Practice Shots

This was our first practical media tasks where we had to portray different camera shots/angles.

The Royal Tenenbaums.
Analysis of Margot
In the opening sequence to the film, Margot is in fact the first character we see, but as this is a tracking shot we only see her for a split second. The fact that we see her first seems to me as though she has some importance in the film, this is clear as she has been made the viewpoint for the audience by being lit up compared to her surroundings, the only piece of personal information we can take from this moment is that she is reading which could be a hobby of hers. An instrumental of ‘Hey Jude,’ by The Beatles is asynchronously playing, and the instruments used give quite a strange effect on the whole introduction, in my opinion it reminds me of medieval music, which also made me pick up on the fact that when the tracking opening shot begins there is a flag waving on the steeple part of the house, that resembled that of a castle, it also carries through to when the three children are sat at a formal-looking table with medieval looking candle holders, this also connects with the title of the film The Royal Tenenbaum's.
On the mid shot of the children sat at the table, I notice firstly that Margot seems to camouflage into the mise-en-scene, her hair, skin tone and clothes include beige and burgundy tones that are the theme colours of the room they are in. This could be the directors way of showing a little of her life story in a simple way. I also notice that whilst the boys are sat comfortable with their arms on the table and heads held high, Margot’s body language looks timid and almost as though she has done something wrong, we can also see her discomfort as when the scene opens she slowly lifts her head up, whilst the boys are comfortably sat and ready. Also she seems to make little eye contact with the man that appears to be her father, unlike her brothers. This intrigues the audience and makes us wonder why she seems unwelcome in her surroundings, when her two brothers are the complete opposite. Also the colour theme (red) seems quite ironic to me, as the colour usually represents love but in fact there seems to be little of that emotion in the room.
The next scene including the woman we presume to be the children’s mother, we see Margot again looking very left out. Even though she is now wearing more contrasting clothes to her surroundings, she does not seem as involved with her mother as her brothers do, the thing that stands out to me is that there is actually a physical barrier between her and her mother, that being the doorway. Although this is not an extremely obvious thing, I feel as though it signifies a distance between them, also as Margot actually almost has her back towards her mother. Margot is also engrossed in a book by Anton Chekhov, a famous russian author and playwright, the fact that we can so clearly read the authors name may express a link between Margot and the author. We also see quite a cold side of Margot in this scene; when her brother asks for a large amount of money, she looks up from her book with an almost angry expression waiting for her mother to answer, when her mother says yes, without questioning Margot’s focus returns to her book, this short sequence gave me the impression that the boys seem to get a lot and maybe Margot doesn’t receive quite so much - this reinforced my idea of her being an outsider as well as that Margot is now wearing completely contrasting colours to her surroundings which again shows her being seperate from her family, also her two brothers have both wore the same outfits throughout the film so far which in a sense personifies their character but Margot has worn different things, so we don’t have a clothing connection to her so far.
The most important scene that introduces us to Margot is when we visit her bedroom. Straight off we see signs on her closed bedroom door including “Do not disturb,” “Keep door closed” and “Do not enter” and even a physical padlock. These are very forward warning off signs, which tell us that she is a very private person, but makes us wonder why as her brothers are completely different. We know Margot is different as we can see this in her mannerisms, and how she communicates but we as an audience are still intrigued to know the reason for this. Upon seeing Margot, she is sat on a very neat bed, with completely organised surroundings, but looks completely emotionless. She is listening to music through headphones which suggests she is in a ‘world of her own,’ allowing no one else in. The first thing the narrative voice says is that “she was adopted at age 2,” this instantly gives us information that we haden’t had before, I personally, instantly gave that fact the responsibility of being the reason she is an outsider. Like on her bedroom door, she has african decoration in her room, which seems quite unusual for a girl of her age, as most would enjoy pink, girly objects whilst the african object seems actually quite ugly and unwelcoming. When the camera has completely zoomed out we see curtains at the end of her sleeping area, I felt as though this is her way of closing herself off from her family even more. The short scene following her bedroom scene is strange in the way that Margot is looking dead straight into the camera lens whilst the action remains happening around her, as though in her mind she isn’t there, but in her body she is, this saddens me actually again as the only dialogue used is “This is my adopted daughter, Margot Tenenbaum,” it is as though her adoptive father has no pride of her and wants people to know that she isn’t his own flesh and blood, and this proves to me that this is what