Class of 2017

Welcome! As you will soon realise, I love teaching Media, and you are going to end up seeing the world around you in a very different way… but first… the basics! 😉

Have a look round… this blog is your one-stop shop for everything to do with the Media course. You can find the handouts, deadlines, clips, and all sorts of added Media goodness. In addition, when you are stuck, you can add a comment to a post asking for help and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. 🙂

First up is one of the trailers from last year’s class… this is here to show what you is possible!

And yes… I really do expect your trailers to be this good as well! 😉

Stay tuned… your first homework will be along shortly.

Trailer Trash! (Can you see what I did there!?)

Here are the slides for the trailers, minus the trailers! There is a list of them all, plus some of the clips I used at the end of Part 2.

Download, read, enjoy, and ask questions… and start trying to read trailers rather than merely watching them.

Part 1

Part 2

Trailers Part 1

Just finished converting the slides from today (it took a while to strip out the trailers from the document). You will get most of these as a handout as soon as I can find a working copier and time to press “print”! In the meantime, you should bear in mind that as well as allowing you to consider how you will approach your own trailer, studying trailers is an interesting media exercise in itself.

If I were to give you any advice at the moment, it would be to be making a mental note of the common features in the trailers. What does every trailer appear to have? And remember, the from the second the trailer starts (and I mean the green MPAA slide when I say that), it is trying to get you to pay to see the film. If I draw an analogy with English, one could argue that a trailer is like a poem in that there is no waste in it. Everything is there for a reason (purpose).

Anyway, here are the slides (Click THIS LINK, or click on the thumbnails on the right to download).

Part 2 tomorrow, and remember, Mr Jamieson will be sitting in and asking you about the course (so I’ll be nervous and talking far too much!). Please be honest with him. We need to know the bad as well as the good. 🙂

 

In No Particular Order…

Enjoy!

Hello To Jason Isaacs…

Hi Class,
Great to meet you for the first time. It goes without saying that Miss Robertson will be a tough act to follow, but I’ll do my best!

Just a couple of wee things to get you started, both came up in discussion during Monday’s lesson.

@wittertainment

If you are interested in film in particular, then the best film review podcast (by a loooonnnnggggg way) is Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s Film Reviews. You can find them on iTunes or by clicking this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/kermode

The podcast is more entertaining than the live radio show (Friday from 2 – 4 on Radio 5 Live), not least because it loses the news and travel interruptions. More importantly, it has podcast extras which, if you ‘get it’ will become a highlight of your week.

What I will say is that Mark Kermode is one of the shrewdest and best film critics out there, bar none. He will infuriate you, he will rip films apart that you may like, and he will give you ideas for films you may not have ever thought of watching, but one thing you will find is that he is just about always fair in his reviews. Simon Mayo (ask your mum!) is an effective ‘straight man’ to Kermode’s outbursts.

Their show is full of in-jokes, but you will soon pick up on them (Hello to Jason Isaacs!). There are also over 200 previous shows on iTunes that you can download… if you want a taster, and one of the funniest film reviews of any films ever, then Kermode’s review of Sex and the City 2 is about as good as it gets:

 

Journey To The Line

The second link relates to a quick chat about soundtracks. As some of you may have realised, the trailer for a new movie is often showing in cinemas or online way before the film is released… or even finished! This means that the film maker will use music from a previous film in the trailer. Of late, one of the most common and recurring pieces of music is ‘Journey to the Line’ from Terrence Malick’s 1998 WW2 movie ‘The Thin Red Line’. There’s an interesting collection of trailers that feature the music in this article on the Inside Movies blog.

Feel free to leave any thoughts or suggestions in the comments! 🙂