Fact Sheet About Colin Firth

The King's Speech is our case study for our exams, and the main character King George VI is played by award winner Colin Firth. Colin Firth is known from other famous films such as Pride and Prejudice, Shakespeare in Love, Bridget Jones' Diary and many more.

Colin Firth was born on September 10th 1960 and in Grayshott in Hampshire in England (UK).

In 2011, Colin Firth won an oscar for Best Performance in The King's Speech and the year before, Colin Firth was nominated for an oscar for Best Performance in A Single Man. Also, Firth won a BAFTA for his role in The King's Speech in 2011 and won a BAFTA for his role in A Single Man the year before. Colin Firth has won a variety of different awards during his career.

After winning the Oscar for The King's Speech, Colin Firth was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 2011 following the Queen's birthday.

Q2 Evaluation

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The main character is my horror opening is a late teens, young adult named Michelle, who is out-going, popular, who has modernised fashionable clothes and hair. She also has a mobile phone that shows she's in modern society and living within a city.
The social groups Michelle represents are teens, females, the black ethnicity.
This is a female character from the opening of the film Scream by Wes Craven, and this particular character could be a good representation of my character in my film opening because they are both females, teenagers and alone throughout their time in the movie, which makes them more vulnerable and an easy target. These two characters are similar because they both get attacked in their own homes, which shows that they were both stalked and also the weapon used against them was large kitchen knife. 

Q1 Evaluation

Q1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

These are 9 frames of my horror opening, Ominous. To analysis these frames, the bottom row shows the victim in my horror film and the setting location of where she is attacked, it would make the audience know that she is outside alone at night. The middle frame in the bottom row shows a close-up on the victims face and it is clear that she sees what the audience cannot see, but she is looking at the camera so the audience would be portrayed as the villain . The frame on the right on the bottom row, shows the special effect that I added while editing my film and it is a clear view of the villain’s perspective and that he is watching the victim run away.
 

The middle row of the frames, shows the opening of our horror film, and that it starts with our production company 'prey productions' and it shows a few establishing shots to set the scene to introduce the character. The middle frame has ’prey productions’ at the bottom of the frame so it would not fully distract the audience as our long shot of the victim and the tube station needs to be recognised by the audience also. Then the frame on the left in the middle row shows the end of our film opening and it ends with the title of the film, to show that it is the end of the beginning and how the film title defines what happened in the opening sequence. The title of the film is in the middle of the screen to get the audience's full attention and it is in white so it could contrast the dark background. 

Furthermore, the middle frame on the left shows the victim walking from the light into the dark, indicating that she is heading to danger and it is not safe and making the audience aware that she is in a dilemma.
 

The top row shows 3 frames that are commonly related to horror films, the first image shows the victim being threatened by a weapon (a big knife that is famously used in the horror movie scream by Wes Craven). The second image on the top row shows a clock. Clocks are a useful prop in a horror movie as the sound of a clock ticking could be very superstitious (it was used mainly in Insidious). Also, the last image on the top row shows the victim being blacked out with a bright background, showing that she is entering a dark place where it may be unsafe and where she is more vulnerable.

Feedback For The Rough Edit Of Ominous

In class, we had to show other groups our rough edit of our horror opening so far, and my partner and I had a mixture of positive and negative feedback. My class stated that they liked the fact that a part of the footage was in slow motion because the class had a clear view of the victim's facial expression and how scared she was. Also, the class liked the idea of the use of the time and clocks that we showed in our video. 

However, the class criticised that the video transition from the victim to a close up of the clock was childish and was not adequate to use in a horror film and that the opening titles needs to be smaller.

To help my partner and I, the class recommended that we should use a video transition from the station to the street, to prevent the cut from being jumpy and to use more sound effects to keep the audience intensed. Furthermore, the class suggested that we may need to re-record the scream at the end because they didn't feel the victim was scared enough as the scream wasn't powerful enough.