Weekly News 4th April 2016

Weekly News: Boston Marathon Bomb Survivor killed in Crash

The broadsheet online digital newspaper Sky News reported an article about a survivor of the Boston 2013 Marathon Bombings who had been killed on the 6th March 2016. Since Sky News report news that is deemed as serious and never reporting anything with use of hyperbole or abbreviations to envoke a negative response in the audience and cause any negative representations to be associated with the topic the newspaper is reporting about. A more serious tone is used in the language within the article's body text. This article would be suitably put on the news agenda of Sky News as most of the information they report about is close linked to Crime and incidents that have occurred internationally. As this newspaper tends to report about serious incidents, the editors and senior journalists which are the gatekeepers of the newspaper typically tend to allow the writers to approve stories focused around negativity which is a technique to attract the audience as negative news is more interesting than something positive that has occurred in our society.

The main image of the newspaper is supposedly of the victim of the car crash being lifted off back from the Boston Bombings in 2013, provided by the information from the caption which states the victim named 'Victoria McGrath' being carried off after receiving shrapnel injuries to her legs. This image is however not related to the actual incident that had occurred on the 6th March 2013. The main image of her being injured at the Boston Marathon Bombing's is used to attract the reader's attention since this was of a more serious incident than an ordinary car crash.

The target audience for this article is suited to the more intellectual reader, targeting the middle class workers in society. However judging from the structure and layout of how the article is written, the text is written in sentences and brief paragraphs. This is to ease the reader's stress as if an individual were to be presented with an article's structure of long paragraphs, the reader would lose the motivation to continue reading and therefore stop reading altogether.


http://news.sky.com/story/1655664/boston-marathon-bomb-survivor-killed-in-crash

The Intouchables (2011) Analysis - Case study - Poverty, Class, Ethnicity

The Intouchables is a French film both directed and written by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano. This film was released in 2011 which had been produced by Quad Productions, Ten Films and Canal +. The Intouchables production budget was consisted of an estimated amount of €9,500,000 and which it had grossed at a huge profit of $13,179,837, however only in the USA alone. The themes that were explored in this film are themes of hope, courage, joy, trust and most importantly; friendship. This film had been critically acclaimed in France when it had been released to cinema's, however outside of France, for example England where most of film's audience prefers America Hollywood style films, films that aren't foreign to their own language, wouldn't perform so well. However despite this, the film managed to make $426.6 million dollars worldwide at the box office.

Throughout the narrative of the film, the director/writer had employed a circular narrative into the script and film making process. The narrative of the film follows a black male by the name of 'Driss' who has not much going for him in his life, living off benefits in order to get by in life, jobless. This is until he comes across a quadriplegic millionaire who's interviewing potential candidates for a job position which involves taking care of his personal needs. Driss needs a document signed by an individual from Social Security in order for the government to approve his benefits. This is when the turning point in both the film's narrative and both protagonists lives takes a positive turn. A key scene in this scene of the film when Driss is waiting for a chance to be interviewed, Driss is sitting down waiting along with other men of French descent who are indeed of White ethinic origin. A pan shot is used before showing this visual information, presenting a shot of all of the men's legs and feet in suits until the camera finally stops at Driss, who is wearing trainers and baggy jeans. Then after the audience is presented with a long shot of all the men sitting down, Driss being the only black man there.

This key scene is meant to show the stereotype of how black people are uneducated and useless to soceity, which is significantly shown through the disappointment on all of the white peoples face when glancing at Driss and when Driss barges into the interview room after becoming tired of waiting and demands his document to be signed in order to achieve free benefits. This stereotype that the director is trying to show through Driss' character is how black people are reckless, live off of societies efforts, temperamental; essentially wild like an animal. However throughout this film the protagonist proceeds to defy this stereotype, when the protagonist Driss actually shows compassion and care to his best friend Philippe. The message through the technical codes that Olivier and Eric want to convey is that you should not judge a man based on the colour of his skin and through the stereotypes society places on an ethnic group.

