film-making trickery (e.g. Inception).

Exam Areas and Explanations

Section A:
1.) Textual analysis and representation

Four areas:

• Camera angles
• Camera shots
• Camera movements
• Composition

2.) Mise-en-scene
3.) Editing
4.) Sound

A film is made up of these four key aspects. A mise-en-scene would feature key pointers such as; props, lighting, location/setting and the characters present in the film itself. Editing would involve things such as editing and cutting clips but having them flow in a seamless movie-like experience and although it is an uncertainty that a film will not feature any continuity errors, movies have had a great history due to their editing e.g. Rocky (despite the $1-million budget spent on the movie itself so editing is of good importance to the movie). The sound is perhaps one of the most important and integral parts of crafting an Oscar-caliber movie as there are movies which are critically acclaimed such as "The Artist" for their usage of silent film to add to the atmosphere and distinctiveness.

Furthermore, sound could be seen as oozing a sense of identity and character as there may be a movie, in its entirety, based on dialogue or sounds that do not rely on characters' voices at all and can still come across as a great movie (e.g. even narratives are used in movies to explain the storyline step-by-step.)

Representation:
How you purposely intend to portray/display yourself to others

Characters would usually give the audience a sense of their identity through their movements, how they speak and the facial expressions they may have; for example, in The Godfather: Part III, Al Pacino portrays himself as an aging character and this is shown through his appearance and how he walks slower and speaks more softly in comparison to its predecessor, echoing Marlon Brando's widely-recognized portrayal of Don Vito Corleone. In addition to this, a character who is merciless and infuriated would have facial expressions full of anger and fury as opposed to a character who is caring towards others and strives to achieve the best as his facial expressions would be more varied yet it would be more of a rarity to see them angry in comparison.

Peoples' representations are categorized by factors such as age, ethnicity and even religion but these representations also depend on how you are sociable with others; e.g. if a person mainly hangs around with a religious group, it is unlikely that he would heavily use cursing through his dialogue and would represent himself as a kind-natured and selfless character.

Another example of this is in Inside Man, there is a Sikh man that the police interrogates as they take off his turban and this adds to how ethnicity plays a factor in the movie too as a turban is represented here as of high importance to this character's religion as he echoes the fact that he will not answer any questions until he is given back his turban.

In addition to this, gender plays a factor too as females and males are represented differently, in general, but this is not to generally state that all males will be represented as dominant characters as there are males who are represented distinctively too.