Drive - Revision

Drive Revision

POMO Mix Tape - Tracklist

1. Disclosure - Intro
2. Destiny's Child - Say My Name (Cyril Hahn Remix)
3. Common - I Want You (Kaytranada Edition)
4. Jill Scott - Golden (Kaytranada Life Long Edition)
5. Bishop Nehru - Elder Blossoms prod. MF DOOM
6. Childish Gambino - Telegraph Ave. ("Oakland by Lloyd")
7. ASAP Rocky - Phoenix 
8. Le Youth - COOL
9. Drake - Pound Cake ft. Jay-Z
10. Frank Ocean - Nature Feels
11. Jai Paul - BTSTU (Edit)
12. Jamie XX - Far Nearer
13. Jay Z - BBC 
14. Mellowhype - La Bonita
15. Kanye West - Gorgeous ft. Kid Cudi & Raekwon 
16. Kendrick Lamar - Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe
17. Kid Cudi, Best Coast, & Rostam of Vampire Weekend - All Summer
18. Duke Dumont - I Got U ft. Jax Jones
19. Major Lazer - Get Free
20. N.E.R.D - Hot & Fun ft. Nelly Furtado 
21. Pharrell Williams & Uffie - Add Suv (Armand Van Helden Vocal Mix)
22. SBTRKT - Pharaohs ft. Roses Gabor
23. Mmoths - Over You
24. The XX - Intro

Sunshine Mix - Here's a mix that would get you in the mood for summer festivals and general summer vibes. Lots of music I've enjoyed from past summers, everything from house to r&b. 'Fire up the BBQ, get the beers in the fridge and stick this on loud'.

Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes

1A & 1B Question

1A
Describe a range of creative decisions that you made in post-production and how these decisions made a difference to the final outcomes. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time. [25]


1B
Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to genre. [25]

Advice from the exam board:
Genre.
Generally, this should cover not just generic conventions of the particular sub-genre of their product but should include ideas about how genres develop/evolve in relation to their particular product (e.g. changing sub-genres of music video, magazines) and how institutions use genre to target audiences.  

Genre Theory

Applying genre to your text from hammonda

Narrative Theory

Narrative Theory from guest9e3b3b

Alan Partridge on Jonathan Ross

Alan Partridge

Alan Gordon Partridge is a fictional character portrayed by English comedian Steve Coogan and invented by Coogan, Armando Iannucci, and other show writers for the BBC Radio 4 programme 'On The Hour'. A parody of both sports commentators and chat show presenters, among other, the character has appeared in two radio series, three television series and numerous TV and radio specials, including appearances on BBC's Comic Relief, which have followed the rise and fall of his fictional career. A feature length film featuring the character, 'Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa, was released in August 2013 to critical acclaim.
It was revealed that the film would involve and al-Qaeda siege - due to the sensitivities of such a storyline after the 7th July 2005 London bombings, the project was put on hold.

The IT Crowd

The IT Crowd is a British sitcom by Channel 4, written by Graham Linehan, produced by Ash Atalla and starring Chris O'Dowd, Richard Ayoade, Katherine Parkinson, and Matt Berry. The 'IT' in the show's title can be pronounced as either the word it, as in the 'it' crowd, or as the letters I-tee, as in the abbreviation for information technology (IT).
Set in the London offices of the fictional corporation Reynholm Industries, the show revolves around the three staff members of its IT department, compromising two geeky technicians, a genius named Maurice Moss (Ayoade) and the workshy Roy Trenneman (O'Dowd), headed by Jen Barber (Parkinson), the department's 'Relationship Manager' who knows nothing about IT. The show also focuses on the boss of Reynholm Industries, Douglas (Berry).

Is Postmodernism Useful?

Debates about postmodernism and whether it is really a useful theory or not.
• Lyotard and Baudrillard share a belief that the idea of truth needs to be ‘deconstructed’ so that we can challenge dominant ideas that people claim as truth.

• There are always competing versions of the truth. A postmodernist cannot wish to remove one version of the truth and replace it with the ‘correct’ one. All notions of truth must be viewed with suspicion.

• Postmodernism challenges the very notion of truth….and certainly disputes the idea that we should live our lives by adhering to widely perceived ideas of the truth (through religion etc)

• Many critics see this position as offensive. They believe that it is a luxury of people who live in advanced, rich nations and democratic states to take this ‘playful’ stance on matters of truth… (JM, 138) For example, many people in sub-Saharan have to face very fundamental truths every day…truths about the need to eat to survive etc

• The denial of ‘grand narratives’ and moral principles in postmodernism is also objected to by people who have religious convictions and attach importance to moral principles.

• If truth is absent, many would argue that we sink into a moral relativism where ‘anything goes’.

• Even if you accept the idea that there is such a thing as postmodernism, many would suggest that its time has now passed. It has been argued that the events and aftermath of 9/11 have undermined postmodernism’s belief that we have reached the end of ‘grand narratives’. Religious fundamentalism is perhaps the ultimate grand narrative. Did postmodernism get it wrong? Possibly, but there is an argument put forward by some that 9/11 reminds us of why we need postmodernism to try to challenge the authority of ‘grand narratives’.

