Film : My week with Marylin

My week with Marilyn

How stardom is portrayed in the film 'My week with Marilyn'

Hello again,
This week in class we watched 'My week with Marilyn'.

The basic story line of the movie is that Sir Laurence Olivier is making a movie in London. Young Colin Clark, an eager film student, wants to be involved and he navigates himself a job on the set. When film star Marilyn Monroe arrives for the start of shooting, all of London is excited to see the blonde bombshell, while Olivier is struggling to meet her many demands and acting ineptness, and Colin is intrigued by her. Colin's intrigue is met when Marilyn invites him into her inner world where she struggles with her fame, her beauty and her desire to be a great actress.

After watching the movie we were asked to discuss one topic in relation to the film, I'm choosing to discuss the portrayal of stardom/celebrity in the film.

I really enjoyed watching this film, I found it interesting because the film peels back the glamour and stardom to show you the real Marilyn underneath. I didn't know much about her before watching this film so I really enjoyed learning about her life, as even now she is one of he worlds most iconic celebrities years after her death. I found it remarkable that even at the time where there were no internet existed, she was on the cover of every news paper, magazine, cinema screening or stage play. She was THE golden girl of the era. She cannot go anywhere without being bombarded with fans and doesn't seem to have a normal life, she seems to lead a glamorous life style, happily married and loved by many. Everyone knew about her. I thought the film portrayed this very well. But as the film continues we learn that Marilyn is actually just a vulnerable insecure woman battling with mental issues such as alcoholism and drug abuse.

The whole film constantly switches between her two different sides, the film shows her in her element as a star, a performer living her dream, wanting to be an amazing actress and offers a window into Marilyn Monroe's secret side. The opening few scenes featuring Marilyn shows us how her privacy is not respected, when she first arrives in the UK she is swarmed by paparazzi. They ask her questions such as...

Arthur P. Jacobs - "Marilyn! Is it true you wear nothing in bed except perfume?"
Marilyn Monroe - "Ooh, darling, as I'm in England, let's say I sleep in nothing but Yardley's Lavender."

Nowadays you wouldn't get asked those personal questions, they would be an infringement on your privacy.

She is also shown in the first few scenes to be this wonderful talented actress, people are falling for all over the globe, so as she starts to act and actually has to be on set on time. She crumbles under the pressure, she struggles to remember lines and gets very upset and unsettled within her character role. Even seems to be in awe of the actress who played Elsie in the play, aspiring to be like her. I wasn't sure of the idea of her forgetting lines and being stressed was an attention seeking act to start with but as the film goes on you can clearly see that it's not an act. Colin asks her 

Marilyn had her acting coach Strasberg to keep her motivated after several bad takes when she thought she couldn't go on. I think Marilyn saw her as a mother figure since it's clear Marilyn had family troubles growing up in care homes around the states. It is clear that she had mother issues when she says..

"Little girls should be told how pretty they are. They should grow up knowing how much their mother loves them"

Strasberg is the clear mother figure here telling Marilyn what a amazing, beautiful talented actress she is. However I do not think that Strasberg boosted her ego, because from what we can see, Marilyn didn't have an ego she had serious confidence issues. Strasberg kept her grounded.

Another moment when her underlying confidence issues are mentioned is when Sir Laurence Olivier is talking to Colin...

Sir Laurence Olivier: She's quite wonderful. No training, no craft, no guile, just pure instinct. Astonishing.

Colin Clark: You should tell her that.

Sir Laurence Olivier: Oh, I will. But she won't believe me. That's probably what makes her great, yet it's certainly what makes her so profoundly unhappy.

This shows how everyone else can see that she is talented but she cannot. 

Another feature of the film that struck me was the way she talks about Marilyn as a separate person suggests Marilyn is just a persona. Especially when she says things such as "All people ever see is Marilyn Monroe. As soon as they realise I'm not her, they run." and "Shall I be her?". When she gets crowded in a street she starts laughing, when she gets crowded in a school she starts flirting almost as a copng mechanism she reverts back to being Marilyn. But as soon as she is removed from the situation you can tell she is clearly shook up. This dual personality is shown the whole way through the film, the effects of the dual personality only have negative effects on herself.

After watching this film I can safely say that the attention of the media and fame is sometimes not as beneficial as you might first think. Marilyn lost control of her own life and herself. The love for Marilyn that is still so very clear today shows what an incredible actress she was.

Thank you :)

Practice : Final 2 minute opening based on characters

Character based opening 2 minute video

Practice : Character based Opening 2 Minutes to a film

2 minute Opening to a film Preparation

Our Second AS media task was to create and develop a character and use this character in a 2 minute film opening set in a given location. We had to create a plot, cast, film and edit this 2 minute opening. Both characters in the group we were given had to meet at some point during the opening and to spend at least 20 seconds in the location we were given.

