Similar texts - Sub task 2 - Magazine Review - Men Who Stare At Goats

This magazine review is from Empire magazine and is reviewing the 2009 film 'Men Who Stare At Goats'. It uses one whole A4 page  for an image from the film. In the right hand corner is some text in red,  The use of red is throughout the double page spread including a red border at the top, used to grab the readers attention. The red lines and text are used through the text and effectively draw attention to key pieces of information.  
The large main image of the two male protagonists show their importance as main characters in the film. Their expressions and stances connate that they are confused, dejected and defeated.  
The main title is in a simple, bold font with a further banner above 'In Cinemas' showing that that this is a current film in cinemas now, while making use of the red as a background. 

Similar texts - Sub task 2 - Magazine Review - The Lady in the Water

The magazine article I have chosen to analyse is a review of the film 'The Lady in the Water' which is a 2006 fantasy film, written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

This review uses one large still image from the film as well as one smaller adjacent image. These images don't overlap however instead of having a border the main image bleeds to the edges of the page. The text again is of the same font throughout the article except for the title. As a result the title stands out from the text. This article has highlighted a quote from the text by changing its colour and font size. In addition small amounts of text have been added to the top hand right corner of the images to explain what they are showing.

There is a conventional box in the bottom left hand corner, with an overview of the main information the readers need to know about the film, including who it stars, certificate and director. It also uses the star rating system at the end of the text, summing up the overall rating. 

Similar texts - Sub task 2 - Magazine Review - Wings of Desire

In Empire’s film review by Ian Freer, “Wings of Desire” (March, 2010) there are three main features – colour scheme, layout and photography. Over fifty percent of the article space is filled by a striking, black-and-white movie still with a more minor image to the lower right of the page, making review far more attractive and readable while making the subject of the article instantly identifiable for the audience. The clean, masculine layout of boxes and straight lines signifies the straightforward, earnest and informative nature of the article. Also, while being a common feature of film reviews, this type of wide large shot with text beneath it looks similar to the view of the cinema-goer with the big screen and the audience beneath it, connoting greatness and the “silver-screen”.

The bold grey, white and black colour scheme is indicative of the film noir/classic film genre, referencing the film’s themes of bleakness, hope versus corruption, oppression and the focus on the limitations of perspective. The stylised and visually striking look of the colour design also signifies the direct, confident and informed nature of the writer’s review. The inclusion of the bright blue subtly modernises the look of the page, showing it is a reviewers modern take on a classic film and it is a retrospective tribute, and co-ordinates with the colour of in the DVD cover thumbnail. The strong visual style reflects and emulates that of the film, with a stark, noir-esque feel and a pared-down, retro look, which again informs the audience about the type of film being reviewed.

This is reinforced with the main image choice being a woman with wings sitting on a vintage car with an urban cityscape as her backdrop, allowing the audience to quickly identify the film’s era, location and perhaps even certain themes within it. The technique of imitating the aesthetics of the film within the article aligns the publication with the director of the film in a gesture of tribute and admiration to the auteur.

The choice of typefaces used are a simple combination of three or four basic fonts, a bold, upper-case ‘arial’ for the headline, a serif/italic font for the subhead (connoting the publication’s opinion/comment on the film) and a standard serif typeface for the main body of text, giving the article a sense of sincerity and directness. The white used on the headline and subhead is mainly to allow them to stand out boldly against the dark background of the image, but could connote the supernatural theme of angels within the film. The bold blue ‘arial’ font of the first line grabs the attention of the reader and makes an instant impact and the circular arrow symbol – the only spot of yellow on the entire page aside from the pull quote – draws the eye to this very point where the review begins. Similarly, powerful, emotive language is lifted from the text for the pull quote, where words such as “life” “love” and “filmmaking” are showcased in bright yellow and blue to entice readers. Empire clearly consider it important to use these techniques as extra nudges to encourage the audience to engage with the text.

