Film Distribution

A film distributor is an independent company, a subsidiary  company or occasionally an individual, which acts as the final agent between a film production company or some intermediary agent, and a film exhibitor, to the end of securing placement of the producer’s film on the exhibitor’s screen. In the film business, the term “distribution” refers to the marketing and circulation of movies in theaters , and for home viewing (DVD, Video-On-Demand, Download, Television etc).

2000′s – spider-man

Box office revenue – $821,708,551

Review – This is the best comic character since Batman. In fact, I liked this a lot better than Batman. It did not have any slow spots. The acting was well and the characters fitted the comic book characters to a tee. I can not wait for the sequel. I wonder who the villain will be. The special affects were good, but you could tell some was computer graphics. A must see. 10/10

Availability on DVD’s – Easy to find

Can you watch it on the internet? – Not legally

90′s – Titanic

Box office revenue – $1,842,869,955

Review – This movie re-wrote film history in every way. No one cares what anyone thinks about this movie, because it transcends criticism. Every flaw in the movie is easily overcome by the many amazing things the movie has going for it. It is an extremely beautiful movie, and I doubt many of us will see anything like it again. I’ve seen it more times than I care to count, and I still become transfixed every time, with a feeling which is hard to describe. One for the ages.

Availability on DVD – easy to find

Can you watch it on the Internet? – Not Legally

80′s – Die Hard

Box office Revenue -  $1,126,935,581

Review – Bruce Willis gives a amazing performance in perhaps one of the best movies of the 1980s. This is an action/adventure movie for the ages. There are a lot of great scenes, including the scene where Bruce Willis leaps off the rooftop and crashes trough the window. I never thought it would be so good when I first saw it, but I was wrong. Don’t miss one of Willis’ best films of all time.

Availability on DVD – it can be found but not as easily as more recent films

Can you watch it on the internet? – Not legally

70′s – Star Wars

Box office Revenue – $797,900,000

Review – Star Wars is a movie that has had great social impact, a fact that has often gone unnoticed. A harbinger of a changing mood within the United States, Star Wars was one of the few movies rated General that was released in 1977. Where movies had for a decade been depicting ever more dark topics (Taxi Driver, The Exorcist) Star Wars was a lighthearted adventure. While some may decry the move back to swashbuckling from social comment, I for one celebrate the fact that Star Wars made it possible for families to go to movies together once again.

Availability on DVD – it can be found but mainly comes with the others as a trilogy

Can you watch it on the internet? – Not legally

Representations of Masculinity

In the video brits behing bars you get the impression before watching the video you are going to be watching a bunch of thugs but the enviorment that they have put these prisinors in is the complete oposite. The video lets you interact with the prisoner and shows who he really is they do this by the camera being close up to his face, by doing this it feels like you are actually speaking to him and by doing this you listening to what he is saying. By doing this you dont get the sterotypical representation of a prisnor which i think is shaven head,tatoo’s and a angry attitude even though the prisnor in this video looks like a typical prisnor he come across as clever individuall.

Main task evaluation

Main task evaluation

I have been working on my AS Media main task for around three months now everything I have produced and researched can be found on my blog www.benslater.wordpress.com. I have kept my blog up to date in a diary type form showing my work and what I have learnt, I update it on a week to week basis so it has everything that I have done in this task.

The task brief said we had to continue our choice of music or video from the preliminary task so I continued by working individually on a magazine. The task set was to create a music magazine we had to include a front cover, contents page and a double page spread
We where aloud to pick any genre of music and style the magazine in any way we wanted we just had to use four original images throughout  the magazine. Because the task set had such a huge range of ways in which I could create this magazine I knew I had to settle with one type of music which I was familiar with and a type which I also am passionate about.

Instead of starting straight away I looked back over my preliminary task and assessed what I had done right and wrong, the main aspect which appeared to me was that in the preliminary task I had made my cover to complicated for me to construct so I knew this time to stick to the basics and make it look professional. I believed I could do this due to the vast improvement to my skills on Photoshop, I was now confident in myself on the program as before I did not feel comfortable. I found several different aspects with my preliminary task which definitely had to be changed in my main such as; more precise images this meaning eye catching and making you want to look agen, also to keep a theme throughout I believed if I included these aspects my magazine would be of a much higher quality.