Creating my character
In our lesson we were given an A4 sheet with pictures of people from the internet, our task was to choose one image and create a character and a backstory for that character. Here is a picture of the images we were provided :

From these images I chose the girl in the top right:

After choosing my person I was then told to brain storm ideas for who my character was, what she did, her friends, her lifestyle. To basically craft an entire character from this one image, this is what I came up with...

Characters group members created
Tasmine created a character and brainstormed the same way I did however she chose a different image therefore creating a completely different character to me, she used this image:

Creating this mind map of her ideas to what her character could be like etc:

Characters
The characters Tasmine and I created were...

Ellie (female)
The way I created Ellie was I thought of issues I am facing at the moment and people I know, Ellie is a good girl gone bad. She was brought up in a middle class suburban area. Her mum and dad have good paying well respected jobs, she works hard at school to get the grades she needs to get into a prestigious university. Despite having an amazing life full of opportunities ahead of her. She appears to be in with the wrong crowd, she wants to fit in with her friends and to do that she goes to parties, gets drunk, does drugs and one night she gets into a car with some drunk friends and towards the end of the evening they hit someone in a car and he dies. They try to hide the body. Her life goes downhill and shes stuck with this group of manipulating people getting her to do things like drug deals threatening to call the police on them if she doesn't, which is where we meet Tasmines character

55 year old man
The character Tasmine created was a sleazy 55 year old homeless man who is dating a young super model, he does drug deals to get his money. He had a wife and a family but he's now divorced and very rich, he often cheats on his now girlfriend the same way he did his wife, he has two kids that he doesn't talk to. They have completely disowned him. He used to manage a top bank in London. he wants the best for his kids and secretly buys them gifts



Group Brainstorming

 In our groups, we were given a location in which our 2 minute opening had to be situated. We got 'farmyard' . We then had to come up with a scenario in which these characters would meet. It also had to be engaging.

We did a lot of planning for this, we mind mapped ideas, one of our ideas we mind mapped we eventually decided not to do because it would take up longer than 2 minutes and would be too hard to film in the end. The area was too difficult and we could not get someone to drive us there during the week as parents were working so we created a new story line with a location just outside Aidens house, We decided that he would be her dealer, or something of a more suspicious nature. Aiden joined us half way through our project as he moved classes and proved extremely helpful.

We came up with some other concepts such as her being another fling but we decided that was not in the character (Ellie's) nature. We also thought maybe we could film flashbacks from her hitting someone with a car but in the end we thought we would start the film half way through to engage the audience so they had to concentrate.

Here are some of the notes we made in class as a group:

Location
We decided to film in a farm in watton outside one of our group mates village. We did this because it was convenient and exactly what we were looking for.


Casting
Casting the roles proved rather difficult, as we had to find actors who were free on the evening we needed them and who were actually willing to act for us. On top of that we had to find people who looked similar to the images of the people we based our characters on. We had to find a female actress, fairly young with blonde hair and fair skin. Luckily one of my friends who goes to the same 6th form as me fit the required description, she was willing to act for us so that was one of our characters cast in the early stages of this project. This is the actress chosen:

I chose her because she is an incredibly talented actress for her age and takes drama at school and keen to be part of the production, she fit the wide eyed and scared criteria I needed for my character.

The man was the hardest to cast as we actually had to find a middle aged man who was willing to film as part of our production, who was free in the evening and didn't mind acting with someone younger than him. Again luckily my dad volunteered to help us, he didn't fit the description but he was an excellent and helpful choice, it saved me having to do actor hunting across Wymondham and surrounding areas.

Props

Props we might need include :

- A brown parcel ( being handed from the man to the girl ) probably around medium size, easy to stuff in the bag

- A necklace ( something for her to fiddle with so we can tell she is anxious )

- A bag or small rucksack

Plot

We have finally decided on a definite plot line for our opening, for a few weeks we had been playing with different ideas but today we have decided on one.

The start of our opening is our female character walking down a long wooded path, a tunnel of trees. She looks bedraggled, messy hair, very anxious. She is playing with a necklace and looks very uneasy, she has a rucksack on. She reaches the end of the path and turns into the farm, she looks around, we don't know what or who she is searching for until a man, dressed in mismatching clothes walks out with a parcel in hand. He hands her the parcel and she shakes his hand. Then she stuffs the parcel into her rucksack and as she is walking away someone walks round the corner and catches them in the 'deal'.

Filming schedule

We are filming after school on Thursday 22nd of September, we're getting the bus afterschool to the location near Aiden's house and hopefully completing all the filming on one day, if not we can go back on Saturday as everyone is free.

