Week 2: The Matrix and Hero's Journey

24/04/17

In this lesson, we finish The Matrix and it which was really good. I've watch the film before but it was a long time ago so it was refreshing to see it again. I like the way they uses some film techniques that they thought about such as the Time Bullet and the overlay technique where one person moves in all different direction at the same time.

After watching the film, we discuss about the hero's journey and how can we incorporate into out trailer. To convince our trailer is a hero's journey, we need to have an everyday character getting involve into a supernatural event or something never seen before while that character have special powers and the chosen one. Afterwards, we watched trailers from other students to give us an idea of how it would turn out.

Also, we were given a task where we had to watch trailers and choose two to analyse them. Also they need to have some hero's journey elements because it is what we are doing this term.

Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 2 Trailer-

• The names of the Guardians were written in titles for the people who do not know them 
• Genre: Adventure, comedy and si-fy
• Can distinguish the genre by mise-en-scene of futuristic tech and aliens, planets that is out of our world, funny dialogue and they fight monsters 
• impact on the audience= they are excited for the trailer due to the dynamic of the trailer 
• Genre conventions: narrative= saving the galaxy and defeating the villain 
• Rhythm editing= match to the music, editing= quick shot about 2s, slowest about 5s
• Sound fx= knew that it is sci-fy due to guns firing and spaceship
• Target audience: marvel fans, older and younger generation or those who love comic book movies 
• Last shot of the team assembles  

Kingsman: The Secret Service Trailer-

• Main character: Eggsy 
• Mentor: Harry 
• Spy film-has Hero's Journey elements 
• Genre: Action, crime and science fiction
• Narrative conventions: The Mentor (Harry) saw potential in Eggsy and decide to take him in his wig 
• Villain and his right hand woman introduced- Valentine and Gazelle 
• Target audience: range - for the older James Bond fans due to references and young audience due to the young main characters 
• The beginning: introduces the protagnist=telling his skills that is higher than average (huge IQ, gymnastics and served in the marine)= this tell to the audience that he is special
• The mentor shows his skill to which introduces the world of spies in which is unknown outside 
• Supernatural aid: Weapons and gadgets
• Voice-over: from the dialogue of movie= to establish narrative 
• Songs=realtes to the film 
• Rhythm editing matching the film=1 to 2 seconds of shot and some longer but less than 5 secs 
• Editing match the music 
• Eggsy's normal life is doing small crimes while living with his mother and abusing step father 
• Harry introduce Eggsy to the world of spies which is unseen by ordinary people

27/04/17

In this lesson, we were asked to do an activity where we had to break down the Matrix and find elements of hero's journey that were shown in the film.

28/04/17

In this lesson, we discuss about the breakdown activity that we were doing last lesson of the Hero's journey in the Matrix. I have added more notes on the table. We then watch the trailer for the Guardians of Galaxy trailer as another example and discuss how it is breakdown and why they have done this way.

We were then were asked to start thinking about ideas for our trailer task as Mr Andrews recommend to have five ideas so far.