Final Film Plan:

 Final Film Planning Process:

For my final film these are some criteria's i have to achieve when making the film:

• It has to show an example of one of the theory's we have been learning about, i decide to focus on the 'lack' theory by Jaques Lacan. I could also include that there could be a hint of the 'male gaze' theory created by Laura Mulvey but this wouldn't be the main theory focused on.
• When filming i love the use of colour in film, especially to show emotion in characters as i believe it isn't used enough in films today and can change the entire scene with creative lighting techniques.
• The beginning with start with a phone conversation that leads the main character to end up being influenced by her friend to download instagram and explore the world of social media.
• I then want this new social media platform to be essentially a rabbit hole full of the expected but unrealistic beauty standards that girls and women push themselves towards constantly.
• Then showing the reflection and comparison which goes through the girls mind, when she is reminded of her actual body compared to all the body types/figures plastered all of instagram, corrupting her mind with this fantasy idea that the new beauty standard is easily achievable.
• After this I wanted to create a montage type feel clip that links towards the typical scene in movies where there is a makeover of the main characters, so i want to have very close up scenes of the model dolling her self up, trying to achieve that perfect instagram look that society pressures her to look like now. This then also links to the lack theory and how she desires to be more like the people she sees online, always wanted to improve herself and be the perfect person.
• I think throughout this whole video, the only audio i want that's non-diegetic is the phone call at the beginning that started this whole downwards spiral off, just to emphasis that one decision can change a person entirely. Especially when they have the the pressures and influences from her close friends. Then for the rest of the video i want to research and find the perfect song to add to the video, so it makes the video visual rather than factual.
• Another idea i had was that I wanted to feature quote directly from a interview that was about how social media affects your body image. I felt like this gave the video a more realistic feel to it, because it gave examples of how this affects lots of other people around the world as well, because peoples expectations to look picture perfect all the time isn't possible.
• Once the montage is complete, she will still be seen editing her images to look completely different compared to her normal self before, showing how much the use of social media has effected the way she sees herself and the way she feels a need to change herself drastically to please others.
• All of this pressure to look perfect effects her mental health as well because nobody can ever be perfect. This creates frustration and built up a hatred towards images of women and girls who are portrayed to be perfect in magazines or social media so towards the end of the video, i will film her snapping. Snapping by going crazy, ripping pages out of magazines, maybe even burning them. I want to show this type of emotion as frustration can be demonstrated and shown different ways and change quickly too, so the switch from angry to frustrated to then sad, may be a good way to show the come down from everything getting to her and that she can't take it anymore. Then i want it to end there, hopefully this will be impactful to the audience and make people try and understand how much peoples desires can take over everything else they feel is important, pushing them to their final tipping point.

Final film powerpoint plan

 PowerPoint ScreenShots:

These screenshots are a rough idea of what my first initial idea were for my final film production. After feedback on the teams call, i decided to go with the first idea however the theorists linked are different and the storyline is a little different as well.

Film Notes - Laura Mulvey

Laura Mulvey - Male Gaze Theory

Laura Mulvey was a producer, director and actor in the early 1970s as well as being a film theorist. Her early work showed the investigation on spectatorial identification and it's relationship to the male gaze.
Her ideas and clear proof of misogyny in films allowed a lot more people to see this theory as well and this eventually helped the issues around gender that were present in many films.  Laura Mulvey quoted herself that women are "the bearer of meaning and not the maker of meaning." suggesting that women aren't placed in roles where they can be in control of a scene and everything going on in the scene, instead they're placed in that role to be observed and seen as a 'nice view' for the audience viewing the movie, objectifying the woman playing the role to be seen as a prop or object. These ideas are more enforced becuase typically the films are shot from a heterosexual males point of view/filming it so in a way the audience is forced to view it all from his eyes, making them look at the woman a certain way.

This became a social norm because it was being placed into out films and people were not noticing it at first so it because normal, this then led to the male gaze correlating with normal day to day life. Stuff such as advertisement: 

This advertisement  is in a subway and it's promoting weight loss protein shakes but any people who view this advert may be negatively effected by this advert because they don't look like this woman because her job is most likely keeping her body fit and healthy so that's all this woman focuses on unlike the everyday person who uses the subway all the time. As well as this many people then get an idea that this advertisement is the idea woman that they must strive to have even though this image is probably heavily edited and very unrealistic.

This is another example of how the media use woman to gain attraction from audiences by not even recognising them as a human being and completely wiping their identity so all they are to the public is a body to be looked at and sexualised. This is also a very common marketing technique  lots of big media companies use, is that they only have the body parts that appeal to the majority of the public on display to sell a product because the admired body is being associated with product.

I believe this technique of using images of headless or no identity women so it allows the audience to let their imagination go wild and picture whoever they want to sexualise with the body. This soon became recognised and even had a twitter hashtag of #Headlesswomen trending on twitter because it had gone unnoticed for far too long.

