cracking.

Narrative Codes

In this lesson ( 5.10.10 ) we learnt that Roland Barthes was a semiologist, he looked at texts and basically that was his job.

There are two types of narrative, open and closed.
Open narrative is when the tv/film could be interpreted in any way, there isn't a set ending, e.g soaps and films that have no specific ending.
Closed narrative is where there is no other way the audience could interperet an ending , it has to be very specifically scripted so the audience get what the director is putting across. Detective drama's and childrens programmes are usually closed narrative. Childrens shows are closed narrative because a child doesn't normally have interest in a running series, the programme is just there for watching at that specific moment in time.

There are five narrative codes;

#1 Action code

applies to any action that implies further narrative. e.g a gunslinger draws his gun on an opponent and we wonder what the result will be. This picture of Will Ferrell and John Reiley in Stepbrothers has two obvious action codes in it, the fact 'Brennan' is holding a knife and looking pretty angry, and that Dale looks like he is about to let go of the dog. Basically the signals imply anything action related could happen.

#2 Enigma Code

Refers to any element in a story that isn't explained and therefore exists as an enigma for the audience, raising questions that demand expectations. This draws the audience. The Harry Potter series has many layers to its 'enigma code', the question of whether he kills voldemort is obvious right from the first book/film. It makes the audience want to carry on watching as they don't know the answer to the question and want to find out in order to enjoy the film.

#3 Semantic code
Any element in a text that suggests a particular or an additional meaning by the way of connotation. So basically something that has multiple meanings and it gets it across to you.

#4 Cultural Code

Any element in a narrative that refers 'to a science or a body of knowledge'. Basically, the cultural codes tend to point to our shared knowledge about the way the world works. Santa Claus is a good example of this, in the western world an old large man with a white beard, red clothes and a red hat with white fur around it is automatically associated with santa. Whereas in China or somewhere in the far east, it would typically be an old man wearing red.

#5 Symbolic Code
Its very difficult to understand and explain, but, it is a symbol that represents something that the viewer will recognize. It could also reflect a type of non verbal communication that we use in everyday life. Symbolic codes are mainly linked to different cultures.

Is Max a stereotypical teenager?

, rushmoreIt is made pretty obvious from the start of the montage that Max does quite a few more extra-curricular activities but when you scratch the surface and actually think about it he does way more clubs than any 'stereotypical' teenager would do. The media portray a specific image of teenagers. They make out that a vast majority of teenagers drink, smoke, do drugs, hang around on parks in the evenings, terrorise old people, commit crime such as shoplifting, are antisocial to others in the community, have unprotected/underaged sex, do graffiti and wear hoodies and joggers. The song 'Teenagers' By My Chemical Romance reflects how some adults would look at teenagers. TV shows such as The Inbetweeners and Skins reflect different ends of the teenage stereotype;

The montage opens with max opening a red book with bee's on the front of it, this could relate to him being a busy bee, or the bee's knee's, or the fact one of his clubs is a bee-keeping club and maybe that's his favorite club. The clip then shows Max turning over a page to show him being an editor. Its as if the way the book is presented its how Max wants us to see him, from his point of view, as he's controling turning the page and that could reflect to how he feels in reality, that he has control over how we see him and how he does his clubs but that he really doesn't have the control/power he desires. The clips of him doing the out of school clubs are quite short per club, but the image that is portrayed is enough to give the audience the idea of his role in the clubs. It could also show that because the pace of the montage is quite fast that his life is fast paced too, with not much spare time.
You could denote from the 'French Club' that Max doesn't have any friends his own age, and likes the power. This can also be shown through him wearing a red beret and everyone else wearing blue, red is a more powerful colour than blue and it singles him out as clearly being more important than the others. He is also wearing his blazer, when none of the others are. It could almost show the dynamics that a teacher has with a student ( lads wearing shirts, him wearing shirt,tie,blazer) and that he feels in charge of this club as though he were teaching a class. The sash (in the colours of the French flag) also singles him out and represents power, like the Queen is sometimes seen wearing a sash. He clearly feels a high sense of self- importance. The shot is from a high angle in order to get all the people in, the lads in this shot are static, and grinning as if this was a photo being taken. Which could reflect his life how he wants us to see it through this montage is a bit posed, as its bigging him up in every possible way and there could be lots of things that we dont have a clue about because he hasn't shown us. It also reflects on Max's quirky side that he is interested in culture and in his 'pretend world' of clubs he'd like to be the french president.
  

