Lighting/ Costume in V For Vendetta

Use of Lighting
• Chiaroscuro lighting casts Evey into intense light, emphasising that she is completely exposed, and vulnerable.
• Chiaroscuro lighting casts Evey’s interrogator into darkness, emphasising his shadowy authority and, compared to Evey, mysterious strength. Emphasises his speech.
• This visually shows the motifs of the film, with the forces of light struggling against the forces of darkness.
• Chiaroscuro lighting casts V in the darkness, reinforcing his sense of mystery, while it leaves Evey and the fingermen in the light, showing their vulnerability. This effectively shows the binary opposites of the film: dark versus light; good versus evil.

• Using fireworks at the two scenes of destruction:
1) Appropriate for Guy Fawkes Night
2) Suggests celebration at the destruction
3) Contrasts with the drab colours of Norsefire England

• Lighting in the Shadow Gallery is soft, showing a sense of calm and sanctuary from the main events. Usually accompanied by a pleasant soundtrack – not orchestra or bombastic.

Use of Costume
V’s costume is of vital importance as it ties many of the film’s main ideas together.

1. It is a fundamental link back to Guy Fawkes and the idea (given by Evey in voice-over in the prologue) that the ideas that change nations must be remembered, but so should the lives of the men who fought for them.
2. The hat and cloak do not allow a clear view of V, so it is never possible to know exactly what he is doing.
3. The costume covers V and hides his injuries sustained at Larkhill.
4. The mask is a symbol that links all of the characters who are forced to hide under the government’s persecution of individual freedoms.
5. The mask of the people is metaphorical – they do not physically wear one but they are forced to live a life that is not true to themselves (Deitrich/ Finch/ Valerie/ etc.). “You wear a mask for so long you forget who you are underneath it”.

Alliteration - Tongue Twisters

Remember, alliteration is the repetition of the same consonant sound.

These might help you to remember...

A proper copper coffee pot.


Red Leather Yellow Leather


Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.


She sells sea-shells on the sea-shore.
The shells she sells are sea-shells, for sure.

Betty bought a bit of butter and put it in her batter
But the bit of butter Betty bought made her batter bitter.
So Betty bought a better bit of butter and put it in her batter.
The better bit of butter Betty bought made her batter better.

Intermediate 2 - Close Reading Skills

Intermediate 2 close reading

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Term Three Contest

Another term, another contest.

This time I want you to look at short-story writing.

I will be looking for:

1) Descriptive writing
2) Good characterisation/ dialogue
3) An interesting plot with a twist
4) Believable settings, etc.
5) Interesting vocabulary

The story can be of any genre (though you may want to consider writing a crime story to be submitted for the "Time To Kill" competition - max 1,000 words), set in any period, feature as many or as few characters as you like (I personally prefer stories with a small number of characters) and have a word count as small or as large as you like.

As usual, I will have some really good prizes for the winners.

The competition closes on Monday, April 4th and is open to ALL year-groups.

If you need any help, or want to submit/redraft copies, just pop in to room 6 and let me know.

Should film censorship be banned? (Int 2 Discursive)

Intro:

1. Is it a controversial subject, and why
2. Roughly (in one sentence) what the two sides are
3. What the essay is about

Film censorship/ the censorship of cinema/ the government censorship of film

• Is a controversial subject.
• Is a subject which generates many opinions/ views/ arguments
• Is a highly contested subject matter
• Is a subject that has triggered debate for many years/ for as long as cinema has existed.

Points in favour:

1 Allow film companies to profit (widen the audience)

• By removing censorship laws, film companies would be able to sell their films to more people. At the moment, fifteen year olds are not allowed to see films rated at “18”.
• If film companies made more profits they would be able to make more films for the public to watch.

