Male Gender Research

5 Typical Male Characters in Soaps

1.Money Maker and Buisness man:This Character takes no prisoners and always trys to get what he wants no matter what price he may have to pay they are also generally lazy and will take the easy route avoiding competion.















2. The no nosense Hard Man: This Character unless you know him personally then you tend to avoid any kind of contact if possible at all times, this character also may have a soft side to him when it comes to his family as he will show a great deal of care towards them and will do anything to protect them, and you will most defenatly not want to get in the way of what he wants!!















3.Innocent Hardworker and Pushover: This Character is 9 times out 10 a really nice man in some cases the Grandad of the soap, who will work hard to feed his wife and family and will always help a friend but sometimes will do things that make get himself into trouble as he can be taken advantage of.














4.All round nice guy: This Character is normally liked by all in the Soap and by the audience, Normally he is in a strong long term relationship, he would not hurt a fly and do what he can when he can for the people around him.

The Male Gaze

The Concept of gaze is one that deals with how an audience see thing presented mainly people.

There is a feminist theory to gaze, Laura Mulvey coined the term the Male Gaze in 1975 this basically means that "film audiences have to view character from the veiw of an hetrosexual male" The main features of the gaze are:

- The camera angles linger on the curves of the female body
- Events which occur to women are presented largely in the context of a mans reaction to these events
-Regulates women to the status of the objects. The female viewers must experience; the narrative secondary by identification with the male.

There are a few criticsms of Mulvey and the gaze theory, these are:

-Some women enjoy being looked at e.g beauty contests and models etc
-The Gaze can be directed at members of the same sex for many reasons as well as those of the opposite. such as in comparison at body image or in clothing.

Preliminary Activity Evaluation Magazine

Preliminary Task Evaluation Questions
1. Who did you work with and how did you manage the task between you? and how did you plan your magazine?

I worked with a friend in the task Dan Bailey,first we put all of
our ideas in a mind map which we though were appropriate and then decided on the most appropriate through discussions and elimated idea we thought wouldnt work until we had a suitable possible idea.


2.What technology did you use to complete the task, and how did you use it?

To complete the task we used photoshop on the school computers this was good because of all the features you can use to make your work look impressive and professional lighting affects, background contrasting, variation of fonts etc.



3.What factors did you have to take into account when planning, shooting and editing?

When we were planning we had to make sure we used ideas that were possible to do using the facilities given. Shooting the phot was relativly straight forward all we did was make sure that first we choose someone who was confident and made sure she had the correct pose



4.How successful was your magazine cover? Identify what worked well, and with hindsight, what would you improve/do differently?

The thing that worked well with the magazine cover is the colour sceme which didn't over power anyaspects of the cover e.g the background colours work well with the text colour. With Hindsight I would look at the colour of the clothes the girl on the cover is wearing because it limits what colours you can use on the magazine.



5.What have you learnt from completing this task? Looking ahead, how will this learning be significant when completing the rest of your foundation coursework?

I have learnt that we have to stay on top the work and when decisions have to made on my own or a group I/we have to make these decisions quickly so we can get on with the work. This will help when doing the rest of my foundation coureswork because it should prevent me from getting behind.

Camera Angles and Editing

In this Lesson we learnt about Camera angles nd when each one maybe used!
First we learnt about the simple and common shots such as the Long , Medium and Close up shots.

Then we went onto look at more advanced shots such as:
- Shot reverse shot which used for dialogue, the main focus is on the person talking, the camera is usually positioned over the shoulder of the person being spoke to, this is a affective shot because it makes you feel part of the conversation.

-High angle Shot, these shot connote power over the object you are viewing, traditionally women have been used for this shoty to make men look more powerful

-Low angle shots are designed to make a character look more powerful.

-Tracking Shot is when the camera is parelelle to the action and follows the subject or action.

- Establishing Shot, this is usually the first shot in a scence establishing where the action is taking place.

We also learnt about Editing Techniques such as:

-Continuity, which is when the shots are edited so that the film flows from shot to shot.

