River: A2 Media

Writing the screenplay appealed to me from the start, most likely because of my interest in English and Media.  However, it was still new to me, and although I knew the basics, I would need to practice and learn from the best writers. Someone who immediately inspired me was Quentin Tarantino. Cult classics like Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill are among my favourite films, and when I learned he wrote his own screenplays as well as directing, I had to see his scripts and gather knowledge from them. This is a snippet from the start of the Pulp Fiction script. It's interesting, as there's more to it that just what the characters say. He begins by setting up the scene, yet in a comedic, creative way. He has self-made similes and figures of speech, gives his script a sense of originality. This came in handy when it came to making my own screenplay, because I realised the depth of creativity you can implement into it. Furthermore, he describes his characters in detail. He gives them...

The life of death is an interesting spin on the idea of the grim reaper, as it begins with him dying, then shows flashbacks of his life. I thought this was a good film to analyse, as it is similar to ours in that it takes the idea of death and the afterlife and distorts it to create their own idea for a film. The movie begins by showing several tranquil long shots of inner city New York, setting up the theme and location of the film. The first establishing shot is shown which starts in parallel to the non-diegetic soundtrack, which is both happy yet tranquil.This opening scene is filmed in the morning time, which could be the director trying to convey hope or new life. This is heavily ironic as it is juxtaposed to the theme of death that the audience assumes through the title. Living beings, humans and dogs alike, are shown in his opening scene, which further conveys the theme of life which juxtaposes the character of death.    As the scene progresses, we see death, ...

Narrative is created to appeal and entice an audience and to maintain their interest. From the start of The Heist, the audience is already enticed by the short due to several narrative techniques and codes. At the start of the short when the 2 guys are pitching their idea, the film seems to be of a normal structure and chronological code, as they are stating what they want to do where they want to do it. It is when they begin telling the man how they want to do it when the film switches to an anachronic structure, as the viewer sees the different back-stories of every character, each weirder and more detailed than the last. Since the genre of this short is comedy, it is significant that it doesn’t strictly follow Todorov’s narrative theory, as this be seen as comedic. There is an equilibrium, yet it is becomes more disrupted as the film progresses. At the end of the film, the equilibrium is at it’s most disrupted, due to the paradoxical image presented. The equilibrium is not rein...

Mr. L's Limbo is a short film made by an AS Moving Image Arts student, which follows a man dealing with the judicial and mental consequences of drink driving. From a vague view of the film, its a psychological horror  with dark and gritty elements permeating through the 3 minutes. The title sequence already begins to strike fear into the viewer through the aural effect of the heartbeat effect and the eerie coin spinning in the void.   As the film begins, the director continues to inject anxiousness into the viewer. It begins with an over the shoulder shot of a man, looking across at another man, standing awkwardly in front of him. the claustrophobic, uneasy room makes the viewer feel uncomfortable, with the visual effect of not being able to see their faces or know what the setting is  being significant, as one of the great human fears is the fear of the unknown. It then cuts to a medium side-on shot of the two, sitting down. The extreme lighting creates odd sha...

In Greek mythology, Charon is the ferryman of Hades who carries souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. A coin to pay Charon for passage, usually an obolus or danake, was sometimes placed in or on the mouth of a dead person. Some authors say that those who could not pay the fee, or those whose bodies were left unburied, had to wander the shores for one hundred years. Knowing this info, it became easier for us to create our own interpretation of the character. we wanted him to be monotone and slightly emotionless, yet we wanted o create a character arc in which he became emotionally attached to Kevin. Though our interpretation will be modern, some of these original interpretations were useful in picking up the mood of the mythical character:

For our Media Studies project, we took a few weeks to come up with a genreal idea for a film. It depicts the ferry man, a mythical being who transports the dead from the life to afterlife. However our depiction twists this, as it portrays him as a normal guy who delivers souls for his dayjob.  Now granted, this idea is not ultimately perfected, as there is not a full plot.  However, I got tasked with writing the initial screenplay for the film, trying to outline the different shots we would use to help shape the idea better in our heads. This is also not the first idea we had. We wanted to create a film around a character that was mute. This brought up many ideas as to how the character would perceive and communicate with the world around him. The character was going to use sign language to communicate and the story was centred around his school life. We went through many different interpretations of this idea, such as a love story and comedy but we ended up going wit...