A2 Brief Options.

In the presentation below are all the briefs that can be chosen from for the A2 production. There is a wide variety of options from a music video to making a video game. I now will have to decide on which brief I would like to do for my piece.

Media studies a2 course layout from abelc01

 At the moment the only thing I have decided on is that I want my production to be based around filming, but thats as far as I got. I am torn between whether to make a music video or a short film as these two appeal to me most. Therefore I will research both and then decide using that research.

Fahrenheit 9/11 and Persuasive Elements

Recently in lessons, we have been watching a documentary which as the title of this blog suggests is called 'Fahrenheit 9/11' This documentary was all about one mans opinion on Ex-President Bush supposable used events of 9/11 to war with Iraq and Afghanistan. As a documentary goes, it follows all the conventions, such as archival footage, voiceovers, interviews and facts however it does goes against the usual conventions overall. It is essentially made through the eyes of one man, and therefore is subject to biased. Several ways it does this is by giving George Bush a negative outlook all the way through the film. Another way this is done is through the music and images that are used. At times it used for mocking individuals, such as when it shows the four leaders who are in charge of the war (George Bush, Tony Blair etc.) they are presented like they are comic book characters in a 1960's cartoon. This isn't the only way it used however, for example when upsetting and graphic images were shown, there was no warning so the audience had no time to prepare themselves to see the horrors of reality. Selective editing and is also used effectively throughout the film. For example when a politician is interviewed on his opinion about going to Iraq, his argument is quickly destroyed by a following interview with Britney Spears attempting to say the same thing but on a dumbed down scale.

Here is a link to the IMDb page for Fahrenheit 9/11: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0361596/   

Overall this documentary uses a good mix of persuasive elements such as selective editing, soundtracks and representation to help argue Michael Moore's case as it convinces the audience that only his argument is valid an nobody else's is.   

The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off.

In yesterdays lesson, we watched a documentary called 'The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off.' This documentary focused on a 36 year old man called John Kennedy suffering from a condition called EB. This meant that his skin was weak and tore easily, therefore preventing growth and making his life extremely painful. The documentary follow John through his final four months and what he felt during these months. As well as focusing on John and his unfortunate disease, it also looked at other controversial topics. One of the focuses was the outlook on death. Throughout the documentary, Kennedy talked about his beliefs of what happen after death which is that there is something after death and life is just preparing you for this, so there's no point being afraid of it. Death has always been a subject which, commonly, people don't like to talk about but this documentary breaks the shell and delves deep into it. However death is not the only topic covered as abortion is also touched upon. There is a part of the program where the makers of the program ask the mother if she would've aborted if she could go back and she didn't hesitate to say she would have. Topics like abortion and death are so controversial because opinions about them can change depending on the scenario. Using the program as an example, if somebody was to be asked if abortion was acceptable, the majority would say no however, if that person was then to watch this documentary and see how much John was suffering their opinion may be different.

Here is a link to the full documentary on Channel 4:

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-boy-whose-skin-fell-off

  

Looking back at AS Media

AS my first post on my A2 blog, I am going to go over how I feel the overall progression of AS media has benfitted me and prepared me for A2 media studies. Below, is my final AS production which was an opening sequence for the fictional film, 'Hollow Earth'.

Overall, I feel that this productions outcome was as good as I hoped it to be before I started. There were ups and downs however along the way. The three main stages of the construction of this piece were pre-production, production and post production. I shall cover what went well and what we had to do to improve on some of the drawbacks throughout the construction.

Pre Production

Pre Production was by far the most straight forward processes in the whole production, compared to the other two stages. This step focused on all the planning aspects of the production such as storyboarding, scripting and organising actors, the setting and so on. Me and my group dealt with this fairly efficently as we did not slack with our job roles. For example, I was in charge of storyboarding and organising the costume and setting. I did this quickly but took time thinking about what would be suitable. The storyboarding proved slightly more challenging as this was the first step of bringing the actual production to life. The only real problem we have was disagreement on the intial idea for the production. Two of us, including me, wanted to make a thriller whilst one of us wanted an action opening sequence. We decided though that a thriller would be best. Overall, the pre production stage was a success although the majority of plans made were not actually used, as we changed our minds throughout production and post production.

Production

In this stage, we actually went out and filmed all the shots needed for the piece. These shots were already decided in the pre-production stage so it sounded like it wasn't going to be too difficult. However, this was definetly not the case. There were positives, like the majority of the times we actually went out on location,k we were productive and got what we wanted to do done, on the most part. However there were a few problems we encountered. One of these problems was that we were sometimes unequipped thus making it impossible to get anything done. For example, on one occassion the camera ran out of batteries as soon as we started filming and we didn't have any way of charging it or a replacement battery. By far, the biggest problem was lack of continuity. When on location, we though that each shot was continuous so did not worry about it. However when we were editing it became apparant that there was a lack of continuity. We then had to go out and re-film the shots. Overall this was a tricky stage but we managed to pull it off.

Post Production

Although probably the most stressful, this was the stage I enjoyed the most. Post production mainly consisted of the editing process but it did also involve finding a suitable soundtrack and so on. Editing was something that I had little experience in, so I felt most confident here. The main challenge here was timing. It took three times as long as I first thought it would to edit, and there were some problems such as corrupt files and lack of continuity along the way. The soundtrack we used was good as it fit the whole mood of the opening sequence and was editied to be at a range of volumes, to make it seem more profesional. Overall, the post production stage was probably the most challenging stage however I enjoyed it a lot as I feel it gave the piece life.