• Postmodernism has emerged from so many different disciplines that it is notoriously difficult to define. How much value can we ascribe to theory which remains so elusive? If it is difficult to define what postmodernism is all about, might we conclude that there is nothing really there: there is nothing at its heart.

• Postmodern challenges the ideas of core truths/principles. By disputing the very notion of core truths, it would be contradictory for postmodernism to establish a coherent and clear set of central ‘postmodern ideas’. It has therefore become impossible for postmodernism to coalesce around a shared ideology (it challenges the idea that you should/could have one) and as a result has postmodernism denied the possibility that it can make a difference.

• Some would argue that postmodernism is really a descriptive rather than prescriptive movement. It tries to describe current phenomena but does not really move towards any idea of how we should progress from this point. In many ways, it even disputes the idea that we can make progress.

• Can you really separate postmodernism from modernism? One criticism of postmodernism is that it is not as new as many would claim it to be. In particular, intertextuality/pastiche/parody are often seen as key characteristics of postmodernism but, it is argued, they can also be seen as characteristics of many modernist texts: ‘Joe Dante’s films may be marked by a plundering of all kinds of popular cultural sources, but then so is James Joyce’s Ulysees, a high modernist novel’.

It is important to remember that not everyone agrees with the ideas of postmodernism….Many would dispute the ideas commonly associated with postmodernism.

‘Although the omnipresence of the postmodern and its advocates would seem to suggest otherwise, not everybody subscribes to the view that language constitutes rather than represents, reality; that the autonomous and stable subject of modernity has been replaced by a postmodern agent whose identity is largely over-determined and always in process; that meaning has become social and provisional; or that knowledge only counts as such within a given discursive formation, that is a given power structure.’ Hans Bertens (1994)

Audience

A2 Audience Presentation by amhammond

Genre Analysis

Note that an analysis of a text which is framed exclusively in terms of genre may be of limited usefulness.
Generic analysis can also, of course, involve studying the genre more broadly.
This is something we simply don't have time to do in class so you will need to spend time outside of class doing this (although you will hopefully have done lots of this when planning your production).

General

• In what context did you encounter it? (web, film, TV etc)

• What influence do you think this context might have had on your interpretation of the text?

• To what genre did you initially assign the text?

• What is your experience of this genre?

• What subject matter and basic themes is the text concerned with?

• How typical of the genre is this text in terms of content?

• What expectations do you have about texts in this genre?

• Have you found any formal generic labels for this particular text (where)?

• What generic labels have others given the same text?

• Which conventions of the genre do you recognize in the text?

• To what extent does this text stretch the conventions of its genre?

• Where and why does the text depart from the conventions of the genre?

• Which conventions seem more like those of a different genre (and which genre(s))?

• What familiar motifs or images are used?

• Which of the formal/stylistic techniques employed are typical/untypical of the genre?

• What institutional constraints are reflected in the form of the text?

• What relationship to 'reality' does the text lay claim to?

• Whose realities does it reflect?

• What purposes does the genre serve?

• In what ways are these purposes embodied in the text?

• To what extent did your purposes match these when you engaged with the text?

• What ideological assumptions and values seem to be embedded in the text?

• What pleasures does this genre offer to you personally?

• What pleasures does the text appeal to (and how typical of the genre is this)?

• Did you feel 'critical or accepting, resisting or validating, casual or concentrated, apathetic or motivated' (and why)?

• Which elements of the text seemed salient because of your knowledge of the genre?

• What predictions about events did your generic identification of the text lead to (and to what extent did these prove accurate)?

• What inferences about people and their motivations did your genre identification give rise to (and how far were these confirmed)?

• How and why did your interpretation of the text differ from the interpretation of the same text by other people?

Mode of address

• What sort of audience was your text aimed at (and how typical was this of the genre)?
• How does the text address your classmates?
• What sort of person does it assume they are?
• What assumptions have you made about their class, age, gender and ethnicity?
• What interests does it assume they have?
• What relevance does the text actually have for you?
• What knowledge does it take for granted?
• To what extent do you resemble the 'ideal reader' that the text seeks to position you as?
• Are there any notable shifts in the text's mode of address (and if so, what do they involve)?
• What responses does the text seem to expect from your audience?
• How open to negotiation is their response (are they invited, instructed or coerced to respond in particular ways)?
• Is there any penalty for not responding in the expected ways (think in terms of enjoyment for the audience or consequences for the institution)?
• To what extent did people find themselves 'reading against the grain' of the text and the genre?
• Which attempts to position your audience in this text do they accept, reject or seek to negotiate (and why)?
• How closely aligned is the way in which the text addresses you with the way in which the genre positions you (Kress 1988, 107)?

Relationship to other texts

• What intertextual references are there in the text you have created (and to what other texts)?
• Generically, which other texts does the text you created resemble most closely?
• What key features are shared by these texts?
• What major differences do you notice between them?

Her: Love in the Modern Age Documentary

The Moon Song

Her: The Digital Muse & Postmodern Culture (Amy Edelstein)

Illuminating critical perspective of the Spike Jonze film 'Her' by Amy Edelstein.