Now that I had analysed the project and noted what I needed to change I started to research the three different pages contents, front cover and double page spread. I started by looking at double page spreads I had a basic idea of the different styles of layouts such as the main image taking up one whole side or spreading over both pages. I had this general knowledge because I am a fan of music magazine and have read several over the years this made the task all the more exciting for me. I found one aspect which I wanted to use in my double page spread it was where there is a picture of the artist with a reaction shot of the crowd on the other side, I thought that this would give the reader a much better of how there performance was reacted too. I researched into how successful magazines might do this and I found that they would have a large image of the artist and then a smaller image of the crowd somewhere near the article, I also realised that I would have to add captions to the images to not confuse the reader and show the images are linked.

The next thing I researched was contents pages they where the hardest to research because it was hard to find a pattern in all of the different ones I looked at. What I did like about some that I found was that there was a lot of images used, instead of using text like I did in my preliminary task I could use images instead to pull people into the article. Before I was trying to use bold words and interesting article names to gain the readers attention instead I could carry this on but fit it around an image and I think this makes the article all the more exciting. I did not research contents pages aswell as the other two because I think I have a good knowledge on how to create and lay them out my main purpose of research contents pages was to try and find ideas in which I could use in mine.

I continued my researched by looking at several different successful magazine covers, I looked at famous titles such as Mojo and Kerrang even though this is not the genre I wanted to use for my magazine I thought it would still be a good idea to study them in depth. I looked at how they places there images and how they layed out there text, I begun to realise that the there title was not important I thought this would be a main selling point for them but because they had the famous artists on the front that’s all that that mattered. I noticed both magazines make the image very significant and eye catching they place them to make you look more closely. I wanted to do the same thing with mine because I knew if I could draw my reader in through the image then they will look at what else is on the front cover. But Mojo and Kerrang make it seem like the front cover is simple where it is extremely difficult to shoot a picture of that quality, I continued to think of a way round that as the task went on.

Now that I had researched the three key aspects of the task I decided to look at some smaller aspects which I could research these where fonts and a overview of magazine creating. I found 8 steps to follow throughout the whole task, these steps where extremely useful and kept me from making vital mistakes in the task. I also spent time finding several different fonts I came across a site called www.dafont.com this website was extremely helpful throughout, it supplied me most of my fonts which I used for Masthead’s, Headlines and captions. The website had thousands of fonts to select and different genre’s you can choose from I stuck to the same genre for my whole magazine so I can keep a theme going throughout. I stuck to these types of fonts because i think they represent age well, by this i mean they appeal to the age of my audience and they work extremly well with the genre of my magazine.All of my research can be found on my blog and in paper work.

Now that I had finished all my research I  thought in depth about what genre I wanted my magazine to be because I wanted it to be something that I was passionate about and that I had a good knowledge of I immediately thought dance music. I stuck with this genre because I could talk about several different genres such as House, Electro and Trance and they all come under dance music. Another reason for sticking with this genre is that I had been to see allot of famous DJ’s perform and have photos of them, I knew these would come in hand for parts of this task. I also knew I was going to see others as the task went on so I knew that I could take some of my original images there. The genre of dance music was perfect for me and I knew this straight away because I am so passionate about it.

I know wanted to put some of my initial ideas onto paper so I begun to sketch three front covers to have some kind of initial idea when creating the cover. I mainly thought about layout and how the image would be placed and how the text would fit around it, I took feedback from other students and placed there ideas with mine and see how it worked. I finally finished with three ideas which I would consider to use when creating my front cover the ideas would not be definite because I knew I would come across problems when creating this cover.