2 It simply doesn’t work

• Easy for people to get around it
• What’s the point if it doesn’t work?
3 Greater audience freedom of choice
• Currently the audience cannot watch just anything
• This is patronising – surely people can judge for themselves what is suitable or not
• This would increase the audience size and lead to greater profits for cinemas
4 Downloading makes certification irrelevant
• Dawn of the internet means anyone can watch anything.
• Teenagers left unsupervised will decide what is best for them
• The “click if you are 16” option is totally pointless – anyone can click “yes”
• It is no longer necessary to provide ID at a shop or cinema; the internet cannot verify a user’s age

5 People are not so affected by the images they see

- We cannot blame violent crime on the influence of films
- What about the influence of pop songs (everyone should be depressed/ suicidal)
- What about the influence of the news
- Stand-up comedy
- Surely the society we see around us is a far greater influence than ANY media images we see

Turning point

Yet, for all these points…
The argument in favour of censorship, though…
Is this the whole story, though?
It would be dismissive to suggest, however, that…

Points against

1 Prevents children seeing inappropriate material

- There are certain materials that can traumatise children
- These can have life-long effects – need for counselling – affect their ability to engage fully in society/ relationships
- Imitate the actions? “Child’s Play”/ Bulger

2 Excludes illegal material (traumatic content)

- “Snuff” movies/ etc.
- Helps to discourage film-makers from making these films – removes the exploitation of individuals in their production
- These films often involve the committal of crimes

3 Desensitizes the audience

- They become less compassionate
- Direct influence on the quality of our society
4 Just because the system is flawed, doesn’t mean it is working

- Yes, the system is flawed
- There are ways around the law
- However, it is founded on a sound idea of protecting the public
- It may not be perfect but it is moderately successful
- Regardless of any system of censorship, there will be flaws
- That does not justify throwing the whole thing out
- It keeps our society from being desensitised, and this is a fundamentally good service

Conclusion

Teenagers - Statistics and Quotes

• Nationally, more than half of teenagers are virgins until they are at least 17 years of age (The Alan Guttmacher Institute).

• Nationally, one-quarter of 15 year old females and less than 30% of 15 year old males have had sex. (National Bureau of Statistics)

• 1 in 12 persons age 12 to 15, compared to 1 in 357 age 65 or more are victims of violent crime. (National Bureau of Statistics)

• Approximately 80% of adult smokers started smoking before the age of 18. Every day, nearly 3,000 young people under the age of 18 become regular smokers. (Centre for Disease Prevention)

• More than 5 million children living today will die prematurely because of a decision they will make as adolescents---the decision to smoke cigarettes. (Centre for Disease Prevention)

• Among young people, those with poorer grades and lower self-images are most likely to begin using tobacco.

• More than half (56 percent) of youths age 12-17 reported that marijuana was easy to obtain in 2008. (National Household Survey on Drug Abuse)

• Each year, students spend $5.5 billion on alcohol, more than they spend on soft drinks, tea, milk, juice, coffee or books combined. (2008 Household Survey on Drug Abuse)

• In total, nearly seven in 10 (68%) of 16 to 18-year- olds stayed in full-time education in 2009. (Dept for Education)

• The total number of 16 to 18-year-olds in education or training last year rose by 39,000 to 1.65m. (Dept for Education)
• In 2006, 15% of all arrests for violent crime were made on people under the age of 18. (Dept of Justice) (This suggests 85% were committed by those older than 18 – a significantly larger number.)

• Right now, more than a third of high school students hold part-time jobs; and four out of five are employed at some time while attending high school. (suite101.com)

• Many parents believe part-time jobs increase a teen's sense of responsibility and ease the transition to the adult workplace. (suite101.com)

• Young people have been telling us for years that they are stereotyped and misrepresented to the general public, and want us to speak up on their behalf to challenge this. In fact, many make a fantastic contribution to our society through volunteering and public service. (British Youth Council)

• 71% of teenagers thought their teachers believed in them (British Youth Council)

• "Teenagers have been unfairly criticised for irresponsible behaviour when it comes to sex and contraception." Dr Phil Steer (BMJ)

• A typical teenager’s day: “Up at 6.30am, leave at 7.45am for school at 8.30am; out again at 4pm, extra curricular stuff till 5pm, home 5.45pm, three hours of homework, say, takes you to 8.45pm, by which time, if you're to get the recommended nine and a half hours' sleep, you should go to bed." (The Guardian)

• “More than 60% of the stories about teen boys concerned crime – 90% of which showed them in a bad light. Eighty-five per cent of a sample of 1,000 boys thought the press portrayed them negatively.” (The Guardian)

• “96% are ambitious about their future careers, 94% are happy in their home and family lives, 93% are happy in their social lives and 91% are happy in their school or work lives” (The Guardian)

Today's handout.