The inclusion of the DVD thumbnail demonstrates instantly that the subject of the article is a product, and the star-ratings at the bottom of the page allow for a quick-reference appraisal of the DVD (the film and its extras respectively). The black caption beneath the main shot includes a brief fact or piece of information about the photos and their position, a common convention in magazine articles. Overall this review seems to follow a basic, minimalist layout and mimic the visual style of the film being reviewed, use image as a main feature as a nod to cinema and adopt a masculine look to connote seriousness and style, perhaps targeting a male-dominated audience.

By Emily Atkinson

Similar texts - Sub task 1 - Poster - Descent

This film poster is from the short film ‘Descent’ which is an American thriller released in 2007 and directed by Talia Lugacy.
The film poster has very simple layout with the the main image of a head and shoulders close-up of the female proganist with a vacant and dead look on her face which conotes apathy.
It has an unconvention feature of having the image upside down which connates the idea of things being unnatural and different. The body and head don’t seem to match each other, which adds to this effect. The symetrical and central placement of the image makes it clear that she is the main character and the plot will centre around her and her experiences. The close up aspect on her face puts across that her feelings are important and central to the storyline. This is also re-confirmed by having the actresses name (Rosario Dawson) in reasonbly large font above the title.

The white typewriter style font connotes professionalism and the fuzzy edges also signal that something is wrong and not quite right. The text is quite old fashioned (as it is a typewriter font ) and appears scary and creepy.
The grey, textured background show that she is lying on some kind of stone or uncomforble which suggests that she is in an uncomfortable situation. The grey colour connates bleakness and a melancholy situation. The black from the bottom of the poster connotes death, fear and darkness and the way the black merges into her dark hair suggests that the darkness is permeating into her character and perhaps life. This suggests that the film may contain some dark themes such as the subject of death and depression. When looking at a short synopsis of the film it is not surprising to discover that the film has themes of depression, rape, addiction and sociopathy. 

The very feminine face (curly hair and full rosy lips which signifys her femininaty and sensuality) makes the audience feel sure that it is a female but the boyish torso may make the viewer question this assumption. The head and body do not seem to match somehow.
The bare shoulders and chest shows a vulnerability and the fact that she is lying down on the floor also shows she may be in some trouble.

I choose to analyse this poster because of the close up image which I am considering for my own film poster and to see what effect this gives. I also chose this particlar poster because it is for a quite obscure short film  and the main background colours of black and white. The target audience for this would be males and females aged 18 - 35 with an interest in dark thriller films. It is also a short film which means it has more of a niche audience as it was only shown at film festivals and not released in cinemas to the general public.

The certificate of the film is an 18 which also shows that the target audience would have to be a minimum of this age to watch it because of the content. The thriller genre varys greatly from family all the eway up to very scary and adult , it it fair to say that the certicate of this film reflects the adult nature.
Overall this is a suceesful and effective film poster because it uses the layout, colour, lighting, image and font to appropriately reflect the mood and tone of the film and to attract the intented target audience.

Similar texts - Sub task 1 - Poster - La Dame de Shanghai (The Lady from Shanghai)

This film poster is from the film ‘La Dame de Shanghai’ also known as ‘The Lady from Shanghai’ which is an American film-noir thriller released in 1947 and directed by Orson Welles. I choose to analyse the French version of the film poster because I found it more anesthetically pleasing and I felt that it embodies the spirit of film noir well.

The main layout of the poster is quite different to the current set up of a conventional modern day thriller. This is due to the overlapping of different images, which almost tells a story in its own right, introduces the characters and lets the audience begin to draw their own conclusions about what they think the story is about.
The extreme close up on the female lead shows her expression and emotion which leads the audience to believe that her emotions are of importance. The shadow on one side of her face signifies that she may have a darker side to her nature. This image dominates the whole screen showing her importance as a character and that conveying that she is the main role.

The red sky in the background of the poster has connotations of danger and excitement. 
This contrasts to the dark sea which conveys mystery and volatile passions. The dark clouds in the sky emphasize this and connote that there is danger and trouble on the horizon, while the image of a small boat signifies a voyage/journey/adventure of some kind. 

