#preliminarytask

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TODOROV'S NARRATIVE STRUCTURE : ENDER'S GAME

date : November 16th, 2021

upload : March 30th, 2022

Todorov's narrative theory is about how a narration story is created. Todorov said that there are five stages that a character would go through, which include: Equilibrium, Disruption, Recognition, Repair, Disruption and Equilibrium Again.

This blog will use 'Ender's Game', the recent movie I watched, as an example.

ENDER'S GAME

Equilibrium - The first part of the story introduces the characters

Ender was introduced to the other kids on a spaceship, and we; all are moving to the headquarters where they will be training to become soldiers.

Ender shows the commander his intelligence.

Disruption - Second part of the story which contains issues or something that disrupt the happiness of a character

Through his intelligence, Ender got to lead his new team. Every day they practised their techniques and tried to find the best way to defeat the army.

a. Ender was struggling to win the practice Battle

Recognition

When he successfully won the last battle, Ender realized that the war was real

a. Ender was mad at the commander as they made him kill all the species (genocide)

b. He knows that he could communicate to the aliens, but the action is undone as all the species are already gone.

Repair the Disruption

He felt guilty about his action, so he went out of the headquarters to find the queen.

He told the worker that he'd find a new home for the species, returning the favour for what he did to the alien's planet.

Equilibrium

Ender became an admiral of the army, giving him the ability to travel wherever he wished.

Ender uses the chance to find a new home for the queen.

The movie cuts out after Ender starts his journey of travelling the space.

In the movie, various disruptions occur from time to time, and the ending seems undone, which gave me struggles with what to write under equilibrium.

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Media Usage

date: August 23rd, 2021

update: March 30th, 2022

This screenshot was captured on last week's Thursday. It was not a surprise to me that my daily average phone use was more than 6 hours a day.

As you can see, most of my most used applications are entertainment-based, I tend to spend my free time creating content on TikTok and searching video editing tutorial.

I enjoy listening to music in the morning or when I'm feeling like analyzing another piece of music which has a thick texture; it is entertaining to imagine how many musical instruments are in one song.

I used instagram for talking to my friends and Twitter for publishing my Thai-writing work which I always enjoy to do so. Apart from this, I also used Duolingo, Notes, and Papago for educational purposes.

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SHOT BY SHOT COMPARISON : Lion king (Animation and Life action analysis)

date: September 30th, 2021

update: March 30th. 2021

As the Lion King was re-created into a live-action based on their old cartoon animations, so it is a good opportunities for those who write media blogs to write some details about it.

ANIMATION They used a low angle extreme long shot to show the direction of where Scar ran to in the beginning of the scene, then they changed it to the high angle shot after he reached the cliff to show the audience how deep it goes. 0:24 - They used an eye-level mid shot to captured Simba’s expression, we can noticed the detail when his face is distorted due to the heat of fire. During the dialogue, a mid-shot were used very often to show the character’s feelings and emotions through their face. 0:39 - 0:48 - A reverse shot was used as the conversation between Simba and Scar occurs. After that, the shot changed to a low angle close-up shot to show that Simba is currently the one who’s more powerful than Scar 1:17 - There’s a possible insert shot on a thing that could be a hot soot as it was he weapon that scar used to tricked Simba before he attacks him.

During the battle, dutch angle were used while both the lions are tremble over each other. There’s also a full shot to show the lions’ entire body while fighting

