Two months before her big day, Sophie (Ziya Zhang) gets dumped by boyfriend Jeff (Ji-seob So) for a glamourous actress, Anna (BingBing Fan). At a party, Sophie meets nice guy photographer, Gorden (Peter Ho) who has previous history with Anna. Sophie, who is a comic strip writer and Gorden join forces to try and both win the ex partners back.
This film is great througout and although un- like many Chinese/Hong Kong films I predicted the ended very near the start of the film. For a chinese rom com, this film was very well thought out and the acting was actually really good and believable.
If I were to describe this film in a sentence then I would say: “girl gets dumped, wants him back, meets someone new and falls in love with him”. It is actually as simple as that, apart from all the drama along the way. There was nothing suprising about this film, which also shocked me as with many other East Asian films I never quite knew what would happen next and it really enagaged to keep watching and find out.
So, Why did I carry on watching this if there was nothing that suprised me? I love this genre of film and love to see what plots and problems they bring into the film. This wasn’t the best film i’ve watched but it certainly did keep me entertained and I enjoyed it very much.
I have really enjoyed this term. I havent missed one lecture and I feel really proud that I am back to normality again and finally enjoying University (at the end of the year I know, but at least I can enjoy it now!!)
We again this term had to work with Advertising and Media and Journalism students, which was make four media products in four weeks. This was very stressfull and demanding because there are always people who dont pull their weight, but this term I can honestly say I did. I enjoyed being in everyday and really getting stuck into the work.
Its a shame about the other two terms because I really enjoyed this one, but I am so excited about coming back in October for my 2nd Year, so hopefully then I can prove how much I want this and follow on the good work like I have the end of this year.
Also this term, I started to go to the CUEAFS and watch the East Asian films. I am thinking about joining the society next year because I really enjoy watching the films and you get to meet some really nice people along the way .. (and free popcorn!!)
When Yu’s mother died the last thing she gave him was a statue of Maria and told him when he finds his Maria – Love of his life, to bring it back and show her. Now widowed, his father becomes a well respected Priest but following a short fling he has a breakdown and life for Yu (Takahiro Nishijima) then changes. His father demands daily confessions from his son and soon Yu’s minor sins turn into his trademark crime, learning Kung Fu he becomes an up- skirt photographer, hoping to one day snap a shot of his future true love from her panties. His time may come sooner than he thinks when he helps a brassy teenager, Yoko (Hikari Mitsushima) fight with a group of men. After becoming ‘excited’ from seeing Yoko, the bulge in his trousers lets him know that this is his “Maria”. Matters are made harder though because at the time of meeting, Yu is dressed up in drag and calls himself Ms. Scorpian, leaving Yoko now believing she is a lesbian.
Having not watched any of Sono Sion’s films before, I didn’t really know what to expect when I heard it would last 4 hours. The title ‘Love Exposure’ really doesn’t give any clue as to what to expect either and because there is so much going on from the beginning it is hard to lose concentration and I was engaged from the start always trying to guess what would happen next. Before watching the film we were told that it wouldn’t seem like four hours of wtahcing the film and I can assure it didn’t feel that long at all. I would definately recommend this film to anyone wanting to watch something a bit different from your usual comedy-action-romance-satire films!!
I was just having a look on youtube for Chinese/Hong Kong directors to some more of their work when I came across this interview with the director of “Run Papa Run”, Sylvia Chang.
In the interview she talks about the film and how when she first read the novel she thought ‘Run Papa Run’ could have been a light-hearted film and how it reminded her of some of her masculine friends whos attitudes changed once they became fathers. She then went on to talk about how she is much more comfortable making contempary film in Hong Kong than in the Mainland.
The most interesting part of the interview was when she spoke about gender within Hong Kong film. She said she still thinks Hong Kong film-makers are male dominated, and that there isn’t many male script writers who would write a script for a women (not because they don’t want to but because they don’t know how to).
Anyway, have a look at the interview, it is very good!
Shing (Chapman To) is a policeman in Macao. He regularly meets prostitutes when he goes out drinking and takes them back to his house. One night he meets Yan (Isabella Leong), and soon enough takes her back home. Waking up in the morning, she explains to him that she is his daughter. Realising that the women he had been in love with many years ago had kept the baby he thought she had aborted, they become friends. Often going to Shings house, he still brings women back, but this is soon stopped when Yan claims to the women that she is his girlfriend.
