Se7en

Link to Se7en;
http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/se7en/


Se7en follows usual conventions by having the production company and producers name which appeas within the first 10 seconds and executive producers ect are shown throughout the ots. It also shows the cast members full names in writing that flashes and moves and they are popular actors and actresses, the title and shots of various props and random drawings, writing which looks rough and rushed, characters and a viewing of the setting also appear. The sound is slow then begins to speed up to the end of the ots and has strange high pitched noises added in which builds tension well. It shows a slight storyline of a man that looks as though he is mad or mental as is slising skin off of his finger then he is developing pictures of people some with tools in their head, that could be his victims? and editing lines of film by chopping them about aggressively also he high lights words out of a book, whilst doing this we see shots of his rough dirty and cut hands which show he is clearly a male. The lighting it all very dark and dull which creates an atmosphere for the audience of what they film may be like.


I think that Se7en is a really good example of an ots that meets the codes and conventions as it shows props, a slight story line and setting, pictures of maybe characters and it shows that the character at the begging which we would expect to be the main character is a male. Also i think it challenges the conventions as the camera shots are so varied and quick we never see a full shot for long of for example, props which starts a mystery for the audience to try work out what some of them are. Also as an audience we only see the characters hands and fingertips but never his body or what he looks like so they have changed the way of first seeing the character by making it much more interesting as the audience are wanting and waiting to find out what he looks like and his story. Also the title, producers and actors names really fit in well with the feel of the film but also are not clear and stuck still which is what we are used to seeing in films.

"the opening sequence is considered one of the most innovative of its era"
I think this statement is very true as it is more creative and different to any other ots that i and probably many people have seen. The ots of se7en contains the codes and conventions expected in an ots but it challenges and changes them to come across from a different angle and view point which engages the audience more. It fits in to its genre perfectly and create a tense and questioning atmosphere for the audience which makes them want to watch more and see the outcome, this is what an ots aims to do and this one has succeeded. 

Codes and Conventions of an ots;

In an ots the audience usually has a view on the setting of the film, where it is and what time period. What the film is called and the production and distributing company name and logo, The mise-en-scene such as costumes and props and other things that are seen in the scene. Usually there is a sound track to set an atmosphere which could be happy or tense depending on the genre.

http://asmediaproductionsschs2014.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/conventions-of-ots-se7en.html

From the slide shares about the codes and conventions of an ots i think they have shown them well and clearly. They are identifying the codes and conventions well and use good examples whilst doing so, i think the audience are media studies students from a gcse to sixth form age as they will understand the language better than a younger age. The obvious perpose for the presentations is to support the media sllybus of looking at opening title sequences and to help students or teachers learn, question and understand the different codes and conventions of opening title sequences. 

I think the formats of these presentations are good, the second one being more interesting and informative as it is more complex but all are clear and easy to understand, the third one being slightly harder to read and less interesting as it is just written out. Most of the slides identified the codes and conventions well but could have expressed more detail in them and added the smaller and less obvious and predictible conventions.

Cinema 16;

Stephen David Daldry, CBE (born 2 May 1960)^[1] is an English theatre and film director and producer, as well as a three-timeAcademy Award nominated and Tony Award winning director. He is also notable for having all of his feature films that he has directed go on to be nominated for Best Director or Best Picture at the Academy Awards. These films are Billy Elliot 

(2000), The Hours(2002),The Reader (2008) and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011).

Eight tells the story of the life of an eight-year-old soccer fan who has to come to terms with living in a strange new town and the loss of his father. Eight is a 13 minute, 1998 short film directed by Stephen Daldry, written by Tim Clague and produced by Working Title Films.

Lynne Ramsay (born 5 December 1969) is a Scottish film director, writer, producer, and cinematographer best known for the feature films Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar and We Need to Talk about Kevin
Eight; It's the Christmas season. With her mom's help, Lynne, a girl of perhaps eight, dresses up; her younger brother Steven plays with a toy car. The children leave with their dad, who's affectionate with them. They walk down a railroad track where an unkempt woman waits with two children, about the same age as Lynne and Steven. The children go with them. They're all headed to a holiday party at a pub. Lynne notices that the girl acts all too familiar with her dad. What's going on?

The Short and Curlies is a 1987 short film written and directed by Mike Leigh. It stars Alison Steadman, Wendy Nottingham,Sylvestra Le Touzel and David Thewlis. The hairdressers 'Cynthia's' was in Willesden and exterior locations were in nearby Harlesden.Channel Four put up money for the film and, pending the success of this project, agreed to co-produce with Portman Productions Leigh's first feature film since Bleak Moments - what became 1988's feature movie High Hopes. Music by Rachel Portman.

