Mock Questions

This question asked to 'Explain a public service company operates differently to commercial company, use an example to support your answer' and the correct answer would be things such as; BBC, Inform, Educate and Entertain. OFCOM and BBFC are correct as regulators but these aren't commercial companies, to remember this for next time o need to remember a Public Service Broadcaster is a company that delivers services beneficial to public interest.

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L03 Representation

How the media shows us things about society, but this is through careful meditation.
Hence - re-presentation

Selective
War - Value = Belief System

Tim O'Sullivan (1998)
For representations to work, there has to be a shared recognition of people and places. All representations therefore have ideologies behind them.

Ideology - refers to a set of ideas which produces a partial and selective view of reality.

Write down a view of reality that is shown in your film, is this only a partial view?

That Spider-Man has to keep evil away and to fight it off before any bad people take over.

Richard Dyer (1983)
Audiences should question the representations they see in media texts.

Laura Mulvey (1975)
Male Gaze - Women are objectified in media text and passive objects
Audiences are positioned to view the women from the point of view of a heterosexual male.

Stuart Hall (1995)
Western/White cultures continue to misrepresent ethnic minorities as in the media due to underlying racist tendencies.

Earp and Katz (1999)
Men are often represented as having tendencies of pathological control and violence.

L03 Narrative Theory

Narrative = The techniques used to tell the story such as editing techniques, sounds, camerawork etc.

Story = A sequence of events that happen to make a story.

To show your understanding - write down briefly the main story or plot of your film.

Spider-Man

The story of spider-man is a boy that gets bit by a spider and gets all the capabilities to do everything that a spider can, hence the name spider-man. He then creates a spider suit and his uncle dies and he kills the person that kills his uncle with his spider powers.

Tim O'Sullivan (1998) - All media texts tell us some kind of story.

Through careful mediation, media texts offer a way of telling stories about ourselves (as a culture) - these are ideologies.

Mediation - the way that the media carefully selects production to create a specific meaning.

Ideology - Values/Beliefs 

Write down the wider meanings or ideologies, the main story of your film tells the audience.

The wider meanings that spider-man tells is that there are good people out there and spider-man tries to prove that by the good he is doing for the city he is trying to protect.

Pam Cook (1985) 

- Linearity of cause and effect within an overall trajectory of enigma resolution (enigma is a problem or puzzle that needs to be solved)

- A high degree of narrative closure

 - A fictional world that contains verisimilitude especially governed by spatial and temporal coherence. (knowing when and where it is set) 

Write down how your film presents an enigma that is resolved.

Spider-Man has an enigma where there 'Green Goblin' tries to take over New York until he is stopped in his tracks by the main character Spider-Man.

Tzvetan Todorov (1977) 

Stage 1 - Point of stable equilibrium 

Stage 2 - This is stability disrupted by some kind of force, which creates a state of disequilibrium

Stage 3 - Action directed against the disruption.

Stage 4 - Restoration of a state of new equilibrium.

Apply the plot of your film to Todorov's four stages

Stage 1 - 'Green Goblin' causes trouble 

Stage 2 - Spider-Man stops the 'Green Goblin'

Stage 3 - The police join in

Stage 4 -

Claude Levi-Strauss (1985) - Binary Opposition (Good vs Evil)

Write down what binary opposition are presented in your film

Spider-Man being the good guy trying to stop evil vs Green Goblin being the bad guy causing the trouble.

Vladimir Propp - All narratives feature stock characters and that audiences understand stories because of such features:

-Villan/Antagonist

-Hero/Protagonist

-Helper/Supporter

-Princess, the one thats saved/helped.

What character types are presented in your film?

Antagonist - Green goblin

Protagonist - Spider-Man

Roland Barthes (1977) Narrative Codes
Enigma Codes - Work to keep up setting problems or puzzles for the audience.
Action Codes - Work to inform the audience in terms of what is happening in the next shot/scene

Enigma Codes & Narrative Codes in your film

Enigma 
Action Codes - Shows everything the green goblin is doing while doing it.

L03 - Editing

Editing involves changing how something looks and making something look better E.G. special effects, removing bits and adding bits.

- Transitions
- Cut
- Fade
- Dissolve
- Wipe

Continuity Editing - when you don't notice the editing because its invisible and it uses cuts.

Shot Reverse Shot: Juxtapose two images in order to create a link between them E.G. conversation sequence - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0xiCIMIwLY - the live event feel as all the action happening at once engages the viewing audience.

- Cross Cutting - Crossing to different scenes using cuts.
- Cutaway - The interruption of continuously filmed action by inserting a view of something else
- Insert Shot - A part of a scene filmed from a different angle or focal length from the master shot.
- Eye-line Match - Being able to see what the actor is seeing..

Match Cut Example - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzHuFy494mk
This shows a matching cut scene that all shots and clips show the same conversations.

Master Shot - Establishes the space between the actors and characters before the action starts E.G. running or talking

Establishing Shot - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBAeOTHtZVg

1) How many cross cuts are in the scene?

2) What was the purpose of cross cutting in the scene? To create suspense and we see more action at once and serves as pace of the situation.

3) How many stereotypes are challenged in the clip? the woman was powerful and independent, pretty much on the same level as James Bond with the action she was involved with.

Cross Cutting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c0B5lzBa0A this shows the irony of being at a baptism but sending a hitman to shoot and kill somebody.

A Cutaway Show - This is an interruption of a  filmed action by inserting a view of something else.

it is usually followed by a cut back to the first shot, cutaway edits relate to the main action, or provide more information about the story or location.
Sound Bridge - This is a sound editing technique that works with cut aways to give the audience more information

Sound Bridge Example - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Hqa34dZp-E 
This is an example of a cutaway shot as we can still hear the young man still speaking over the phone even though we can't actually see him talking down the phone.


An insert shot edit is always a close up or an extreme close up edit and designed to draw the audience's attention to something that was only a part of the previous shot.

An example of an insert shot - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsUxVJufiUI

This is a good example of an insert shot because it its the follow on from the pervious shot but the same scene and has also gone into an extreme close up to grab the audience's attention making them want to know what it is saying.

Eyeline Match - An eyeline match is a kind of shot-reverse shot structure, which shows what a character is looking at. Can be followed up by a Reaction Shot which shows a characters emotions

Example of an Eyeline Shot - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77KP_uWMrXI