Another key scene is at the beginning of the film when the two protagonists Driss and Philippe are in a luxury black car, speeding through traffic for pleasure purposes. What's notable from this scene is that the audience is tricked into believing that the genre of this film is of Action and that the themes would be based on Crime as they're committing a crime by breaking the speeding limit as police are after them. However the audience is only fooled as this is the first scene where the film begins as the narrative structure is part of a circular narrative. Another point to make is the representation of disability and age in this scene. In society, disabled and elderly people are often seen as always tired and lonely at home, unable to enjoy their lives simply because of the incapacitates that they have to endure which comes with age and disability. However Philippe's character goes against this negative representation of diasbled/elderly people. We can understand this from how he acts as if he's having a fit as an excuse for Driss to speed when confronted by the French police, when really he faked it in order to have fun driving fast. There is also various other key scenes which goes against this representation too such as Philippe going parachuting while in a wheelchair, which goes to show how some disabled people can have fun and enjoy life despite the unfortunate disabilities that one individual might have.

Themes of poverty are also touched upon in this film as from the scene where Driss is taking a bath while simultaneously the other kids in his household are brushing their teeth in the same bathroom. While the kids do this, Driss is complaining about them using the water while he's using the shower in the bath. From this performance alone we can understand the struggles lower class people have to live by, compared to Philippe living in a rich mansion, he himself has to undergo similar struggles of living (because of his disability) despite the clear boundary of Driss' lower class status and Philippe's upper class status and wealth.

To conclude, the director and writer intended to create this film in order to convery a serious message through the film's narrative and technical codes used to create the film. The messages that Oliver Nakache and Eric Toledano conveyed was no matter the circumstances which you're born from, no matter what disability you have, no matter who you are you can still achieve positive things and enjoy your life.

Weekly News Analysis: 'Schizophrenic' nanny smiles in Russian court after claiming 'Allah ordered her' to decapitate four-year-old girl and walk Moscow streets brandishing the child's severed head (unfinished)

In a report by the daily mail, a tabloid online digital newspaper, the writers Will Stewart and Julian Robinson which was published on the 2nd March 2016, had wrote about a shocking incident which could invoke muslim hatred in Russia as tensions between Russia and Muslim extremists are at an all time high after recent news of a flight in Egypt had been crashed in which Russia said that it was the fault of terrorism by the Islamic state. In this article, an incident occurred in Moscow of a nanny named Gyulchekhra Bobokulova burned down a flat of a child she was looking after and proceeded to sever the young girl's head and then walking around the streets holding the severed head in the air shouting "Allah Akhbar" essentially meaning 'God is greatest' in arabic, after she was detained by police. 

The sub-headings in the article help sum up what the article is about, which helps readers who aren't quite motivated to read the whole extract gather the main information through the bullet points provided by the writer of the article. However not only do the sub headings just provide information summarised, it also warns the reader of the graphic content that would follow through reading the article, in case there are some vulnerable readers that just want to learn of the incident. This is there in order to target both audiences of the vulnerable and invulnerable audiences. Images are used to 






Link to article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3472578/Schizophrenic-nanny-smiles-Russian-court-admitting-Allah-ordered-decapitate-four-year-old-girl-care-walk-streets-brandishing-head.html

Weekly News Analysis: Americans seeking to escape Donald Trump are offered asylum in Canada

The Sun is the most read newspaper in all of the United Kingdom, while at the same time this type of newspaper is what's known as a tabloid newspaper. The main difference from the online newspaper of The Sun compared to it's print format is that the newspaper states who has written the article in print, whereas in the digital online format, none of the newspaper articles detail a writer within. The headline of the article presents to the audience of how the United States presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump, is running for president while most Americans are so afraid that he might be successful in the election that they might even consider moving abroad to "escape" Donald Trump.

