Secret Voices Of Hollywood

Anyone who knows me well is all too aware of how much I love musicals. So when I saw a documentary about musicals on iPlayer, I couldn’t resist… ‘Secret Voices of Hollywood’ talked about my favourite musicals, ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ and ‘The Sound of Music’, and my favourite actresses, Julie Andrews and Audrey Hepburn. I found it interesting, so I thought, why not blog about it?

‘Secret Voices of Hollywood’ revealed one of Hollywood’s best kept secrets: the voices behind the songs. Many major musicals used ghost singers to sing the songs the actors couldn’t manage, without them ever being credited. For example, Christopher Plummer (The Sound Of Music), by his own admission, ‘didn’t even sing in the shower’. He was ghosted by Bill Lee, one of the more well-known ghost singers.
This is a link to Christopher Plummer’s own recording of Edelweiss: http://vimeo.com/73063831.

The Sound of Music is sometimes referred to as the film that saved 20th Century Fox. I don’t know anyone of my generation who likes it, but it was a big success when it was first released in 1965, winning five Academy Awards. However, the famous seven Von Trapp children were actually the eleven Von Trapp children; the seven seen on screen and four who sang the songs. Even the mother superior, played by Peggy Wood, was ghosted by Margery McKay. Julie Andrews, however, sang all her own songs, having been on Broadway for many years of her career.

Julie Andrews is undoubtedly my favourite actress ever. She is, to quote Mary Poppins, ‘practically perfect in every way’.

Marni Nixon also appeared in The Sound of Music as Sister Sophia. This was the first time she was in front of the camera. Before that, she was a ghost singer in many famous musicals, such as West Side Story, My Fair Lady and The King and I. The songs in My Fair Lady were performed by Marni Nixon (dubbing Audrey Hepburn), who has only recently received recognition for her work.

Often, ghost singers were used to get the musical to the highest possible quality. Most of the actors could sing, but the directors usually didn’t think they were quite good enough. Robert Wise always had Marni Nixon on hand, just in case.

Ironically, Singin’ in the Rain is about ghost singers and the use of new technology in the 40s and 50s… Debbie Reynolds played a ghost singer, but in one song, her young teenage voice couldn’t quite hit the notes, so she too had a ghost singer, who was never credited.

About Time (Richard Curtis, 2013)

Last weekend I got bullied into going to see ‘About Time’ at the cinema with my friend. He’s a hopeless romantic, this film was right up his street. However, romantic comedies are not the type of film I usually go for; I don’t see the point in spending two hours of your life watching a painfully predictable film, and paying seven pounds for the priviledge.

Having said that, ‘About Time’ was sweet, and not overly cringe-y. It was directed by Richard Curtis, and starred Bill Nighy, both of whom are well known for their work in romantic comedies. One criticism is that it also starred Rachel McAdams… She’s a brilliant actress, but she was in a very similar film, The Time Traveller’s Wife, not so long ago. Most of her roles portray her in a very similar way every time. It would be good to see her take a different role for once.

I also feel there should be a mention for some of the main characters, who had wonderfully ginger hair…

It was a typically sweet Richard Curtis film, but that’s exactly what people were expecting… A shy but attractive man, a quirky and beautiful girl, a few complications and a life lesson, all wrapped up with a happy ending.

Despite it’s predictability, however, it was a nice enough film. It left everyone with a happy feeling, and their use of music added to the feel-good mood. While I don’t think it’s going to be a classic, highly regarded film, it’s still a cute film for a quiet evening in.

Preliminary Exercise – Script

This is the finished script for our group’s preliminary exercise project.
We wanted roughly five lines of dialogue, to demonstrate all the editing techniques sufficiently. We have to demonstrate match on action, the 180 degree rule, and shot/reverse shot.
To make it more interesting, we were set the task of including the word ‘bandit’.

Here is our final script:

Continuity Editing Techniques – Match On Action, 180° Rule, Shot / Reverse Shot

During our preliminary exercise we must be able to demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule. This post is an explanation of each of those techniques.

 

 

The 180-degree rule is used to ensure the shots make sense…

The green arc is the only place the camera can be in. It can be in any position within the 180 degrees, but when it enters the red section, the footage would appear to be backwards. The shots done within the green arc would have the man in orange on the left and the man in blue on the left. If the camera crossed over to the other side of the room, the scene would appear to be backwards. In a shot of a single person (if shot/reverse shot was used), it would seem as though both characters were facing the same way. The 180 degree rule makes the editing seamless and helps with continuity.