Greek gods info

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Discursive Essay: Should film censorship be banned? (Int 2)

Yes
1 Allow film companies to profit (widen the audience)
2 It simply doesn’t work
3 Greater audience freedom of choice
4 Downloading makes certification irrelevant
5 People are not so affected by the images they see

No

1 Prevents children seeing inappropriate material
2 Excludes illegal material (traumatic content)
3 Encourages violent behaviour/ desensitizes the audience
4 It is a system based on litigation, not the moral well-being of the public
5 Just because the system is flawed, doesn’t mean it is worthless

V For Vendetta - Revision Quotes

 

V For Vendetta - Revision

The comprehensive guide (with clips) is here.

From today, remember:

1. Comment on:

Costume
Lighting
Camera angle
Editing
Score
Gesture
Tension/ climax

2. Develop each point FULLY.
3. Indicate if a shot or scene has a connection to one later.
4. QUOTES.
5. At the end of EVERY paragraph you must link back to the question.
6. Show the development of an idea or character.

Here are the common misspellings:

1. Vendetta

2. Government
3. Criminal
4. Terrorism
5. Evey
6. Symbol
7. Metaphor
8. Score
9. Orchestra
10. McTeigue
11. Corrupt
12. Sutler
13. Dystopia
14. Sympathise
15. Camera angle
16. Visual
17. Assassinate
18. Detention
19. Authority
20. Parliament
21. The Old Bailey
22. Curfew
23. Experiment
24. Transformed
25. Revolutionary
26. Rebellion
27. Chemical
28. Future
29. Biological
30. Vengeance

Intermediate 2 - V for Vendetta Revision

You've got a lot of work to do.

In your film essays you MUST do the following:

1) Finish every paragraph by answering the question directly.
2) Explain which technique the director uses, and say why he uses it. What effect is he trying to create?
3) Try to indicate where events or ideas come up again and again (motifs, symbols, symmetry, etc.).
4) DO NOT JUST RETELL THE STORY. If you have gone four lines and not made reference to a filmic technique, you are drifting off subject.

Here is the PowerPoint from today:

S1 - Greek Myths

For those of you interested in getting a peek of what's to come this term...

Greek myths unit twelve labours - student booklet

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S3 - Discursive Essays - Paragraph Structure Notes

As discussed, and using the example:

Religious Freedom

Overall point: People can distract one another with their clothing, even if it is not religious.

1. Topic sentence (The sentence that indicates what your paragraph will be about.)
2. The argument in full.
3. Any statistics or quotes.
4. Your point in favour or against.
5. (optional) Any statistics or quotes that support this point.


1. Many people argue that religious clothing can be distracting and divisive.
2. The idea behind this is that religious clothing separates people into “religious” and “non-religious” and this can provoke antagonism.
3. It is stated in the Guardian newspaper that “24% of bullying in schools is due to Religious clothing”.
4. However, it can also be argued that other forms of clothing can be just as divisive, and the competition around fashionable clothes can provoke even more bullying in schools.
5. A survey of head-teachers in 2010 revealed that 87% of fights in school are connected to the clothing pupils wear.

S3 - Discursive Essays - Intro Notes

• The subject of your essay.
• Why is the subject controversial?
• Your intentions.
• Possibly suggest a key argument for each side?
• Quote.

