Character Profile: Murphy (Sexuality)

For the theory side of the course, we had to pick a character from a TV drama and analyse how their sexuality is represented.

For this task, I have chosen Murphy, a convict from America that is experimented on for a cure to the virus, from Z Nation, a TV show about how a group survive in a post-apocalyptic world filled with zombies.

Murphy is heterosexual man in the series, he is shown as a stereotypical heterosexual  male, he is rude, somewhat lazy, and argumentative.

He has a low, rough voice, which is linked to the dominant ideologies of a heterosexual male.

However, through the storyline of the show, Murphy's character changes slightly. He becomes a father, and the mother of his daughter dies during labour, leaving Murphy to look after his child, Lucy. This goes against the stereotype of a heterosexual single parent typically being a woman.

After this, Murphy becomes a 'softer' character, he becomes more caring and considerate in order to protect his daughter. however he still treats the rest of his group with the typical rudeness, etc. of a heterosexual male. This action causes Murphy to Subvert dominant ideologies of a father as he becomes the one who has to take care of the child and take on the Mothering' role.

Camera Equipment: Tripods and mounts

Hello everyone!


Today I'm going to be writing about different types of Tripods and Camera Mounts. Using knowledge I have gained from being a Media Tech support helper as part of my school enrichment program. The course involves me handling equipment and software and finding new ways to use it for people to learn and use themselves to improve their grade and knowledge of different aspects of media.

Firstly, we have your regular tripods, these are incredibly useful for ensuring your camera is steady during a shot. Tripods also allow smooth panning of the camera in multiple directions. Tripods can be used to hold cameras such as DSLR's or Video cameras, but they can also be fitted with a mount for mobile phones and other devices to film from, allowing for a full range of filming equipment to be used.

Next there are Gorilla Tripods, these are not as useful for standing a camera up or creating a steady pan shot. This is because Gorilla Tripods don't have a pivoting head (at least the ones at school don't), they also have much shorter legs made up of lots of connected pivot joints, meaning the legs are bendable. This allows Gorilla Tripods to be wrapped around things such as tree branches and ledges and hang on whilst holding a camera or mount. These are useful if you want to film a shot from in a forest where, for example, the protagonist(s) is/are walking through the forest and someone or something is stalking them, an example of this type of shot would be in Predator. However in that film, the shot also pans, which is achievable through more expensive and/or advanced equipment.

Moreover, there are Shoulder Mounts. A Shoulder Mount is a 'crossbow shaped' piece of equipment that you can attach a camera or mount to allow for things like a tracking shot from a shoulder height view. These are also useful for a point of view shot as they position the camera to head-height.

Preliminary Task Evaluation

Q1: What have you learned during the making of your preliminary task?
Using cameras and equipment such as DSLRs and tripods was pretty easy to get the hang of, the hardest part of that would have to be learning how to use the filters on the cameras. Furthermore, using things such as Premier Pro and editing techniques was slightly harder to grasp, luckily, important things such as cutting clips, changing their sounds, and adding titles was fairly easy, it was things like sound effects and other visual effects that was hard. In our actual production, there were no visual effects used except a filter on the camera to change the colour. However I’ve seen another group testing different visual effect ideas for their task.

Time management was an easy thing to do, figuring out the order in which to do the tasks was a no-brainer, storyboard and scripting, then filming, then editing and post production. We did learn how much time should be used on each section of the project though, which will be useful for future tasks.

When it comes to working in groups, I find that I don’t necessarily work better alone, but I prefer it because it is easier to handle for me.

Q2: Areas of success
Overall, I think that our project turned out well. Our finished project turned out looking good and the making of it went well (planning, etc.).

Time management went well, we got our video finished and edited on time for the deadline.

As a group, we had some disagreements on Mise-en-scene in our production, about where our characters should sit across a table and similar things.
We found out that instead of moving the camera every time for a Shot/Reverse shot sequence, it was quicker to film all of one person’s lines, then move the camera, then edit the shots into sequence in post-production. This saved time for us and made it easier to edit. We also managed to succeed in using a gunshot sound effect in our film by adding it in during editing, this was done by Kasey and Alex.

