The production notes

-The director Joe Wright, oscar winning Jamie Foxx and oscar nominee Robert Downey Jr are all from the acadamy Award nominated 'Atonement'.
-Dreamworks pictures and universal pictures present in asociation with studocanal and participant media.
-The filmmakers followed a suggestion from Dreamworks' head Stacey Snider about a young, rapidly rising British director.
-The director also won a BAFTA award for best picture of the year with 'Atonement'.
-Wright thought that this film would benefit from his distinctly outsiders point of view.
-Foxx said the first script he read gave him an emotional reaction.
-The more Foxx spoke to nathaniel the more he realised how hard it must have been for Steve Lopez to talk to him.

Let the right one in

The Sweedish horror film 'Let the right one in'(2008) directed by Tomas Alfredson, is an adaption of a Sweedish, gothic horror book written by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Although the film was given a small budget of £4 million to produce, the film has more than trbeled this amount to date and has become very successful. There are plans to recreate the film in America but development has not started yet. The film is set in the 1980's in a small town outside the capital city Stockholm, and was film in the harsh winter as snow is seen in every outside shot. The main characters are a young boy called Oskar who is twelve years old and lives in a block of flats with his mother, he is harshly bullied at his school by class mates and this immidiatly makes us feel sympathy for him. He meets a girl named Eli who is of similar age and they meet outside the flat. Eli lives with her father who we immediatly discover is a viscious murder and performs inhuman tortuers on his victims. We later find that Eli is a vampire and feeds on blood. Oskar is unaware of this as she decides not to tell him what she really is. They immidiatly become friends.
The director uses many different sounds to show emotion and feelings within the characters. Sound is used to build tension in key parts of the film, they use recognisable sounds such as the opening of doors and creeks in the floor to let you know someone is there. Music is also used to build tension and we are introduced to loud sudden music just before a killing. The repetition of this makes the audience know when a dramatic scene is about to take place.
There is a lot of variety in the camera work of this film, There are close ups to show emotion of the character when a significant part of the has happened such as a murder. We then see long to show an incident happening, eg:When the body is found in the frozen lake. This is to give the audience an all round picture of what is happening and the location. We also see panning shots when someone enters a room or a new location is being shown, this is also to show the audience the surroundings. We see over the shoulder shots when a conversation is taking place and also close up of faces are used to show the charcters emotion.
The lighting in the film is also very important, the dark nights add to the horror as night is assosiated with that genre. The lighting we see in the houses are artificial and are usually dimmed low. The day shots that are filmed in the natural light are shown to be very bright, the snow and the pure white sky add to this so artificial lights were not needed in those scenes.
Claude-Levi Strauss and his theories played a big impact in 'Let the right on in'. It was his idea to add binary opposites into films such as Boy versus Girl, good versus evil, young versus old. Binary opposites are shown throughout in this film. We first see a common opposite of boy versus girl, through Oskar and Eli. We see innocent versus bully when Oskar gets bullied at school. There is also good versus evil, which is shown when Oskar fights back against the bullies and with the murser victims. We also see human versus non-human in the freindship of Oskar and Eli, we see how they can both help eachother and learn from eachother.

The soloist

Cast
• Jamie Foxx
• Robert Downey
• Catherine Keener
• Tom Hollander
• Lisa Gay Hamilton
• Rachael Hamilton
• Jena Malone
• Diana Gomes
Budget: 60 Million dollars

Director: Joe Wright

Writers: Susannah Grant (screen) and Steve Lopez (book)

Production Company: DreamWorks, Universal pictures

Official Reviews : Based on a book by Steve Lopez, a Los Angeles Times journalist, it deals with the plight of Nathaniel Ayres (Jamie Foxx), a homeless schizophrenic and gifted musician. Lopez (Robert Downey Jr) discovers him, playing Beethoven exquisitely on a violin with two strings and writes human-interest columns about him that capture the public’s imagination (Telegraph)

The Soloist bucks the trend by pulling a bait-and-switch: going in it seems obvious that this will be the story of Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), former student at the prestigious Julliard music school turned crazy homeless man on the streets of Los Angeles, who gradually reclaims both his dignity and his sanity under the watchful eye of well-meaning newspaper columnist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr). (The vive)

Male gaze

Paul Blogs

• Incentive to buy DVD.
• Documents production.
• Features main actors.
• Fans of working title films.
• What the film is about.
• Using the same humour shown in the film.
• Simon Pegg fans.
• Audience participation-cast answer audience questions.
• Extras on DVD.
• Incentive to watch the film.
• Teaser.
• Contious of spoiling the plot.