is hurting her. Incredibly on the next scene we are hit with her african style decoration as now it is very obvious and is everywhere, maybe this is a place she wants to be or something that really inspires her. I do feel that this is part of her inspiration as we see her frantically typing with a huge pile of paper documents beside her, this instantly makes me think of her obsession with reading, and makes us wonder what the link between the two is. Next we see consecutive clips of parts of her room, beginning with the library of her plays. This gives us a huge insight to her personality, we can now link the obsession of her books, and writing with her love for plays. Next we see Models of sets, which reinforces her love for plays to the audience, and really makes us realise how much of a passion she has for plays in general, the fact there has been a pencil left on the little set leads us to believe she has made these impeccable sets, which seems quite incredible to me. We then come across her ‘dark room,’ which actually looks like an en suite of some sort, the fact that she has renovated this into a dark room suprises me again, most young girls dream for en suites for vanity, and privacy the most unlikely thing i could imagine it being changed into, she has created. Margot already seems way beyond her years. Strangely, rather than creating a ‘Ballet’ part of her bedroom it seems she has just created a random space for when she wants it, as though she isn’t taking it as seriously as her other interests, again we are surrounded with african objects and then the narrator gives a very insightful piece of information, “her and her brother ran away from home one winter, and camped out in the african wing of the public archives.”
The first scene where we witness Margot and her brother hidden away in the public archives she is reading ‘The sharks of north american waters,’ i feel this is an importance as the director has made the book cover very visible, and then we realise that young girls are usually terrified or disgusted by things such as sharks but Margot appears to be quite interested in them. This again reminds us that Margot is not an ordinary girl. I also realise that Richie seems to have no interest in Africa, or anything to do with it (as he is asleep throughout the scene of them hiding) and I wonder why he has gone along with Margot rather than his brother, or why didn’t they all go together? The camera zooms out, tracks and then pans towards the door, and as this is happening Margot’s eyes meet her book again which suggests she was deep in thought whilst being narrated.
Soon after we are informed by the narrator that Margot had again attempted running away from home, this strikes me as an unhappiness but also her sense of adventure, we are shown a picture titled, ‘Alteration of glove,’ this glove is obviously something that is personified to her character, as we had already seen it before when we saw her model play set. When we are introduced to Richie’s room, we witness part of his room that he has a gallery of photo’s and strangely they all appear to be of Margot, this makes me feel like Margot has some significance to him, as there are almost an obsessive amount of portraits, and most of them see Margot with her books, which is how we’d imagine her ourselves anyway, this feels to me as though it connects to the fact that they ran away together, maybe they are more than just brother and sister. Also when we see Richie out with his father, and the fact that Margot or Chas aren’t invited along this by now doesn’t suprise us as we know Margot doesn’t have a strong relationship with her father anyway, and when we see Margot her expression isn’t suprised either at all, in fact her body language suggests she’s bored.
On Margot’s eleventh birthday her brothers and Eli Cash performed her first play, this is when I realise the connection with her african obsession, as the characters used in her play are animals that would typically be found in Africa. Whilst sat at the table I firstly realise that Margot is sitting furthest away from her father, even Eli Cash is sat closer than her, Margot’s father goes on to say that her play wasen’t believable which is extremely harsh to me, as this is a girl who has just turned 11 and has already written her own plays! When the shot turns to Margot, we find she seems angry, but her expression doesn’t show this very well, but if you look into the background of the shot you can see the masks of the animals which look as though they are roaring with anger, which seems to me as though the director has used this as a convention to show her hidden emotion, I feel as though Margot secretly is desperate for acceptance but her father is unwilling to give it. When her father speaks down again about her play she has had enough and leaves her own birthday party, just as the birthday cake arrives, (the most important part of a birthday party) she sees the cake but still leaves which shows us that this has really hurt her and in fact this is the only time we see such a reaction occur from her.
Overall I see Margot as a very mysterious character, from start to finish she has never shown much emotion or even spoken very much, her brothers seem a lot more down-to-earth which makes her stand out even more. It makes me feel quite sad as her father is so reluctant to be proud of her just because she is not his biological daughter, even though she has such an incredible talent. I feel that if I were to watch the rest of the film Margot would go on to be a very significant character, as she is the one who has more of a story than anyone else, I also feel that we would find out more about the connection between her and Richie.