The cartoon style of images with the lead female and male protaganist in a clinche pose on the front show their relationship as the hero and heroine. This shows that this film will have very defined roles, such as the hero, villian and heroine, perhaps similar to a melodrama. 
The cartoon style is synonamous with the film noir posters from this time period. The cartoon effect gives a dramatic and intense effect and connates that the storyline will be dramatic and interesting. The bright, bold and clashing colours are effective in making the poster very eyecatching and exciting.The technology at the time was also limited and they could only have black and white pictures and films. This meant that to have a colourful poster was to have a cartoon poster which was drawn.


Main list of conventions from this poster:


Bold cartoon style writing
Bricolage effect of characters images
Bright colours
Dark detective characters
Femme fatale character with classic 40s make up

Similar texts - Sub task 1 - Poster - Hot Fuzz

This film poster is from the film ‘Hot Fuzz’ which was released in 2007 and directed by

The main background colour is black which connotes darkness and drama. The bright light shining on the two protagonists shows that they are under the spotlight and perhaps under some kind of pressure. The way half of their faces are in darkness and other half in such a bright light shows conflict and two sides within their personalities and maybe their situations.  The refection of the typical London scene in the sunglasses gives the film a context and shows where it is based.

The surly faces with steely expressions shows a resolute and determined attitude. The toothpicks in their mouths, connotes a need for a hard attitude and also shows their masculinity.  It is also copying the style in a humorous way to exaggerate the stereotype of ‘hard men’.

The font for the film title is bold and blocky and connotes masculinity. The darkness at the corners also mirrors the dark and light contrast on their faces. The reason I choose this poster to analyse was because the the high key lighting and close up on their faces. The posters connotations of masculinity makes it appeal more to a male audience, however the tongue in cheek attitude can be appreciated by all.

Similar texts - Sub task 1 - Poster - Sin City

Sin City is an American crime thriller neo-noir film, based on the neo-noir comics written by Frank Miller. It was directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez and released in 2005. I am going to analyse a clip from the film to look at other similar texts and thought it would be interesting to analyse the poster as well.

The font is very bold and looks like it came from a comic, this is another signal that the film is based on a comic. The use of the bright red in the font shows the importance of the title. The bright red colour connotes blood, anger and danger. The white text also in a comic book like font show up clearly against the back backdrop. The black background of the poster connotes death, fear and darkness.

The stance the main male protagonist holds is one of masculinity and power.

The mid action stances of all the other characters show the action, movement and violence within the film.

Similar texts - Main Task - The Good German

Textual Analysis of 'The Good German'

Screen shots of:

Actors & costume

Props/codes

Subterranean sets

Lighting/shadow

The Good German, a visually compelling neo-noir by director Martin Soderberghe, has a wealth of features to analyse and take inspiration from in the planning of our own noir film. George Clooney and Cate Blanchett, both mature actors in their late 30s or 40s, with theatrical, strong and attractive faces, are cast as the classic figures of male protagonist and femme fatale. Actors around this age appear frequently as the main characters in film noir to create a certain sense of jaded cynicism and darkness which would perhaps be less achievable with younger actors lacking in conviction. Set in post-war Berlin, a city devastated by bombings, the characters’ costumes are appropriate for the era, with Clooney’s character Jake dressed in a captain’s uniform throughout most of the film and Cate Blanchett’s Lena in longer 40s dresses or austere skirts with jackets. Already the location of the film denotes the dark side of human nature and its capacity for self-destruction by immediately confronting the audience with the consequences of war. While fitting for the decade, both costumes have connotations of repression and confinement, with the uniform and the strong presence of men in long coats and fedora hats symbolising a lost identity and anxious sense of displaced masculinity.