What in the World is Holy Motors About?

Critical appraisal and explanation of Holy Motors. 

Question 1A (Practice)

Question 1A

"Postmodern Media Break the Rules of Representation" Discuss.

Postmodern Media Break the Rules of Representation

1B Question

Analyse media representation in one of your coursework productions. [25]

Barthes Five Codes

Linguist Roland Barthes described Five Codes which are woven into any narrative.

The Hermeneutic Code (HER)
The Hermeneutic Code refers to any element of the story that is not fully explained and hence becomes a mystery to the reader. 
The full truth is often avoided, for example in:

• Snares
: deliberately avoiding the truth.

• Equivocations
: partial or incomplete answers.

• Jammings
: openly acknowledge that there is no answer to a problem.

The purpose of the author in this is typically to keep the audience guessing, arresting the enigma, until the final scenes when all is revealed and all loose ends are tied off and closure is achieved.

The Proairetic Code (ACT)
The Proairetic Code also builds tension, referring to any other action or event that indicates something else is going to happen, and which hence gets the reader guessing as to what will happen next.
The Hermeneutic and Proairetic Codes work as a pair to develop the story's tensions and keep the reader interested. Barthes described them as:
"...dependent on ... two sequential codes: the revelation of truth and the coordination of the actions represented: there is the same constraint in the gradual order of melody and in the equally gradual order of the narrative sequence."

The Semantic Code (SEM)
This code refers to connotation within the story that gives additional meaning over the basic denotative meaning of the word. 
It is by the use of extended meaning that can be applied to words that authors can paint rich pictures with relatively limited text and the way they do this is a common indication of their writing skills.

The Symbolic Code (SYM)
This is very similar to the Semantic Code, but acts at a wider level, organizing semantic meanings into broader and deeper sets of meaning. 
This is typically done in the use of antithesis, where new meaning arises out of opposing and conflict ideas.

The Cultural Code (REF)
This code refers to anything that is founded on some kind of canonical works that cannot be challenged and is assumed to be a foundation for truth.
Typically this involves either science or religion, although other canons such as magical truths may be used in fantasy stories. The Gnomic Code is a cultural code that particularly refers to sayings, proverbs, clichés and other common meaning-giving word sets.

How to Answer Question B

You will notice that each of these questions is quite short and fits a common formula. You can be assured that the same thing will apply this summer. You will be asked to apply ONE concept to one of your productions. This is a quite different task from question 1a, where you write about all of your work and your skills, as this one involves some reference to theory and only the one piece of work, as well as asking you to step back from it and think about it almost as if someone else had made it- what is known as ‘critical distance’.

There are five possible concepts which can come up
Representation
Genre
Narrative
Audience
Media Language

If you look through those questions above, you will see that the first three have all already come up, but don’t be fooled into thinking that means that it must be one of the other two this time- exams don’t always work that predictably! It would be far too risky just to bank on that happening and not prepare for the others! In any case, preparing for them all will help you understand things better and there are areas of overlap which you can use across the concepts.
So, how do you get started preparing and revising this stuff? First of all, you need to decide which project you would be most confident analysing in the exam. I believe that any of the five can be applied to moving image work, so if you did a film opening at AS, a music video, short film or trailer at A2, that would be the safest choice. Print work is more tricky to write about in relation to narrative, but the other four areas would all work well for it, so it is up to you, but to be honest, I’d prepare in advance of the exam as you don’t want to be deciding what to use during your precious half hour! What you certainly need is a copy of the project itself to look at as part of your revision, to remind yourself in detail of how it works.

Representation
If you take a video you have made for your coursework, you will almost certainly have people in it. If the topic is representation, then your task is to look at how those representations work in your video. You could apply some of the ideas used in the AS TV Drama exam here- how does your video construct a representation of gender, ethnicity or age for example? You need also to refer to some critics who have written about representation or theories of media representation and attempt to apply those (or argue with them). So who could you use? Interesting writers on representation and identity include Richard Dyer, Angela McRobbie and David Gauntlett. See what they say...

Genre
If you’ve made a music magazine at AS level, an analysis of the magazine would need to set it in relation to the forms and conventions shown in such magazines, particularly for specific types of music. But it would not simply comprise a list of those conventions. There are a whole host of theories of genre and writers with different approaches. Some of it could be used to inform your writing about your production piece. Some you could try are: Altman, Grant and Neale- all are cited in the wikipedia page here

Narrative
A film opening or trailer will be ideal for this, as they both depend upon ideas about narrative in order to function. An opening must set up some of the issues that the rest of the film’s narrative will deal with, but must not give too much away, since it is only an opening and you would want the audience to carry on watching! Likewise a trailer must draw upon some elements of the film’s imaginary complete narrative in order to entice the viewer to watch it, again without giving too much away. If you made a short film, you will have been capturing a complete narrative, which gives you something complete to analyse. If you did a music video, the chances are that it was more performance based, maybe interspersed with some fragments of narrative. In all these cases, there is enough about narrative in the product to make it worth analysis. The chances are you have been introduced to a number of theories about narrative, but just in case, here’s a link to a PDF by Andrea Joyce, which summarises four of them, including Propp and Todorov. 

