Warp vs Working Title1 Dead Man's Shoes

In this post I will compare the distribution, box office and representations of Warp's first film, Dead Man's Shoes, with Working Title's releases in that same year.
Dead Man's Shoes vs Ned Kelly Thunderbirds, Wimbledon, Shaun Of The Dead, Bridget Jones The Edge Of Reason

Warp's first full feature film was Dead Man's Shoes. They had released a short film, My Wrongs

Mise-en-scene: What this means TBC

Mise-en-scène is a part of media language. A french term, it means "placed on stage"

As said in the book Film Art: An Introduction, it is the elements of film production that overlap with that of the stage. These include lighting, costume, designs, props. either been studio-based or on location outside or inside.

Semiotics: The Opening Shot - Shaun Of The Dead

Shaun Of The Dead

Edgar Wright, 2004

LEAD ACTORS: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Kate Ashfield

GENRE: Zombie romantic comedy

PRODUCTION COMPANIES: WT2 (Working Title)

DISTRIBUTORS: Universal Pictures 
BBFC: 15             MPAA: R

BUDGET: $6.1m 

BOX OFFICE: $30m (worldwide)

REVIEWS, wiki:

Shaun of the Dead received critical acclaim. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a score of 92%, based on 201 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Shaun of the Dead cleverly balances scares and witty satire, making for a bloody good zombie movie with loads of wit".^[14] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 76 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[15] Nev Pierce, reviewing the film for the BBC, called it a "side-splitting, head-smashing, gloriously gory horror comedy" that will "amuse casual viewers and delight genre fans."^[16] Peter Bradshaw gave it four stars out of five, saying it "boasts a script crammed with real gags" and is "pacily directed [and] nicely acted."^[17] The film was placed sixth in Empire's top one hundred British films list.^[18]

TRAILER:


International trailer, with the classic booming American narrator


Minus the Universal ident, the opening sequence

THE SHOT

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS 

There is no Working Title ident, only the Universal ident. There is an audio bridge transition between the ident and the opening Shot.

The camera zooms out. So already in the first Shot there is camera movement, the camera isn't static. 

The unsettling sound on the indents, and suddenly the soft, upbeat sound signifies the hybridity of the horror comedy. His serious look can also be seen as a juxtaposition with the positive music.

This character is signified as important, protagonist, we are meant to sympathy with him.

• Background is in shallow focus and he is deep focus
• Rule Of Thirds applied
• Looking at the camera
• Alienated, the "Other"

Alcohol and cigarettes, negative connotations, signifies his precarious situation throughout the film.

Regional Identity: UK stereotype, "Last orders"

I myself know how non-British people perceive this as a stereotype, my German father once joked how I should say "Last orders" when we soon going to leave a restaurant.

Narrative enigma, 
female protagonist the conflict of romance set up. Common trope of issues in relationships, one doesn't listen to one's partner, often a female complaint? 

REPRESENTATION

Countertypical representation of the male gender, confused, bewildered, not the strong macho male protagonist leading the story, not the typical Proppian hero?

Analysing Media Language In 5 Shots: This Is England

The film starts with the opening credits putting the film into historical context with three minutes of historical footage, starting with the cultural figure from children's television Roland Rat, followed by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the royal wedding between Princess Diana and Prince Charles, as well as several protests. It ends with images of the Falklands War, with mutilated bodies and covered up corpses of soldiers.

The exact date is immediately given as July 1983.


After the camera has zoomed out of a close up of a portrait photo, this shot displays a routine of the young boy getting up for school, in a medium long-shot. The mis-en-scene features a stereotypical image attributed towards young males, that of a football team poster. The boy is naked except for his underpants, which can connote a maybe more relaxed upbringing than if he was wearing pyjamas, which would suggest a bit more of a stricter,  traditional and middle or upper-class background. The fact that the mis-en-scene of the room is pretty bare and does not have a lot of objects, hints further at a poorer and working class background, as otherwise parents would like to spoil their children if they could afford to.
The boy is looking at a portrait photo. With the images of Falkland soldiers falling in battle and the date given, one can connote from this that the by has a lost a close relative in the war, most likely his father or older brother. This kind of portrait lying on surfaces on home being a stereotypical image of a lost loved one. The audience thereby feels sympathy for the young boy's loss, a feeling which is added by the colorless nature of his room, which can be seen as a metaphor for how his life feels.



This is an extreme long shot of a moving subject, giving a feeling of distance the young protagonist. He is walking towards a shop Him walking pass a group of boys his ages signifies his status as an outsider. The fact that the boys start picking on him for no reason creates antipathy for the other characters. However the boy's usage of swearwords soon after this shows a side that is not just a victim. The swearing of both the protagonist and the other boys signifies the rough nature of the area.