They also put pressure on teenagers as year after year they say that 'Gcse's are getting easier so teenagers are getting bad results' which isn't true, as GCSE's aren't easy. I think the image put across by the media is a very negative. I think that it is obvious from the beginning of the montage that Max doesn't fit into that stereotype.

Looking at the type of clubs Max goes to he clearly has a lot of time on his hands. He does about fifteen out of school clubs, which isn't very realistic but it gets the point across that the director wants to make; That he doesn't really have a life other than these clubs. The more times we watched this montage, the bigger the gap was between Max and a stereotypical teenager as its not just the fact he does a lot of out of school, its the type of clubs he does like being the 2nd Chorale Choirmaster and the Bombardment Society Founder. That reinforces my view on him as being a bit of an outcast, he may just go to these clubs because he has no friends and he feels like he is in control, espcially as the kids that go to his clubs are all younger than him so they obviously look up to him and respect him because of his age.  

If you look at it from another perspective, e.g his teachers/parents it shows that he is clearly enthusiastic about his education and is trying his best to do well in school. It shows that he is independant and has a lot of interests and in his eyes he's probably having a great time because he gets to do all of these out of school activities, and making friends that would be outside of his lessons (because of the age). Max clearly is unhappy with his social status as in the 'Model United Nations - Russia' club he is the Russian leader, which links back to political context as America and Russia were the two biggest econimies in the world before China overtook Russia. The reason he chose to be the Russian leader as maybe he feels like he isn't accepted and appreciated in America so he'd rather be leader of the othher largest economy to show them he is worthy and they have missed out.  

Therefore in my opinion, I don't think Max is a stereotypical teenager.

Re-Presentation lesson

This lesson Mr Smith explained to us what Re-Presentation was,  then asked us to write down ur own definition of Re-Presentation, mine wasn't very easy to understand because I knew what I meant in my head, but found it hard to write it out. My definition of Re-Presentation was; 'Re-Presentation is the copy of something that is perceived to be real, but actually is acopy of something that is made out to be real by the copies. Basically, copies of copies, in a big circle.'
The actual definition we were given was;
Re-presentation; The way the media present 'something' as though it were real, it is not real, merely a copy of something.
We were also given some other definitions...
Signs; Something which communicates a piece of information e.g a road sign giving directions to where you are going
Signifiers; Multiple 'ideas' or ' feelings' behind a sign. 
All signs/signifiers belong to cultures, so people in other cultures will relate to different signs e.g wearing a wedding ring on your 'ring' finger in this country may be worn on another finger in a different country, but will still give off the same sign of ' i'm married' 

Mr Smith asked us to draw a picture of a house with the sun shining , a tree in the garden and a number from one to ten.
< This is what I drew, and it was practically the same as what everyone else drew. Most people picked the number 7 or 4 because apparantly they are the most common numbers to pick randomly. When we were asked to draw this, we thought of a typical house, tree, sunshine to draw. They are the instant signs we think of when asked to do this, whereas in other cultures they may draw tree's differently, such as people in Miami may draw palm tree's. 
Gatekeepers; The people in charge of what you can see. E.g they decide how the character may be portrayed, and they decide everything that you see on screen and the way they want the audience to interprate what they are trying to show.
Ideology; 'A beleif system' , what the maker of what you are watching is trying to portray to you.


I have used re-presentation in my magazine cover and contents, as Becca doesn't do Drama at A-level so I have created an image of Becca on something that isn't real. I was the gatekeeper in the sense that I decided what I wanted my target audience to see, I cherry picked the best photos and that affected how she was portrayed, therefore people would reckon she was like that and base an opinion an image of her that isn't real.


Mr Smith then introduced us to ' Mise En Scene ' which basically means everything you can see on screen. So not sound. 
Mise En Scene is 
Camera angle
Props
Settings
Lighting 
Acting.


Baring that in mind we then had to watch the opening scene twice of 'Rushmore' without any sound and answer these five questions, here is the clip, then my questions and answers.



1) Where is the film set?
At a christian private school in America. The lads there all looked clever so it made me think there was more than likely an entrance exam. 