Despite being illegal, the Guardian notes that “Doctors in the UK were responsible for the deaths, through euthanasia, of nearly 3,000 people last year.” This controversial subject divides opinion between those who feel they have the right to choose when to die, and those who feel it is not their right. Over the course of this short essay, I will assess these two positions in th

Research Websites

From last Thursday's class, here are a number of websites that I would deem acceptable for you to take quotations and statistics from. Of course, this does not mean you can't come up with your own, but you do need to make sure your own research is reliable.

Euthanasia

From the Guardian website, and also this interview with Terry Pratchett.
The Wikipedia entry.
This is interesting, from the BBC. There's also a special report here.
This organisation campaigns for the legalisation of euthanasia.
There are some interesting arguments against here.

Doctors withholding treatment
This is quite dense but the General Medical Council site has a lot to offer.
An interesting article in the Independent here .
And another interesting one in the Telegraph here .
This is interesting. David Cameron made these comments before he was PM...

BMI for Models
This is from the Times.
The Independent ran this story in 2006.
Clearly, this was an issue in 2006 as the BBC also got in on the story.
This is an interesting, albeit rather unpleasant, collection of information about anorexia.

Religious Freedom
This is the Wikipedia page for the subject - a good place to start.
This is a report of the UK's freedom of religious worship.
Here is an article by the inspirational Shami Chakrabarti.
The Declaration of Human Rights is the cornerstone of this issue. Articles 2, 3, 12 and 18 are worth a look.
This article is from a theological "think tank" - not entirely impartial, but worth a read.


Same Sex Adoption
You could make a good start by reading this.
An interesting account of life in a same sex family is here.
Here is an article detailing the pros and cons of the issue.
This is a website that claims to be impartial but, as you can see, the text is skewed dramatically in favour of one side...


Sexual Inequality
This article is a bit old now but many of the points are still relevant.
Here is the Wikipedia page which is a good place to get an overview.
UNICEF's website has some interesting material on the issue.
A good article from the BBC.
The debate in the UK tends to be centred around this.

Why do teenagers have such a bad press?

Why do teenagers have such a bad press?

Intro

The issue of XXXX has been debated for many years.

• The reporting of teenagers in the media is a contentious/ difficult/ complicated issue.
• Teenagers are often in the news, but their reporting is a moot/ controversial/ debatable issue.
• Every generation of teenagers has its reputation scrutinised by the media.
• The reputation of teenagers is not clear cut: are they a good influence in society, or bad?
• Their behaviour, language and culture is alien to adults, but can we really say it is deserving of a bad reputation?
• Perhaps their strange and clandestine/ esoteric culture is hard for adults to understand, but the extent to which it can be said to be “bad” is hard to say.
• The reputation of teenagers is wide open to personal experience and interpretation.
• While teenagers may seem a separate species to most adults, can we say their culture deserves a bad reputation.
• That said, it cannot be denied that through anti-social behaviour, teenagers do not help themselves.
• The vandalism we see around us, though, is rarely painted by pensioners. Teenagers, surely, are responsible for some unacceptable behaviour.
• Seeing a group of underage drinkers at a bus-stop, though, hardly refutes/ contradicts/ disagrees with the picture painted by the media.
• The number of under-age pregnancies of course, does nothing to suggest that teenagers are entirely innocent.

Megalopsychos

Following on from last week, I have the following proposed names for the group. Please have a read and maybe choose one that you like the sound of.

• Union of Amateur Philosophy
• Agorasophos (which means "a meeting of wisdom")
• Eudaimonia (the philosophical term for human flourishing)
• The Eidos Convention (Eidos meaning "what we know")
• Golspie Arete or Arete Golspie (Arete meaning "virtue/ excellence")
• Tea, Trivia and Thinking
• Classics Union
• The House of Nous ("nous" = The mind/ intellect)
• Of course, we could stick with Megalopsychos, which means "great soul" and was the main goal for the Stoic philosophers.

If you have any suggestions of your own, please let me know. It's your group, after all.

V For Vendetta - Characters - Revision

This sheet can be downloaded and printed out. PLease keep a copy handy in your folders so you can keep checking which character is which. I really don't want to see people talking about the wrong characters in their essays...

