4 previous AS Media Clips, Documentary and Box Office Statistics

In our first media lesson back from the Christmas break we watched a documentary about film openings and we were given a question sheet to which we had answer questions to. We learnt about the different techniques that different directors used e.g. Thomas Sutcliffe, Jean Jacques Beineix, Stanley Kauffmann, Kyle Cooper and Orson Welles. The main argument of this documentary was if an explosive start was better than a build up or vice-versa. Directors in favour of the slow build up starts argued that if you do this you have the audience knowing a little bit about the story but eager to know more therefore the ‘pleasure’ is at the end. Directors who argued that an explosive start was better said that you immediately have the audiences attention; the ‘pleasure’ is given straight away (when using a date as a metaphor). Directors say that they are under increasing pressure to add all the best bits to the film teasers and trailers thus leading to ‘no surprises’ for the audience as they would have seen these bits already. The documentary also talks about how directors may face problems by the publishers as the publishers may disagree with some of the directors decision and can easily overturn the directors decisions; for example Orson Welles wanted no credits at the beginning of his film ‘A Touch of Evil’ but the publishers at Universal Studios disagreed and changed this.
After we watched the film openings documentary we watch about 6-7 clips of previous AS Media Students from in and out of the college. The first clip that we watched was ‘Blasphemy’ which was in my personal opinion outstanding, I could have easily been fooled into thinking that it was done by professionals. The intertextuality was from a famous Brad Pitt movie and the plus point of this AS clip was the groups use of props, location, camera angles and shots, and most of all… editing. I would rate this group 4.5/5 and they would have got a 10 if it was not for a boy in the clip having his trousers hanging low.
The second clip we watched was ‘Essex Road’ which I thought was also truly acceptable. The plot was about a police officer (C.I.D) who was investigating a murder or kidnapping, he falls asleep and we see what may have happened to the girl. This groups main strong points was their use of mise en scene, their use of props really created a great affect and also helped us to distinguish different characters. They also used flashbacks appropriately showing where evidence dropped and flashing back to the evidence in the police station. I would rate this group 4/5 and the ways they could have improved are for example through using black and white to show us that the police officer was dreaming. After these two clips we watched five more which are as follows:
‘The Untold’: This was basically about a teacher on her way to school where one of the pupils had been abducted, this group got most of their grades through their diverse use of camera shots and angles.
‘Timecode’: This was about a boy waking up only to find that he was handcuffed to a brief case, they had really nice shots of the city sky line and the editing was also good (noises of a code being entered).
‘Days Are Numbered’: This was about a man rowing a boat on the canal when after a few minutes he sees a girl who is looking very devious. This group had some really good camera shots and rather fine editing; where they show the sunlight hitting the water and they use this as a fade into the next scene.
‘The Fragile’: We are shown an isolated barn, forest, fast zoom through a hole in the wall and sharp non-diagetic sounds. After this we get a really good shot of a bicycle wheel fro the side and from the top.
‘Not alone’: Very simple but affective plot. A boy washing a cup at the sink and we start seeing him from the outside the we go into the house, the lights switch off and somebody magically made him a cup of tea which we later see (the cup of tea) when the lights are turned back on.
After watching these clips we looked at cinema audiences in the year 2007and looking at the trends we found that females were more likely to watch light hearted, romantic-comedy and comedy movies such as: Hairspray, Enchanted and Atonement. Whereas men were more likely to watch action and war films such as: 300, Die Hard 4, and Spiderman 3. Looking at these statistics we also found that males always tended to be the most likely gender group to watch thrillers, examples include: Ocean’s 13, The Bourne Ultimatum, and 28 Weeks Later.
Looking at U.K Box Office statistics from the 14th-16th November 2008 showed us that the distributor taking the most weekend gross was Sony Pictures thanks to James Bond: Quantum of Solace with £5,164,182 but the movie with the highest total gross to date was Mamma Mia! With £67,879,439 which was mostly due to its high amount of DVD sales (highest selling DVD ever, beating Pirates of the Caribbean).