Although the theory of 'male gaze' is becoming more recognised and slowly decreasing in film with women now being independent and strong willed, not being objectified in films as much. This isn't the case for all films, such as 'The Wolf Of Wall Street' - 2013, this film contains lots of scenes and imagery of women being sexualised and objectified throughout the films. Another example of a film would be 'SpringBreakers' - 2012, this film is known to be overly sexualised towards the women featured in it and is highly controversial because of basically the whole focus of the movie is revolving around the girls.

Multiple examples of different male gaze examples in films.

This scene clip is from the movie Bombshell and it represents how multiple females on Fox news came forward about how they were sexually harassed by the sexual predator Roger Ailes ( John Lithgow). From this clip is it very visibly uncomfortable to watch but also the camera is placed in a way that the audience can notice that Kayla ( Margot Robbie) is obviously being victimised during this scene. This can also be proven by the cameras angles as they are in specific placements and have particular framing that has us the viewer identifying with the sexual predator instead.

Whereas recently the roles started to become reversed, like this example scene of the 2016 Ghostbusters, the roles of the original male group are all swapped for females and then the only male of the group is lusted after throughout the entire movie which would normally be the other way around. However because of this, the film was criticised quite badly as because it was essentially making fun of the normal structure of a movie, people did not like that, so they reviewed it badly.

4 Hour Film Challenge - 'Obsession/Love'

 

Plan for 4hr film challenge 2

My Plan for my second four hour film challenge:

For the second 4hr film challenge we were asked to to plan and create a 1 minute film that went with the theme of obsession and lust. For my idea I was thinking of using social media as it is known that people can be addicted and obsessed with social media.

1. I wanted the 1 minute video to portray a montage video, like an arrangement of clips throughout the day of someone obsessed with social media and show how being on social media can make time fly by. 
2. To give the video the appearance that time is flying by so quickly, i want to slightly increase the speed of all the clips on Premier Pro.
3. Throughout the video i want the phone/tablet to be the main focus by constantly having it in frame to get the message across to the audience that technology is the problem in this case.
4. Towards the end of the video, i want the clip to end in darkness but then have the reminder that technology is always with us so i want to use the light reflecting from the phone to be the only light source in that clip, showing no matter where you are or what you're doing, technology and social media are always with you.

Film Notes - Jacques Lacan

Jacques Lacan - 'Lack Theory'

Jacques Lacan was a French psychoanalyst. Lacan was deeply invested on identities, which he later named 'The Mirror Phase'. Which is when you're between 6-18 months old and you begin to recognise your reflections so you're showing a representation of your permanent structure of subjectivity. We have to understand and control the way we look on the outside because it's the only way others can understand you, or at least try too. This mirror phase can also be linked to more recent topics such as cinemas. cinemas essentially present to use a large mirror full or concepts, that us as the viewers have to try and understand just from what is presented to us.

Lacan was extremely negative about love all together. He said that 'There is no such thing as a sexual relationship' ( Badiou, 2013). 'Men and Women don't exist' and that 'Man knows nothing of woman and woman nothing of man'. He said that we peg our love fantasies from childhood experiences, so our expectations aren't unbelievable and we can't be too disappointed when love fails. So the overall connection in love, was never truly there, it was just fantasies. So Lacan said that it's better to be alone so you can mature on a more realistic lifestyle, eventually allowing you to build more mature relationships. The symbolic version of the phallus, a phallic symbol is meant to represent male generative powers. According to Freud, males possess a penis, no on can possess the symbolic phallus.

Lacan's views on politics was that most people were interested in finding someone to look up to and worship, to be in power. This is because the majority of people are dependant on others telling them what to do and when to do it, without this authority many people are unmotivated and lost, so in these cases, power is needed. This need for a person in charge is usually started from dependance on a parent when they were younger, it sticks with them.

He created the idea of 'lack' and that it causes to arise. A quote from Lacan, 'Desire is a relation to being too lack. The lack of being properly speaking. it is not the lack of this or that, but lack go being whereby the being exist'. Freud's approach of 'lack' is the hedonistic features strive us to act on moral principles and vice versa.

In the novel, (Mamoulian, 1931) Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde the mirror is very significant to the whole story as it displays the physical manifestation of Dr Jekyll's transformation into Mr Hyde. In this novel the mirror is a way of showing how the subject in the mirror that we normally see is just a representation of us. When Dr Jekyll first looks at himself in the mirror, he sees Mr Hyde who is depicted to be his darker personality which is able to carry out his darkest desires. The representation of himself in the mirror isn't what he wants to portray to the public because people create personas of themselves to please others and so others don't judge them. So the representation of Dr Jekyll in the mirror is his true self, even when he's in the mirror, Hyde is still a part of him.

In the Film versions, 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' staring Fredric March in 1931. They use camera tricks and techniques such as Point of view shots to represent how Dr Jekyll sees himself at the beginning, this point of view shot is then show again 2 more times later on in the film, and it begins to show his true form of Mr Hyde. This shows how everyones secrets that they're trying to hide and remain perfect for, always see the surface eventually.

References:

• Badiou, B. C. (2013). There’s No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship. Columbia University Press.
• Mamoulian, R. (Director). (1931). Dr.jekyll and Mr.Hyde [Motion Picture].
• Mirror POV Trick in "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde" (Fredric March, 1932) -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm59kdak8w0
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