First released in January 2006 by Virgin Records, the album was a great success for the new indie-rock band, The Kooks, reaching number 2 in the UK album charts, and selling over 2,000,000 copies worldwide since it’s release eight years ago. The album flows seamlessly from song to song and yet still ranges from softer love ballads such as ‘Seaside’ to more roudy tracks such as ‘matchbox’, describing the evens of a ‘lad’s nigh out on the town’. However, my personal favorite song on the album has to be ‘Sofa Song’ – just a small peek inside the mind of your average, British lad.
The Brighton boys write everyone of their songs based on their own experiences and thought processes, making the music accessible to everybody who had been through, or is in, the young adult stage of life. The events they sing about are pretty bog standard as far as day to day life goes, but this is what makes their lyrics so relateable, and I’m sure that any Kooks fan such as myself would tell you, this is what makes the band so lovable and curiously charming.
This song definitely makes it into the “Jazzmin Fotherby Top 10 Greatest Songs of all Time” awards, if not for it’s flawless craftsmanship, for it’s sheer awesomeness alone. The song was written by the well known Eric Clapton and, the not so well known at the time, Jim Gordon. However, on it’s release in 1971, the song wasn’t well received compared to it’s popularity over a year later, and even still today. ‘Layla’ is widely recognised as one of the greatest rock songs of all time and gained a reputable number 27 in The Rolling Stones Magazines “Top 500”, and then won a Grammy award in 1993 for Clapton’s re-mastered acoustic version, but then who could argue with that when Clapton’s and Duane Allman’s godly opening riff seems to stop time it’s self and takes every rock fan back to the release of this classic Derek and the Dominos album all those years ago.
It is said that “Layla” was inspired by Nizami Ganjavi’s story “The Story of Layla and Majnun, a book that was given to Clapton by his friend Ian Dallas. It was a story of a young man who fell deeply in love with “Layla” and went crazy because he could not marry her; hence “Layla, I’m begging darling, please!” However, it could be argued that this song was written about one of Clapton’s love affairs, similar to his well known song “Wonderful tonight”… But that’s another story.
All in all, I think it’s safe to say that “Layla” is a timeless record with a timeless melody, a song attribute that isn’t commonly found in todays world of popular music.
Along with my class partner, Neary, we analysed a short film ‘Identity’ and presented our ideas in the form of a timeline, as follows:
00.00-00.11 The film opens with a black screen and eery music playing in the background. This builds the audience’s anticipation up.
00.12-00.16 The word identity appears in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, in a cracked white font, which signifies the cracked identity of the girl who later appears in the film.
00.22-00.26 The tone of the film and the characters mood is established with the grey discordant colours in the shot.
00.27-00.35 The girl wears a white mask indicating her innocence and purity, however the mask is tainted with other colours showing the ways that society has effected her.
00.36-00.48 The quick camera cuts in this shot emphasises the girls disorientation, and also disorientates the viewer.
00.39-00.55 A high angled shot is used to show the girl, suggesting a higher power over her, and also possibly suggests her own low self esteem.
01.00-01.05 A reverse-over-the-shoulder tracking shot is used which is unusual to watch. Once again, this disorientates the audience, and suggests the characters individuality compared to the extras.
01.00-01.13 The camera backs away from the girl, distancing her from the audience, and the other characters in shot.
01.25 It is made clear to the viewer that she is learning about Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, and that this triggers and idea in the character’s mind.
01.30-01.36 We see a close up of her drawings, that symbolise how she feels distant from others. This establishes her mood to the audience.
01.44 Everybody in the room except for the main character are wearing plain masks. This shows that she is different from the other characters and makes her stand out.
02.05-02.10 She walks alone through the corridor, once again shooing that she is alone
02.11-02.13 There is a shot of a poster saying “This is what beautiful looks like,” followed by a group of girls wearing matching masks to the poster. This could show that the main character doesn’t feel beautiful, or similarly chooses not to conform and wear a “beautiful” mask.
02.22-02.33 Everybody in this shot is wearing matching masks to their friends. Also, one girl changes her mask when she enters a different social group. This shows how people change in order to fit in with others.
02.35 The girl is shown to be playing with a pawn, and the background voice is talking about how pawns are used to other people advantages in chess. This pawn symbolised her in society.
03.35 Uncomfortable, scratchy sounds are introduced as the girl starts running and the camera tracks her. This makes the audience feel as though she is running away from something, which in this instance could be society.
03.50-03.51 The girl falls on the floor, and the camera goes black in order to create anticipation for the audience.
04.00 The girl looks in the mirror to see that her mask is broken, portraying the fact that she has broken away from the norms of society.
04.10-04.17 This shot shows the girl hesitantly talking her mask off, and is accompanies by a loud banging sound. This shows that it is difficult to be different, but that she can be bold and different.
04.26-04.30 The girl smiles and the voice over says “today the truth found me”, showing her chance of mood compared to the rest of the film.
04.34 A shot of the mask on the floor is shown in order to clarify her decision.
04.39-4.42 She is shown walking away from the camera, with everybody looking at her. This differs from the rest of the film as normally the camera is backing away from her, but she is moving away from the camera in this one, changing the tone of the film. Also, the fact that she is walking through the people looking at her shows that she is more confident than before.
During yesterdays lesson we started to practice our moving image analysis technique, and we began this by analyzing about the first twenty minutes of the horror film ‘Insidious’.
