Other Students A Level Media work (Graded A)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hll-thWi7Y0&NR=1&feature=endscreen

The Killers - Mr Brightside


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTg4BY7E6xo&feature=related


Like a g6 - Far East Movement

Pudding Bowl

Pudding Bowl was another short film we watched. I think that it was one of my favourites due to the humour, light heartedness and innocence of the main character.

Plot
The film in set in the 60's, it involves a family of a mother, son and daughter. The main character is the daughter, a young girl who fantasises that she will one day become one of the beautiful celebrities she idolises. It starts by the young girl cutting out pictures of the women she idolises and glueing them in a scrap book, her elder brother is annoyed that he can't go out and play with his friends and so makes a plan to distract his mother and run out. He does this by pouring glue all over his little sisters hair, her mother sees the glue and is furious, blaming the girl for what has happened. She proceeds to tell her "No more long hair!" and puts a pudding bowl on her head and cuts of her long hair. The girl runs of and finds a pair of black tights and tries to replicate the long dark hair of a woman she admires. After doing so she imagines that she is the woman and sneeks off to find her brother, she then steals his bike and her brother and friends chase after her. You see a clip of a beautiful woman riding a bike being chased by men throwing flowers in admiration, this is what she is imagining.

GenreI'm unsure as to what the genre of the film is. I think that it is most likely a comedy due to the humour of the girl robbing the boys bike and what she imagines. I feel as though it differenciates its self from any other comedy film because comedy is not shown obviously throughout.

Narrative
The narrative of this film is linear, due to the way tension develops and continues to build towards the end, you are continually thinking 'what is going to happen next?!'. In addition the film is open ended, i often dislike this in films however i feel that it works well for this one. I like how it ends on a positive note, the girl has had a bad thing happen to her but the film ends on her having one-up on her brother laughing and smiling.

CharactersThe main character, the young girl is typical of her age. She admires 'grown-up' women and longs to have the attention that the celebrites in her scrap book get. Again the brother, who is portrayed as 'the bad guy' in the film, is typical of his age also, although you are lead to dislike him i think he acts just like any other boy. He prioritises his friends and will do anything to get out and see them, its a typical spiteful brother and sister relationship.

Barthes - Theorist

Roland Barthes wrote the narrative theory, this was based on five codes;

 

The hermeneutic code;

Is the way the story avoids making things obvious by dropping hint and clues to keep things  a mystery.

The Enigma Code;

The way tension is built up and the audience is left guessing what will happen next.

The Semantic code;

The semantic code points to any element in a text that suggests a particular often additional meaning by way of connotation which the story suggests. 

The Symbolic code;

This acts in a wider way than the semantic code organizing semantic meanings into wider set of meaning. 

The cultural code;

Looks at the audiences wider cultural knowledge, morality and ideology. 

Propp -Theorist

Vladimir Propp broke up fairy tales into sections, for example there are 31 generic sections in russian folk tales. Also, he stated that folk tales were extremely similar in many areas.  He thought that folk tales were about the same basic struggle and appeared to have similar   characters. He criticised the tales because he felt that they were 'male orientated'.