Stereotypes.

Stereotypes as we learnt in the lesson are important to a film because it helpes people be able to relate to the characters in the film and understand the film and different groups of people in the film easier.

Tessa Perkins in 1997 said that stereotypes contain a number of assumptions that can be challenged, using different assumptions: They are not always false e.g.- Cowboys do wear cowboy hats or in terms of our film, young girls tend to be emotional. They are not always negative e.g.- Lonely girls do not always commit suicide.Not always about minority or less powerful groups e.g.- Our girl is unfortunate in what happens to her but she is upper class.They can be said about your own group e.g.- another girl thinks our girl is lonely and maybe depressive.

Problems with a stereotype can be that they over look an individual, place people in groups or people are often exaggerated in their stereotypes which create caricatures.

In our film we are going to use a stereotype of a young lonely girl. I feel that the stereotype of someone who is lonely is that they are quite depressive and keep themselves to themselves, in our film we are going to make our girl fit the stereotype so that the audience can see that she is lonely but we will not make her into a caricature becasue we think this could ruin our film by making it seem too depressive. Our character may break the stereotype slightly because she doesnt keep herself hidden, however, she will be a quiet person.

semantic and cultural code

In todays lesson with Mr Smith we extended our knowledge of Narrative codes further. we watched the opening of the Royal Tenenbaums again. but this time to looking at how they use cultural and semantic codes to represent . We were asked to focus on one of the three children and pick out all of the things we could think of that would come under the two codes.


I decided to look at Chas.

• He is always seen wearing a suit, this could suggest that he is into business and shall go into business as a career. He shall become wealthy and money will matter.


• when situated with his siblings he is always central, he sits upright with his arms folded and always speaks with a high vocabulary and confidence in his tone. This shows that he is of high status in the family and shall go on to be in high power.


• his bedroom is set up like an office, with a computer, volumes of books and a money deposit safe. These all reflect an organised, work orientated character. Not the usual behaviour seen by a boy his age.


• he asks his mother for money, and already has the cheque written. This shows he's ahead of the game, but could it also present him as being spoilt?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Narrative Theory

today i learnt about the narrative theory. A narrative being the way in which a story is told in both fictional and non fictional media texts. there are only seven stories in the world.

Vladimir Propp is a russian critic and literary theorist who spent his life analysising stories. he analysed 100 russian fairytales in the 1920s, he also proposed that it was possible to classify the characters:

hero (seeks something)

Villian (opposes the hero)

donor (helps hero by providing hero)

dispatcher (sends the hero on his quest)

False hero (falsely assuming role of hero)

princess (rewards hero, needs protection from hero)

her father

we also learnt about Tzvetan Todorov, he was a bulgarian literacy theorist, he suggested that ,most narrative start with a state of equilibrium in which life is 'normal' and protagonists are happy. this state of happiness is interrupted by and outside force.

in the class we watched a disney pixar short film called 'Boundin', we then had the task of identifying which character in the film was the character outlined by vladimir.

we have now started to think of who in our own short film will fit the role of the Vladimir characters, but before we can do this properly we have been trying to think of a structure for our film.

we would like to use the idea of mixing up the narrative, having the conclusion shown at the beginnning and then the film leading up to this conclusion just like the film 'Pulp Fiction'.

we also discussed how would we show the protagonist is leading a lonely life, i was inspired by a shot in 'hollyoaks' which showed the girl dressed up glamorously and then when she turns to look in the mirror, in reality she looks a complete mess, we could interpret this shot in our own film showing the protagonist how she dreams of being but how she sees herself in reality.