Match on action is the filming of one action in two shots. For example, opening a door; if the camera was behind a character opening a door, and the next shot showed him walking through it from the front, the positioning of the door would have to be perfect so the shot didn’t ‘jump’. To help explain, I’ve enlisted the help of some ‘Friends’…

Shot / reverse shot is best described using two people. This technique is often used for long conversations between a pair. Usually, the person talking is the one in the shot, but this can also be used for reaction shots.

Person A is shown in the shot. This then skips to show person B in the conversation as they deliver their line. Then back to person A, then person B, then person A, and so on.

Grand Theft Auto V

Everyone knows Grand Theft Auto. Grand Theft Auto 5, despite its title, is actually the tenth version of GTA, and the most expensive; it cost Rockstar Games around $260 million to make, which is over double the cost of GTA 4. The game came out on September 17th, only five days ago… already it’s breaking records for selling so fast and making so much money in its opening week.

But along with the ‘open-world environment like no other’, better graphics, and more realistic missions, comes controversy.

GTA games have always been criticised by feminist and activist groups for their incredibly degrading, sexist and misogynistic content; but now, along with vile mistreatment of women, Rockstar Games have introduced a torture scene, which has sparked debate both inside and outside of the gaming world. What makes this worse is that this torture scene is not optional. The only way to complete the game is to torture a helpless, unarmed man. After having spent around £40 on a game, very few people would refuse to do this just because of the ethical issues it raises.

In GTA’s most shocking scene yet, the player must actively engage in torture. To start the scene, we find out the victim is actually innocent. However, the message ‘Do your patriotic duty’ comes up on the screen, and the player is forced to either participate or forfeit the entire game. A workbench is shown covered in equipment which is then used to torture an innocent man. This ranges from pulling out the victim’s teeth, to carrying out the controversial ‘water boarding’ torture technique by pouring a flammable liquid over a victim tied to a chair. The player must then give the victim electric shocks and smash his kneecap with a wrench. All the while, the man is begging for mercy, and saying he’ll tell them what they want to know. He is ignored.

Despite the game’s 18 certificate, it has almost become accepted within society that children as young as five can be playing these games, as long as they can get their hands on them. Even if parents are firm enough to insist that their children do not play these games while under the age of eighteen, there’s still a high chance that they’ll see these scenes while friends or older brothers or sisters are playing them. Children should not have to see scenes of torture, especially in the format of ‘a game’; this gives the impression it’s fun and acceptable. Young children do copy the things they see, and while GTA has an age restriction, the torture is both obscene and totally unnecessary.

Some people are arguing that this scene is ‘glamourising torture’. The counter-argument is that this would mean GTA also glamourises murder, drugs, sexism, prostitution, violence and thieving. The response to this is, ‘Well, perhaps it does’.

Others are saying that although they know torture and sexism is wrong, they are not put off by it. If anything, they say, it is expected. It is typical of Rockstar Games to have such graphic content. GTA 3 made having sex with prostitutes (and then killing them) into an actual gameplay strategy, while Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas came under fire for an (edited-out) sex scene. But since society now ‘expects’ violence and sexism, it seems people have become desensitised to it.

I can appreciate that the game is well made. I can appreciate that the graphics are so good they’re practically life-like. I can appreciate the excitement of breaking the rules in virtual world where no real people are harmed and there are no consequences. But Rockstar Games have possibly gone a step too far with this particular mission. At the very least, they should have included the choice to opt-out, as this scene is incredibly disturbing and uncomfortable to watch, let alone play…

British Social Realism – Educating Yorkshire

Educating Yorkshire is a British fly-on-the-wall documentary TV programme, commissioned by Channel 4 after the success of Educating Essex two years before. Educating Essex, which followed the lives of typical Essex school pupils, received a BAFTA Award in 2011. Educating Yorkshire, which uses a similar format, captures the everyday lives of both staff and students at Thornhill Community Academy, in Dewsbury, Yorkshire.

Headteacher, Jonny Mitchell, allowed the camera crew into his school for six months, saying “I was proud of what we’d achieved and felt we had a story to tell”. The school is made up of more or less exactly half white-British and half British-Asian students, set in a particularly diverse part of Yorkshire.

The programme description for Educating Yorkshire on 4oD says: ‘Told with warmth and humour, Educating Yorkshire explores the universally recognisable themes of teenage life and those all-important pupil-teacher relationships that lie at the heart of everyone’s formative years’. The programme follows the ups, downs, and general drama and fun of the lives of ordinary teenagers.

Despite its documentary format, the pupils of Thornhill provide natural entertainment, giving the programme a humorous feel. One of the most talked-about clips shows a girl called Bailey showing off to her classmates that she’s shaved off her eyebrows…

Educating Yorkshire is broadcast on a Thursday at 9pm, aimed towards secondary school pupils; this was well received, with over 4 million viewers, and a good reception on social media websites, becoming the most tweeted about show of the day on the date it was first shown, September 5th.

