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SEPTEMBER 2013: READING THE MEDIA edia agazine Menglish and media centre issue 45M | september 2013 2013 Production Competition – the Results! Reading Film through Writing with Film POLITICS, PROPAGANDA AND THE PRESS Reading Films Online BEYOND HOLLYWOOD: Reading Arthouse Cinema Analysing Still-Image Ads Reading Rap MM MM45 cover.indd 1 22/07/2013 12:24 MM This magazine is not to be photocopied. Why not subscribe to our web package which includes a downloadable and printable PDF of the current issue or encourage your students to take out their own £12 subscription? MediaMagazine is MM45 Editorial published by the Welcome back to a new academic year, a English and Media new set of courses and challenges, and a new Centre, a non-profit edition of MediaMagazine. making organisation. The Centre publishes a This issue is all about Reading The Media – wide range of classroom new ways of looking at the media experiences we often take for granted. materials and runs What difference does it make whether you read a film in a cinema or on courses for teachers. If an iPad? How can we read between the lines of hot stories in the press? you’re studying English Why is arthouse cinema still considered so difficult to read? How can at A Level, look out producing – or writing with – film help us to read it more critically? What for emagazine, also do we look for when we ‘read the past’ in TV drama, the ‘com’ in sitcom, published by the Centre. or the meaning of rap? These questions will be important for AS students taking Film or Media for the first time – and useful reminders for A2 The English and Media Centre students consolidating their analytic skills. Read on for some answers and 18 Compton Terrace approaches. London N1 2UN Telephone: 020 7359 8080 We’re delighted to share the fabulous results of the 2013 MediaMag Fax: 020 7354 0133 Production Competition – and to prompt you to think about how you can get involved for next year’s version, either in school or in your own time. Email for subscription enquiries: [email protected] Regular subscribers might notice MediaMag has had a mini re-design – a Editor: Jenny Grahame cleaner look, less highlighting, more space, intended to make us more legible and less cluttered. Does it work? We’d really like to know your Subscriptions manager: Emma Marron responses – do email them to [email protected], together with your ideas for future articles, neglected topics, or areas you’d like us Design: Sparkloop Print: S&G Group to cover. And do check below for new arrivals on the MediaMag website Cover: David Tennant and Olivia this term. Coleman in Broadchurch (ITV 2013) Lots of luck for the new term – and enjoy Reading The Media! ISSN: 1478-8616 Coming to the MediaMag website this term: MediaMagExtras on reading The Big Bang Theory, Game of Thrones, Utopia, Drive, Primeval, and We Need to Talk About Kevin. MediaMagClips interview with controversial journalist David Aaronovitch. December edition: The Gothic, featuring monsters, vampires, ghosts, and all things horrific; Goth music and style; Goth influences from art and literature, and much more… MediaMagazine Conference And remember: Booking is now open for the 2013 MediaMagazine Student Conference on Friday 13th December – and filling up fast! Get booked in at http://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/mmagconference/ 2 MediaMagazine | September 2013 | english and media centre MM contents MediaMag Presents… the Beyond Hollywood: 04 results of the 2013 Production 24 Reading Arthouse Cinema 50 Competition. Nick Lacey investigates the readability and appeals of arthouse movies, and wonders why they’re not more popular. 06 Gangnam Style: Reading a Analysing Still-Image Music Video Phenomenon Adverts: Reading Lynx Mark It’s the most watched video on 28 YouTube. Pete Turner asks: Why Ramey talks you through the process of reading a print advert. Psy? Becoming a Media Detective: Alternative Reading Rap: How do Approaches to Textual People Interpret Music? Analysis It’s harder than it 54 32 What’s important in ‘reading’ the looks. Make like Sherlock with meaning of music? Does music some new problem-solving have meanings you can analyse – approaches which will help you or is it an experience you feel? to get started. Reading Film through It’s no Laughing Matter: Writing with Film: Creating Reading the Sitcom 58 11 Jonathan Nunns explores the Video Essays Barney Oram shows teachers how to get stuck conventions and variations that into analysis through creating make the sitcom so easy – and video essays, and student Abbie enjoyable – to read. Loosemore describes what she Reading Film Production: A got from the process. Life-Changing Experience A Screenwriter’s Guide to Student Luke Robson tells the Reading (and Writing) the 38 story of his experiences at the Media Screenwriter Ian Pike BFI/NFTS film-making residential. offers a recipe for how to write 14 screenplays that TV audiences might want to read – and how to read the screenwriter’s tricks of the trade. 