Just before i started constructing my magazine i wanted to come up with a name for my magazine, i wanted it to state the genre of my magazine but yet still be elegant. My audience is the younger generation 15 -  30 is the age i would be aiming at so i needed it to be a name which would stand out and that would be remembered. I  finally decided on “Dance Euphoria” Euphoria meaning the extreme happiness, so the title represents the extreme happiness you get from dance music i also believe the name is very catchy and stays in your mind.

It was now time to start constructing one of the three aspects of the task I chose to start out with the front cover because I believe this was the easiest out of the three and I had a picture in my head in how it would look. Firstly I started out by playing around with different colours for my background I had the idea of it looking like disco lights so I used several different gradients to see which one suited best. I finally found one which was clear and most importantly that the reader would be able to read the text which I would lay on top of it. I then began to start looking at fonts I went back to my research because I knew I had several that I liked there, I ended up using one that I had chosen in my research I got it onto Photoshop by using the website dafont I entered in the words I wanted and then printed screen and cut the part out which I wanted. I then used the magic wond tool to change the colouring and move it onto my front cover, all I needed to do now was add a gentle glow to the outer of the wording and masthead was complete. I carried on to use this technique for several other aspects of my magazine it is a long process but I believe you get a much better finish a lot better than if I was using the basic fonts that Photoshop have.

Now I began to add some article names about the page I new I needed to use taglines which would draw the reader in to the different article in my magazine. I added several different images to the page to make the some of the articles look more interesting, I kept to a theme with every image by adding a slim border around each one I believe this makes the page look more professional. On the contents page I used one original image it was a picture that I had took in a London night club, I wanted a picture that overlooked the whole club I think the image taken fits that perfectly. I selected other images that would fit nicely with the article I believe I have a good range of different types of articles for the magazine. Finally I wanted a trade mark item which could be used on every contents in different issue’s I chose a disco ball which I think represents dance music fantastically. I believe all of the colouring in the contents page represents my genre well and I wanted to stick to this throughout.

I continued to represent music in different ways throughout the magazine, when creating my front cover I started by creating a sound wave across the top of the page. I made this sound wave by using three different colour brush tools I drew the the waves freehand straight onto the cover. I believe I created what I wanted and I think the waves are a key aspect to my front cover; I considered printing my magazines name across the top of the sound waves. After asking several other peoples opinions I came to the decision of having it slightly below because I think there would have been to much colour and that would make it hard to read. I continued to construct my front cover by working on the masthead I used the same technique I used for the contest but this time it took longer because I spent time on changing the colours of the lettering. But this was all worth while because by doing this I had kept the multi coloured concept throughout both pages in which I have created.

The next step which I took to produce my front cover was to add my main original image, the idea was to have my close up image of an artist from an angle where he’s face is not clear. I took a great picture of a friend of mine that is a DJ I was extremely pleased in how the picture came out and thought it would work well with my front cover. I uploaded the photo into Photoshop and worked on the colouring and contrast to make the image more significant but when I placed the image of the cover I wasn’t best pleased with the way it looked. I tried several different angles to try and make the image fit and look better but it just wasn’t working so instead of wasting any more time I took an image of a famous DJ from the internet and changed different aspects of the photo, this image looked allot better so I kept it as my main picture. Now I had a dilemma I had to use three original images in the rest of my work, I did this by firstly adding another two images to my front cover the first one being of a famous sign in Ministry of Sound in London. As soon as I see the print on the wall I new it would be a great idea to use this in my media work I was not sure on where I would use it throughout the magazine but I new it would come in useful. The other image was one that I had taken on my summer holiday it was at a famous DJ’s (Tiesto) concert. I used to image on the cover to advertise a competition to win a trip to Ibiza, I thought this was a great way to mix the image in with the magazine also by using a word like “Win” will draw the reader into the prize and the magazine.

Now that I had enough images on the page I believe I smartened the cover up by adding borders and make the images appropriate sizes. I kept to the steps which I had found in my research when creating this front cover I used a  great masthead and I used a great cover photo which I think is the most important thing when creating my cover so i am glad I didn’t risk using my original image and my front cover not being as good as I could have made it.