Contents Page

We took inspiration from Fashion magazines such as Vogue, Glamour and Elle, as they print a photo of the front cover and use this for page numbers.

Gossip Girl Magazine

Preliminary Magazine Cover Evaluation.
For this piece of work, I worked in a small group of 3 with Minty, and Emily. We decided we wanted to create a girl’s school magazine, and so made a rough plan of what we would go onto create. As part of the group I was the hands on designer of the magazine, Minty and Emily planned it out, told me their vision and I created it using photoshop. Photoshop was the best computer program to use as their are infinite things you can create with it, also it works very well when creating a magazine, as alike magazines Photoshop works in layers.
We wanted a cover that would initially draw in the girl’s rather than the boy’s so we had to think of a colour palette that was stereotypical for a girl, but attractive at the same time. We chose pink and yellow, as background colours, and grey and black for the Masthead and the cover lines. We chose a darker colour as it would contrast against the light pink and stand out, and also it does infact look quite attractive.
To keep an informal, casual style we chose Rosewood Std, I personally like this as it stands out clearly to the magazines target audience, and it is fun looking. The secondary font we chose to use was Bell Mt, this is a lighter font that is quite flowy in form, and still sits pretty on the page, rather than harshly standing out. We chose to use just two fonts as to keep with the initial conventions of a magazine, although many magazine companies choose to use 3, we felt in context two was enough, as we had chosen to swap the colours around which gives the font different effects on the page anyway.
The photograph used is of a content looking, laid-back girl. This makes the audience feel comfortable, rather than photographing a straight faced, stuck up looking girl as this can be seen as intimidating and this is the last affect we wish to have upon our audience.
In terms of the cover lines we tried to keep them short and sweet, as the target audience we are aiming at will not be attracted by long boring lines of information, they tend to want to know the basic details, and if it interests them they’l read on, I know this primarily as the target audience we were aiming for, I actually fit into.
I feel that the magazine cover is clever as it draws in new and regular readers. Regular readers will see the coverline “Interview with Molly Captain of the Geek Squad,” and will already have some idea of who Molly is in more detail, whilst a new reader will probably not know anything about her anyway, either way they can both be interested in the interview as she is the main subject of the front cover.
I feel that this magazine would definitely be distributed within a certain school, as there are promotions such as the ‘Trip to New York,’ which would only be running at one particular school, so really this would be pointless to sell at other places.
Overall I think that the magazine cover is a success, I think it is aesthetically attractive, but gives the needed information too, i.e. barcode, price, edition. I also think that it is a healthy magazine, as there are many problems highlighted in the media that focus on underweight rolemodels that are printed on the front of magazines, whilst we have a healthy normal looking girl. I think the way we could have improved upon it is by using a more detailed background, as it looks pretty, but quite plain as it is, another way it could have been improved is by having photographs for the coverlines, e.g. a photograph of New York, for the coverline: “New York trip coming soon!” this would have improved the affect of the magazine as a lot of younger people look for photographs rather than writing. Other than that I think the magazine as it fits the target audience’s stereotype, is attractive anyway and gives the basic details of whats included inside.