...

Through a medium-close-up the boy is shown to be reading a comic. The boy is shown to be enjoying a typically childish thing to do with an undertone of innocence, this child-friendly atmosphere is increased by the comics in the background. The boy's status as an outsider is increased to that of a rebel by not listening to the shop owner's request to buy the comic.



This is a two-shot where vulnerability is expressed with use of the naturally taller height of the shop owner. Due to height differences the shop owner is in medium long-shot (down to the knees) and the boy in medium shot (down to the waist). The Indian shop owner is a common cliché in urban England. The boy has just been having his first pleasure of the day, but it is snatched away from him. There is repetition in the boy's usage of swearwords.

The long-shot shows images of youth culture, with the cliché of graffiti on walls. Sitting under The bridge connotes an area outside the main world, which signifies rebellion and a resistance to mainstream society, a form of counterculture. the hight of the skinhead right shows his status as the leader and a proactive character as he rises to help the suffering protagonist. This creates great sympathy for him as he is the first character to help the protagonist in his day of misery. In portrayal of the skinheads we have two positive representations, the one of a kind helping person displayed in the young male standing and the black man with a hat. Skinheads have a reputation of being Nazis. The two skinheads towards the left don't care much for the boy's predicament, and their skinhead look is even more extreme, so they appeal to the stereotypical expectations of street youths, sitting together and laughing everything off, despite it being obvious that the boy is suffering.

TECHS3 Mac2: screen recording and screenshots

*Insert screenrecording of screenrecording*

*Insert screenrecording of taking screenshots and uploading them

TECHS4 - Acer1

Experimenting with taking screenshots on my acer computer
in preparation for analysing the film opening of "This Is England"

New Look

Given my page a new background and template

Issues with discussing "British" cinema

These include:

• British subsidaries of large conglomerates
• Almost all set in southern England
• characters speak RP (renounced pronunciation)

Marketing, Distribution and Box Office - Moonlight

Moonlight

Barry Jenkins, 2016

Leading actors: Trevante Rhodes

Genre: Drama

Production companies: A24 Films, Plan B Entertainment,         

                                      Pastel Productions

Distributor: A24

Budget: $5m  Box Office: 

Trailer:

Media language: angles and shot types

I've taken a series of photos of my course mate Evie Gibbons to show the key types of shots used in media texts, using PowerPoint, which is embedded below

Types Of Camera Framing & Angles from Richard Dannenberg

Prelim2 The equipment used

- a Sony A58 camera
- an SD card that we borrowed from our teacher (we made a note to soon get one ourselves)

Film Fave: The Imitation Game (Tyldum, 2014)

Crash

Paul Haggis, 2004

Lead Actors: Ensemble cast 

Genre: Ensemble drama 

Distributor: Lionsgate

Production companies: kk

Budget: $6.5m  
Box office: $98.4m (world) $11.1m (UK)  $54.6m (US)

CRITICAL KUDOS
RottenTomatoes.com 91%; IMDB 8.1 ; Roger Ebert 4.5

Trailer:

TECHS2 - Mac1: Keyboard Shortcuts

There are an abundance of shortcuts on a Macbook Pro keyboard, the computer I am using at my school. Here are some examples.

Guardian Box Office Analysis

Guardian columnist Charles Gant gives a weekly analysis of the UK box office

Sausage Party has retained the top spot at the UK box office with a weekend gross of £1.22m, the fight for second have beena close-shave between Ben-Hur and Don’t Breathe, with Ben-Hur winning by just under twenty thousand, with £1.05m from 509 cinemas, but that number includes Wednesday and Thursday previews totalling £265,000. Strip those out, and Ben-Hur’s tally falls to £783,000. earned all its £1.03m opening number from the three-day weekend period.Don’t Breathe is shaping up to be highly profitable. Production budget is a reported $10m, and the film has already grossed $67m in the US. The UK opening number isn’t anything special – Warners’ Lights Out debuted a few weeks ago with £1.13m – and was probably hit by the sunny weather on Sunday. On the other hand, rain on Saturday gave all films a boost.Ben-Hur’s weekend takings of £783,000 would have put it in fifth place for the weekend period, behind Sausage Party, Don’t Breathe, Bad Moms and Kubo and the Two Strings. Production budget is a reported $100m.Even if previews are added to Ben-Hur’s opening tally, 56 films have opened bigger in the UK so far in 2016, and its box office is far from the blockbuster numbers it needs to achieve profitability. US box office is a calamitous $26m so far, but foreign is helping to stem the losses, with decent numbers in Brazil and Mexico.