Since Yan’s mother died of lung cancer a year previously, her landlord threw her out of her flat along with her dog ‘Isabella’ for not paying the rent on time and sometimes not at all.
As the relationship between Shing and Yan grew in the film, there were some parts where I wasn’t to sure if Yan loved Shing in a different way than father-daughter. Maybe this was because she wanted what her mother had, true love or maybe it was because she was very young and naive and just wanted to be extra close to somebody.
This film was beautiful from start to finish and admittingly when it started I did think “What am I watching?”, because it was quite strange at the begining. The enigma at the start of the film is really strong as there are loads of questions you ask yourself throughout, and want to know, for example, there was part of the film when I doubted that Yan was really Shing’s and waited to see whether I was right or not. A film I would love to watch again!!
This week we had to create a Silent Movie. The brief was to show a woman meeting a man. She then kills him and leaves the scene rapidly. Her actions have been witnessed by somebody.
We decided to create our film about a German spy. The women knows he has some papers which have very important information on so she kills hilm and takes the papers with her. She then takes them to an office and shakes the mans hand who she gives them to. She doesn’t know that she has been caught and that the person who was watching is not on her side!
Our task for week two is to create a movie trailer for a local charity. It has to include a strong narrative and be in genre. We have to use the raw footage which will be given to us and our target audience for this product will be students.
The message that we have to try and give it through the trailer is to raise funds – see the funds in action.
In the lecture it was discussed about what a story actually is – (Just a return to where you began), for example, you are in one place, start your journey, but alwasy end up back in the old place where you started.
Claude Levi Strauss spoke about binary opposites which cause conflict then resolution.
Society creates these opposites for example, Men and Women. Society decided these are opposites when infact theyare actually quite alike, they both have hands, eyes, body ect. Cat and Dog – the only difference between them is their attitude and a Terrorist and Soldier, they both have guns and kill, but culture sees them as opposites.
Tordorov :
Stages of Narrative:
1. Eqilibrium
2. Disruption
3. Regognition
4. Attempt to repair damage
5. New eqilibruim
Tordorov states that for each film these are the stages in which they follow.
Propp
Character Roles:
Propp says that in each film their are seven main roles.
Princess - something that needs rescuing Villain - takes the princess Hero - rescues the princess Helper - helps the hero Dispatcher - sends the hero on his/hey way Donor - magical properties or secret that helps the hero recue the princess False Hero - tries to rescue the princess but fails
Seven Stories (all films no matter what genre)
Achilles – a flaw in the hero Eg. Batman, phycological problems because parents killed themselves infront of him.
Orpheus - a search for what you have lost Eg. a search for someone or something
Cinderella - rags to riches, from nothing to something
Romeo and Juliet - overcoming love
Faust – a man who wants everything, sacrifces something themselves Eg. drugs, money, sex for someone else.
Circe - finding your journey
Tristan - love triangle Eg. Titanic
Most films dont just use one of these seven stories, infact they use a few if not all throughout it. Very rarely will you find a film that only includes one or two. Without meaning to, most sotries for films include these before even prepearing it.
Roland Bathes says that “all shots are action codes or enigma codes”. Basically this is the questions we ask when watching a film Eg. if someones says “don’t go, you know what happened last time” we as the audience automatically wonder what happened last time and this engages us into the film to find out what the actors are talking about.
As an audience the pleasure when watching a film is almost knowing what is going to happen, and saying to whoever you are watching it with “i bet this happens”. This also encourages us what film genre we are interested in and what most certainly we will be watching again. If you like horro films, its most likely that you will watch another in the same genre again.
The generic conventions have to match to the audiences expectations because this is what “we” expect from this film genre and we wouldnt like to be disapointed.
Our Group Work
In our group we were quite confused as to how we could make a movie trailer for a charity without making it lok like an advertisement. At a feedback session with John, we were told to put the charity to the back of our minds and start with a genre for the film trailer.
We decided that the genre we wanted to create was a thriller – drama type. The storyline was harder to choose as we all has different ideas about “thriller” genre. We decided that the mian story would be about a girl being kidnapped over in Bangladesh.
Throughout the idea process, it was hard to create the story with props, budget and actors that we didn’t have! We had to be careful not to take this task as if we were in Hollywood with a huge budget and fantastic actors, because it just wasn’t possible to express this through what we did have, which at this moment in time wasnt’t alot!!
