Film Symbols

A high gate – this means that someone wants to keep someone out of keep someone in – for example a prison, a Nazi concentration camp etc.

A telephone off the hook – danger, someone has either dropped it in shock, or someone has left it off the hook so no-one interrupts.

The sound of dogs barking – gives uneasiness to the scene, something bad is about to happen or is.

A calm lake – peace quiet serenity romance all are things you would associate with a calm lake, but in a thriller it could mean that this calm will be broken and the audience is left in tension or that they aren’t expecting anything so it is interrupted and comes as a shock

Cars beeping – in the city, something’s happened, or just traffic.

Sirens from emergency vehicles – Accident, emergency, police, ambulance, fire

A hooded figure – death awaits

Running footsteps – being followed, traced - something’s happened, calling for help.

Lightning – power failure, a sound to cover up other sounds (eg The Shawshank redemption – he smashes at the pipe every time he hears the thunder from the lightning

A creaking door – someone’s trying to creep in or out of somewhere.

Tapping on glass – rain, trying to scare someone or attract their attention without attracting the attention of others

Shuffling paper – Getting irritated or in a rush.

A smoking fire – out of control

A sweating man – he could be sweating because he has been exercising, could have been running from someone therefore being the victim or criminal, or running after someone again criminal or good guy.

Heavy Breathing – being watched, followed by someone/something, out of breath from exercise, unfit

A door slamming – Someones angry, trying to keep someone out, panic, confusion

A clock – The clock could represent time going by slowly or quickly, the ticking of the clock could become loud and unbearable

A ring taken off a finger – Someone is breaking up with someone, engagement off

A train speeding through the night – trying to get away

A vulture – we suspect that this is going to attack our protagonist

A glass of wine with lipstick on the rim – A romantic evening or criminal evidence

A bird in flight – has been suddenly shocked into doing so. Calm, happy, freedom.

A bird in a cage – The bird although happy, is restrained.

A candle – A romantic scene. Old days when electricity was not about. Power cuts.

An axe – death (American psycho)

A cross – church, religion, belief, holy ground, safe ground.

A bat – baseball, American sports. Or animal – live in the dark, caves.

A key – breaking off in car, panic, rushing , trying to get away.

Broken glass – Somewhere has been attacked

Intro to video camera

16.9.08

During this lesson we learnt about all the features of the Sony PD170 video camera.

In this lesson, Matt and Vicky showed us what each of the symbols on the screen meant - for example, the battery in the top left hand corner/the time code in the top right hand corner/in the bottom left hand corner is the exposure and shutter speed and on the bottom right hand corner is the tape format. I found this lesson very interesting and it gave me a good insight into what I was going to be doing. I have never before this used these cameras and I was very excited after the lesson to do so. As well as looking at the videocamera we looked at tripods. We were shown how to put it all together and how to move the camera when it was attached. We panned, zoomed and focused, tilted and canted the camera taking test shots around the room to practice using the camera.

Photoshop lesson 1

16.9.08

I have been using photoshop for around 6 years. I taught myself how to use photoshop over the years and so this lesson was quite simple for me. We had to make horror film postersin which I took inspiration from some of my favourite films (Scarface, The Shawshank Redemption). Using the Marquee tool to highlight half of the white background, I then used the paintbucket to fill this box in black. Then using threshold on my picture, I blended the picture into both colours.

Then I decided that this would advertise a prison escape type film so I named it 'Freedom Town' which is what they called the refugee camp in 'Scarface'. By using red for the text colour I wanted to insinuate that the film would be violent.

The black and white contrast to eachother and to the red colour of the text. The contrast of black and white is to show that he is escaping. The black shows the dark place he had been and the white is meant to show the better place which he was going to after escaping.

Practical lesson with Matt, Vicky + Bex

In this task we worked with digital still cameras. I asked some friends to pose for me and took a 'long shot', a 'mid-shot' and a 'close-up' of them. I asked them to be very ambiguous in their actions so that when I use these pictures for my film poster, the audience wonder what the person in the image's intent is.

Why I chose media...

Media is one of the subjects that made sense to me. I have always been very interested in camerawork and discovering how films are made. The world of media has always been a very exciting place for me. I am interested in publishing, so photoshop has also been an area that i've explored. I have been using photoshop since i was 11 years old. I have found that I am able to understand and analyse advertisements and films well and this is a very big part of media so i decided also to play to my strengths.