edia agazine Menglish and media centre issue 50M | december 2014 Sci Fi, SF – what's the di erence? Girls on Film THE FEMALE GAZE REVISITED Media Language MICROANALYSIS APOCALYPSE NOW Crowdfunding for students The Wire vs Treme MM MM50_cover_art.indd 1 24/11/2014 08:38 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? Seasonal greetings from MediaMagazine is MediaMagazine! published by the MediaMag English and Media website – exciting This issue should provide Centre, a non-profit you with plenty of making organisation. changes ahead! stimulus, whatever your The Centre publishes a interests. All AS Media wide range of classroom LAUNCHING EARLY 2015 students should read materials and runs As part of the redevelopment of Steph Hendry’s overview courses for teachers. If the English and Media Centre’s of Media Language, especially paired with Mark you’re studying English website, the MediaMagazine site at A Level, look out is also getting a new look – and Ramey’s masterly micro-analysis of the Apocalypse for emagazine, also some exciting new features, Now opening sequence The latter is a gift for Film published by the Centre. including: students, as is Nick Lacey’s case study of Lionsgate The English and Media Centre • improved search of archived – perfectly timed to coincide with the launch of 18 Compton Terrace articles Mockingjay Part 1. A2 Media students can explore London N1 2UN our update on the issues confronting the BBC, and Telephone: 020 7359 8080 • access to the complete archive Fax: 020 7354 0133 as downloadable PDFs current debates about representations of place, • the facility to select your own Email for subscription enquiries: gender, and the (Fe)Male Gaze; and if you’re doing [email protected] username and password. documentary in A2 Film Studies, there’s an excellent Editor: Jenny Grahame The site will go live early in 2015. contextual case study of the iconic Night Mail. On the production side, three student-written pieces should Subscriptions manager: Emma Marron demonstrate the range of possibilities for those Teachers! hoping to enter the media industries, and the pros Design: Sam Sullivan Print: S&G Group IMPORTANT INFORMATION and cons of internships, screenwriting and crowd- Cover: Turksib, Screaming Train FOR WEB SUBSCRIBERS funding production projects. The issue is topped and (The Stenberg Brothers) tailed with articles on Science Fiction: Roy Stafford’s Before you can access the new ISSN: 1478-8616 MediaMagazine website, you will speculation about the hybridity and diversity of the need to register your school on genre, and Steve Connolly’s use of social media to the site and choose a magazine influence the programming of the SyFy Channel. username and password to pass We have not one but two Christmas presents on to your students. accompanying this issue! Firstly, a free online Science Once the site has launched, Fiction supplement, in collaboration with BFI’s Sci-Fi you will no longer be able to Days of Fear and Wonder season. 10 articles over 46 access the site using IP access pages, thanks to the generosity of BFI Education. or your 2014-15 username and password. And secondly, we’re not only re-running our lovely Look out for the email MediaMag Production competition, one of the ‘MediaMagazine website – your highlights of our year, but also launching a brand unique voucher code’. This new competition for those of you with an interest in email will include instructions on writing for, in, or about the media. We’ll be publishing how to set your username and the outcomes online, and the winning entries will password and access the site. be featured in future issues of the magazine – useful KEEN TO FIND OUT WHAT’S additions to portfolios or CVs. The details are on page HAPPENING NOW? 5, and entry forms will appear online in January. Go for it! OR ANY QUESTIONS OR Happy New Year from MediaMag! CONCERNS? Email [email protected] 2 MediaMagazine | December 2014 | english and media centre MM Representing Place: Crowd-funding for contents 30 Versions of the City in 50 Students The Wire and Treme Animator and filmmaker Nathan Wilkes shows you how crowd- funding can be the answer to your no-budget productions, The Front Page with some useful tips for avoiding The latest media news and 04 the pitfalls and maximising your views. income. ‘Sci-fi’, SF and Science Fiction: What’s the Writing Dust: Becoming 06 Difference? Andrew McCallum compares the 52 a Screenwriter representation and role of the city A Level Film student Abbie As a preface to the British Film in two groundbreaking TV drama Loosemore’s short film screenplay Institute’s current Science series for HBO, both written by was selected