This Is England (Shane Meadows, 2007)

This Is England (Shane Meadows, 2007) shows England from a scarily realistic point of view. As the tagline suggests, this film is going to ‘stand out from the crowd’. It does not disappoint.

This is a very controversial film – it deals with issues such as racism and violence, along with smoking, drinking, drugs and foul language. It is centred mainly around Shaun, a young boy of twelve, who gets in with a gang of twenty-year-old skinheads.

Shaun gets into a fight at school after a boy makes a cruel comment about his father, who died in the Falkland’s war. On his way home, he walks through an alleyway, where Woody and his friends are sat drinking and smoking. Seemingly without any apprehension, Shaun tells them about his rough day, and Woody takes pity on him. The next day, Gadget, another boy from the gang, turns up at his house and invites him to go hunting. Shaun declares his day spent with the gang as ‘the best day of [his] life’, and the audience can sense a strong friendship formed between them all. However, this harmony is quickly unbalanced with the arrival of Combo, an old friend of Woody’s who has just got out of prison. He makes a negative comment about Milky, a member of the gang who has Jamaican origins, and this introduces the main themes of the film: racism, xenophobia, and discrimination.

Combo convinces Shaun to ‘join the fight’, and tells him that the Falkland war was pointless. He tells him that unless he makes a stand against immigration, his father would have died for nothing. The film then follows Shaun as he is forced to grow up quickly; lots of the gangs bad habits rub off on him quickly, such as smoking, drinking, excessive swearing… but the violence is something no child of thirteen should ever have to see.

The film is shot to seem like a documentary, with lots of long camera shots encompassing a whole conversation. Most shots are filmed at eye level, and are hand held to make the shots seem more realistic. There are several montages during the film, which are used to establish the setting and to contextualise. The film begins with a montage of iconic news clips from the time, set to a song from the 1980s. This establishes the time period and the theme of the film; for example, the lack of jobs and the time of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister. The youth of the 1980s is a recurring theme throughout the film, and most adults clearly remember and can relate to that time. The editing was also cleverly done to add an 80s feel, with slightly grainy camerawork, to recreate the retrospective camera techniques typical of the 1980s. The mise-en-scene, such as music, costumes, hair and dialogue, were also all done a certain way to help the audience connect with the 80s theme – this included a lot of bad perms and blue jeans!

Despite the low budget Shane Meadows had to create it, this is a very successful and well-made film. The serious themes of the film are cleverly put across, contrasting the skinheads’ friendliness towards Shaun with their violence towards Milky, to both shock the audience and to make them think.

A Tale Of Two Sisters (Kim, Jee-Woon, 2003)

Recently in class we have been studying a short clip from ‘A Tale of Two Sisters’ (Kim, Jee-Woon, 2003), looking at the camerawork and sound design.

The scene in this particular clip starts at 06:00.

Camerawork:

• The scene starts with an establishing shot; this is a favourite with directors, as it helps to contextualise and set the scene. This shot shows us who and what is in the scene, as well as where it is taking place. It focuses on a woman sat at a dining table as a man leaves the room. The shot is quite long, focusing on the stillness of the room, and as the man leaves the room, highlighting the woman’s loneliness and consequent fear.
• The next shot is a mid-shot, with the camera positioned just under the table, which then obscures the half the shot. This means the main focus is the woman sat at the table, and it seems to imply that something is watching her.
• She slowly turns her head to look at the sink. The director then uses an over-the-shoulder shot, so the audience can see what the woman is seeing, and also her reaction to it. It puts the focus on the sink, while still showing the actions of the woman. Her body language is showing how scared she is, so the director focuses on her to make the audience feel scared too. The audience will instinctively interpret her behaviour as fear and thus feel fear themselves.
• Another mid-shot focuses on the woman’s face; the actress successfully puts across a look of uncertainty, unease and fear, and the shot of her facial expression so clearly showing her emotions helps the audience to empathise with her. The camera moves with her during this shot. The director wanted to use as few different shots as possible as a lot of editing can make a film feel less ‘real’.
• There is then another establishing shot of the sink, putting the focus on the possible thing inside the cupboard. The actress moves into the shot to save them from another edit. This is followed by a reaction shot, used again to help the audience empathise.
• The next shot is filmed presumably as a point of view shot, from the point of view of the monster under the sink. This is another long shot, which creates questions about what could be under the sink, while also focusing once again on the woman’s emotions. As the woman moves out of the shot, a girl can be seen in the background for a short amount of time.
• This is followed by yet another reaction shot. In the same shot, the camera then zooms into the woman’s face, again highlighting her fear.
• This shot is immediately followed by another establishing shot, which shows an empty room. The girl who was sat at the table has now gone. Establishing shots are useful when used at regular intervals within a film as it contextualises the scene for the audience (for example, showing the audience that the girl is no longer there).
• After another quick establishing shot of the woman crouching on the floor, and another reaction shot, the camera focuses on the floor. This is another establishing shot, as it is showing a hair clip which was not there before.
• The next shot is a reaction shot, where the camera moves down to focus on the floor and the hair clip. The woman slowly goes to pick it up… she gets it, and just as the audience begin to relax, a hand reaches out and grabs her wrist. The hand is shown for less than a second.
• She screams, and there are lots of quick edits, showing her reaction and her dropping the hair clip on the floor. These quick edits show the woman’s panic. A and-held camera shot then shows her moving away from the sink. As she scrambles away, the camera also moves back. She then turns round and sees the girl who was sat at the dinner table earlier on. The camera zooms in to just her eyes in a close-up shot, which then fades into the next scene.