Analysis of Juno

Analysing ‘Juno’ Opening Sequence

The beginning of the sequence opens with an establishing shot of a house that we as an audience presume has some significance to the events which will take place, or a particular character. This quickly moves on to a wide angle shot involving a girl (Juno) and a chair, for those few moments we are mystified to why the girl is focusing her attention whilst drinking towards this chair, and why this indoor chair is outside on her front lawn. We are then directed into a close up shot of the girls ‘wandering’ expression, when a narrative speaks, “It started with a chair,” in this instance asynchronous music begins, with its almost romantic tone it sets the mood for the following scene as this will begin to tell us her story and the significance of the chair. At first glance the mise-en-scene has a continuous colour palette of browns, until we come to a mid-shot of Juno which introduces he use of red, on her t-shirt, in her lips, and in the blushing areas of her face. In my opinion this could symbolise love, and passion which flows very nicely with the fact that they are about to make love. Although we are quite well associated with Juno as a character now, the director has made an effort to keep the boy mysterious and unknown, I think this is to keep the emphasis on Juno, as this is her side of the story. After their short dialogue, the boy says the word “Wizard,” which is obviously slang as being used for its proper definition, it wouldn’t fit into this context, the use of slang goes onto familiarise us with this character and actually makes him feel a little less distant to us. The synchronous sound of a dog barking interrupts the deep emotions of Juno’s flashback, and brings us very quickly back to her reality. Seemingly quite annoyed at the dog she goes onto drinking her drink again, which we as an audience feel must have some significance but cannot identify it at such an early stage. The song by Barry Louis Polisar - All I Want is You begins to play which is a very light-hearted song which makes us feel comfortable but somewhat confused, we also see Juno walking and yet again carrying the same drink we’d seen before in two scenes. Whilst she is walking, a group of athletes run past wearing the same colours as Juno is, they have red and yellow/gold outfits on whilst Juno is wearing a red hoodie, and carrying the distinctive yellow Sunny D, with no warning the opening credits begin to run, and all of a sudden everything is placed under a cartoon effect. In the opening credits, we carry on seeing Juno drinking Sunny D which strangely seems as though its never ending, the objects we see around her in basic line form include a guitar, and a t.v both laying on the street, this gives us a feel for her neigbourhood, and those images mixed with the distinctive harmonica music makes me imagine a friendly laid back small american town, ones that are stereotyped on tv. The font is quite child-like, and looks almost handwritten which also runs well with the light hearted theme, as it’s not a formal look and seems quite laid back. Camera shots used in the credits; wide angle (used with tracking), mid shot, close up, long shot, low angle, high angle. I feel that the director chooses to simplify the environment by animating it, as it bares no significance to her story, it’s just normal and is not extremely important, and this keeps our attention on Juno, as well as the background being cartoony, the colours are also not as vibrant as they are on Juno. Also, although she is a little animated, Juno still has aspects about her that are realistic, whereas the background is completely cartoonized.
As the credits draw to a close, the song fades and Juno tosses the Sunny D bottle into the bin, which is strange for us as we thought it bared a large significance but this movement makes us think otherwise. I notice after seeing the shops mise-en-scene, that there is a lot of red and yellow that stands out, which relates back to the runners, and Juno’s hoodie and drink. Also the mood of this scene contrasts with the child-like manner of the credits as it is quite a serious matter - teenage pregnancy, although the shopkeeper and in fact Juno don’t seem to feel just how serious this is - yet. On entering the bathroom mellow background music plays to make the mood a little more serious, to make us understand the importance of what she is doing, and again we see a lot of red and yellow. After Juno returns to the main shop she picks up some childish strawberry lace sweets, which we see again when she leaves the shop, it is a mid-shot that starts at her hands, holding a pregnancy test in one hand, and childish sweets in the other, I feel that this signifies the end of her childhood in one hand (positive pregnancy test) and trying to hold onto her childhood and innocence in the other hand (sweets).
The following scene is angled from behind, where Juno is wearing her hood up and the lighting is darker, this shows a slight mood of depression. Again we see the runners, which include the red and yellow theme into this scene. I find the same situation and contrast in the last scene, in this scene (losing childhood on one side, trying to keep it on the other,) this is where she uses the strawberry lace sweet to create a noose, and pretend to hang herself, this shows that she is having dark thoughts but the fact she is using a sweet shows it could also be light hearted, and when she bites through it, it ends the deep mood.
