“Letter to the Free” was written as part of the soundtrack to “The 13th”, the song speaks out against America’s justice system which helps to perpetuate the inequality endured by many African Americans

Cultural Hegemony:
● Antonio Gramsci: Italian philosopher writing in the 1930s

Key Terms:
● Hegemonic: dominant, ruling-class, power-holders
● Hegemonic culture: the dominant culture
● Cultural hegemony: power, rule, or domination maintained by ideological and cultural means.
● Ideology: worldview – beliefs, assumptions and values

● Cultural hegemony functions by framing the ideologies of the dominant social group as the only legitimate
ideology.
● The ideologies of the dominant group are expressed and maintained through its economic, political, moral,
and social institutions (like the education system and the media).
● These institutions socialise people into accepting the norms, values and beliefs of the dominant social
group.
● As a result, oppressed groups believe that the social and economic conditions of society are natural and
inevitable, rather than created by the dominant group.

Key Concepts:
● Cultural resistance
● Cultural hegemony
● Subcultural theory

Lyrics
“We ain’t seen as human beings with feelings” – Common states that black people aren’t seen as humans by some

“Will the U.S. ever be us?” – Common is asking if black people will ever be seen as true Americans

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Hunger Games: This poster contains Katniss alone in the centre of the poster aiming her bow towards whoever is looking at it, behind her is the mockingjay symbol – a symbolic sign for Katniss. Katniss aiming her bow signifies aggression towards someone or something – that she is ready to kill if needed.

Baby Driver: This poster is very minimalistic, it contains a gun “shooting” a car that is driving away. The gun and car are symbolic signs for what the plot of the film is. This poster is quite radical due to its minimalistic design, something not commonly seen in film posters.

Bohemian Rhapsody: This poster contains Freddy Mercury alone on the left side of the poster

Different forms of media have different languages that go along with them, the languages of moving image consists of the key terminology, grammar and conventions of the media languages.
The conventions deconstruct moving images into languages that we can use to describe what they are.

The most important tools in a camera are focus and depth of field, the focus is used to direct the viewers eyes and prioritise certain information. Switching the focus between one element and another is known as a pull focus or a rack focus. In my sequence, when I redo it I want to use rack focus during the shot where the character is walking through a forest, changing the focus from the forest to the character when he enters the shot.

Sizes, Angles and Movements

• High angle / Low angle / bulls-eye / birds eye / canted angle
• Tracking / Panning / Craning / Tilting / Hand held / Steadicam
• Establishing Shot / Long Shot / Medium Shot / Close-up / Big Close-Up / Extreme Close Up (students often struggle with the first and the last again issues with SCALE, SIZE & SPACE, so practice is really important)
• Insert Shot

My first shot was a tilting shot from a low angle to a bulls-eye angle

Insert shots

I could use an insert shot of a note when I redo my sequence to tell the audience why the character is in a forest.

Editing

Editing is the stitching of the shots together, this is used to create context for the story and to allow the audience to understand what is happening and why it is happening.

Generally, there are key times when you should have an edit

1. EDIT ON ACTION
2. EDIT ON A MATCHING SHAPE, COLOUR, THEME
3. EDIT ON A LOOK, A GLANCE, EYELINE
4. EDIT ON A SOUND BRIDGE
5. EDIT ON A CHANGE OF SHOT SIZE
6. EDIT ON A CHANGE OF SHOT CAMERA POSITION (+30′)

I edited my sequence when the actions edited, e.g. when my pan ended or when the character finished walking I edited to a different shot to keep the sequence flowing instead of leaving it hanging.

Parallel Editing

The use of sequential editing (editing one clip to another) allows for a number of key concepts to be produced:

• parallel editing: two events editing together – so that they may be happening at the same time, or not?
• flashback / flash-forward – allowing time to shift

Montage
First conceptually theorised as the Kuleshov effect, montages are the process of compressing time, through editing shots together in a very quick sequence you can cut out irrelevant details and show progress of an event in a fast manner.

Shot progression

Conventional shot progression – to create VERISIMILITUDE (ie realism, believability) usually involves the following shots (although not always in the same order).

• establishing shot / ES, moving to
• wide shot / WS,
• to medium shot / MS,
• to close up / CU,
• to big close up / BCU;
• and then back out again

Shot / Reverse Shot
Shot / Reverse Shot includes the directions that both characters are facing

https://streamable.com/3drj1f

Genre is a way of organizing products into different categories, for example films can be ordered into the genres of horror, comedy etc. These categories all have similarities that run through a specific genre and differences between each genre, making them PREDICTABLE AND EXPECTED but also INNOVATIVE AND UNEXPECTED.
Genre is applied to all forms of media, including radio, TV, music etc.

“. . . saddled with conventions and stereotypes, formulas and
clichés and all of these limitations were codified in specific genres. This was the very foundation of the studio system and audiences love genre pictures . . .” – Scorcese, A personal Journey through American Cinema (1995) This quote shows that studios have specific genres that they stick to, creating the foundation for how films are made in each studio. Each of these genres have specific elements that the studios follow to create their films.

CONCEPT	STRONGLY AGREE	AGREE	NEUTRAL	AGREE	STRONGLY AGREE	OPPOSITE CONCEPT
GOOD			X			BAD
WEAK		X				POWERFUL
CALM				X		CHAOTIC
EAST					X	WEST
FEMALE					X	MALE
STRAIGHT	X					GAY
WHITE			X			BLACK
URBAN	X					REGIONAL
POOR		X				RICH
EDUCATED			X			STUPID
RELIGIOUS			X			SECULAR

GHOST TOWN
“Released on 20 June 1981 against a backdrop of rising unemployment” – Jon Kelly
“it expressed the mood of the early days of Thatcher’s Britain for many.” – Jon Kelly
“By mid-1981, the UK was already tense following April’s riots in Brixton” – Jon Kelly
“It sums up how it felt to be young at the time,” – Les Back, professor of sociology at Goldsmiths

THE GUARDIAN
“Despairing of rising unemployment and frustrated by the most unpopular government of the post-war era” – Alexis Petridis
“the worst mainland rioting of the century broke out in Britain’s cities and towns.” – Alexis Petridis
“Clearly the Specials and a whole generation had been hugely inspired by what had happened with punk, culturally, socially and politically,” – Alexis Petridis

1. racial otherness (72-73)

“post-war wave of immigration…produced a series of anxieties”

1. post-colonial melancholia (72-73)
2. the story of UK race relations post W.W. 2 (72-73)

“In the two decades following the Second World War… intensified fears that immigrant communities might swamp white Britain”

1. Legacy of the Empire (77-79)
2. The Search for Albion (77-79)

A man moves to New York from Louisiana for his new job, and finds it isnt what he hoped it would be. In search of new meaning in his life, he finds happiness with what would become his family. Years later the man is diagnosed with an unseen illness and has to go around the world to find the cure for it, he has only 1 week before its all over.

I want to create drama/action film about a man travelling the world to find a cure for his unknown illness, Whilst I want there to be suspense and drama to have some heavy hitting scenes, I also want there to be action throughout to take some pressure off of the audience. I want my film to be targeted towards people aged 16+ to allow for the drama to be effective. For my posters for the film, I want one poster to show the dramatic side of the film, with the main character on his own enveloped in darkness with just a glimmer of light to represent his hope. For the other poster, I want to show the action side of the film – to do this I want to include the main character as a silhouette carrying a gun.