V for vendetta unit characters - pics

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Research Sites

I'm still working on a collection of links. Hopefully I'll have them up here by the end of tomorrow.

Discursive Writing - Teenagers

The Hippocratic Oath

For those of you writing any essay about the rights and wrongs of health, medicine or doctoring, you may need to make consideration of the Hippocratic Oath.

This document, as so many marvellous things are, is from the Greek civilisation of the 9th to 2nd centuries BC, and is an agreement taken by all doctors.

The gist of the oath is that doctors (or "physicians") would always try to heal or reduce the suffering of their patients, and would never tell anyone about the treatment of their patients.

Of particular interest is this section:

"I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone.

I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan..."

Is there a disagreement between "the good of my patients" and "not give a lethal drug" when considering the issue of euthanasia?

iDebate - VERY USEFUL

This is the link for the iDebate website. You may use this to start gathering ideas for your essay.

However, because I know of this site, it is going to be very easy for me to check up on plagiarism.

Please make responsible use of this resource.

V For Vendetta - Mindmaps

V For Vendetta - Key Scenes - Film - Int2

INTRODUCTION

Mention the name of the film,the director and the year it was released.
What is the film about?
What are the main themes?
What is your essay going to do?

YOU MUST REFER TO THE FILMIC TECHNIQUES!

How is the scene composed?
What is interesting about the way this scene is presented?
Why do you think it is presented this way?
How do we feel about V when we first see him?

YOU MUST REFER TO THE FILMIC TECHNIQUES!

In this scene we are introduced to four representations of the people of London – who are they?

What visual clues help us to identify them?
Why has the director chosen each group?
Why are they presented like this?

YOU MUST REFER TO THE FILMIC TECHNIQUES!

Dietrich is a minor character in the film but he is important – why?
What is interesting about the camera angle that reveals Dietrich is gay?
How does it make an audience feel when this angle is used?
What is the overall tone of this scene? Is there something in the scene that sums up this tone?
YOU MUST REFER TO THE FILMIC TECHNIQUES!

What are the main colours in this scene?
Why have they been chosen?
How about the camera angles and lighting; in what way are they important in contributing to the tension of the scene?
What do you notice about the music through this scene?

YOU MUST REFER TO THE FILMIC TECHNIQUES!

Valerie’s story packs an intense emotional punch. Comparing it to the previous scene, how is this impact achieved?
Clue: Think about lighting, music and camera movement.
As the scene progresses we feel the tension increase as tone changes – what are the indicators that things are getting worse ?

YOU MUST REFER TO THE FILMIC TECHNIQUES!

In this scene Evey is released and she is ‘born again’ as a revolutionary.
Compare the beginning and ending of the scene to show how tension is a) built and b) released here.
On the rooftop we get a real sense of space and physical release – why do we feel that way?

YOU MUST REFER TO THE FILMIC TECHNIQUES!

This is a montage based on Finch’s voice-over. How do the words and images connect?
Which images are the most powerful?
Does the use of real footage add anything to the scene?
Again, listen to the music – what happens at the end of the scene that creates a sense of foreboding?

YOU MUST REFER TO THE FILMIC TECHNIQUES!

Again, we have a montage from Finch, but this time it plays chronologically, advancing the plot.
Why is it effective that the action itself has no soundtrack?
What is symbolic about the dominoes?

YOU MUST REFER TO THE FILMIC TECHNIQUES!

Why does the scene start with a wide-angle long shot of the masked “V”s?
What is the effect of this shot cutting to a close-up of the soldiers?
What happens when the music reaches its first crescendo at 1:30?
Parliament Square is swamped with protestors – how do we know this?
What do we expect when we hear the 1812 Overture again?
How do we feel when Parliament is destroyed and all the protestors reveal themselves?

YOU MUST REFER TO THE FILMIC TECHNIQUES!

CONCLUSION

Explain how the examples you have used contribute to answering the question.

Make note of any recurring ideas or motifs.