-Montage, this is a style of editing that has two functions. First is a highly political soviet style of the 1920's which sought to create a new meaning out of seemingly unconnected shots. The Audience will be very aware of the cuts. Secondly there is "the hollywood montage" In classical hollywood cinema a montage sequence is a short segmant in a film in which narrative information is present in a condensed fashion.

-Transition, This is a term for how an editor moves from one shot to another. The use of an inappropriate transition can destroy the mood or pace of a Scene.

- Cross Cutting and parrallel editing, Editing that alternates shots of two or more lines of action occuring in different places usually simultaneously.

-Dissolve, this is a transition between two shots during the first image disappearing the second image gradually appears.

Wipe- A transition between shots in which a line passes across the screen, eliminating the first shot, and replacing it with the next one.

"The Royal Tennembaums"

As a Introduction task we were shown the introduction of the Film "The Royal Tennembaums" which is a film that was directed in 2001 by Wes Anderson. Then we were asked to write a 500 to 1000 word essay using Mise En Scence this was a good activity to practice the skills we have learnt so far!

The Question for the essay was:
"Using Mise en scene select one character and analyse and explain the way chosen character is represented."

This essay also tested what we had learnt about the Narrative Codes and was useful because it meant I had to go back over my notes, to make sure I was doing the essay correctly.

Mise En Scene

Mise on Scene is a french term for the anaylisis of what you see on the screen, but it does not include sound.
The 5 aspects of Mise En Scene are

1. The Setting
2. Costumes/Propps
3. Lighting
4. Acting/facial Expressions.
5. Camera Angles

Vladimir Propp's Charcter Roles

In This lesson we learnt about Vladimir Propp who is a russian critic and literary theorist, he thought it was possible to classify the characters and their actions into cleary defined roles and functions.

Propps Character Roles

• The Hero (seeks something)
• The Villan ( Opposes the Hero)
• The Donor (Helps the hero by providing a magic object)
• The dispatcher (Sends hero on his way)
• The False Hero (Falsely assuming the role of the hero)
• The Helper (Gives support to the hero)
• The Princess (Reward for Hero and needs protection from villan)
• Father of Princess.

Narrative Theory Roland Barthes

We learnt about the Narative Theory in the first theory lesson, we learnt about:
Open Narrative which are continuous e.g Soaps
Closed Narratives e.g A film which has a Beggining, middle and end.

In this lesson we also learned about "THE 5 CODES" I will now give a breif summary of each:

• Action Code - applies to any action that implies a further narrative action.
• Enigma Code - refers to any element in a story that is not explained and therefore, exists as a enigma as its raising questions that demand an explanation.
• The Semantic Code - any element in a text that suggests a particular, often additional meaning by the way of connotation.
• The cultural code - any element in a narrative that refers "to a science or a body of knowledge" in other words, the cultural codes tend to point to our shared knowledge about how the world works.
• The Symbolic Code- this is very difficult to understand, you can only understand it if you look at and understand binary opposites. Levi Strauss was spit into a series of binary opposites for example someone can only be really good at football if someone else is really bad and there can only be a hero if theres a cowardly option.

The final thing we learnt in this lesson was IDEOLOGY this is a organised collection of ideas it also can be thought of as a comprehensive vision or a belief that helps explain the world around us!

Presentations about Directors

Over the last couple of weeks we have been given the task to create a powerpoint presentation on famous directors in random groups which helps us get to know other people in the class. I was set the task to do a presentation on Hammer and Tongs they are a directing partnership which specilise in music videos and film directory, It waswas very interesting whilst researching information and realising they enjoy playing around with the camera and using a variety of shots e.g Establishing Mid and long Shot these are there most popular from what I saw. Other students also did presentations on directors such as Anton Corbijn, Wes Anderson, Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry. I learnt from watching the presentations that these different directors use many different techniques and some we are very capeable of doing with the facilites we are provided with at school.

Magazine Preliminary Task

Our task was to create a magazine cover and a contents page for a school magazine. At first we took a few photos of a fellow student a picked the best one, I decided which one was the best due to the lighting of the photo and facial expression of the student. As i have never used photo shop before i have learnt new skill for example adding light to a image to make it stand out.We also chose and appropriate colour scheme to make sure it looked professional and easy to read the text. Also we had to make sure that the colour scheme matched what girl in the photo was wearing.