Audience
Every media product has to have an audience, otherwise in both a business sense and probably an artistic sense too it would be judged a failure. In your projects, you will undoubtedly have been looking at the idea of a target audience- who you are aiming it at and why; you should also have taken feedback from a real audience in some way at the end of the project for your digital evaluation, which involves finding out how the audience really ‘read’ what you had made. You were also asked at AS to consider how your product addressed your audience- what was it about it that particularly worked to ‘speak’ to them? All this is effectively linked to audience theory which you then need to reference and apply. 

Media Language
A lot of people have assumed this is going to be the most difficult concept to apply, but I don’t think it need be. If you think back to the AS TV Drama exam, when you had to look at the technical codes and how they operate, that was an exercise in applying media language analysis, so for the A2 exam if this one comes up, I’d see it as pretty similar. For moving image, the language of film and television is defined by how camera, editing, sound and mise-en-scene create meaning. Likewise an analysis of print work would involve looking at how fonts, layout, combinations of text and image as well as the actual words chosen creates meaning. Useful theory here might be Roland Barthes on semiotics- denotation and connotation and for moving image work Bordwelland Thompson 

So what do you do in the exam?
You need to state which project you are using and briefly describe itYou then need to analyse it using whichever concept appears in the question, making reference to relevant theory throughoutKeep being specific in your use of examples from the project

Audience Theory

This is from Pete Fraser: Every media product has to have an audience, otherwise in both a business sense and probably an artistic sense too it would be a judged a failure. In your projects, you will undoubtedly have been looking at the idea of a target audience - who you are aiming it at and why; you should also have taken feedback from a real audience in some way at the end of the project for your digital evaluation, which involves finding out how the audience really 'read' what you had made. You were also asked at AS to consider how your product addressed your audience - what was it about it that particularly worked to 'speak' to them? All this is effectively linked to audience theory which you then need to reference and apply.

Media Language

Lang-Moving Image

1A and 1B Tips

OCR A2 Media studies Exam Questions 1a and 1b tips from Mr Smith

Leos Carax Explains Holy Motors

Honor Roll 2012: Leos Carax Explains his Beloved 'Holy Motors', Indiewire's Top Film of 2012.

1A Exam Question

Describe the ways in which your production work was informed by research into real media texts and how your ability to use such research for production developed over time. [25]

Holy Motors (Let My Baby Ride)

Edith Scob in Eyes Without a Face and Holy Motors

Holy Motors: A Critical Perspective

Article about Holy Motors on Biblioklept.

Criticisms of Postmodernism (James Rosenau)

Rosenau (1993) identifies seven contradictions in Postmodernism:

1. Its anti-theoretical position is essentially a theoretical stand.
2. While postmodernism stresses the irrational, instruments of reason are freely employed to advance its perspective. 
3. The postmodern prescription to focus on the marginal itself an evaluative emphasis of precisely the sort that it otherwise attacks.
4. Postmodernism stress intertextuality but often treats text in isolation. 
5. By adamantly rejecting modern criteria for assessing theory, Postmodernists cannot argue that there are no valid criteria for judgment.
6. Postmodernism criticises the inconsistency of modernism, but refuses to be held to norms of consistency itself. 
7. Postmodernists contradict themselves by relinquishing truth claims in their own writings.

Postmodern Audiences

How do postmodern media texts challenge traditional text-reader relations and the concept of representation? In what ways do media audiences and industries operate differently in a postmodern world?

• Have audiences become accustomed to the stimulation and excitement of spectacular films/games and a sense of spectacle has become something that (young?) audiences increasingly demand from cultural experiences?
• has narrative coherence become less important for audiences?
• In terms of ideas, has cultural material become more simplistic and superficial, and audiences are no longer so concerned with the process of understanding a text. 
• Has the attention span of audiences reduced as they become increasingly accustomed to the spectacle-driven and episodic nature of postmodern texts. 
• In its 'waning of affect', has postmodernism contributed to audiences become emotionally detached from what they see. They are desensitised and unable to respond 'properly' to suffering and joy. 
• Has postmodernism contributed to a feeling among audiences that arts and culture does not really have anything to tell us about our own lives and instead simply provides us with somewhere we can escape or retreat to. 

Postmodernism and Audience Theory

Alain J.-J. Cohen has identified a new phenomenon in the history of film, the 'hyper-spectator'. "Such spectator, who may have a deep knowledge of cinema, can recognise both the films themselves and filmic fragments into new and novel forms of both cinema and spectatorship, making use of the vastly expanded access to films arrived at through modern communications equipment and media. The hyper-spectator is, at least potentially, the material (which here means virtual) creator of his or her hyper-cinematic experience" (157)

"VCRs and laserdisc-players or newer DVDs have produced, and are still producing, a Gutenberg-type of revolution in relation to the moving image."