62 Reading Between the Lines: Politics, Propaganda Reading Broadchurch: and the Press So you thought 42 How did ITV Create Perfect propaganda was dead? Steph ‘Event TV’? It was allegedly the most tweeted TV drama ever. So USA: Experiments in Hendry presents two case studies Fiction with Media A 1930s which expose the techniques how did ITV create the TV event of the year so far? trilogy of novels by John Dos used in the Press to promote Passos explored a period of particular values and ideologies. American and world history through the lens of the newly emerging mass media. Andrew 44 Green considers what both Media 20 and Literature students can learn from this experiment in fiction and documentary. Reading the Past… And the BAFTA goes to Big Screen, Little Screen: Downton Abbey! Michael Reading Films Online Roy Massey explores what we look Stafford explores the multiple for when we read the past ways we now watch film, and the onscreen. impact of changing technologies on the viewing process. english and media centre | September 2013 | MediaMagazine 3 MM MediaMagazine presents… And the MMAFTA goes on iTunes!), and a backstage view of carrying with us, and just be in the moment, his extraordinary music work with use our ears, and pay attention to what’s to… Biffy Clyro, The Horrors, Keane, and happening, and just listen to the inner voice BFI Southbank 3rd July 2013. 24 Prodigy – imaginative, ingenious and that directs us, the better... productions, ‘shortlisted’ from over 70 visually exquisite, and always with a submitted from all over the country Gothic twist. Along the way we heard The Awards – it really was that hard to whittle many anecdotes and much wisdom First things first: the quality of all them down any further. A panel of – the importance of collaboration, the work submitted this year was judges including Mark Reid, Head of persistence, risk-taking, attention to outstanding. Year on year, your BFI Education, MediaMag editor Jenny detail, and resilience. Corin closed productions just get better and better, Grahame, Pete Fraser (author of Pete’s both in terms of professionalism, Media Blog, actually in Australia but technical skill, understanding of the present in spirit), and the fabulous medium and the genres, and sheer Corin Hardy. 150 filmmakers, parents imagination. So, many congratulations and teachers. The assorted might of to all who entered – and please do it BFI projectionists, staff and ushers. The again next year! Sadly we can’t mention hallowed interior of the prestigious you all, but here are the highlights from NFT1, and the stage where so many each of the four categories. of the film industry’s finest stars have appeared… Quite an event. Film openings: Much the most popular category, these encompassed zombie The inspiration horror worthy of Edgar Wright, high- The afternoon opened with welcomes tech computer-hacking intrigue, a from Mark and Jenny, and an Skins-style houseparty-gone-wrong inspirational masterclass on music with a twist, Tarantino-style girl heist with stirring words from Rick Rubin, video from Corin, who you may know action, and a stunning Se7en-ish title co-founder of the legendary Def Jam from his superb sessions at previous sequence of wax, blood and flame; label, producer of LL Cool J, The Beastie MediaMag Student Conferences. locations included an eerie bus depot, Boys, Public Enemy, Johnny Cash, Kanye Corin took an autobiographical trip urban rooftops, and – of course – well- West, and more: through his filmmaking past, from dressed bedrooms. The outstanding early experiments, his student days, I never decide if an idea is good or bad until I pieces were those that showed the five-year birth of his wonderful try it. So much of what gets in the way of things the most attention to visual detail, 30-minute stop-motion animation being good is thinking that we know. And the the tightest editing, and the most Butterfly (available to download now more that we can remove any baggage we’re creative use of sound – Detachment, a man preparing for vengeance in his 4 MediaMagazine | September 2013 | english and media centre MM the 2013 Production Competition Winners! bedroom, came to chilling life entirely of Jesus and Mary College. A ghost in ‘Disappear’, and the multiple through its off-screen diagetic morning story daringly shot in full daylight, formats and atmospheric lighting of soundtrack. Many congratulations which literally made us jump into the Hurtwood House’s ‘Something to Say’. to Hurtwood House School for the cupboard with its combination of whip- We particularly loved the male-rap stunning use of mise-en-scène, pan edits, subtle effects, and mounting good-time vibes and variety of ‘Damn’, multiple locations and tension-building atmosphere.