DON'T BREATHE'S FINANCIAL SUCCESS, CASTING?

Jane Levy is known for her roles on TV in Shameless and the leading role in Purgatory. Her big role in terms of box office success had been with Alvarez's 2013 supernatural horror film Evil Dead. After that she was in indie productions such as About Alex.

The film industry lives on franchises, but Ben-Hur demonstrates that the remake side is critically and financially not that successful.

GUARDIAN'S VERDICT ON BEN-HUR'S BOX OFFICE

"Ben-Hur’s weekend takings of £783,000 would have put it in fifth place for the weekend period, behind Sausage Party, Don’t Breathe, Bad Moms and Kubo and the Two Strings. Production budget is a reported $100m.Even if previews are added to Ben-Hur’s opening tally, 56 films have opened bigger in the UK so far in 2016, and its box office is far from the blockbuster numbers it needs to achieve profitability. US box office is a calamitous $26m so far, but foreign is helping to stem the losses, with decent numbers in Brazil and Mexico."

CRITICS

Ben-Hur

The production values are credited but in terms of narrative it is not being well received.

Don't Breathe

The critics positively commenting on the narrative and production values.

...

Prelim1 The Brief

Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting or standing opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

What is continuity editing?
Continuity editing is the process of editing footage so that the narrative flows naturally and doesn't appear disjointed to the audience. This can take away realism from the text.

TECHS - Blogger/Samsung 1

I've downloaded the Blogger mobile app onto my Samsung S3 from Google Play 

This is a form of convergence, the technologies of computers and smartphones coming together so that I can work. However, the smartphone has several limitations, I won't be able to edit footage.

Last 5 movies I watched

I had not watched any of the trailers before watching the film.

The Imitation Game

I had been wanting to watch this film for a while, primarily because of the lead actor, Benedict Cumberbatch. This demonstrates how the star system dominates the film industry. While I don't just watch films and other media in general, recognisable faces always give me a good feeling about the film, especially when I first heard of it two years, it excited me that Benedict Cumberbatch was in a leading role after seeing him in several TV roles leading up to internationally successful Sherlock and his role as a villain in Star Trek: Into Darkness.

Twelfth Night 

I have had an interest in Shakespeare for a while, and have been watching more and more screen adaptations.

The Tempest

The Reader

Watched it because I read the book, intellectual property.

The Age Of Stupid

A very relevant issue for our planet today, and the DVD had been lying around for a while.

TECHS1 - Blogger1

Through this you can manage the background

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This was my first background

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Time for a makeover, this is my second.

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This is the blog toolbar where you manage font, text size and add videos and images etc.

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This is the page you open when you add images

This is one of Sophie's vodcasts where she talks about titles

Embedding a video link

What I've learned from 2016 student blogs

This is the list of the last Media Students, this is same way my media text and the blog detailing the research and production will be listed and linked next year.

RIONA'S BLOG

This registers the number of hits on Riona's blog

Riona comparing adult rom-coms and teen rom-coms

SOPHIE'S BLOG

These show her blogs from January 2016 

I will be writing a script or to use a more common term, screenplay for my text and will be preparing to write one. 

...

My production experiences

In 2012 I was the boom operator in a short film, filming over a weekend in and around a housing estate.

In 2015/2016 in Art t we had the choice to either do photography or a short film. I was in a group making a short film. However we didn't ac. As this wasn't Film or Media Studies, we weren't marked on our techniques, only on the film at face value. The editing was done mainly by the one person in the group who had a MacBook and thereby access to iMovieMaker, while the rest of us planned it logistically and wrote the script, as well being the main actors. This has given me experience of forming a narrative and also learning you might have to adapt to certain sudden circumstances like rain.

During the summer holidays I took an Acting For Screen course at the National Youth Theatre. While this was mainly focused on acting and not on the production level of filming, I still got a good insight into how the industry works when we looked at the scripts for Wolf Hall and This Is England, a series  by Warp, one of our two case studies companies. This was also when I was introduced to the different shot types. 

I have not had a directing role in filming, but have had experience in assistant directing both actors and logistics on stage in amateur theatre groups, also managing the whole rehearsal once

I have never written a script for screen, but indulge a lot in writing short stories, poems, song texts and I am also developing a play script at the moment. I have always wanted to write scripts for screen.

I have never worked with a recording camera in photography, only done amateur recording privately with small cameras, iPhone and Samsung in my social life like all adolescents. 

The Brief

Main task: the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes. This is not a short film, as that would have a closed off narrative. 
All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source.

The assessment objectives for my coursework film opening

The evaluation of our text, or as the examination board calls it "creative critical reflection"