First Post!

Hey, hows it going? Good. I'm good thank you. Well basically this my blog for my Media Studies AS course, which I'm using as a way to display things I've done, different things I've tried, evaluations and things we've done in classes. Seeing as this my first post I better include something useful, so I'm gonna talk about the stuff that I've learnt about in the first couple weeks of Media Studies;

- What Mise en Scene is, and how it is used in film. Mise en Scene is, in a nut shell, what is displayed on screen. It can cover anything from; the lighting to make up. This can be used to display what the character is feeling and what status the character has in the story, say if the lighting was quite dark and didn't show much of the subject, the audience would know that they were meant to be interested in this character. It also covers the most basic of things, like the costume, if the character was wearing a police uniform, it would most likely mean that he was a police officer.

- How different shots can be used to get different advantages out of the scenery and landscape, and other shots can be used to get a better emotional effect on the audience by the subject. An extreme close up shot can be used to get a greater connection from the character to the audience. A long shot can be used to set the scene and let the audience know where the scene is taking place.

- Who Lester Burnham is. He is a character in American Beauty, played by Kevin Spacey. We studied how the opening two minutes can be used to introduce what the story will be about, for Lester Burnham, throughout the first four minutes of American Beauty, he is visually trapped to the audience. The first time the audience see him he is in darkness lying on his bed, the next shot he is having some 'alone time' in his shower, but he is still boxed in. This shows that he is 'trapped' in his own life.

- How to deconstruct a shot. We were set the task of taking eight frames that would tell the introduction of a story. We then wrote down what each frame was showing and what it was implying.

- How dividing the shot into thirds helps to draw attention to certain areas or how it can be used to make the shot look tidier. We watched a short video about how this technique is used in many films, dividing the shot vertically and horizontally into thirds. This creates a box in the centre of the frame, it is commonly used to put the subject's eye or the centre of their face on one of the top two corners of the box.