Finally with a Simba’s POV shot when Scar jumped into him. Added with a little insert shot of Simba’s foot kicking Scar off the cliff. Ended with an establishing shot to see the wildfire invaded the forests. LIFE ACTION The first shot I noticed was the low angle long shot in the beginning. There’s a lot of angle switching from low to high during the chasing scene with an addition of a bird eye view shot. The similar thing I noticed is the high angle shot they used to show the depth of the cliffs, then it switch to low angle shot with scar as the main subject in the scene. 0:37 - There’s an over the shoulder shot when Scar turned back at Simba. During the conversation, there’s a long shot showing the hyenas at the back then it changed to a mid-shot so the audience can see their’s expression. There’s also a eye-level mid shot during the dialogue scene, then it changed to a low angle shot to show the power that Simba holds. After a long conversation, there’s a close up shot to catch the expression from Simba’s face. Scar also got his own close-up shot but in low angle instead, showing the audience that he’s already powerless. During the battle scene is quite the same thing as the animation version, there’s a dutch angle when they’re fighting each other. An extreme long shot for an overall view and a high angle shot when the lions trying to push each other off the cliff. The battle ended with a high angle shot when Scar fell down from the cliff. OPINION I personally prefer an animation version more, because I have a very hard time trying to understand how things going on in the live-action version. Dialogues were rushing up and has less details than the animation ones, even if the live-action version has more variety of shots.

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CODES AND CONVENTIONS : HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON

date: June 10th, 2021

upload: March 30th, 2022

TOOTHLESS AND LIGHT FURY SCENE

How to train your dragon is an animation based on a children’s book by Cressida Cowell and produced by Dreamworks. The story is about a young Viking teenager expected to follow his tribe’s tradition of becoming a dragon slayer. Still, it somehow becomes friends with Toothless the Night Fury, the rarest dragon in the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaf5QD3s_24

This scene comes from the third movie of HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, presenting you the (potentially) last journey of Hiccup and his dragon Toothless.

The scene I chose is the scene when Toothless and The Light Fury are flying along each other. As it’s one of my favorite scene among the three movies I’ve watched.

MOVIES ANALYSIS

Convention

As the movie is about a journey based on viking mythology. It is mainly an adventure-fantasy movie that made for children/family, means that there’s not much of  things that express the action of violence.

Codes

Technical Codes

As the dragons were flying, the scenes are mostly a high-angle shot, showing us the texture of clouds that were drawn. There are a few over the shoulder shots to see both Night Fury and Light fury together in one scene. There’s also a long wide shot which shown both of the characters in the middle so the audience focus on the two dragons only. Many lightning effects were used in the movies because the scene started around the evening and the sky was getting darker and darker. The special effects are also the highlight of the movie as dragons are fantasy creatures, Dreamworks did a really good job in animated dragon’s power/abilites such as spitting fires are more. The song was composed by John Powell like every other movies. Even if there’s not much of an impact made in the song, it helps the dragons carry the scene’s emotion very well. With different dynamics, the audience will hear the packed instruments in a climax/intense moment and the loose instruments in a scene where we’ll be focus on the dragons’ actions.

Written Codes

There’s no written codes needing during this scene as the things that carried this scene were the dragons and the music.

Symbolic Codes

As dragons cannot speak, it is very important to exaggerate their expression. We can tell that Toothless was so happy to meet the Light Fury when his eyes became very wide and made a little growl. We can see a different tone of lights during the scene, the warm tone that comes from the sun in the beginning and the cool tone came from lightning and thunder caused by Toothless and Nature.

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These are the location shots for the preliminary task. It is set in a school.

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This is my script for the preliminary task. I have included the transitions, the characters names, the dialogue, the stage directions and a description of what is happening at each stage. The key stage directions are also in bold.

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This is my storyboard for the preliminary tast. I have included the camera shots, the editing and some of the dialogue.

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Preliminary Task: Planning

The brief we were given to create this piece of work was: Film and edit a sequence in which a character opens a door, crosses a room and sits down opposite another character. After we were given this brief we had to brainstorm a theme for the film; we decided to go down the route of danger and mystery. To get to this final idea me and Kian decided to make a mind map of all our ideas, we wrote down any first ideas we had onto this mind map so we would forget any and had all the information in one place. Once we had this mind map one particular idea that stood out to us was the theme of a deal, we decided to make it an intense drug deal; this would bring a lot of drama to the piece and make it interesting for the watcher. This theme of a deal would also full fill the brief. We planned to have the main drug dealing walk into the room and sit down on the chair, therefore fulfilling the brief. We didn’t face many difficulties in the planning side of the task, it all went ot plan and we met the dead lines.