Anne Friedberg has argued that because we now have much control of how we watch a film (through video/DVD), and we increasingly watch film in personal spaces (the home) rather than exclusively in public places, "cinema and television become readable as symptoms of a 'postmodern condition', but as contributing causes." In other words, we don't just have films that are about postmodernism or reflect postmodern thinking. Films have helped contribute to the postmodern quality of life by manipulating and playing around with our conventional understanding of time and space. "One can literally rent another space and time when one borrows a videotape to watch on a VCR... the VCR allows man to organise a time which is not his own... a time which is somewhere else - and to capture it."

Anne Friedberg: "The cinema spectator and the armchair equivalent - the-video viewer, who commands fast forward, fast reverse, and many speeds of slow motion, who can easily switch between channels and tape; who is always to repeat, replay, and return, is a spectator lost in but also in control of time. The cultural apparatuses of television and the cinema have gradually become causes for what is not... described as the postmodern condition."

Postmodern and Media Industries

Whereas modernism was generally associated with the early phase of the industrial revolution, postmodernism is more commonly associated with many of the changes that have taken place after the industrial revolution. A post-industrial (sometimes known as a post-Fordist) economy is one in which an economic transition has taken place from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy. This society is typified by the rise of new information technologies, the globalisation of financial markets, the growth of the service and the white-collar worker and the decline of heavy industry. 

Postmodernism and the Film Industry

It has been argued that Hollywood has undergone a transition from 'Fordist' mass production (the studio system) to the more 'flexible' forms of independent production characteristic of postmodern economy. 

The incorporation of Hollywood into media conglomerates with multiple entertainment interests has been seen to exemplify a 'postmodern' blurring of boundaries between industrial practices, technologies, and cultural forms. 

G325 Exam

Question 1A
Include both AS and A2.

Question 1B
Choose to write about either AS or A2.

1A Exam Question

Describe how you developed your skills in the use of digital technology for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to your creative decision making, Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time. [25 marks]

Tips for Question 1A

There are five possible areas that can come up;
Digital technology
Research and planning
Conventions of real media
Post-production
Creativity
The question is likely to mix and match the five.

What production activities have you done?
This should include both the main task and preliminary task from AS and the main and ancillaries at A2 plus any non-assessed activities you have done as practice, and additionally anything you have done outside the course which you might want to refer to, such as films made for other courses or skateboard videos made with your mates if you think you can make them relevant to your answer.

What digital technology have you used?
This should not be too hard - include hardware (cameras, phones for pictures/audio, computers and anything else you used) software (on your computer) and online programmes such as blogger, youtube, etc.

In what ways can the work you have done be described as creative?
This is a difficult question and one that does not have a correct answer as such, but ought to give you food for thought.

What different forms of research did you do?
Again you will need to include a variety of examples - institutional research (such as how titles work in film openings), audience research (before you made your products and after you finished for feedback), research into conventions of media texts (layout, fonts, camera shots, soundtracks, everything!) and finally, logistical research - shots of your locations, research into costumer, actors, etc.

What conventions of real media did you need to know about?
For this, it is worth making a list for each project you have worked on and categorising them by medium so that you don't repeat yourself.

What do you understand by 'post-production' in your work?
For the purpose of this exam, it is defined as everything after planning and shooting or live recording. In other words, the stage of your work where you manipulated your raw material on the computer, maybe using photoshop, a video editing programme, or desktop publishing.

For each of these lists, the next stage is to produce a set of examples
so that when you make the point in the exam, you can then back it up with a concrete example, You need to be able to talk about specific things you did in post-production and why they were significant, just as you need yo do more than just say 'I looked on youtube' for conventions of real media, but actually name specific videos you looked at, what you gained from them and how they influenced you work.

This question will be very much about looking at your skills development over time, the process which brought about the progress
most, if not all, the projects you have worked on from that list above, and about reflection on how you as a media student have developed. Unusually, this is an exam which reward you for talking about yourself and the work you have done!

Final tips: You need some practice - this is ver hard to do without it. Have a crack at trying to write an essay on each of the areas, or at the very least doing a detailed plan with lots of examples. The fact that it is a 30 minute essay makes it very unusual, so you need to tailor your writing to that length.

Exam Board Advice Question 1A

Question 1A is always about how your skills have developed.

Paragraph 1 should be an introduction which explains which projects you did. It can be quite short.
Paragraph 2 should pick up the skill area and perhaps suggest something about your starting point with it - what skills did you have already and how were these illustrated? Use an example.
Paragraph 3 should talk through your use of that skill in early projects and what you learned and developed through these. Again there should be examples to support all that you say.
Paragraph 4 should go on to demonstrate how the skill developed in later projects, again backed by examples, and reflecting back on how this represents moves forward for you from your early position.
Paragraph 5 short conclusion.

G325 Exam Board Advice

G325 exam from petefrasers

Creativity Task - Scott Walker

What is meant by postmodern media?

What is meant by ‘postmodern media’

The Driver (1978) Dir. Walter Hill - The Getaway

The Driver (1978) Dir. Walter Hill - Opening Title Sequence

Violence: A History of Violence (2005) Dir. David Cronenburg

'A History of Violence' is a 2005 American crime thriller film directed by David Cronenberg and written by Josh Olson. It is an adaptation of the 1997 graphic novel of the same name by John Wagner and Vince Locke. The film stars Viggo Mortensen as the owner of a diner who is thrust into the spotlight after killing two robbers in self-defense.

