What was effective about the opening of Utopia, Season 2, Episode 6?

2 weeks ago we were set a homework task to write an answer to the following question: What was effective about the opening of Utopia, season 2 episode 6?

We have now been asked to upload it onto our  blog; here was my response:

The makers of Utopia were very brave to start the episode with such a  casual approach to violence towards a child.  Discussing slitting a child's throat is an emotionally disturbing subject and featuring it in the first five minutes was a risk because it could drive away viewers, particularly parents.  However, this opening was also very gripping and could make people at home who were just skimming through the channels stop and watch it. 

Right from the beginning the man is presented as very over powering and dominating.  We see this when a point of view shot from the little boy is used. This shot could also be called a low angle shot as the boy is small so the camera is low down pointing up. This highlights the size difference between the two characters and the power the man could potentially have over him.  Furthermore this foreshadows what happens later in the scene where he threatens to kill the boy. 
 The creators of 'Utopia'could have decided to use the environment as one of the man's motives because people are extremely worried about the environment and we are constantly bombarded by images in the media of ice caps melting and deforestation.  Therefore this scene reflects the time in which it was set (the Zeitgeist). 

my target for my next piece of written work is to comment on how the makers used sound and mise- en- scene.

preliminary task: story boarding

As part of our preliminary task, we have made a storyboard to show the sequence of our shots for our two minute clip. Our group came up with the idea of one friend confiding in another about a worrying situation. we chose this because it should be a tense situation and creating this atmosphere will be good practice for our thriller opening. Our storyboard shows a girl walking towards a door, going threw it and sitting next to her friend where she begins to tell her friend that she is pregnant.  
                                                           
 As you can probably neither myself nor Charlotte are artists 
but we have tries our best to make the story board as 
detailed as possible. Charlotte and I shared the 
(extremely difficult) job of drawing each shot and then 
wrote in the type of shot we will be doing at the side. 

This story board will help us keep track of what shots we have filmed so far and help us not miss any out by accident. it should make filming quicker and easier because we will not have to stop and discuss what we are doing next because we can just look at our storyboard. 

Preliminary Task

Here is my preliminary task video:

Framing a shot: Practice with Stills

Last week myself, Charlotte and Jess were given a camera and unleashed into the school.

Our task was to shoot a series of images of figures, objects and buildings using LS (long shot), CU (close up) using rule of thirds, a long shot and medium shot using leading lines, a low angle shot and an establishing shot. The pictures had to represent a antagonist and a protagonist. 

These were the results;

This was our LS using rule of three.
as you can see it is not perfect, but
as a first attempt we are quite
pleased with this.

This was our LS using leading lines.
We thought this was effective because
it looked quite eerie and as if she was
being watched.




This is the first of our three different view points, showing the antagonist waiting for the protagonist.







 this is our second one which we thought showed that the antagonist was stopping the protagonist from getting away because she could be seen from every angle.

And this showed that she looked away for a moment and the protagonist escaped

This is our establishing shot which looks very bleak and lonely- reflecting how the protagonist feels. We chose this open field because we thought it showed that the protagonist had nowhere to hide.













 

In our media class we have been set a task to create a short video which features a person entering a room, walking across it and talking to a person in the room. This is our first time using the cameras to film something, it will be useful for us to practice using different shots and one of the requirements is that we use shot reverse shots. The scene has to be continuous and flowing, Therefore we will be using match on action, and 180 degree rule.

Shot Reverse Shot

Shot reverse shot is a film technique where
 one character is shown looking at another
 character and then the other character is
 shown looking back at the first character.
Because the characters are shown facing in
opposite directions the audience assumes
that they are looking at each other. It is a
feature of continuity editing.




Match on action

Match on action is when the camera follows
each action or movement of the character 
cutting from one action to the other- giving
a continuation to the scene.






180 degree rule


The 180 degree rule is the rule that states
that two characters or objects in a scene
should have the same right/ left relationship
to each other. the camera must stay on the same
side of the axis (imaginary line) to make these shots
work.

An introduction to my blog

Hello, and welcome to my blog.

My name's Rachael, I'm an AS Media student and this is my first blog so you may have to bare with me a little. Media isn't something I've studied before but it is something that has always interested me. The internet is something that really fascinates me, particularly YouTube and the new craze of "Vlogging"- video blogging. I would really like to learn more about the ways in which the internet captures such a large audience, as it is a huge part of my daily life- being a huge YouTube and Twitter addict myself. I am excited to learn what makes these networks such a captivating part of the media.

Film and television is also something that I am very interested in, and I definitely want a career in one of the two. I love acting with a passion and to become an actress is a dream of mine, I have also taken A Level Drama and theatre studies and I'm hoping that studying this combined with Media Studies will help me figure out exactly what I want to do. I don't actually have any experience with cameras or editing videos but I'm really excited to learn and I hope I succeed.
 
This blog is going to be about my media course in which I will be expected to make an
opening of a thriller, which is expected to create tension/ suspense and intrigue the audience. I am very excited for this assignment as I will get to unleash my creative side and use equipment that I haven't even heard of yet.

Overall, I am definitely looking forward to this course and I hope I can hack it.
   Rachael