We decided to have a look at some other kidnapping trailers and see what codes and conventions they used to really pull in their audience and cause suspence throughout.
The first one was a film called “Taken” (2008). This film was about a young girl who goes travelling with her friend, while on the phone to her dad when she arrives, she witnesses her friend being taken by gun men. She is telling her dad what she sees, and he tells her to hide under the bed, giving her more instructions he then tells her that she will be taken next, but he WILL find her! She does get taken by these men and he sets off on a journey to find his daughter and bring her back home!
Our final trailer was nothing like what we expected it to be. We had came up with the genre of thriller-drama but when it came to editing we didnt have enough footage to actually get the narrative across to the audience. We did the best we could with what footage we had and I was very happy with the end result.
A Music video is a combination of music and images. Filmic Styles can be in many different forms:
*Narrative
*Non – Narrative
*Documentary Forms
*Animation
*Abstraction or,
Combination of ALL of them.
What is the relationship between music/image?
The image genrally dominates. The culture we live in now is were image rules. The song or piece of music pre-dates the music video.
Prosumption
“A blurring distinction between ‘producer’ and ‘consumer’. In digital culture we are both, simultaneously producers and consumers”.
“A more general concept refering to progressive or professional consumer” (Alvin Toffer (1970) Future Shock) Generation C :
*Content
*Creativity
*Control
Our music video is about the different World Wars. It starts with the First World War and goes through right until present, the war in Afghanistan. Throughout the peom there are key sentances which relate to the images shown.
Music Videos are the combination of “music + image”.
They now help with the artists selling of a certain song and also dominate the way its audience feels about the song and artist.
I love all kinds of msuic from classical to r ‘n’ b, but to me watching a music video definately has an effect on how I interpret the song and the artist.
My favourite music video is Coldplay – The scientist (2002). This video is about a journey and going back to the start. The video interprets this as he starts from the end of events and goes through the song backwards. It is hard to establish at the begining but it soon becomes clear what the intentions of this video were.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmjPrdTNxQ0
I love Johnny Cash. His music was so meaningful and every lyric always had depth that as an audience we felt connected with. The film “Walk the Line” was all about his life as a singer and his relationship with June Carter. He is definately one of my favourite singers everrr!!
Snow Patrol are another of my favourite bands. They have this energy in their sings which make me feel happy all the time when I listen to them.
Queen – Bohemiam Rhapsody (1975) is one of the all time classics. Not only is the song fantastic, but it was one of the first music videos made. Because of the song having so many harmonies, the video was made to look like a choir to interpret more voices than the four of them. It was widely famous and will always be well known as one of the best songs ever!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ9rUzIMcZQ
Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991) is another great msuic video. This video is filmed as they perform to their fans. At the end of filming this video they actually damaged all the equipment and it turned into a small “rave”. I wonder how much that cost in damages!!
We have been asked to create a radio advert for the first weeks task.
In the lecture we were taught about different named products and how they can either be a metaphor or onamaptopher to really make use of the product and help sell it. Our examples were Milkyway, this includes milk in the product and aims to satify anyone who likes this. Boost was also another example, this chocoate bar gave you energy if you ate it, giving it the name “boost”.
We then discussed the USP – (Unique Selling Point), this can also be described as what our product has that others don’t and what can it give to its consumers that other products like this cannot.
This leads on to the Line of Appeal and why people should buy our product. This is similar to to the USP but it also includes alot more detail into the consumers likings.
a) we have to make the comsumer think that with our product their lives could be so much better when they buy it.
b) make the consumer envious, if they were to buy this product then people would be envious of her/him.
c) make the consumer anxious (forcing them into buying it because it makes the buyer actually questions who they are as a person)
*GIVE YOUR PRODUCT MEANING* – Use signs throughout to try and convince the consumer in a subtle way. Don’t be over powering with the signs but be clever to make sure that the signs reach the audicne in the way there supposed to.
So, in our group we decided to think of ideas we would like to start with for the radio advert. Energy drink was the first chose, with Deodrant being close second. We decided that we would take time to each think of an idea and pitch it to eachother in the next meeting.
Deodrant was the most popular chose in our group, so thats the one we went ahead with. We chose to create two radio adverts and analyse them if we had time.
Tiger deodrant was aimed at men and Eden deodrant was aimed at women. These would be the two ideas in which we started to focus on.