Soderberghe’s use of props offer recognisable, strong visual codes for film noir, and it is becoming more and more apparent to us that a key component in creating meaning in this type of film is to make the audience explicitly aware of its genre, so our audience can use a general knowledge of noir’s themes and moods as a subtext informing their interpretation. In this case, a list of notable codes used includes pistols, low-brimmed hats, cigarettes and dark, old-fashioned cars. In combination with these props, the sets used for filming are archetypically noir-esque, with some examples being cellar bars, underground clubs, underneath bridges and sewer tunnels creating a subterranean world of corruption, immorality and mystery. Lighting in The Good German reinforces these connotations, as the harsh divide of bright white light and deep shadow, often fractured or split through blinds or bars is suggestive of the ongoing internal struggle between the good and the bad, reflecting inner anguish and turmoil, while remaining highly stylised.

An interesting feature of The Good German is Soderberghe’s distinctive cinematography, bearing many of the hallmarks of old film noir and showing an unwillingness to adopt the more modern styles of camerawork seen in most contemporary neo-noirs with their ‘homogenised’ approach to noir. The editing employs vintage scene transition techniques such as screen wipes and slow fades to black, as well as stilted versions of shot/reverse shot whereby the camera only shows the character when he is speaking. While pertaining to the style of old noir and serving as a nod to classic filmmaking, the meaning created in these decisions includes a lack of cohesion in the screen-wipe and shot/reverse shot, suggesting a disjointed sense of time and a difficulty in communication between characters, and a sense of resolve and purpose in the protagonist as seen in old detective pulp fiction and comic books. (<- Image)The film was unusually shot with 32mm lenses and shown in a 1.33:1 ratio, rebuffing the accepted currency of widescreen cinema, as a steadicam glides slowly through car windows and along pavements following the footsteps of the protagonist, or slowly moving upwards with the use of a crane to reveal a broader scene from above. This slow and roving mobility of the camera and thus the audience’s eye creates an uneasy sense of omniscience, paranoia and covert knowledge. Overall the unique visual impression and the conventions Soderberghe has chosen to adopt in The Good German creates a dark underworld of misery and compulsion, and certain elements of this modern noir will be an inspiration to our own film.

Similar texts - Main Task - Guilda

Textual analysis: Gilda

Set design & location

Costumes – sensuality, male weakness, female sexuality/empowerment?

Cinematography & editing

Charles Vidor’s 1946 black and white film Gilda, starring Rita Hayworth, is a glamorous, high-octane film noir set in an Argentinean casino. The film is significant in its genre for the more polished and “Hollywood” aspect it possesses for a noir film, although many of the themes and codes it includes are the same. The opening credits and sweeping score are cinematic and powerful, with “Gilda” appearing across the entirety of the screen in huge letters, precluding the iconic and powerful nature of the starring character and the powerful orchestral music demonstrating the forthcoming dramatic elements of the film. Gilda is recounted as a flashback from an external narrative voice, Johnny Farrell, also the male protagonist in the plot, an implicit feature of noir. The serious, grave voice with which Johnny tells the audience the story lends the film a sense of introspection and melodrama, setting the dark tone for the film while establishing a clear relationship between his character and the audience.

Rita Hayworth, the Hollywood actress playing the starring role as the eponymous Gilda. 

Similar texts - Main Task - Double Indemnity

Double Indemnity is a film noir that I watched in its entirety. It is a 1944 American film noir, directed by Billy Wilder, co-written by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, and produced by Buddy DeSylva and Joseph Sistrom. The script was based on James M. Cain's 1935 novella of the same title which originally appeared as an eight-part serial in Liberty magazine.

The film stars Fred MacMurray as an insurance salesman, Barbara Stanwyck as a provocative housewife (the femme fatale character) who wishes her husband were dead, and Edward G. Robinson as a claims adjuster whose job is to find phony claims. The term double indemnity refers to a clause in certain life insurance policies that doubles the payout in cases when death is caused by accidental means.