The Sun uses adjectives like "escape" in the title to try and attract readers to the article, as the newspaper's agenda is to attempt at representing Americans who are against Donald Trump like refugees seeking asylum from a war stricken country. From this it suggests that the agenda that the opinion leaders of the newspaper have are that they're against this presidential candidate becoming president. The main image that the newspaper uses for this article shows Donald Trump in a pose similar to what a dictator looks like when presenting a speech, with his arm up and hand out over the people.

The use of this image is very symbolic to what a past dictator like Hitler's actions he used to use when delivering a speech to the citizens, while it is also a reminder that from the action in this picture (which could also be timed a perfectly timed shot) his actions relate to the techniques the late dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong Il, used when presenting himself to North Korea's citizens. The audience could also interpret this image in a different way however, as this could be what the opinion leaders want the audience to think, that from this hand gesture in the main image, it suggests that Donald Trump is shouting at those Americans that oppose him (judging from his facial expression too), essentially suggesting the notion of telling them to go away and get out of the country.

The article does indeed state that within the body text and the headline that Americans can opt to flee to Canada if they do happen to live under Donald Trump's rule. However while this is also one of the opinion leaders ideaology that they're supporting, the headline to the article is quite misleading. It's misleading because as the reader proceeds to scroll down in an effort to read the article, there are no facts about the presidential election nor substantial information about Donald Trump that the audience can learn from. The article acts as a mere advertisement to promote a website that is trying to make people aware of a Canadian island, Cape Breton, that's trying to increase the population there through the presidential election campaign.


Link to the article: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/6956380/Americans-seeking-to-escape-Donald-Trump-offered-political-asylum-on-Canadian-island.html

Report

The task that I had been set with was to ensure I had made a DVD cover, script and one film poster for a thriller film. As for the creation of these production artifacts, I had to firstly research various posters and DVD covers pertaining to the thriller genre whilst also engaging in research of thriller genre codes and conventions. Before the production process began, I had researched various film posters and DVD covers since they included different layouts and various aspects of design that I wanted to include into my own design.  For this I had created a blog post on blogger which from there I had added various film posters and DVD covers where I had analyzed them in an attempt to understand what kind of techniques I can use in the creation of my own media texts.

For the pre-production part of my coursework I had taken a huge amount of influences from film director John Woo’s Face Off film, in which the film poster had incorporated mysterious conventions surrounding the two figures, just as on my poster and DVD cover, such as the use of smoke on my poster compared to the mist effect that had been used on Face Off. This film was the most significant film poster I had researched.  I had taken the elements used here and simply manipulated them to suit the theme, genre and narrative of my poster and DVD cover’s film.  From seeing how the poster of Face Off utilizes the use of black and white colour codes that pertains to mystery, death and suspense, this influenced my decision to use them as my main colours for the design process of the poster and DVD cover. As I had looked at most of the film posters I researched which were Face/Off, Eagle Eye, The Roommate and The Woman In Black, all these media texts utilized both the colours white and black as their primary colours. Since white and black offer symbolization of mystery, darkness and suspense, I knew that these colours were the primary colours that I was going to use for my film.

There were some anomalies that I had to work around, which in particular was to do with the lighting on the protagonist and antagonist’s faces for the front cover of the DVD cover and film poster. I had the aim of them both appearing to be sinister with dark lighting on half of their face to shroud mystery and dark intentions shared between the two, however as I did not have the correct technical lighting equipment to create this effect, I effectively used the tools on Photoshop to try and replicate this effect, which I had done successfully.

