Lecture 8 'Shoot and Cut'

This weeks lecture was on screen violence and the way in which we are exposed to violence everyday through tv, films and videogames.

Bill mentioned the Columbine high school massacre and how the boys involved had been obsessed with the computer game Doom, which i mentioned in my blog two weeks ago. This disturbs me slightly, when i talked about it before i said how the gore and violence hadn't affected me but it clearly affected those two boy to the extent that they committed mass murder. It makes me feel uneasy thinking that i have something in common with those boys. I haven't played that game in years and was never obsessed with it, just to clear that up.

CCTV footage of the Columbine Massacre               Doom Video Game

But it raises the question - are we all affected by our exposure to such graphic violence? Does it make us more OK with violence in the real world. I'm not sure. We are able to watch torture and abuse on screen but if we were to see it for real i think our reaction would be the same, for me at least. Because i can watch gory films but when you see real footage on the news of war or a terrorist attack i have trouble watching, even if the images aren't graphic it's the thought of what happened to real people. In movies it's ok because you know for sure that it is made up, i can watch Kill Bill and watch the crazy 88 get their arms and legs cut off but if i were to see that in real life i think i'd vomit or faint.

I think you'd have to be really hardened to gore, maybe a paramedic or surgeon could cope with an amount of bloody violence in their real lives, but i don't know.

It was not a cheery lecture as you can probably tell.

Lecture 7 'To infinity and BEYOND!'

This lecture was about the science fiction genre and how films can be classed as different genre. About how films don't just belong to a single genre, all films contain elements which relate them to several genre.

An example would be 'Galaxy Quest' which is a spoof of t.v shows like Star Trek, it is both a science-fiction film and a comedy.

In the seminar Alan talked about genre markers, which are clues in the movie which tell us what genre the movie belongs and therefore how to watch the film. These clues are in the soundtrack, cinematography and effects. For example, the eerie music which is played throughout 'Alien' is a sign telling us that we should be scared therefore 'Alien' is a horror film. But we also get clues from the subject matter and plot, even the title 'Alien' is a sign that the film also belongs to the sci-fi genre.

These genre markers can also be far more subtle, the type of explosion for example:



This is a still from 'Saving Private Ryan' showing a shell exploding in a burst of earth and dust.

This is a still form 'TropicThunder' showing an explosion, this explosion is a giant ball of orange flame and black smoke.

You can easily see the difference, the realism in the explosion in 'Saving Private Ryan' tells us that the film is serious and want to be taken seriously. They want to show the realism of war.

The explosion from 'Tropic Thunder' is very unrealistic and this tell us that the film is more lighthearted, it doesn't want to be taken to seriously, this kind of explosion is a genre marker for comedy and action films.

The level of gore and bloodiness is also a genre marker, in 'Tropic Thunder' the gore is excessive and over played which tells us again not to take it seriously, whereas in  'Saving Private Ryan' the gore will be limited, tasteful and realistic, it wont be shown for the audiences enjoyment as it is in 'Tropic Thunder'.

In a film like 'Kill Bill' where there are huge quantities of blood it is a sign telling us again not to take the killing too seriously, it makes it more lighthearted and it keeps our sympathies with the main character.

Lecture 6 'A Brief History of the New'

This lecture was about different approaches to 'new media', mainly talking about how techniques of film making and video games have progressed.

Bill talked a lot about video games he liked from his childhood and today a why he felt they were good, and it was all about the level of interactivity. How the leap had been made from films where the viewer is apart from the action on the screen and cannot influence it, to a completely separate interactive world which the player can enter and change, where you can meet other people in that world and exist with them in a fictional reality.

This got me thinking about the first computer games i played and why i liked them. The first game i remember is Doom95, which was a first person shooter where a gateway to hell has opened and you have to defend earth from the onslaught of demons. I remember my brother getting the game when it first came out and watching him play and being quite scared of the monsters, they seemed really real to me. Now when i look at images of game play i find it strange how i could compare it with real life that quality of the graphics are so poor you can barley see the creatures, let alone believe they could be real.

The game has been criticized for is high level of gore and satanic imagery by religious groups, and thinking about it now i was probably a bit young to be playing a game like this and to be exposed to simulated violence like this at a young age. But i don't remember it like I've just described it, it was just something i used to play, i was so young i didn't understand the gore i just new that when you shot at things they went red, it sounds really weird but i didn't think of it like 'omg i just shot that zombie and he exploded and his guts have gone everywhere' it was just 'huh he went red'. And as for the references to hell, they just went completely over my head; i am far more disturbed by this game when i play it now then i was then.

Other games i used to play were far more innocent, another favourite was 'The Great Green Mouse Disaster' where an orchestra of green mice has been booked to play at a hotel but someone dropped the basket with all the mice in and they escaped. You then had to look around all the rooms in the hotel trying to find the mice.

It is based on a children's story book, the cover is shown above. If you look closely you can see the basket of mice on the steps where it has just been dropped with all the mice running into the hotel. I really liked this game because you could interact with the other characters in it and with the objects in the rooms. This we take for granted in all games now but it was the first game i played where this was an option. I preferred it to Doom because it had a higher level of interactivity which is what Bill was talking about earlier today.

Lecture 5 'Two Sides to Everything (and a bit in the middle)'

This lecture was about Structuralism and the way people view the world in a system of Binary Opposition. We automatically split the world into opposites and decide what things are by deciding what they are not.

We choose to perceive the world in this way but that is not how the world is. For example we may describe something as being hot or cold, but when does hot stop and cold begin. I might say the waters hot when its at 60 °C but the surface of the sun is around 6,000 °C which is much hotter n makes the water seem pretty cold in comparison. The only example i can think of of two absolute opposites is 'on and off'.

Between the 2 opposites is the zone of indeterminacy where stuff is neither one or the other, its a bit of both; and these things in between are much more interesting and exciting.

For example i find the devil child in The Omen quite a dull character because he is evil incarnate and nothing else, he doesn't even do much. Whereas the possessed child in the exorcist is a good normal child which is taken over by evil, making her a much fuller, more interesting character.



Left- child from 'The Omen'                           Right - Regan in 'The Exorcist'

 You will often find the most boring characters in a story will be those who have an extreme personality. They tend to have quite shallow personalities and become predictable and boring. For example, when i was little i used to watch Winnie the pooh on TV and my favourite character was Pooh, but my friends used to like Eeyore which i couldn't understand. He was always grumpy and sad and had nothing else to his personality; he was boring. Obviously when i was little i didn't read this far into it but i can see now that i didn't like him for that reason.

Pooh and Eeyore

 Bit of contrast in my choice of examples; devil children and cuddly woodland friends, oh well you get the idea.