Is Max Fisher a sterotypical teenager?

In the opening of the film Rushmore from 1998, we looked at The main character we were immediatly intoduced to, Max Fisher. From the opening montage of the clubs and groups he is involved in we can see that he is not a sterotypical teenager by the way he puts himself forward to lead the groubs and teams. It is unusual that a teenager of his age would be prepared to put themselves forward and spend all of their free time setting up and organising clubs. Also we can see by the uniform he wears that he is not a sterotypical teenager, other teenagers his age would prefer to dress casualy and to not make much of an effort, whereas Max likes to always dress smart. He wears a blazer with his schools badge on and this shows he takes pride in his appearence, He wears his uniform for every club he does which shows he enjoys dressing smart.
Also the fact that he has all younger people join his clubs and every one he is associated with him is younger than him. This could be because he is not noticed by people his own age because he stands out as being different.
We also feel that he is on his own and unlike other teenagers he is happy how he is and dosnt make much of an effort to mix with others, he is always shown looking happy how he is. We can also see that he takes great pride in how clever he is and uses it as an advantage to out smart adults. This is also very not like an average teenager. We can see that he thinks of himself as being very intelligent and above everyone, this might also be why he finds it hard to fit in as people are wary of him and know what he is like.

Comparison table

	This is England	Hot fuzz
Iconography	·         Montage of news events from the time. ·         Setting outlined from the start. ·         Social realism film	·         Introduced to all of Nicholas Angels major events in his life. ·         We are introduced to the main character at the start, see him walking down corridor.
Camera work/editing	·         Long shots to show where they are. ·         Slower paced to make it seem more natural. ·         Handheld shots sometimes used.	·         There are lose ups of faces when talking at table ·         Sharp quick changing shots to show the changing.
Humour	·         Young boy swearing ·         Bullying incidents ·         Realistic jokes within the characters ·         Quick switch from humour.	·         Repetition of jokes is used as humour.
Cast	·         Cheap ·         Authentic	·         Well known through Shaun of the dead ·         Proven
Director	·         Shane Meadows	Edgar Wright
Stereotypes	·         Skin heads ·         Council flats-Graffiti ·         Dressed as skinheads.	·         Hard working.
Location	·         Nottinghamshire ·         Beach, Grimsby	·         Started in London the moved to Gloucestershire in the countryside.

Shane Meadows research

• He was an english fim director screenwriter from Uttoxeter in Staffordshire, born december 1972.
• He started off making short movie clips with a friend before his talents were discovered.
• The majority of his films were set in the midlands area where he grew up as he knows the places, and although the scenes were set in a certain area they were shot elsewhere.
• A lot of his film ideas have come from past experiences so he is able to write in detail about what happend to him in his youth.
• He was nominated for a BAFTA for his hit film 'This is England' and won the British indipendant fim award.

American Beauty notes

Family- the family dont take any notice of the father and are not interested in what he has to say. They ignore him when he tries to speak. The family are also seen as creatures of habit as they follow the same routines, this is shown by the same music constantly played. We can see from family photos that the family used to be together and were once happy with the father in his rightful place, and also we can see that the father and daughter once had a close relationship.
Camera- the camera position slowly moves in on the family when eating dinner to make it feel like we are spying on them.
Diegetic sound- sound within the film
Non diegetic sound- sound over the top.

contents

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• The main character of the film 'Lester Burnham' continues a theme of him being trapped throughout the film, we see him trapped behind behind bars as he is stood at the window and also when his reflection shows on the computer screen which suggests he is again trapped. Also when he is behind the screen in the shower, it is showing he is traped. He then sits in the back of the car when he gets a life to work, this shows he is at the bottom of the family hierachy.
• Colours also play a big part throughout the film, red, white and blue are constantley repeated to possibly represent the american flag. Neutral colours are also used when showing the bedroom, this could be to represent the dull and boring life they have. These boring colours are also used to make the brighter colours stand out more.
• A motif is also repeated throughout the film.