As part of the production process, I adapted these conventions and tried to keep my poster and DVD cover with a simplistic design, as having two faces glaring at the consumer, these production pieces inhabit a direct mode of address which makes the audience feel like the consumer cannot take their eyes off them if they went on display, as this is from the eye contact made from both the protagonist and antagonist which is there to create a relationship with the potential consumer in order to draw them in and persuade them to go and watch the film.  On the back page of the DVD cover, I added two images of a scene in the film where the protagonist proceeds to engage with the antagonist, as both images of them are displayed. The contrast between the placements of these images suggests that these two are against each other and underlines the conflict between the two, such as is the same with the image on the front of the DVD cover and poster. The facial expression between both the antagonist and protagonists displays the anguish that they feel between each other, which

When deciding what style of font to use for the both of my media text artefacts, I wanted to decide on a font that would have a sinister effect to it, but also leave a mysterious effect. Hence why I used the white colour codes for the font to add to the conventions of the thriller genre so the audience understands what genre this film belongs to from an initial glance at the poster and DVD cover. However on the contrary, initially I wanted most of the colour of the film title font to be red, though when I had edited the font to be of a red colour, the DVD cover and poster appeared to belong to a horror genre since the heavy use of the red colour codes resembled blood and gore while also symbolizing danger, violence and disembodiment; which my film tended to not utilize those conventions. As for the font on the poster, as the main focus when it came to the design process, simplicity was a key factor. I decided to place font which says “He’s closer than you think” down through the middle. I enlarged the word “closer” to generate an effect that the audience is involved and from this phrase alone the audience is questioned as to who is “closer” to each other (the antagonist or the protagonist).

On all of the DVD covers and film posters that I did research, all those media texts included star power on them in order to attract the audience.

The process of the script creation was to outline the genre of the film through the creation of the narrative. I had researched the script of the film Pulp Fiction which was written by Quentin Tarantino. From my research of this script, this gave me the guidance on how to professionally write a script including the correct layout and the right inputs that account for example, actions or dialogue within a script. Since I also had previous experience using the script writing program, ‘celtx’, I knew how to input these selections to write the script. However since I had to keep the script to a minimum at least eight pages, it was particularly difficult to structure out the chronological order of the linear narrative to the film when writing the script, so deciding when to end the script, even along with the synopsis of the film’s narrative at hand, was difficult in doing so. 

In summary, I have used most of the key conventions of a thriller to produce a poster and DVD cover at a professional standard. One weakness that I believe I could have improved on was using a different image for my DVD cover as it’s the same image used on the film poster, however I think the way I manipulated them to appear in a different way was a good option. Overall I am pleased with the outcome of my project.

Weekly News: Tiffiany Tabo slammed by US Cop

The shocking moment an accused woman shoplifter is slammed to the ground by Florida cop and left in a pool of blood from her gaping head wound

A police officer wrestled a woman to the ground and slammed her head before she was finally arrested for shoplifting.

Dramatic body cam video shows Tiffany Tebo getting flung towards a wall outside Bealls Department Store in Wesley Chapel, Florida, on Friday after authorities confronted her about stealing a pair of shoes.

At one point, the deputy's hand can be seen around her neck, and the situation escalates, leading to Tebo bleeding severely from her head.

Speaking after the incident, Tebo, who had to get four staples put in her head, told WTSP: 'I'm all bruised up and banged up everywhere. He didn't need to do any of that.' 

But Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco spoke on behalf of the unnamed deputy and defended his actions.

He told WTSP: 'We're trying to put handcuffs on her, she's trying to fight. I know people will say she's tiny but a lot of tiny people cause harm.' 

The body camera footage shows the deputy approaching Tebo with a member of the store's loss prevention team.

They ask her for the merchandise she didn't pay for, and she can be heard saying: 'I bought the shirt.'

The man then says she didn't pay for a pair of shoes, and when the deputy tells her to put her hands behind her back, she pleads with the officer instead of complying with his orders.

He grabs hold of her arm and throws her towards the wall, saying: 'Stop resisting me.'

Tebo, meanwhile, can be heard saying: 'Oh my god, okay! Please! Ow! I'm not going to do anything,' as she is wrestled to the ground.

While Tebo screams: 'Please you can have the shoes,' the deputy has one of her arms behind her back. 

But the situation escalates and the deputy can be seen grabbing her hair and slamming her head to the ground, leaving splatters of blood on the bricks.

She is already sitting on the ground when he draws his taser and points it directly at her.