Coursework : Character Research - The Joker

Researching into a character - The Joker

Today I'm going to be exploring and analysing any character from a film that I would like to look into. I've chosen The Joker originally from Batman The dark night but whom also features in suicide squad.

The Joker is a fictional super villain created by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson who first appeared in the debut issue of the comic book, batman published by DC comics in April 1940. Although the Joker was planned to be killed off during his initial appearance, he was spared by editorial intervention, allowing the character to continue to be the archenemy of the superhero Batman. In his comic book appearances, the Joker is portrayed as a criminal mastermind. He is a psychopath with a warped, sadistic sense of humour. The character became a goofy prankster in the late 1950s in response to regulation by the Comics Code Authority, before returning to his darker roots during the early 1970s. As Batman's nemesis, the Joker has been part of the superhero's defining stories, including the murder of Jason Todd the second Robin and Batman's ward and the paralysis of one of Batman's allies, Barbara Gordon.

There are lots of theories as to why the joker is effectively insane. My favorite theory is him falling into a tank of chemical waste which bleaches his skin white, turns his hair green, and his lips bright red; the resulting disfigurement drives him insane.

(The Joker, played by Heath Ledger in Batman The Dark Knight)

One of the most iconic characters in popular culture, he has been listed among the greatest comic book villains and fictional characters ever created.  The character's popularity has seen him appear on a variety of merchandise, such as clothing and collectable items, inspire real-world structures (such as theme park attractions).

The Joker possesses no superhuman abilities, instead using his expertise in chemical engineering to develop poisonous or lethal concoctions, and thematic weaponry, including razor-tipped playing cards, deadly joy buzzers, and acid-spraying lapel flowers.

(The Joker portrayed by Jared Leto in Suicide Squad)

In Batman The Dark Knight the Joker is portrayed as a dark character who cares about no one, he only cared about Batman, he cared about or better yet, took pleasure out of ruining all of Batman's plans. He didn't even care about his share of the money, he just wanted to make Batman's life a living misery. He worked for no one and thought he could get away with everything.

However the Joker is portrayed very differently in suicide squad, in this adaptation the joke falls hopelessly in love with Harley Quinn, originally she was not crazy. The joker made her that way, he wanted someone like himself to be with, he took the pleasure in injuring her and together they became the king and queen of gotham city.

Practice : Prelimary Exercise

Hello again,

Last Friday our group (Me, Jack and Tasmine) completed our Preliminary exercise. This was a continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and siting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. Within this task we had to demonstrate a match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

What is the 180 degree rule?
The 180 degree rule is a shot based against a wall or in such a frame that you cant film a 360 degree angle around the characters. Imagine you’re looking the a scene from the side. You can see the whole scene, in context of  our task you couldn't see past the divider. You need to imagine a line between the two characters. This is called the axis of action. Then we need to keep the camera on one side of that line. If you break the rule you have ‘crossed the line‘. This is called the 180 degree rule because the camera can’t move more than 180 degrees (half a circle) around the characters.

What is match-on-action?
Match on action shots are when the camera follows a character directly or when a character is moving. Action is continuous despite the cut in shots.

What is shot/reverse shot?
Shot reverse shot is when you shoot first in one direction, then in the other direction.
The shots work together because the camera is still (just) on the same side of the characters as it was in the long shot. When the shots are edited together, we understand that they are looking at each other, because they are looking in the same direction as they were in Shot 1.

How did it go?
I thought ours went okay, we had a relatable and easy scripted plot. We wrote about something we all know which was joining a new 6th form and the stresses that come with that. We casted two of our friends who had free periods at the same time as our lesson so they didn't miss out on their lessons. For our location we chose the café as a friendly meeting point between the two characters. The equipment such as camera, SD card and tripod were easy enough to use and didn't cause any problems. Jack was the camera guy and Tasmine and I helped align shots. I edited using premier pro as I knew how to use the program.

Setting up the blog went smooth as well since I already had a Gmail account so it was a simple set up.

What would you change/do better if you had the chance to do the task again?
If I had the chance to do the task again I wouldn't use the café as my set up since we couldn't hear the actors and was a lot of background noise, customers were also an issue as some shots had some customers in and others didn't. I would also have cast a different female acting as she was not very loud or into the part.

Talk soon
Megan

Welcome!

Hello All,

This is my AS media studies blog, I'll be posting ALL of my work on here. Including all the paperwork like scripts and notes. So sorry in advance for that.

I'll be using this blog until July 2017 when I'll start an A2 media blog.
There will be another post shortly as we have just completed our preliminary task.

Talk soon
Megan :)