2) Describe the main characters personality? 
Geeky - he worked out that equation in a matter of seconds, he was also reading the stock markets page in the newspaper
Unpopular - when he woke up after the dream it showed that life wasn't like that and he was imagining everyone appreciating and getting along with him.
Weird/Quirky - He was drinking tea from a pink teacup, which is stereotypically an english drink so the question of why he'd be drinking it in a maths lesson is put across to the reader. 


3) What is he excellent at?
Maths.


4)How do others view him?
In the first scene they think he is a bit of a hero for working out the equation. I assumed from watching it that people respect him and look up to him.


5) How was he dressed?
He is wearing a dark blue blazer ( which matched the walls behind him ) when all the other kids are wearing cream trousers and a lighter blue shirt which shows he liked to stand out and be different. 


We then watched the montage of the clubs Max is involved in three times and I noted down all the clubs he did;

Yankee Reveiw Publisher, French Club President, Model united nations Russia, Stamp & Coin club Vice-President, Debate Team Captain, Lacrosse Team Manager, Calligraphy Club President, Astronomy Society Founder, Fencing Team Captian, Track & Field J.V Decathalon, 2nd Chorale Choirmaster, Bombardment Society Founder, Kung Fu Club Yellow Belt, Trap & Skeep Club Founder, Rushmoore Beekepers President, Yankee Racers Founder, Max Fischer Players Director, Pier Cub Club.
The fact he's always in the centre of the action in these clips, and that all the kids around him are younger shows he can't get any mates in his year, or the year below maybe.

Magazine Evaluation

After finishing the front cover and the contents page, the things I thought went well were the planning that I had done, which made the production stage smoother and easier to do, as I didn't have to think of different ideas so it wasn't a struggle.

The strengths I had throughout this project was that I knew what kind of photos I wanted, and the colour pallette I was going to use. As me and Becca were in a pair for photo taking, another strength was that we didn't mess around whilst taking photos so that gave us more time to get on photoshop and start editing. I thought that I had a basic idea on how to use photoshop as I'd used it in art, so that was better than starting from scratch.
Another strength I found that I had was after Mr Smith tought me how to use the magnetic lassoo, it was a lot easier to cut out the images of Becca and it looked really neat. I thought everything went well but one of the weaknesses was that I didn't have any immediate ideas when I was planning so that used up a lesson, but eventually I had more ideas and then my initial ideas came together.

A flaw in the making of this was that I was ill for the final lesson of doing our contents/front cover, so that is why the work is in late because I dont have photoshop at home.

Overall I reckon the whole task went quite well and nothing went drastically wrong :)

Magazine Production

For the production of my magazine I had to firstly get the photos I needed of Becca, so firstly we had to find somewhere to take the photos ( I was Becca's model) which wasn't hard because we needed a white background so we took them outside and in the new canteen, Becca was doing a maths magazine called 'geek' hence why i was in the glasses.

I took about ten shots of Becca, vice versa, which didn't take long as we took around ten shots of each other before we decided we had the variety we needed.

I then uploaded the photos onto a computer in the classroom, then decided which one I wanted for my cover and started to edit it on photoshop. The photo that I decided to use for my cover was the one below of Becca looking like she was doing a mime, you wouldn't look at it and automatically think 'drama' but if the cover gave it all away you wouldnt want to read more. I also chose it because the specifcation was that we had to have a mid shot of somebody for our front cover and this was one of the only mid shots I got, I decided to use one of the pictures of Becca jumping for my contents page.

I started by cutting around Becca using the lasso tool, which took about a billion years because the computers in there are very slow. I wasn't pleased with my final cut out of Becca because it looked a bit sketchy and a bit of her head was missing where I'd gone wrong, which I wasn't really pleased with because nobody wants to buy a magazine with the model on the front who has a bit of her head missing. Then Mr Smith showed me the magnetic lasso tool which was a lot easier because it found the outline of Becca and it made it look a lot smoother.