The short, 18 minute film, made after three weeks rehearsal, concerns a chatty hairdresser Betty (Alsion Steadman), her shy daughter, Charlene (Wendy Nottingham), and one of her customers, Joy (Sylvestra Le Touzel). Joy works in a chemist's shop and is chatted up by Clive (David Thewlis - in the first of his three Leigh roles) over the Durex counter. ^[1] "On the one hand there is ritual, physical indignity, rubber, prevention; on the other, new life, love , marriage. Charlene slips sadly and silently between two stools..." 

Mike Leigh, OBE (born 20 February 1943) is a British writer and director of film and theatre. He studied theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and studied further at the Camberwell School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design.^[2] He began as a theatre director and playwright in the mid-1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s his career moved between work for the theatre and making films forBBC Television, many of which were characterized by a gritty "kitchen sink realism" style. 

Telling lies; the morning after the night before, a rapid spiral of disastrous telephone calls chart the certain ruin of young Phil's day as he attempts to fib his way out of one scrape after another. Told entirely in animated captions.

Ellis shot and processed his first black and white photographs aged sixteen, drifting away from charcoal and paintbrushes to the camera as his format of choice. Throughout his subsequent art studies in Coventry, Birmingham and eventually Nottingham, he focused on stills photography. After graduating in Fine Art (specifically Fine Art photography) and having worked as a camera operator on fellow students' film projects, Ellis wrote a handful of short scripts and started working as a

volunteer at the now-defunct Intermedia Film and Video in Nottingham, providing access to camera and editing facilities.

Doodlebug by Christopher Nolan;

The story consists of a somewhat ratty man, in a much rattier flat. There, he seems intent - and possibly even driven to insanity -with catching the doodlebug of the film's title. However, after over two minutes of cat-and-mouse chasing, it is revealed that the bug resembles a miniature version of himself. He squashes the bug with his shoe. The audience comes to realise that every move that the doodlebug makes the man reciprocates a second later. Into this Kafkaesque situation enters a large face, that of the man; thereby making the man the doodlebug, and he proceeds to get squashed by this newer being.

Born in London in 1970, Christopher Nolan began making films at the age of seven using his father's super 8mm camera and an assortment of male-action figures. He graduated to making films involving real people, and his super 8mm surreal short 'tarantella' was shown on PBS' 'image union' in 1989.

Dear phone by Peter Greenway;
A narrator relates a variety of peculiar stories involving characters with the initials HC and their dealings with


telephones. These are interspersed with artistic shots of telephone boxes in a variety of locations.

Peter Greenaway, CBE (born 5 April 1942) is a British film director. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance andBaroque painting, and Flemish painting in particular. Common traits in his film are the scenic composition and illumination and the contrasts of costume and nudity, nature and architecture, furniture and people, sexual pleasure and painful death.

Boy and a Bicycle by Ridley Scott;

Boy and Bicycle is the first film made by Ridley Scott. The black and white short was made on 16mm film while Scott was aphotography student at the Royal College of Art in London in 1962.

Although a very early work - Scott would not direct his first feature for another 15 years - the film is significant in that it features a number of visual elements that would become motifs of Scott's work. Shot entirely in West Hartlepool and Seaton Carew the film features the cooling tower and blast furnaces of the local British Steel North Works foreshadowing images in Alien, Blade Runner andBlack Rain. The central element of the Boy and Bicycle is re-used in Scott's advert for Hovis of the early 1970s. The film features Scott's younger brother Tony Scott as the boy.

George Lucas In Love;

   

George Lucas in Love is an independent, live action, parodical short film that started attracting notice in June 1999 when it was passed around Hollywood offices as a filmmaker's "calling card". The film was directed by Joe Nussbaum, a University of Southern California graduate.

In the film, George Lucas is a USC college student in 1967, and he's suffering from writer's block as he tries to write a movie about a young space farmer with a bad crop of "space wheat". Everywhere he goes, viewers see classmates and teachers that either resemble, or will influence the creation of, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Jabba the Hutt, R2-D2, and C-3PO. Lucas is surrounded by inspiration, but he sees nothing. Not even his advisor, who looks and speaks suspiciously like Yoda, is able to help him.