Our first target was to infer what it was that the director was trying to achieve, which we found to be to scare the audience and to fit in accordance with the horror genre. Secondly we had to identify the ways that this was achieved…
The first method we noticed, before the film even started, was the eeiry, uncomfortable music playing over the top of the ident, letting the viewer know the nature of the film before it begins. This is followed by a ball at the start of the film, which then flips around to reveal a young boys bedroom, this is so that the viewer feels disorientated before the narrative begins, and thus makes them feel uncomfortable. Throughout this, the disturbing soundtrack continues. The first shot is an establishing shot of a dimly lit, typically scary child’s bedroom. The camera then takes the audience on a journey through the house and then focuses in on a shadow at the window, which evokes the audience’s primal fear instincts. Through out this, the soundtrack plays into the typical horror genre conventions. The camera then acts as our eyes, forcing us to look around a corner that we don’t want to, with the knowledge that we wont like what we see, therefore scaring us further.
Following this opening scene, the credits are shown in a red smokey font, reminiscent of Hell. The first scene is established with a shot of a big, old American house, filtered in black and white, making it look traditionally spooky. The audience is then shown a shot of each room of the house in succession, but each shot is altered slightly from the norm, but is shown for only a few seconds so that the audience know’s something is wrong, but isn’t quite sure what. As well as this, each of these shots goes ever so slightly out of focus, creating a dream-like effect.
Throughout the film, the camera is intrusive, making the audience feel as if they are there, watching the characters, and alternatively, that someone else is watching the characters, which is in many ways spookier. Added to this, the audio is packed with over extenuated scary noises, such as white noise, creaking doors, scratching, low mumbling and the ticking of the old creepy grandfather clock, which make the viewer feel uneasy
There would appear to be an unnecessary amount of hype surrounding the release of the new iPhone6 last Friday (19th September 2014). What is so great about this new apple device? Isn’t it basically a minorly adjusted version of the iPhone 5S? Well, upon talking to a few people in my school I’ve found out that it’s apparently not. According to them, the slight difference in screen size and phone depth makes up for the significant price difference between the (other than that, the same) phones. WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?! In my opinion, this slightly larger, curvier and all-in-all tackier version of the previous iPhone is in no way worth the extortionate prices people are paying for them. Rant o-v-e-r-r-r.
I was sure that this piece of work was going to excel the last one in all ways, and with this in mind I set about planning. Ollie and I, firstly decided on the camera positions we would use throughout the filming. We decided to start the piece with a close up shout of the first character at the desk, and then a wide shot of them looking towards the door, this was to be followed by an over-the-shoulder shot of them looking towards the door, thus fulfilling our aim to include an eyeline match in our piece. The next shot should then have been a close up of the second character turning the door handle and then a point of view shot from the perspective of the first character of the second character entering the room and then sitting down. There should have then been a succession of point of view shots having the conversation which would have fulfilled our task of including shot-reverse-shot. We then planned the dialogue which went something like this:
C1: “What do you want?”
C2: “Individually wrapped glasses wipes.”
C1: “I’m afraid we’re all out but we can offer you an alternative.”
C2: “Show me the stuff.”
During filming we didn’t manage to complete all of the shots we originally planned to do because of time constraints and because of this we didn’t get to use the rule of eyeline match in our video. Other than this a and the fact that the room was too dark, the filming went okay, and the sound recorded well.
During the editing process, we realized that the overall professional look of the film was hindered by our lack of footage and the dark light we filmed in. As well as this, we didn’t have time to match up the video with the audio effectively, thus making the whole film look less than amateur.
This task was apparently supposed to be the improvement on the last film we made… Well that didn’t go to plan. The list of things that went wrong are endless – but on the bright side at least I know what to change next time (that’s what I said last time). For a start, the room we decided to film in was far too dark, we knew that as soon as we set up the camera, but by then it was too late. Added on to this, we had the problem that the video and audio didn’t correspond correctly. With more time, I’m sure that we could have fixed this and that this wont be a problem in further filming tasks that I’m set to complete. However, these weren’t the only problems we encountered during the making of this film: we also noticed that we didn’t effectively use the eyeline match because of lack of filming time. But we did effectively use bothe the shot-reverse-shot rule and the 180 degree rule.
An eyeline match is basically the the idea that when filming, the character will look off screen and thus, the audience will want to see what it is that the character is seeing. This shot is then followed by one which cuts to whatever the character is looking at. This creates tension in the first shot as the audience waits in anticipation for what is to come in the next shot.
For example: A man looks in to the corner of a room but the corner is not in shot. In the following shot what is in the corner of the shot is revealed to the audience and focused on by the camera.
Eyeline match can also be used to show one character looking at another between two shots without any confusion to who the first character is looking at. This is done by matching the height and eye direction of the first character so that the camera appears to be looking at the second character through the first characters eyes.
Shot reverse shot is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. This is achieved as because the characters are shown (often using a wide shot) to be facting in opposite directions, the audience assumes that they are looking at each other. Shot reverse shot is a feature of the classic Hollywood style of continuity editing.
From what I understand, the 180 degree rule is a guideline to follow when judging the spatial relationship between characters and objects being filmed in a shot or string of shots. There is an imaginary axis connecting the characters or character and object and the camera should be kept on one side of this axis for every frame in the scene. The first character making an appearance should always appear on the right hand side of the shot, while the second character or object remains on the left. When the camera passes over the axis, it is commonly known as jumping or crossing the line… This is to be avoided. Another rule to remember when following this rule, is that the object or character being filmed should remain at the centre of the shot whilst the camera faces towards it or them.
Match on action refers to a technique used when trying to give the impression of a passage of time in a scene. This is achieved by filming two shots from the same scene of action and cutting them together. These shots may have in fact been filmed hours apart… The character will often begin the action in one shot and carry it through into completion in the next; this distracts the viewer from noticing the jump in time or the fact that there is a “continuity error” between the two shots.
This effect can also be achieved by letting a character exit a frame in the first shot and then entering the frame in the same direction (exiting from left to right and then entering from the left)… This continues the rhythm of the screen direction.
Jazzmin Fotherby's AS Media Studies Blog 