I then had to choose my font for the title. I chose a font that I cant remember the name of but it looks a lot like this one, because it is dramatic and that is the theme of the  magazine. The colour palette I chose of the text for the cover was the same blue of the cardigan Becca was wearing. I thought it was important to chose the same blue as it made the magazine cover have a theme, rather than me chosing three different colours as well as becca being in blue, it could have looked a bit messy and not actually thought into that much, white ( as i'd given the cover a black background ) and a bright peach colour. I achieved the same blue as Becca's cardigan by Mr Smith showing me how to use the pipette tool on photoshop. I used contrasting colours ( white on the black, blue with peach, white with peach) next to each other so it would be easier for the reader to see what I wanted to stand out. I found it easy working out how to use the layers and how to move things around so that sped things up a bit, I had some basic idea on how to use photoshop from doing art at gcse, but that was more editing photos and scanning things in so not really the same sort of area, I think i did okay for a first attempt at making a magazine cover though :)

Magazine Pre Production

The task we were given was to design our own school magazine cover and contents page, the magazine's target audience is people at our school (age 14-18). In preparation for this task we had to bring a magazine to the lesson, and look at the way the front page and contents page were set out to give us some idea on the layouts of magazines. For inspiration I went on sites such as Vogue, Elle, Grazia and NME. The covers that caught my attention the most were these ones below from Vogue. I like them because they use strong colours,  eye catching pictures on the front and I am interested in what they are wearing. My favorite one is the one of Agyness Deyn ( middle row on the left ) because of the colour palette and the word 'dazzle' caught my attention.

Obviously I wont have a model on the front of my school magazine because its a school magazine and thats not going to get the attention from all of my target audience and I don't have the money. The ideas i did get from these covers was the bright colours, especially the contrasting colours of the cover on the first row on the left because they aren't two colours you'd put together but they work. They catch people's eyes and make them want to read on, to I kept that in mind. I then had to decide if I was going to do a general magazine or focus on a specific subject, I couldn't think of a name so i decided to choose drama because its a subject I do and you can do more with it, as I reckon a drama magazine about shows and actors sounds better and would interest my target market more than an English magazine about books and writing. I decided to call my magazine 'DramaRama' because it says what subject it is and you'd know straight away if you are interested in it. It doesn't sound deadly serious but I know that at our age, as a school magazine you dont want something deadly serious and a bit heavy to read. I know that not everybody in the school reads the school magazine, I for example haven't read our school magazine so by targeting a specific subject the people that are likely to read this are people who are interested in drama. Drama isn't a subject that is entirely serious, whereas maths and science is. In my opinion you can have fun in Drama, and I wanted my magazine to portray that. This was the mock up of what I basically wanted my magazine to look like (picture above). I already knew I was going to use Becca as my model at this point so that was one less decision I had to make during the production, because the more decisions I made before I wouldn't have to make in the production which would make it smoother and easier.

Preliminary Filming Task Evaluation

I think that the preliminary task went quite well considering nobody in my group had filmed anything with loads of different camera angles before, or use the editing software on the mac.
I think the strenghts of our group was after reading the story board we knew in our heads how we wanted it to look so there wasn't any arguments or dissagreements on how we were going to film it.
One of my strengths was that I acted in the video, I filmed Megan walking down the corridor and I edited the first few clips together by cutting them to make them the right length and making sure they flowed properly.
I thought everything went well but one of our weaknesses was that we didnt double check all the clips before we put them together as we had originally done the close up of megans feet the wrong was as we hadn't thought of the 180 degree rule, so that had to be refilmed. Also when we did the conversation sitting at the table we hadn't done the filming over the same shoulder so that had to be redone.
Another flaw was the continuity. Megan changes outfits 3 times in the shot, as we filmed walking through the door on one day, we had to re-film the conversation on a different day, and walking down the corridor was on another day. This was in-evitable as we couldnt have filmed it on the same day.
Overall i reckon that we did quite well for our first task :)

Film AS Preliminary Task

The task we were given was to create a short film showing somebody walking through a door, sitting down at a table and having a few lines of dialogue with the person in the room.
We were given another groups storyboard to create our film from. I was acting in our film being the person in the room who saw a spider, hence the scream, then sat at a desk waiting for someone to come in. I filmed the scene with megan walking down the corridor, and edited the first few scenes

This is the storyboard we were given.

I found that it was important that we had a storyboard as that was basically what we had to follow and what shots to use and the story. The one we were given wasn't very easy to follow because the directions weren't very specific and the pictures weren't exactly top notch so we we didnt have a direct set of instructions on how to make the film, it also didn't make sense because realistically if you screamed when you saw a spider, you wouldn't then sit in a room n your own at a table on the off chance somebody might come in, baring that in mind we tried to stick to it as best as we could. The strengths i had whilst doing this was acting in front of the camera, and working the camera. The weaknesses were that we didn't know how to use the editing software on the mac, and we had to re film some scenes because we'd done the shot over the wrong shoulder.



This was our final production :)