Analysis of 4 Promotional Videos

With Apple they tend to have similar videos where they use only complicated language with diagrams that explain everything in order to over complicate it and over-sell the device. This video contains text that jumps and changes to the beat of the song that is playing. This is to keep the watching entertained. It combines facts about the phone with images/videos of people demonstrating this. For example for the most durable glass fact they had someone running into the camera and bouncing back. This way the appeal to a wider audience and makes the 'average joe' think they need a this phone to be something they aren't. It shows different abilities of the phone from the camera and the new A11 chip to the animoji's so its the more technological side of the phone to the more appealing features that other people would be interested in that aren't technological. There are a lot of zooms within this video and it emphasises the phone really well. 



This is a Hasbro Advert for a children's toy for my little pony, you can tell its aimed towards children because of the bright colours and the fact that the toy is the centre of attention at all times. It also aims towards parents because it shows them in the advert. The bright colours and showing how the toy works as long as the voice-over that is high-pitch and over the top. The video combines hand-held camera shots with 'life-like' shots and cartoons with a voice over to truly appeal to the audience. The hand-held camera shots give the audience a POV and make them feel like they are there which creates longing for the toy. The addition of the voice-over tells the more uninteresting facts about the toy and this is aimed at parents.



This a google drive video thats a tutorial on how to use it. You can tell its a tutorial by the simple and explanatory manner in which the video is made, the man uses a simple voice over and visionary details. The audience of this is anyone who wants to use google drive but mainly business owners. The simple structure and narrative makes it an easy to video to follow even to those who aren't very skilled in IT.



This is an example of a more relaxed tutorial video by a choreographer who creates tutorial to supplement his business income. This video is aimed towards dancers and people who aren't professional dancers but interested. He uses simple explanations and visual cue's which helps emphasis the simplicity.

Evaluation of Film Studies Videos

Within our film studies part of the course we studied three theories and how they applied to film making; Freud, Lacan and Mulvey. After we analysed films with these theories we created our own film based on the theories. Me and Connie decided to make a short film based on Mulvey's male gaze and what it means to be under the male gaze and how women must be constantly sexualised and appealing and treat the camera as a heterosexual male. We shot in one location which was my house, We shot here because we wanted to show what a 'normal' day in the life of a girl is and then what the 'male gaze' day in the life is. In terms of mise-en-scene the location added a sense of verisimilitude to our film to make the issues of the male gaze rooted in the real world. In this way the choice of close-ups and wide shots of the female character would suggest what the male was actually seeing. 

We had aimed for the film to be an almost mirror image but with the difference being one is sexualised and the other isn't. The sexualised one is in nice underwear (mies-en-scene) and is very posed and 'sexy' we did this because we thought it would be an interesting way of expressing the difference. I think we made a good attempt at this with the variety of shots (cutting from close-up to midshot) and the difference in the opposition, to improve this we could have maybe used different shots (such as cutting to a reverse shot of a male) and created two entirely different films which could emphasise the over-exggaration of the male gaze. 

There are several parts of our video that could be done better; the editing could be smoother and the transitions between shots could be less obvious and visible. The editing in particular was not effective enough in suggesting the male viewpoint. The narrative we have isn't as strong as we wanted it to be and originally first intended but our message still comes across within the video itself. I feel like we could have created a greater contrast and the ending could've tied up the message of the film better instead of just leaving it on the message at the end. In terms of diegetic and non-diegetic sound, we could have made the film much better by using a soundtrack that was more sleazy and obviously masculine. In this way the message of the film would have been more obvious.

In my final summary I feel like we worked well in our pairing and we split the roles evenly and created a piece of work that we are both artistically involved in. I edited the film and Connie filmed it, we both had a hand in the storyboarding and the message of the film and we both chose a concept and theory we were interested in and we hope we have achieved a video that has expressed the idea of the theory and what the male gaze is.

Film studies Videos (evidence for Lacan and Mulvey theory is here)

Analysis of Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad with Mulvey's male gaze theory.

Harley Quinn's character is a prime example of the male gaze, her character is so unnecessary sexualised, in this clip you can see how the camera lingers on her figure and there is a zoom shot in on her licking the bars of the cage she is in, this is sexualisation of the character as the lingering shots and the zoom in shots of her licking the bars sexualise her because they linger on her like the male gaze would. The extended shot duration and close-up of Harley Quinn's face, together with her facial expression, are clearly used to satisfy the male audience and objectify her as an object of male desire. Even the words she are saying 'don't you want to play with me is sexually charged even though it could arguably be a phrase that a child would say. Even the men within the clip are seemingly aroused and interested in her even though they know she is dangerous, we can see this when the cutaways show us their expressions in midshots. The main man she is interacting with shows no interest in her though which shows that even if the scene in the movie isn't meant to be sexually charged but it is exploring the male gaze and particularly for the audiences gratification.

At the start of the scene there is a slow tracking shot around the bars of the cage from a low angle, putting Harley up high in the shot which is a power-play but ensuring that the male viewpoint is gratified for the audiences benefit. This then cuts to a mid-shot of her and tracks downwards with the movement of her body, clearly showing off the curves of her torso right down to the top of her legs. This slow tilting shot glides over her body like the eyes of the male audience and fractures her body as Mulvey suggests in her theory. This is then followed by a zoom-in shot of her being framed in the centre of the screen, this makes her the centre of attention for the shot and gives her the power in the shot. The next shot is a close up of her face as she is licking the bars.

Although the sequence was not constructed with 'the male gaze' in mind, it clearly conforms to the way that a male viewer would be gratified by the over sexualised shots which have been used. The fracturing of the female form, so that a male can see parts of her body in a sexual way makes it easy to critically assess the sequence from Mulvey's perspective. As a consequence I would argue that cinema is still dominated by a masculine approach to representation.  

Outline for Video on the Theory.

Outline of film:

This film we are doing is a day in the life style film that slowly gets more glitchy and distorted. Swapping and changing between a sexualised girl and an un-sexualised girl. The unsexy woman will be static and normal. The other woman is hyper-sexualised and over-the-top. It slowly fades into distortion and becomes censored and flashing images. it will include mundane tasks such as waking up, brushing teeth, getting changed and eating breakfast. The contrast of the mundane tasks with the adding of the contrast between the sexualised woman and the non-sexualised creates a film that accurately portrays the male gaze within the media.

Equipment

1. Camera (DSLR)
2. Memory card
3. Lamps for lighting

Storyboard


What we aim to visualise:

We aim to show the difference between a classic 'male gaze' woman and what we perceive as a 'normal' woman, we are going to cut this with 'contains sensitive information' and with other sexualised adverts such as beer ads that don't need to be sexualised. This is to show that the male gaze is pertinent and how unnecessary the sexualisation of women is.

This is our storyboard, in each of these shots we plan to do exactly the same but with the girl wearing lingerie and being more sexualised. The use of high angles was chosen to put the female in a submissive position and make her appear to be dominated by a male audience.