Similar texts - Main task - The Third Man

I am going to identify the relevant codes and conventions of the medium by analysing similar texts.
The first media I analysed was the film 'The Third Man' released in 1949 and directed by Carol Reed and starring Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles and Trevor Howard. This film is in the genre of 'Film Noir', which is the genre we want to emulate and I analysed the first five minutes. Throughout the first five minutes there is a male narrative voice-over who takes us through what is happening in each frame and introduces the audience to the male protagonist. This voice-over is a feature that is commonly used in films of this time and genre. Emily and I have come to the decision that we want to use a male voice-over in our film noir so it is important to analyse a film which also has the feature we want to use and see if there are any other features that we want to emulate. 

The establishing shot of the film 'The Third Man' shows Big Ben which is a very iconic british monument in London. The overcast background and clouds connotes darkness and perhaps mystery. The font is in an old style of writing which shows the period of time. This combines with the image of Big Ben to establish the context of the film company. The actual film is not set in London, but it is produced by a British Film company called 'London Film Production'. After this frame it then fades to black, which is a classic effect used in film noirs.

The slow rolling credits build up tension for the action of the film to begin.
The music is classical with strings which are in time to the plucking of the strings on the screen. The strings are being played by unseen hands which connotes mystery and suspense.
It is a slightly contrapuntal sound sound as it is a very happy little tune with quite spooky visuals. 

                                                                                                                                                             
This establishing shot shows Vienna and the dark murky streets. This connotes darkness and spookiness. 
The classic font shows the time period and classical nature of the film.
When the image goes it fades to black, which gives a slow and erie feel.

This is the shot that occurs when  the male voiceover mentions the 'damages' that happen. This image of a dead body in the water shows the dark underbelly to the city and the after effects of the bad goings on.  
The high contrast lighting used makes the dark body in the water more 

This is a shot that happens in the sequence when we are first introduced to the male protagonist 'martin'. His name is said by the voiceover as soon as we see him.
The way he emerges out of the train with his head down, obscuring his face and the smoke from the train also clouds the first sight of him. This has the effect of connoting mystery surrounding his character and intrigue as to what he looks like. 

The use of lighting and camera angle here shows the male protagonist being looked down on. This connotes that he is being watched and someone is further up the stairs looking down on him. The shadow which is significantly larger than him looks daunting and spooky and makes him look small in comparison. The large shadow and high angle suggests to the audience that he is up against something. 
The shadows on the stairs are visually appealing and add another piece of interest to the frame. 

This is shot which is a close up on the face of the male protagonist showing the importance of his emotion. Most of his face is in the light and less than a quarter in shadow connotes another dark side to his personality. The way he takes up the whole of the frame shows that he is the focus and a very important part of the film. 

Mood Boards

We have been expanding on our idea of producing a short film noir. I made two mood boards with images from searching on google. The first mood board had images of femme fatales as Emily and I had been discussing having a female lead who would the femme fatale. The second mood board I made was images of couples and of the interesting way lighting is used. 

An Idea

Emily and I have come up with a great idea! We have decided that we will make our short film in the style of film noir. I really like this as I really like the way black and white films look and I think that our final product will be very original and different. To get more ideas about the codes and conventions of this genre we will watch some film noirs and some short so we an analyse similar media texts. 

Start of A2 Media Studies

We have all just finished our exams and back in college for the start of our A2 courses. So today is the first A2 media lesson and I am excited about the coursework assignment as it includes filming. We can chose from making a short film, a trailer for a new film or a music video for a band. There is also the option to produce the first two pages of a local newspaper. I chose to be in a group with Emily Atkinson and we both decided quickly that we wanted to make a short film because it allows the most room for us to choose something creative and original. It would allow us complete freedom to create whatever we want and use exciting techniques when filming. 

Alongside our film we also have to produce two ancillary texts out of the three options, which for a short film are:

• a poster for the film
• a radio trailer for the film
• a film magazine review page featuring the film

We have already decided that we will make a poster for the film and a film magazine review page featuring the film. This is because we both feel confident on photoshop and think that we could produce a high standard poster and magazine page. 

We spent the rest of this lesson brainstorming possible ideas and watching short films on the BBC short film network for inspiration.