On the introduction to her bedroom we see various close up shots of many objects, quite untidily arranged which implies she’s not a ‘girly - girl,’ a particular object that stands out to me is the poster of a sperm like cartoon about to cross through a heart shaped hole in a girl, this is ironic as she has just found out she is pregnant and symbolises that it is going to be a ‘heart-wrenching’ decision on what to do about the pregnancy, e.g termination of pregnancy. Also the fact that she has naked baby dolls in her room is quite ironic. We then see a complete contrast in character when Juno rings her friend, as the other girl is a stereotypical blonde american girl, wearing little shorts, holding a cute bunny, pretty room and using ditzy phrases like; “Honest to blog?” rather than Honest to God, which is strange for the audience because I personally would never imagine the two of them to be close friends as they are completely different characters. The main use of contrasting is between the posters, at one point in the clip we have almost the same angle used on both characters where their posters are in the background, and whilst Juno’s are all musical, the other girls are all typically of famous, half naked men. Also the fact that the girl on the other end of the phone says that she’s helped someone out with a termination before suggests that actually teenage pregnancy isn’t that unheard of, which is quite a concern for more developed countries e.g England.
This scene leads onto another short scene involving the significant chair, which Juno is removing from her front lawn, so we as an audience hope that this will help us understand why it was there in the first place. After the short flashback explaining how the pregnancy came about, and the planning of it. We have a short shot of the two girls, and the girl who is with Juno is camouflaged into the background, in contrast with Juno’s vibrant hoodie, keeping her in the audiences attention, this suggests that the other girl isn’t that important and is keeping the story angled towards Juno rather than allowing any distractions.
The next scene is a proper introduction to ‘Bleeker’ Juno’s partner, it opens with again a red and yellow colour palette, and a very bold image saying ‘Paulie,’ which we expect to be his first name, the director is still keeping him mysterious though as we still do not witness his face, as not to give away his identity. The background music is a song called ‘A well respected man’ by Kinks, and the lyrics seem to fit his regime, but bring humour to it as well e.g the lyrics; ‘and he’s oh so healthy,’ are used when he’s shoving a fast food pasty into a microwave, this keeps the scene lighthearted and funny. As soon as he leaves his house his face is unmasked to show his expression when finding Juno on his lawn, this gives the audience the link between Juno and Bleeker, and we can begin to understand their relationship. I think that they have a ‘role-reversed’ relationship as Juno seems a lot more in control, whilst Bleeker seems quite fragile and waits to be spoken to, and also seems quite shy as he stutters his words. When we see the athletes run past in the background we suddenly find the link with them, as Bleeker is wearing the same outfit as them. An over-the-shoulder angle makes the conversation run smoothly for the audience and keeps our focus on what is being said, and this means we can see expressions clearly. Although the relationship seems to be ‘the other way round’ when Juno comes to tell Bleeker about the pregnancy we see her softer side, that is quite like Bleeker's. For a moment they both seem quite expressionless as though waiting for an answer from each other, but when Juno says nothing Bleeker becomes the more dominant one in wanting to work out an answer rather than getting hung up on the problem that they have. When we have a close up on Juno, she seems to get her confidence back by making her own decision about terminating it, even though at such a close angle we can see in her expression that she is wanting approval, and support, and doesn’t actually know what to do she is just trying to be the stronger person. When Bleeker completely agrees with Juno and says “Do whatever you think you should do,” we see he cares for Juno, and although he’s shy he can be supportive but ultimately just wants her to be happy.
In conclusion the two main characters we have been introduced to are Juno and Bleeker. Juno comes across as a head strong tomboy, but is definitely caught short when she find she is pregnant, we can see how head strong she is when she adamantly takes 4 pregnancy test as she believes she isn’t pregnant and makes up excuses like she thinks the ‘last one was defective.’ I think that because she tries to come across like a very strong person, the pregnancy could ultimately make her a softer person because it seems as though she hasen’t ever been put in such an important mature situation.
Bleeker, seems like a harmless boy, in some respects a little ‘geeky’ although Juno doesn’t come across like this at all. He seems quite sheltered as when Juno came to tell him he had no idea what to do, as he’d obviously not been in that position before, also as his mum is still doing his washing, “My mum uses colour safe bleach.” I think that they make a strange couple as she is such a tomboy and he doesn’t really resemble anything more ‘boy-like’ than Juno, but that could work well for them.

First Magazine Cover

This was our first try at creating a remake of a common fashion magazine. We chose a 'Vogue' issue as our inspiration as it is a well established magazine company. I worked in a group with Emily and Minty, and Minty is photographed on the cover. I am happy with it as a 'first try,' as I now understand photoshop and the makings of a front cover a lot more, I feel this will help me create more detailed ones in the future.