The style of violence is reminiscent to that in Drive. It is visceral and brutal. Is it real or hyperreal? How do you feel when you watch violent scenes like this and why do you feel the way you do? Are your experiences of violence informed by other media texts?

Drive - The Ending Explained

If you're reading this, then you've already had the chance to watch Nicolas Winding Refn's pulpy crime-drama Drive, and hopefully enjoyed it as much as we did (be sure to read out Drive review). 

Though Drive seems like a standard action/thriller (albeit with some art house style and flare), a lot of movie goers have walked away with questions about the movie's final moments, which leave a fair amount of ambiguity over the fate of the 'driver', the character played by Ryan Gosling. 

In the past with out Shutter Island and Inception Ending Explanations, we here at Screen Rant have had to rely on out prowess as movie aficionados in order to form some logical deductions about what transpired in some of our favourite mind-bending movies, and what filmmakers intended with their ambiguous endings. In the case of Drive, however, we were fortunate enough to snag an explanation right from the primary source: director Nicolas Winding Refn.

When we last see Driver - bleeding out while behind the wheel of his car, before pulling himself together and speeding off into the night - there is a certain amount of lingering doubt about the literalness vs. figurativeness of what we are seeing. When I ask Refn first-hand what the ending of Drive was all about, I expected the typically coy filmmaker to hand me an equally coy answer. However, he was surprisingly straight forward in his response:

"Well all my films always have open endings. All of them. Because I believe art is always best when... You talk about it and think about it, so forth. Maybe once in awhile I've gone too far, but I always believe in finding the righ balance. And in 'Drive' he lives on for more and new adventures."

So there you have it - if you were wondering or not the ending of the film was to be taken literally, or was some metaphoric death scene, you at least now know how the director sees it. 

Refn has continuously referred to the film as a modern Grimm fairytale (unlikely hero rises to battle evil king, saves princess) and I for one always saw the ending as the hero saving the girl, while also being denied the "happily ever after" cliche he may want. Indeed the implications of the film are such that Driver will likely speed off into new adventures, as Refn claims, albeit still stuck in the lonely and isolated existence in which we found him. The only difference is: he now knows what kind of hero  he can be. 

Written by Kofi Outlaw

'Drive, or the Hero in Eclipse' by Christopher Sharrett

Click on the above image to find the article posted by Film International on 'Drive' directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. 

'Drive' Soundtrack Tracklist

The soundtrack to Drive includes an original score by Cliff Martinez that was inspired by '80s style synth-pop. In addition to crafting his own compositions, Martinez built the film's sonic landscape from ideas pioneered by European electronic bands, such as Kraftwerk, Other songs in the set - which were recorded and arranged with a similar retro edge - include 'Nightcall' by Kavinsky and Lovefoxx of Brazilian dance-rock outfit CSS, a tune by the Chromatics, and others.

1. Nightcall - Kavinsky & Lovefoxx
2. Under Your Spell - Desire
3. A Real Hero - College Ft. Electric Youth
4. Oh My Love - Riz Ortolani Ft. Katyna Ranieri
5. Tick of the Clock - The Chromatics
6. Rubber Head
7. I Drive
8. He Had a Good Time
9. They Broke His Pelivs
10. Kick Your Teeth
11. Where's the Deluxe Version?
12. See You in Four
13. After the Chase
14. Hammer
15. Wrong Floor
16. Skull Crushing
17. My Name on a Car
18. On the Beach
19. Bride of Deluxe

Tracks 6-19 by Cliff Martinez

POMO Music Task - Childish Gambino (Video)

"Postmodern media manipulates time and space" To what extent does this definition apply to the texts you have studied?

Pomo Essay Time and Space

Postmodern Music Research - Childish Gambino

Childish Gambino POMO

Postmodern Music Task

Postmodernism and Music V4

Postmodern Music Theory

According to Kramer, postmodern music:

1. is not simply a repudiation of modernism or its continuation, but has aspects of both a break and an extension
2. is, on some level and in some way, ironic
3. does not respect boundaries between sonorities and procedures of the past and of the present
4. challenged barriers between 'high' and 'low' styles
5. shows disdain for the often unquestioned value of structural unity
6. questions the mutual exclusivity of elitist and populist values
7. avoids totalizing forms (e.g. does not want entire pieces to be tonal or serial or cast in a prescribed formal mold)
8. considers music not as autonomous but as relevant to cultural, social, and political contexts
9. includes quotations of or references to music of many traditions and cultures
10. considers technology not only as a way to preserve and transmit music but also as deeply implicated in the production and essence of music
11. embraces contradictions
12. distrusts binary oppositions
13. includes fragmentations and discontinuities 
14. encompasses pluralism and eclecticism
15. presents multiple meaning and multiple temporalities
16. locates meaning and even structure in listeners, more than in scores, performances, or composers

Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino concludes his seventh feature, the Nazi-bludgeoning fantasy Inglourious Basterds, with a grisly flourish and a self-satisfied review. Having performed one of his signature mutilations, a character peers down at his handiwork and into the camera and declares: "This might just be my masterpiece." This is typical Tarantino bluster, in keeping with the image of the bratty wunderkind that he worked hard to cultivate and that, even at 46, he refuses to outgrow. But as the rare filmmaker who's also an avid reader of film reviews, he also surely knows that it's been a while since the critical establishment thought of him as a maker of masterpieces.
Since it premiered at Cannes in May, Basterds has met with some wildly conflicting reactions (some of them—no surprise given its breezily outrageous approach to a loaded subject—highly negative and morally accusatory). Tarantino's career since Pulp Fiction continues to seem like one long backlash. Could it be that one of the most overrated directors of the '90s has become one of the most underrated of the aughts?
Tarantino's filmography is split in two by the six-year gap that separated Jackie Brown (1997) and Kill Bill Vol. 1(2003), during which, among other things, he worked on the notoriously unwieldy Basterds screenplay (which was at one point supposed to be a miniseries). The received wisdom has it that he never quite made a comeback. But the criticisms most frequently leveled against him these days—he's a rip-off artist, he makes movies that relate only to other movies, he knows nothing of real life, he could use some sensitivity training—apply equally, if not more so, to the earlier films. (Reservoir Dogs lifted many of its tricks directly from the Hong Kong film City on Fire; Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown are the Tarantino movies with the most flamboyant use of racist language.) Reviewers and audiences may have wearied of the blowhard auteur, but there's an argument to be made that Tarantino, far from a burnout case, is just hitting his stride, and that his movies, in recent years, have only grown freer and more radical.
Taken as a yin-yang whole, Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 constitute a globe-spanning feat of genre scholarship, blithely connecting the dots from Chinese kung fu to Japanese swordplay, from blaxploitation to manga to spaghetti Western. Tarantino's reference-happy method is often dismissed as know-it-all geekery or stunted nostalgia, the video-store dreams of an eternal fanboy. But there is something strikingly of the moment and perhaps even utopian about Kill Bill's obsessive pastiche, which at once celebrates and demonstrates the possibilities of the voracious, hyperlinked 21st-century media gestalt: the idea that whole histories and entire worlds of pop culture are up for grabs, waiting to be revived, reclaimed, remixed.
First released as part of Grindhouse, 2007's double-header exercise in retro sleaze, Death Proof confirmed that Tarantino has no interest, or maybe is incapable of, straightforward homage, even when that's the nominal assignment. While partner in crime Robert Rodriguez tossed off a scattershot bit of zombie schlock for his contribution (Planet Terror), Tarantino borrowed a few motifs from sorority slashers and car-chase zone-outs and fashioned a curious formal experiment that would have given a '70s exploitation producer fits. Death Proof (on DVD in an unrated, extended version) is split down the middle into mirror-image halves. In each segment, the same scenario unfolds (with very different outcomes): a group of young women has a scary run-in with Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), a killer in a muscle car, and the exhilarating final burst of action is preceded by a provocatively long bout of directionless yapping.
Like their creator, Tarantino's characters never shut up and are plainly enthralled by the sound of their own voices. More than the spasms of violence, the lifeblood of his movies is their ornate dialogue, which tends to unfurl at great, meandering length. (Tarantino was sly enough to call attention to this hallmark early on: In Reservoir Dogs, when Tim Roth's character, an undercover cop, is handed the scripted anecdote that he will have to perform to pass as Mr. Orange, he balks at the sheer level of detail: "I've got to memorize all this? There's over four fucking pages of shit here.") Tarantino movies are known for two kinds of verbal expulsions: the stem-winding monologue (Samuel L. Jackson's Old Testament shtick in Pulp Fiction) and the micro-observational tangent (Steve Buscemi's anti-tipping tirade in Reservoir Dogs). In Death Proof, which revels in a buzzed, leisurely camaraderie, he quietly masters a third kind: the language of downtime and hanging out, not exactly naturalistic (his most subdued chatter retains a heightened quality) but less baroque and truer to the rhythms of actual human interaction. Modest as it seems, Death Proof is in fact a clear-cut demonstration of Tarantino's gifts. By so pointedly breaking the film into long, alternating sections—talk, action, talk, action—he distends the normal rhythm of his movies, weighing aural against visual spectacle and pushing each to its limit.
But it's in Inglourious Basterds that the relationship between language and action becomes truly charged. Though the violence (much of it perpetrated by Jews against Nazis, with baseball bats and bowie knives) is graphic and memorable, the film consists largely of one-on-one verbal showdowns. As in Death Proof, but with greater purpose, Tarantino gives the conversations room to soar and stall and double back on themselves (especially in two agonizingly tense and protracted scenes, in a farmhouse and a basement tavern). Language is the chief weapon of the insinuating villain, brilliantly played by Christoph Waltz, a Nazi colonel fluent in German, English, French, and Italian. Power resides in the persuasiveness of speech; the success of undercover missions hinges on the ability to master accents; and as characters strive to maintain false pretenses, words are a means of forestalling death.
Inglourious Basterds addresses head-on many of the standard anti-Tarantino criticisms. You say he makes movies that are just about movies? You think they present violence without a context? Luring the elite of the Third Reich to an Art Deco cinematheque in Nazi-occupied Paris, Basterds gleefully uses film history to turn the tables on world history; its context is nothing less than the worst atrocity of the 20th century. This only seems to have further infuriated Tarantino's detractors, some of whom are appalled that this terminal adolescent would dare to indulge his notorious penchant for vengeful wish fulfillment on such sensitive and sacrosanct material.
Needless to say, Tarantino's movie shares little common ground with—and, indeed, is probably a direct response to—your typical Holocaust drama. It has no interest in somber commemoration, and it refuses to deny the very real satisfactions of revenge. Like all of Tarantino's films, Inglourious Basterds is about its maker's crazy faith in movies, in their ability to create a parallel universe. His films have always implicitly insisted that movies are an alternative to real life, and with Inglourious Basterds, for the first time, he has done something at once preposterous and poignant: He takes that maxim at face value and creates his own counterfactual history. It may not be his masterpiece, but for sheer chutzpah, it will be hard to top.

