Sunday 30 November 2008

Suprise homework

1. The only website i can currently find is www.boingboing.net/2006/02/22/transport-for-london, as nick told us the original website was closed down, but i have found some information regarding the map and how it originally was made which i thought would be useful to add.

The map was created by Harry Beck using a photoshopped Tube map and an online anagram generator, on 7 February, 2006. It was originally shown in a thread on the Thingbox chat forum and, after being submitted by one of the site owners, appeared on BoingBoing a couple of days later receiving 31,000 hits within the next six days.
(The idea came from The Great Bear, a 1992 artwork by UK artist Simon Patterson on display at Tate Modern in London, but it was not until Dorian Lynskey's music genre tube map appeared in a newspaper in 2006 that Barry Heck decided to make it.)

Transport for London claimed the image was a copyright infringement and had one of their lawyers ask for the map to be removed from the web. The site hosting it complied and it was removed on the 22 February, 2006 with the censorship being reported on BoingBoing again.

2. How do you get from Blind Boys of Alabama to Steve Earle in five steps? (put the linking factor up so we can hear it)

3. If 'The Grove Family' were to be at Ongar, what would you expect to find at West Ruislip?

4. Why do you think Omar is our favourite character from 'The Wire'?

From this video clip of The Wire, we can tell Omar is very upfront and open about what he says. When talking to what we can only establish as the police, he uses the expression 'i'd be much obliged to stick my gun straight in their mouth.' showing he is not afraid to voice his opinion. Omar is dressed in street clothing, suggesting he is part of a gang or hood. His phrases and speech during the clip shows he knows alot about other people , such as 'bird' who theyre looking for. His grammar is alot of slang and his shortening of words, such as 'ya'll' from 'you all' makes it is quite difficult to understand what he means, due to his 'cockney' accent. Omar suggests if people knew he was with the police, he wouldn't care and seems nonchalant as to what would happen if anyone found out - suggesting he is of high authority to everyone he knows. The cigarette he holds/smokes and the clothing of Omar helps us to establish his character.



5. Ash showed us a machinima video of 'House'. Find a lego one based on another TV drama and paste onto your blog, ready to talk about it.



This is a lego machinima of the poular tv drama 'LOST'. It was extremely hard to find one that was effective, but i eventually found it on youtube. I thought this was a very interesting video as Lost is very popular and making a machinima of it was a pretty good idea. If you have never watched Lost you need to know the original story before watching it as it is quite hard to understand. The effects are good, for example the sea and the ship etc, and the sound helps you establish the scene.

Wednesday 26 November 2008

We were asked to look at TV drama for part of our media AS level course. Previously we all were given a genre of TV drama, mine was police drama. We were asked to give examples of 10 or more dramas that we know which involve our genre. The next lesson included using this information to create a london underground map, but instead of all the stations we were asked to print out a blank one and fill all the spaces up with TV drama. This appeared easy at first but soon we discovered some stations interlocked and this became a problem as some things we could not find that contained both genres for example sci fi and soap. Each coloured line was given a genre of drama for example the pink line had soaps along it. Some lines were very difficult as some had at least 50 lines so therefore we had to find 50 TV dramas relating to that specific genre. Some things like soaps, medical dramas etc would not be hard to find 50 examples for but some others would be very hard to find.

For our previous homework we had to think of a TV drama that had 6 sub genres eg crime etc. For mine i chose Eastenders as it involved 6 or more sub genres, these included crime, youth, 1980's, soap, actors involved, romance. This was a good starting point for the middle of the underground map (kings cross station) as some genres interlocked and the kings cross station had 6 interlocking with it.

Therefore as a class we decided to use my idea as eastenders for the middle of the underground map as this would be a very good starting point. After working as a class for one and a half lessons, we were each assigned jobs and this helped us considerably. Some people were writing all the tv dramas down on a big sheet of paper ready to list on the map, some were on computers researching certain TV dramas and who was in them, what date they were first aired etc, and some were writing the TV dramas on the underground map (on the big whiteboard) and finding out where things would go - and what fitted with what genre. We got up to working from the middle towards the outer side of the map, and in my opinion i think working from the middle was considerably better as it gave us less chances of mistakes.

We still however need to continue working outwards from the centre of the map, checking for mistakes and ensuring the genres fit correctly and there are no mistakes. This needs to be done carefully and as a group as working in a group would get the task done a lot quicker. We need to finish the map effectively so this could take a while if we encounter any mistakes along the way, as changing one line of genre could result in the whole map going wrong.

If we had a chance to start it again as a class, we would have settled down to the task more quickly as some were not keen on the task and did not see the relevance, and some got confused about the way in which genres interlocked and fitted together. Overall i think we have done well so far considering it is an extremely long task to do and could go wrong at any time, perhaps causing us to start again. I think the assigning of roles was a very good idea as it got us focused on one job rather than trying to do everything simultaneously. I think the task is relevant to our media AS level and would help us in terms of TV genres. I like the fact we work as a class group as it would be considerably harder if we worked in smaller groups.

Monday 24 November 2008

My first blog is a set task to investigate examples of crime (police force) drama. The relevant dramas i have found include:

The chinese detective (1981)
Dixon of dock green (1955)
Fabian of the yard (1954)
The gentle touch (1980)
Inspector morse (1987-2000)
Juliet Bravo (1980)
No hiding place (1959)
Othello (2001)
Prime suspect (1991-2006)
The sweeney (1975-78)
A touch of frost (1992) still ongoing

As you can see, these dramas are quite old by now, some even starting in 1955! However the most recent and well known police force drama is the bill, which is stil ongoing today from 1984! This was the drama i immediately thought of as it is the most well known, as well as inspector morse. The Bill has shown unusual flexibility for a drama and even shows some characteristics of a soap. It is a one hour programme showing two days a week, usually mid week eg wednesday to thursday.

Saturday 22 November 2008