A2 Advanced Portfolio

Victoria Blunden

BRIEFYou are to produce a promotion package for a new film, to

include a teaser trailer (DVD), together with 2 of the following:

A website homepage for the filmA film magazine front cover, featuring the film A4

A poster for the film. (no larger than A3)

Post modern theory

“I steal from every movie ever made”

“Violence is one of the most fun things to watch”.

Quentin Tarantino

Post modern theory

• ‘Post-Modernism is fundamentally the eclectic mixture of any tradition with that of its immediate past: it is both the continuation of Modernism and its transcendence’

Post modern- uses in mediaIdeas from 1960’s onwards that reflect our insecurities in a media saturated world where ideas appear unclear. (Global homogenised culture). Post modernist challenges ideas in a confused world so uses references and update ideas e.g. •Mixing/blurring the genres of Film to create new hybrids/new versions. E.g. Kill Bill•Intertextuality – making references to other media texts for effect, for pleasure or as an ‘homage’, to show respect. E.g. Kill Bill. Also used in ‘parody’ or ‘satire’ of other texts, Simpsons and South Park•Bricolage – almost stealing images/objects from different styles, usually high art to create new meanings. E.g. The Yellow Jumpsuit in Kill Bill. •‘High Art’ styles – film techniques that challenge conventional ideas. (Art House films) E.g. ‘The square’ in Pulp Fiction. Anime in Kill Bill.•Simulacra or hyper reality – where the audience is aware of an artificial rather than a ‘real’ mise en scene. Allows challenging themes and representations to be explored. E.g. Anime in Kill Bill.

Post modern theorist

Lyotard (Jean-Francois) The Postmodern Condition •Meta-Narratives or Grand Narratives – He suggested that we must challenge these dominant ideas or values present in the media as they are only ‘ideas of the truth’ and we can deconstruct them in different ways. So Postmodern texts embrace this and offer many alternative and challenging narratives or micro-narratives.(Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Matrix, Blade runner)

Baudrillard (Jean) Simulacra or Hyper reality

‘Anti-Truth’ – As with Lyotard, he rejects truth in the media and said we must view all ideas of the truth with suspicion. Critics suggest that

this ‘anything goes’ attitude leads to moral chaos and rejects the ‘active’ audience idea. (Although Postmodern text do challenge their

audiences).Simulcra (Simulcrum-singular) or Hyper reality – This is the idea that the boundary between reality and the media’s idea of reality is now

blurred. We therefore are only exposed to an unreal, hyper real world, which is a simulation or copy of reality (similar to the hypodermic needle model). So the signs we read in the media only represent

reality. Postmodernists are therefore aware of this new reality and attempt to play with and challenge these ideas. Critics argue that that

this is too simplistic and is wrong to suggest that the media cannot ever be close to representing reality. (Reality TV, Matrix, Blade runner,

Tarantino)

Jameson (Frederic) PastichePastiche – He suggests that as we are over exposed to the hyperrealism of our media and advertisement world there is no room for critique and therefore all media becomes a pastiche or copy of previous forms and ideas. Critics again suggest that this is too narrow a view and Postmodern texts can offer a critique. (Parody and Satire and Challenging representations in South Park, Family Guy and Tarantino’s films; Kill Bill.)