By Dennis Lim

Analysing the Tavern Scene - Inglourious Basterds

For Lights, Camera . . . , we ask a craftsperson to talk about a specific scene in his or her latest film. This week, Sally Menke, film editor on "Inglourious Basterds", talks about the shootout scene in the basement tavern.
Quentin Tarantino told the multiple stories of "Inglourious Basterds" in five distinct chapters, and we knew from the script stage the film would hinge around the set-piece in the tavern La Louisianne. The daunting task of putting a 25-page dialogue sequence, spoken almost entirely in German, in the middle of the film, weighed heavily on everyone's minds, and it all had to come together in the cutting room. Just mentioning the name La Louisianne created tension among the crew, but we needed that tension to transcend to the audienceIn La Louisianne, the Basterds meet their German movie star contact, Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) for the first time, and they must all pretend to be old friends by posing as Nazi officers. Much to the Basterds' surprise, they not only find Bridget in the dangerously cramped tavern, they find the basement bar filled with drunken, celebrating Nazis, one of whom happens to be enamored with the German movie star and continually pesters their table. The tension in the group runs high as we watch the real Nazis begin to question the origin of the British Archie Hicox's (Michael Fassbender) strange accent, and we hold our breath.La Louisianne required detailed attention to character development as well as numerous story points, all the while using the device of language to create tension. Quentin and I felt it was essential to have the characters not simply drive the scene toward a plot point, but to be fully nuanced characters, while continually building the tension that would culminate in an explosive gun battle that kills all but one. We knew the gunfight would work all the better if we could carefully manipulate and build the tension through a give and take of emotions, playing a cat-and-mouse game with our characters -- and our audience.Our editorial intentions had to be completely clear in how we wanted the audience to feel at any specific moment in the scene -- the Basterds are screwed, wait, no, they're OK, oh, no they aren't, this Nazi knows, he's on to them, no, no, they are OK -- until Hicox makes the fatal error that unequivocally gives them all away as impostors. Every line had a layer of tension, and we needed to play their reactions to the lines as much as the lines themselves to build it properly. Every beat counted. Every second someone delayed their response gave the audience a chance to think, "Did they figure it out? Do they know?"We obsessively controlled every moment so that in contrast, when the climactic gun battle finally does erupt, it explodes in the loudest, craziest and most shocking way possible. But again, while doing this, we always had to return to the human element -- our character development. Hicox gets a bit of a tear in his eye when he realizes he will live no longer, and if we have done our jobs correctly, so will our audience.Another challenge was to seamlessly integrate a lot of key information for upcoming plot points without them feeling perfunctory, heavy-handed or pedantic. For example, we needed to show a close-up of Bridget's shoes so there was no doubt in the audience's mind who it belonged to later on when Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) discovers the shoe while inspecting the aftermath in the bar. We can't draw attention to the shoe in a way that says, "We're showing you a close-up of a foot," but we do need to make enough of a point of it so the audience knows it's Bridget's -- instantly. The solution was to use the shoe as character introduction, to show the style and glamour of this movie star/double agent whom we, the audience and our characters, meet for the first timeThe tavern music was another way we developed a character. The music at first works environmentally and emotionally in the scene but then functions to locate a yet-to-be-seen, off-screen character, the Gestapo Maj. Hellstrom, who, when revealed, we see has clearly been controlling the music selections. We also now know that without a doubt Hellstrom had been listening to the Basterds' conversation the entire time, and we now use the absence of that same music when Hellstrom purposefully removes the needle from the record player to show that he has taken control of the scene. The Basterds, and our audience, are now in Hellstrom's hands.The last issue we had to contend with was the length. A nearly 25-minute dialogue scene that starts 69 minutes into the film can be a potential challenge for audiences, as most scenes by this point play considerably shorter. But it was our belief that if we could hold the scene's tension, we could not only develop character and attend to the story but actually stop the scene to allow Hellstrom to play his King Kong card game, a story in and of itself, which cinematically alludes to another oppressed group, the slaves in America. I could go on about many other layers that needed our attention, but, unfortunately, in this situation I am not the editor with final cut and must end the piece here.

Los Angeles Times