Q3: Areas for improvement
In hindsight, not many things went wrong during production, however there were things such as continuity errors that occurred.

In the future, I’d most likely try to film things differently, not using the filter and using more shot types. I would also like to avoid things like taking so much time to create storyboards and scripts.

Q4: How well did you meet the brief?
We met the brief pretty closely. We obeyed the 180^o rule and match on action. We also used shot/reverse shot and had a conversation, etc. and had everything else required for the task.

Q5: Feedback from others
One point made about our task was that the low angle shot used on the detective whilst he fired the gun was well thought through. Another was that the accents Cory and me used during acting were a good touch to the film. A further compliment was given on the use of props for the gunshot and the effectivness of the sound clip we used over it.

We did, however, recieve criticism for things such as a continuity error as the detective gets up to leave the room. We could have re-shot the scene to provide a solution to this. Moreover, we were also criticised for the font we used for the title, with a point saying it wasn't the right style to suit the film. Which could easily be fixed with a change of font in editing.

Q6: Evaluate your contribution to the group’s work
I acted and performed the role of the detective in our production, as well as supplying props. I also wrote the script and drew the main storyboard ( I say main because Alex drew up a second one).

I would like to say that I was flexible with what we had to do, however I am of the certain mindset where a plan should be seen through unless dramatically different things need to happen. However, in the end, I was persuaded to follow the group's other ideas.

I think that I can work as part of a group, but I do prefer to work alone.

Finished Preliminary Task

This is our finished Preliminary Task, "The Detective".
We managed to get it to work properly through processing and uploading, however there were some unknown problems during the processing stage.

Preliminary Task

Our preliminary task is to create a short film. In the film we must have somebody open a door, walk across a room, sit down and have a conversation with someone else, then walk out.
For our task, we decided to make a Noir style Detective scene, where I play the detective and Cory plays my 'contact' for information.
Alex filmed and edited the final piece and I found some audio and backing tracks to use in the film.

Action Sequence Task

This is a "Knife Fight" scene that I made with Isaac and Spencer. Spencer and I acted in the scene and Isaac filmed it from his phone. After, I edited the clips together on my phone in an app called PowerDirector.

The 180 Degree Rule, Match-on-action, Mise-en-scene, and Continuity

Hello again,
Today's post will be about The 180 degree rule, Match-on-action, Mise-en-scene, and Continuity. Enjoy.

Let's start with Continuity, Continuity is where the film makers ensure that all things remain constant throughout the film, for example, a cut on a character's face staying on the same side, or a cup not magically swapping places with a glass. If this happens, it's known as a  continuity error.
Continuity is important in the film and movie industry as if continuity isn't present, it can confuse the audience as they may lose track of what is actually happening.

Moving on, how about Match-on-action? Match-on-action is the term used to describe the way people's actions carry on seamlessly between shots. For example someone throwing a ball could be shown in two shots, the first being the person actually throwing the ball, and the second being the ball landing. These two shots would then be put in order one after the other and would have to look like they happened fluently in order for the action to match, hence the name, 'Match-on-action'.

Now for The 180 degree rule. This is a general rule that film makers follow in order to help people keep track  of a conversation between two people. the rule involves that you pretend there is a circle between the two characters, and that the characters are at opposite ends of said circle. Each character has half of the circle (180 degrees) where the camera can be to film them talking. This helps with the general flow of conversation and being able to track it for the viewer.

Finally Mise-en-scene, this is a term to simply describe what the director wants to be in the shot, props, costumes, even the amount of a person you can see. it's a really fancy term for what it means really maybe it's the French...

Anyhoo, that's all for today, hope you enjoyed reading, bye!

Welcome message

Hi there, welcome to my blog :)

I haven't studied Media before but took it for A level as I am veiwing a career in the film and movie industry as an option for myself.

I'm looking foward to the course as I'm an avid watcher of movies and certain TV shows. So it interests me how things work behind the scenes. Particularly in the CGI and special effects department. As well as animation.

I'm also interested in learning how to edit videos (post production, mainly, but other types too).

I'm looking forward to making my film opening at the end of the year and hope that you enjoy it too!