All i now had left was my Double page spread i wanted to make this more simple and less colourful because there would be a article on it unlike the contents and front cover. This would be quite a challenge because i wanted it to fit with the rest of the magazine and not loose my theme which i have kept throughout. I started by working with the background i wanted to keep some colour to stick with the rest of the magazine so i used a purple for it, i studied it and new it had to be changed because the article would be difficult to read so i used a gradient to fade the colour out and make the article clearer i new this would make the image and article stand out. I then started work on the masthead agen i used the technique of cutting it from dafont to place it on the top of my spread. I went for a more simple masthead because i wanted it to fit with the article and show clearly that they are together. I continued by typing up article when writing my article i used quite simple language which my audience could easily understand and relate too. My audience is male and female from the ages of 15 – 30 so when writing this article i didn’t want to be using words which would confuse my magazine consumer.

I then added to images to the page one was original and the other was taken from the artists website. This image that i had taken i made the main picture in the spread it takes up half and is surrounded with a slim border like the others in the magazine. My original image is of an arm with the artist name on it.I wrote his name on my own arm and made the affect of it being inside a club by taking a video making it full screen and placing my arm in front of it. This was hard to frame because the arm was a fair size larger than the screen so i took shots from all different angles to find one which worked. I believe the picture came out well but i didn’t get the writing as well as i could of but that is because i was drawing it onto my own arm.

The main task took allot longer than the preliminary but i am pleased with the result i think that i have put allot more thought into the project another reason why i believe my work has a vast difference between the two task is down to the improvement of my skills on photoshop. I am now confident in using the program and know allot more tools which can be used when magazine designing. Overall i am pleased with my work throughout  the magazine i believe i have represented age well through different fonts,colours and pictures. I would of liked to have more time to have completed drafts instead changing aspects as i went also i would have enjoyed holding focus groups and getting specific  feedback on my work. I believe if i had this task set agen i might of been able to do these because of better time management but atleast i have learnt from my mistakes and will carry on improving into the next task.

Double page spread

G322

Age -

I think the main representation in the clip is age, it represents teenagers as trouble makers both groups of boys are causig trouble. It represents the teenage girls in this clip as just objects the boys look at a great example of this is where the boys see the girls walking past and he calls her a “jugasaurus rex”.

Sexuality -

The representation of sexuality in the scene is quite obvious they are all potrayed as typical teenage boys, by this i mean look ay girls as objects and talk about them as they are also. Another way different sexuality’s are represented is that being gay is represented as a bad thing they call eachother gay to insult eachother.

Ethnicity -

There is not alot of representation about ethnicity in this clip accept the helper woman that does not speak english, you get the impression from the boys facial expression they dont really care what she is sayin they jus want there frizbee back i think this represents foriegn people as werthless.
Class and status -

There are different levels of class and status in the clip the four boys which are friends class and status varies, the upper class boy is represented by the way he talks and the way he is dressed he is the smartest of the group and he speaks the poshest. The boys playing football are shown as lower class by the way the act and the way they are dressed, several of them have the tops of and are in tracksuit bottoms this shows working class to me because you can see the dont care about they are dressed another reason for them being shown as lower class is that they chase the other boys at the end and they are looking for a fight i think this shows clearly the class and status difference between the two.
Regional Identity -

regional identity is not reprented in this clip.
Disability -

Disability is laughed about in this clip and represented as helpless, the show this by the boys mucking about with a frizbee and it hitting the woman in the wheelchair, you no this is going to happen before it even has by showing the frizbee being thrown then cutting to the lady in the wheelchair. They make it funny by showing all there facial expressions as a build up to the lady being hit.

in detail:

Camera Shots, Angle, Movement and Composition
• Shots:

establishing shot = An establishing shot sets up, or “establishes”, a scene’s setting and/or its participants

master shot = A master shot is a film recording of an entire dramatized scene, from start to finish, from an angle that keeps all the players in view.

close-up = A close up tightly frames the person or object.
mid-shot = is a shot from medium distance, usually contains shoulders and head
long shot =  a long shot  typically shows the entire object or human figure and is usually intended to place it in some relation to its surroundings
wide shot = also is known as long shot
two-shot = is a  shot which the frame encompasses a view of two people (the subjects)
aerial shot = Aerial shots are usually done with a crane or with a camera attached to a special helicopter to view large landscapes
point of view shot = This shows what the character is looking at (from there point of view)
over the shoulder shot =is a shot of someone or something taken over the shoulder of another person. There is a rule with  this shot its called the 180 degree rule.

