Institutions

i have learnt that institutions are companies that own many different companies they set the rules for their companies where as a journalist would share the same set of values as its newspaper. I have also learnt that as the global pattern of ownerships change so does the concept of institution as the new owner may have different values to the past.

the worlds biggest comglomerate is Walt disney, Disney owns the most companies in the world the list is endless but some of them are Miramax films, The discovery Channel, ABC, ESPN, History channel touchstone pictures Disney interactive Studios, Hollywood Records Radio and also 25% of GMTV. As Disney is seen as a family show, it prefers not to let the audiences of some of its shows know they own it as people may not watch because of disneys family values. Also as Walt Disney stands for family values many of its products must reflect this.

Film Opening.

A good film opening mainly has one purpose and that is to establish the visual style of the film and also introducing the viewer to some if not the main character or characters in a film. it should also introduce a location, this will also show the viewer the key parts of information the viewer needs. Another key feature to get across is part of the plot to the story by doing this in the beginning it is a sure way of getting the viewer more interested in the film. an opening has to also show the genre and the theme of the film.

The opening scene in "13 going on 30" was released in 2004, it is a chick flick, about a un happy un popular 13 year old who wishes to be 30. to skip her teenage years. as she believes being 30 means she is going to be happier and lifes better.

the film starts with non digetic music which is happy upbeat music that shows this is a happy and not horror film, there hare no images of anyone in the scene to start with but a blue sky with clouds appear, the film titles and names of the stars such as Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo appear in pink writing with glitter over them , this then shows the viewer that this film appeals to girls more then boys.

The blue sky then fades to a background of a school photoshoot and of a young girl being pushed into her shoot, showing she is pushed around. she is having her school photo taken. this is a mid shot. The young girls clothing is not a style we see in today so from this you are able to see that this scene is from a long while ago which therefore represents the time period that the scene is set in. as the first shot of the girl is a mid shot and just of her you are able to see that she is the main character in the film.

The first spoken dialoge in this opening scene is of the photographer getting her name wrong and ignoring her when she corrects him. from this you are able to see she is not happy as he gets her name incorrect again showing she is ignored. her photo is then taken. at this time there is a snapshot freeze frame and the title of the film is introduced.

this short opening to the film allows the viewer to see part of how the girl is feeling and therefore why she wishes she was 30. from this you are able to have the main character introduced, part of the location this being the school which shows she is un happy as she is pushed around.

Preliminary Task

For our preliminary task we had to create a short film consisting of a character opening a door and goes into the room for a short conversation with another character. having a match on action shot, short reverse shot and would also have to follow the 180 degree rule.

we began our task by creating a story board showing each shot and the speech that is spoken also what shot that will be used. on our story board we decided that our short film would consist of amy being a bully and storming into the toilets and asking me the victom for the money i owed her.

we shot the film with out any problems as we found it easy to shoot. we had to film our shot reverse shot twice to get each characters perspective of the shot as if their eyes were the camera. doing this we had to make sure we didn't move so it would look continous. another thing we had to look for was that we followed the 180 degree rule by having the same right-left relationship with each other.

once we had finished we had to upload our film to the computer we then had problems with this because our laptop would not find our film when we connected it. this took up a lot of our time as we had to check each component to see what was wrong. in the end once we had found out it was the laptop. we then switched laptops then our work was uploaded. we then watched it and looked to see what needed to be edited.

we began by cutting sections to make our scenes shorter therefore to flow more continously. by cutting our scenes we had match on action shot at the end when amy walked out of the toilets, we cut out and edited our shot reverse shot scenes to create our shot reverse shot which also flowed continuously. we also managed to follow the 180 degree rule.

we had two problems with our editing one being that we had a shot of me looking in the mirror as amy walks in you can see that i turn my head to her. but then it quickly changes to me facing in a different direction, a continuety error. to try and solve this we added a faded transition to make the change less obvious. but we know for next time not to make the mistake.

our second mistake was that we had a shot of me crying in the toilet with no sound. then a shot of me crying in the toilet with amy shouting. this did not flow continuously. as i had moved into a different position. we then had to change this by zooming into the image so you would not be able to tell. after editing we then had to record our directors commentary and add onto the film. we had to do this by cutting parts of the commentary and inserting into the parts that are relevent.

through doing the preliminary task i now know what i will have to do for my coursework, this has allowed me to realise what tools and programmes i will have to use and also how i have been able to practise using them. through our mistakes i am also now more aware of what mistakes i cant make in my coursework.