for production on Fiction season (and MediaMag’s David Simon. the 2014 BFI/NFTS Film Academy free online Science Fiction residential. What did she learn as supplement) Roy Stafford her script was brought to life from introduces some of the big Silence in Court: Judge page to screen? questions about the history, range 35 Judy is in session... and diversity of the science fiction Harry Cunningham finds out why genre. one of his favourite TV shows, The Female Judge Judy, is the most successful 56 Gaze: Rethinking The Media Concepts: daytime programme in America. Representation 12 Media Language Steph Hendry focuses in depth Turning The on the vocabulary and skills you’ll 38 Unbeatables into need to become a fluent reader, a Great Draw: An writer and user of media language Interview with Juan Jose across a range of texts. Campanella The Unbeatables is the first full- For What it’s Worth: The length animated movie to tell BBC Past, Present and the story of a table football team. Debates around gender 18 Mike Hobbs caught up with its representation in Media and Film Future acclaimed director to ask him Studies have traditionally been The BBC as we know it stands about the movie, and his life as a dominated by discussion of ‘The on the brink of profound and filmmaker. Male Gaze’. Sean Richardson unavoidable change. Jonathan argues that the most important Nunns explores the issues. The Beautiful Games: gaze for many advertising texts is, from Rio to Glasgow in fact, a ‘Female Gaze’. Doing Micro-analysis: 42 Cinematography, 22 Night Mail: The Creative Sound and Editing in Apocalypse Now 60 Treatment of Actuality At AS Level, moving-image study Mark Ramey analyses one of the tends to focus on micro-analysis most powerful film openings of of the media language used to all time, and provides a complete construct meaning. But by A2 master class in how to approach you’ll need to understand the the Film Studies AS micro-analysis contexts for, and debates around, coursework task. Third-year Media undergraduate texts and their production. Mark Charley Packham has had an Ramey applies this process to unforgettable summer working Lionsgate: Can Katniss an iconic documentary for Film in production both for the FIFA Everdeen Save it? Studies 26 2014 World Cup in Rio and also Nick Lacey investigates the covering the somewhat different complex economics of the film Commonwealth Games in rainy industry with a case study on Continuum, Sci-Fi Fans Glasgow. This is her story. and the Power of the Lionsgate. 64 Tweet. Or ‘How I Took on the SyFy Channel and Girls on Film: Lukas Lost’ Moodysson’s We are the 46 Self-confessed sci-fi geek Steve Best Connolly’s account of a Twitter Kathy O’Borne analyses a campaign to save a much-loved Swedish film which would make TV series illustrates how social an ideal case study for work media are changing the balance on representation, media and between fans, producers and identity, and collective identities. media institutions. english and media centre | December 2014 | MediaMagazine 3 MM Days of Fear and The big screen re-release of Kubrick’s emailing Mark Reid, Head of Education at masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey, the BFI at [email protected] Wonder: Science frequently cited as one of the greatest Fiction at the British films of all time, screening nationwide And more... Film Institute from 28th November: http://www. BFI’s website includes links to a bfi.org.uk/whats-on/bfi-film- cornucopia of further explorations, from releases/2001-space-odyssey the best 21st-century sci-fi to the best The national re-release of Ridley Scott’s in 80s sci-fi posters, end-of-the-world- SF Noir Blade Runner: The Final Cut, movies, greatest sci-fi characters of all launching in April 2015. time, and much more. Not to mention Star Wars Day on 13th December . A host of classics available through BFI Player, including: The Man Who Fell to Into Film Earth, E.T., Fahrenheit 451, Serenity, The Day The Earth Caught Fire, Under The The 2014 Into Film Festival includes Skin, and Flash Gordon. a BFI Sci Fi strand, featuring 10 films chosen for their appeal to young For Film students, accessible critical audiences, from Attack the Block to books on some iconic classics, including Aardman Animations, supported by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, classroom resources available here: War of the Worlds, Quatermass and the http://www.intofilm.org/festival/ Pit, Solaris, Alien, Dr Strangelove, Blade programme/bfi-sci-fi#resources-in- Runner, Things to Come, and the Cinema strand of Stanley Kubrick The British Film Institute’s spectacular http://shop.bfi.org.uk/sci-fi/sci-fi- And not forgetting..