Eventually, young Lucas meets his muse, a young woman (with a very unusual hairdo) named Marion who is "kind of leading a student rebellion". After they meet, everything falls into place for Lucas, as she urges him to "write what you know." His writer's block dissipates and he quickly finishes his masterpiece. However, his shot at romance with the 

girl is blown when he discovers she's his sister.

The sound in this film is mainly the characters having a conversation. At the beginning whilst he is typing on his type writer there is violins and a recorder playing as he looks peaceful. Deep star wars styled music is played when his enemy comes up to the door mocking him and also throughout the short film when tense or big scenes appear.

This film gives me ideas of having a twist within a short film because the shock of how in love the characters are then as they find out they are related the audience is baffled which leaves them remembering the film because of the twist. 

This film also fits in with the post-modern section we are studying because of the characters and the story line. 

Feelings;

Todd Solondz (born October 15, 1959) is an American independent film screenwriter and director known for his style of dark, thought-provoking, socially conscious satire. Solondz has been critically acclaimed for his examination of the "dark underbelly of middle class American suburbia," a reflection of his own background in New Jersey. His work includesWelcome to the Dollhouse (1995), Happiness (1998), Storytelling (2001), Palindromes (2004),Life During Wartime (2009), and Dark Horse (2012).

Todd Solondz’s first film shot with sound, Feelings is a two and a half minute movie made as an NYU film school assignment in 1984. Solondz himself takes the lead role of a sensitive young man who finds he can no longer endure life without his beloved (Jan Meredith). The film is set to Todd Solondz’s personal rendition of the song “Feelings” by Morris Albert. Cedric Klapisch(The Spanish Apartment, Un Aire de Famille), who included Solondz in his own NYU film In Transit, worked on this production as assistant cameraman.


The sound in this short film is mostly the character talking in a dramatic way, other sounds consist of music which sounds like it has been created by drums which is loud and bold.

This short film gives me ideas of exaggerating the characters if it fits in the genre as it can come across as humorous and leaves an impression. 

Vincent;

Young Vincent Malloy dreams of being just like Vincent Price and loses himself in macabre daydreams which annoys his mother.

Timothy Walter "Tim" Burton^[1] (born August 25, 1958) is an American film director, film producer, writer, poet, artist and animator. He is famous for his dark, gothic, macabre and quirky take on horror and fantasy style movies such asBeetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Dark Shadows andFrankenweenie, and for blockbusters such as Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Batman, its first sequel Batman Returns, Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland.

Tim Burton’s early film ‘Vincent’ is a 6 minute stop-motion animated short film released in 1986. It follows the story of 7 year old Vincent Malloy who fantasizes that he is Vincent Price. The film follows the two opposites of Vincent’ life. The dark twisted magical fantasy of his created world, and the contrasting dull bleak truth of his own reality.

The sound in this short film makes us fill in the shot which is missing through our imagination, such as when he is trying to dip the women in wax the scene of her actually falling in it would be hard to create on stop motion so they have added in a sound which would go along with the scene so we fill in what we think we would see.

This film gives me ideas of an interesting character that i could also create in my short film, i like the way he has two personality's that are both completely different. 

Research and planning; textual analysis

you will need to add three posts and embed links to one of the three in each of of them - then in the post

1. add a synopsis of the film and the director
2. deconstruct the narrative / style and sound
3. make notes on the ideas it gives you

Use clear and suitable titles to your posts: begin with Research and planning : deconstruction - then film title/director

Today we watched the following;

• Freiheit by George Lucas made in 1966.
• Daybreak by D.A Pennebaker in 1993
• Vincent by Tim Burton in 1982
• George Lucas in love by Joe Nussbaum 1998
• Feelings by Todd Solandz in 1984
• Andy Warhole - Screen Test by Helmet

Short film research;

The last man on earth;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/films/p00pf28k

About a girl;
http://onlineshortfilms.net/watch/about-a-girl-video_433221e80.html

Thinking about short films;

Filmmakers;           Type of short film;        Purpose;

Students                     Various                 Coursework

Bands/Artists            Music Video               Promotion

Companies             Advertisements        To sell goods

Film Companies          Trailers          To promote films

Animators                  Cartoons                    Profit

BBC                         Documentary         To gain views

C4                       Community Films       Pro-sumerism 

Actors                        Various               Change of job

Established film      Experimental           Seek opinions
makers            

Sportsmen             Experimental         Showing ability

Exam board           Education        Improve knowledge
education