Feedback for week 7 seminar November 20, 2009

 

We spoke about Genres and how there are hybrid genres and sub genres within films and music, for example, romantic comedies are sub genres of comedy and romance, but also a hybrid of these genres. We spoke about elements that are the same within genres and found it was really easy to talk and know what conventions are used within each genre.

 

We also found that there are some films that the audience would find hard to place in a particular category, these include, harry potter, and Narnia. We spoke on how some genres cannot be mixed, such as sci fi and western, this is because the audience just wouldn’t understand a space ship in a normal western film, however it can be argued that star wars is a sci fi film but set out like a western. In the modern society the lines of what is what have been blurred a lot, and we find that one film could contain up to 5 different genres based on the conventions of the genres. WE came to the conclusion hat the conventions of film genres cam from literature and film critics over time.

 

With the conventions the way we realised how easy it was to know what conventions went with what genre is because if someone turned to you and said we are going to watch a horror today, your mind starts thinking of things that the film will have in it, and then if something out of he ordinary turns out you are not expecting it. For example romance means the typical boy meets girl story, however you don’t normally see a romantic story with gay guys or lesbians.

 

With films what the audience sees helps critics and the audience come up with the codes and conventions, there are some things that just will not be shown on TV and shown in films, this is because it makes the audience feel uncomfortable, for example how does a solider pee? We will not now as we haven’t see it, plus in films you don’t see people going toilet ever and if you do it’s always a guy, plus in films, TV programmes and adverts you never hear about periods, it is a natural thing of a women but it is rather a unsettling subject. Another thing you never see is children being killed, these things re things that happen in everyday life but because it is unsettling or uncomfortable to watch people just dent include them into films. The main reason in my eyes why these things are not shown is because why would the audience want to watch them?

 

Within films we still see that men are dominant and women are submissive, even though society have moved on and have better women’s rights, in the media it hasn’t, this shows that some conventions have been around so long and just wont be changed even if society have.

 

Conventional closure was also mention during this seminar, the usual conventional closure is a term called coupling, this is usually a theme or actual representation of where a heterosexual relationship works out, this is applicable in all genres not just romance. A good example of a film that dos this is fight club.

 

Group task – Week 7 November 20, 2009

 Kate chose musicals
Likes – Make you feel happy, makes you feel good about yourself, clever the way they tell a narrative through songs and how they show emotions and feelings by using songs.
Dislikes – Doesnt reflect real life, Its always over the top, most of teh time they are cheesy and gay, and finally how the songs are always catchy so you are singing thm for days after

Anna did Animated comedies
Likes – They are funny, the way they are animated makes you feel young again, the way the characters always get away with doing stuff we dont get to do in real life, make me laugh, they are just brilliant, the main guys in the shows are always stupid and interesing, the way the characters either have little adventures or just want world domination
Dislikes – SOmetimes they are too childish, they cover some unfunny subjects like war and the nazis, most of them tend to turn towards religion abit too much, have way too much sexist jokes in them and are just blokeish humour, the fact you have aliens and dogs in the familes taht can talk, and how some of them have animal – humn relationships.

Nicola did daytime television
they all cater to a similar audience being unemployed, housewives or stay at home parents etc and they all offer entertainment and escapism yet they are all different in ways. They’re enjoyable and fun and give the audience in both a formal (this morning) and informal way covering topics of hard and soft news. They’re on at a reasonable hour of the morning or early afternoon so if your ill etc then theres something to watch too.
however some daytime shows like chat shows e.g jeremy kyle are although funny, ridiculous in some of the stories that appear on such shows and even those with serious topics, still come across as humorous when they shouldnt be, this could be because of some of the people that are on there. However it does make you feel better as a person as the people appearing are less inspiring.

We couldnt see what they had in common as not all of us had done the task yet, but we went on to the next part, we decided to choose horror, the films we choose were Hills have eyes, The Grudge and Nightmare on elm street. We went on to tak about the conventions in the specific areas :

Characters – There is always a dumb one, he monster/killer is always male, the victim is always female, there is always a final girl who saves the day, this character is usually the likable one throught the film and usualy a friend of the victim.

Locations – The horrible place (eerie, scary looking place) its the place where the killings take place, sometimes its based around where the killer has grown up, usually dark woods and haunted houses.

Narrative – Always strts in a happy place, they always use screams, hero always wins, if there is going to be a squel then the villian always returns in the last scene, the always have a beginnning middle and end, always in linear order, they use tension building music as a main source of buling tension

Mise en scene – Dark, foggy, the weapons that are used for killings or torture to the characters are always shown just before being used. ( this didnt get much responce)

Filming style – Close up of faces when scared, there is nearly lways one shot of womans breasts or clevege. and you always hve establishing shots of new locations.

Be Kind, Rewind Project October 15, 2009

My class got themselves into small groups of 5 or 6 and were asked to do a project like the film Be kind, rewind. We basically had to choose a film within our group and create a missing reel, this meant that we had to choose a certain scene to represent the film.

The group I was in decided we wanted to do click, but make it more mordern, so we chose the scene where you have David Hasselhoff and Adam sandler in an office and Adam pauses the scene and farts in Davids face, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1dbrHPIrwA) but we wanted to modernise it, so we thought we would have a couple that breaks up, and the woman in the scene would have the remote. However the more we thought and planned this idea, the more we realised it was being too complicated and decided to think of another idea to use.

Our second idea was Narnia, this we decided that we needed to represent the four children, who dont know where they are and also to represent the white witch. So we went over the film and found different ways of representing these characters, we then hit the problem of none of us owning a big wardrobe, so we changed the storyline to them going into a elevator and arriving out of the elevator into a cathedral grounds.