• Angle:

high angle = is a shot taken from above looking down usually used to represent power

low angle = is a shot taken low looking up at the character again used to represent power.

canted = A camera angle which is deliberately slanted to one side, sometimes used for dramatic effect to help portray unease or disorientation

dutch angle = is a cinematic tactic used to potray tension in the subject being filmed

Movement:

pan= A movement which scans a scene horizontally
tilt =  A movement which scans a scene vertically, otherwise similar to a pan.
track = alot like a dolly but is on a track

dolly = the camera is placed on a moving vehicle and moves alongside the action, generally following a moving figure or object.
crane =  Basically, dolly-shots-in-the-air. A crane is a large, heavy piece of equipment, but is a useful way of moving a camera – it can move up, down, left, right, swooping in on action or moving diagonally out of it.
steadicam = is a camera on a tri-pod, usually used to get different angles in the same shot
hand held = Hand held cameras denote a certain kind of gritty realism, and they can make the audience feel as though they are part of a scene, rather than viewing it from a detached, frozen position.
zoom =  On a still camera, this means that the photographer can get a ‘close up’ shot while still being some distance from the subject.
reverse zoom = This shot moves you farther away into a Medium Shot or a Wide Shot. If you have a close up shot of a flower, and want to see the entire field that the flower is in, you will reverse zoom.
• Composition:
framing,
rule of thirds,
depth of field –
deep and shallow focus,
focus pulls.

Editing
Includes transition of image and sound – continuity and non-continuity systems.
• Cutting: shot/reverse shot,
eyeline match,
graphic match,
action match,
jump cut,
crosscutting,
parallel editing,
cutaway;
insert.
• Other transitions,
dissolve,
fade-in,
fade-out,
wipe,
superimposition,
long take,
short take,
slow motion,
ellipsis and expansion of time,
post-production,
visual effects.

Sound
• Diegetic and non-diegetic sound; synchronous/asynchronous sound;
sound effects;
sound motif,
sound bridge,
dialogue,
voiceover,
mode of address/direct address,
sound mixing,
sound perspective.
• Soundtrack: score,
incidental music,
themes and stings,
ambient sound.

Mise-en-Scène
• Production design:
location,
studio,
set design,
costume and make-up,
properties.
• Lighting;
colour design.

Front cover

Production log 6

In todays lesson i completed  my front cover, i added my main image and added text,barcode and price. I ended up making two front covers because after feedback i new i needed some improvements, i believe m second front cover is better because the image is highlighted better and the text is easier to read. I also think it is less crowded and more attracting to the audiene. I have 3 weeks now to finish my main task and i have a double page spread and evalutaion to be complete.

Reflective Analysis Of Teddy Bears Picnic

Reflective Analysis of Teddy Bears Picnic

Over the past few weeks a team of three others and myself have been working on our creative project for AS film studies. We have produced an opening sequence to a film called Teddy Bears Picnic. It is a Horror/Thriller that is based in the woods, the film starts out by a group of children walking through the forest and one of them being attacked by a girl that lives there. We wanted to make the images that the audience see horrific and the audio which they hear a light and playful nursery rhyme, we done this to create a huge juxtaposition throughout. The aspect which I controlled in making this opening scene was editing, I used different skills that I have learnt on Final Cut Pro to edit the scene.

I started out by working with the director we created two initial story lines with the same footage, this meaning we had different shots at different stages of the film. We done this by cutting the film up and playing it in different orders to see which tells the best story, we came down to two in the end which where completely different. The first we had very quick cuts and made the story very tense and the other told more of a story and asked the audience more questions. As a group we decided to use the second story line because it told a fantastic story and worked better with the music, I believe the first piece that we created would have been to confusing for the audience.