Sound Design:

• The whole scene is unnaturally quiet; this hightens sounds such as jagged breathing and the creak of the cupboard door. The silence means a loud noise is more likely to make the audience jump and it will stand out much more.
• The sound of her exaggerated panicked breathing makes the audience empathise with her, evoking feelings of fear.
• As the woman turns to look at the dining table, the sound of a child crying can be heard. This is used to elicit natural feelings within the audience; humans are tuned to react to the sound of a child in distress.
• This is followed by a loud, unnatural sound, like white noise. This is an uncomfortable sound which gets louder and louder until it stops suddenly. This leaves the audience with the feeling of discomfort.
• The following shots are mainly silent, other than the woman’s breathing. This is all leading up to the sudden ‘jump’, when a hand reaches out and grabs the woman with a quick, sharp noise. The loud, sudden noise coming out of the silence makes the audience jump.
• She screams, which is another trick to make the audience empathise with her; whenever they can sense her fear, they feel it too.
• As she looks up at the ghost girl, the sound of thunder can be heard. Many authors and directors use the weather as a way of foreshadowing something bad; Thomas Hardy, for example, uses pathetic fallacy to imply something bad, and most horror films are set in the dark, or in a thunderstorm.

Both diegetic and non-diegetic sound is used in the scene. Diegetic sound is sound which purports to come from the world of the film, such as the woman’s heavy breathing and the sound of the cupboard. Non-diegetic sound is sound added in post-production to have an effect on the audience, like the sound heard when the hand grabs the woman’s wrist, and the white noise.

About the AS Media Studies course

This year I will be doing AS media studies. It is a one year course which is also 50% of the A2 grade. It is assessed by both coursework (a portfolio and a blog) and an exam in May, both of which are worth 50% of the overall AS grade.

The first 50% of the grade is the coursework. There are 100 marks available for the coursework portfolio, which is separated into three sections:

1) Research and Planning (20 marks) Research and planning includes a continuity exercise which involves filming and editing a short clip of someone opening a door, crossing a room, and sitting across from another character, and the conversation they have. This is should show the ability to use things such as match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

2) Main Exercise (60 marks) The main exercise is the making of the titles and opening of a fiction film. It should last around two minutes. This will all be scripted, filmed and edited by us.

3) Evaluation (20 marks) The evaluation includes creatively answering the following questions:

• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
• How does your media product represent particular social groups?
• What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
• Who would be the audience for your media product?
• How did you attract/address your audience?
• What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
• Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

This will all be completed on the blog.

The other 50% of the AS grade is a two hour exam, which takes place at the end of the year in May. The two hours includes 30 minutes for viewing and making notes on a short clip.

Section A: Textual Analysis and Representation (50 marks) (Analyse and respond to a film extract from a contemporary one-off drama or series or serial drama programme showing on British television.)  The question is currently worded “Discuss the ways in which the extract constructs the representation of [something] using the following: Camera shots, angles, movement and composition, editing, sound and mise-en-Scène”.

Section B: Institutions and Audiences (50 marks)  This question will be based on a case study which we have studied in class. (Answer one compulsory question based upon a case study undertaken in class about the film industry.) It will be testing our ability to demonstrate understanding of contemporary institutional processes of production, distribution, marketing and exchange/exhibition at a local, national or international level as well as British audiences’ reception and consumption.

First post!

Hi, my name is Lauren and this is my AS media blog. I have just started media studies at A level, along with English, philosophy and ethics, and German.

Enjoy!