Now I had the initial story line I began to try out different effects on parts of the footage, the director told me that he wanted a close up of the eye opening at the start so I zoomed in on one of the shots and changed the speed. I tried various different speeds at different points of the video to find the right shot to drag the audience in and put them on edge. I wanted to this opening shot right so I watched a scene in the film “The Grudge” which had a similar sequence as ours. This scene shocked me a bit and I wanted to give my audience the same response, so by changing the colours, tempos and camera angles in the scene I believe I captured the response of the audience correctly.

I continued to edit the video in various ways, I used various fades in-between different shots to make the film easier on the eye for the audience. But there was one particular shot i wanted to drag the audience into the scene, when storyboarding the director of the film said he wanted a shot that zooms in on the murders face. When given this footage I watched the shot several times and I did not feel the effect that the director explained to me so I began work on making this shot more effective. As a group we wanted this shot to make our audience scared of this girl, because the shot comes to an extreme close up of her face I thought this may make the audience too in touch with the girl and we did not want this because she was meant to be a mysterious character. This was quite difficult to overcome but i knew it would work fantastically due to the juxtaposition of the whole film. I believe i captured this mysteriousness by using a blur on the murder’s face, the audience still get to sill the girl close up but i think by using this you cannot make any contact with her which is the exact reaction i was looking for.

Overall i think the film making process for Teddy Bears Picnic was stressful but worth while, i believe as a group we captured the horror and juxtaposition we was looking for. I think these two elements work well together and gained the right reaction’s from our audiences, i know this because of the several pages of feedback we have received. Another reason why i think i can be proud of this film is because we won the award Film Of The Year at our college, we came up against another four films, our teachers and other film fanatics chose our film as the winner for 2009. I have definitely improved my film making and Final Cut Pro knowledge but still much is to be learnt but for my first film i am extremely proud of Teddy Bear’s Picnic.

Production log 5

In todays lesson i began to form my front cover for my main task, i spent several amounts of time on keeping to the theme of the magazine. I did this by creating a soundwave across the top of the page i also created a border for each image on the cover. Another thing i spent time on was the masthead, this took around a hour because i used different colours for every letter and i also had problems with the positioning. This was a problem because i did not want the front cover to look over crowded i believe i ahve resolved this problem and my front cover is now well on its way to completion.

Disney research task

Discuss the issues raised by an institution’s need to target specific audiences within a media industry which you have studied.

1. Origins of Disney

The Walt Disney Company is one of the largest media and entertainment corporations in the world. Founded on October 16, 1923, by brothers Walt and RoyHollywood studios, and owner and licensor of eleven theme parks and several television networks, including ABC and ESPN. Disney’s corporate headquarters and primary production facilities are located at The Walt Disney Company in Burbank Calafornia. The company has been a component of the Dow jones industrial average since May 6 1991. Micky Mouse serves as the official mascot of The Walt Disney Company. Disney as an animation studio has become one of the biggest

2. Scope of operations/Key areas of business/Turnover/Profits

key areas of business = The walt disney studious, park and resorts, disney consumer products and media network

profit = $3.382 billion in 2007

Turnover = $37.14 billion

and they have over 137,000 employees

3. Competition

The main competition for disney would be dreamworks because they are working to make animation movies,they have produced many succussfull titles such as shrek, madagascar, over the hedge, bee movie, kung fu pander,chicken run, shark tale and many more to come. Also they are making action films which are succsessfull. Another source of competition would be warner brothers because they have many stores across the world. Universal studious can be seen as competiton as well because they have produced many great films and work alongside dreamworks, but the main aspect of competition against disney would be there theme parks they are successfull across america and europe. So disney have competiton in a wide range of areas like film making, merchandise and theme parks.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zNcTE7uzT84

4. What does the Disney Brand Mean?

5. Disney innovations

6. How Disney uses synergy

7. How does Disney represent reality?

8. Disney and Pixar