Scrabble controversy

Recently there has been a large complain launched by parents buying their children scrabble on the DS on the grounds that it contains offensive language. The Daily mail jumped on this, like every other outrageous game related topic they can find. They use an example of the game having the word tit in it; this apparently is considered offensive to the children even though the word tit also means a small garden bird. The scrabble dictionary as many avid scrabble players know is rather extensive covering all words, why do parents not realise the children will be children, and if you give them a bunch of letters to play around wit the first thing they will do is see how rude they can make a sentence I remember playing scrabble for this reason entirely and; laughing my head off as I laid down some childish words, who hasn’t done something like this?. Countless angry parents have since written in to the daily mail about how the game developers can have the audacity to include words like balls tit and other mildly rude words. It’s not like the Ai is spelling c*%$ or f?@* continually. Another gripe brought up by the wonderful daily mail readership is 18 rated games a lady wrote in to say that she had bought her child an 18 rated game and was disgraced that the characters swore in it.
how protective do parents need to be, is this too far? why does the daily mail hate games?

Podcast

yesterday tom Arch and I recorded our first podcast, at the moment we are having a few problems with bouncing the audi file and also finding a site that will host the file, but hopefully it will be sorted by the end of the week.

filming update

Today my group filmed more of our coursework, we now have the beginning and the end of the opening to the film. The clips are in the process of being digitalized, and after what will hopefully be our final filming session tomorrow we can ged town to some editing.

Here are the story board from my preliminary continuity task.

The images and video will not embed or upload from the url, or my computer for some reason, so here are the links.

image 1

and

image 2

the video its-self is 

here

Coursework

This week we have been getting down to work on our courcework. 'we' being James Duddy, Bobbi Gosen and I. We have written the script, the synopsis, drawn the story boards, written up the costumes and planned the shooting dates; all this will be online soon, so please bear with me.

essay for mrs francis

here is my most recent homework on "how is youth represented in skins"

How Is Youth Represented In Skins?

[I chose to write this essay on the first 10 minutes of the first episode of skins

 http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=F_6EHGLtuVc&feature=related ]

In skins youth is represented in a number of different ways. Firstly through the mise en scene of Tony’s room. His room is quite modern, like you would expect of a 17 year old. He also has a speaker system with his iPod connected and he has a bed cover with a naked man and woman on it. This represents youth in a modern way, as tony is up to date with style and technology. Youth is also represented through mise en scene in Sid’s room. Sid’s room is a mess with cloths everywhere and a used plate on his bedside table. This is representing youth as lazy and untidy.  Tony’s sister is represents the rebellious side of youth. She arrives back at the house in the morning with loads of dark makeup on and sneaks back into the house. This is representing the cliche of the youth sneaking out of the house without parents consent.

The editing also represents youth in the way that the editor has used cross cuts to show each character doing a different thing in the morning, e.g nips tanning her legs and Jal practicing her musical instrument. The editor uses underpinning to show the reactions of the characters, which represents the youths reaction to ‘popping’ Sid’s ‘cherry’ which is of irritation or distain. This shows youth as sex conscious and sex driven. The editing Is also used to show the rush of Tony’s sister getting changed in the morning. This represents youth because she is pushing her limits, or cutting it fine as she could be discovered but she is displaying the classic youth trait of being rather nonchalant about it. 

During the opening Tony exercises when he gets up, which is representing youth as being self conscious and prepared to do something about it, it also breaks a stereotype of laziness. Yet, a the stereotype of the ‘war at home’ between the parents and youth. It is shown through the way in which Tony unnecessarily winds up his dad by jumping out of the toilet door and claiming the lock is broken. Tony’s dad swears the whole time, yet the youth do not, and are more selective with the language they use. The colorful language used by the dad and not tony represents the fact that youth can be mature and not a carbon copy of the “father figure” 

Tony appears to get the “1up” on his father by infuriating him so much yet the dad often appears in positions of power. This shows that whilst it may appear that Tony has the control, really he doesn't. In the extract the youths are portrayed as very social, they all have there phone near them as they sleep and they are all up for going to the party. Also at one point Tony has 3 calls on the line. 

Another portrayal of youth that I noticed was of alternate lives. This is shown in Tony’s sister as she returns from her nights escapade, also this is shown in the muslim boy who’s phone rings during the prayers, he drinks and wants to have sex that night, thus showing that he has a dual identity as he would not be able to do such things if he was a devout Muslim. This seems to be consistent with Sid as his dad does not know what he gets up to during the parties. 

Skins also portrays youth as being open about their sexuality. This is shown when maxi talks about his “big gay night out” and when Tony is talking about getting Sid laid at the party that night. It is also shown when Tony is looking at the woman changing across the road

Digetic and non digetic sound is used. An example of this is when Tony gets up and is working out. Rap music is played to portray the style of his life and how it pumps up the youth to do more energetic things. Another example of this is when tony is o the phone you can hear the conversation, without all the cross cutting, this portrays a more relaxed attitude that the youth seems to have. Also digetic sound is used when Tony turns his stereo on max volume to aggravate his dad heavy rock / thrash metal is played in the cliche of loud teenage screamo music

In conclusion through the characters, the mise en scene, the cinematography, the sound and the editing youth in skins is portrayed as being comfortable with their sexuality, self conscious, mischievous, sex obsessed, rebellious, modern socialites. 

africa+media

I spent the last two weeks in africa, so sorry about the lack of posts

in those two weeks i had some rather interesting media exposure.

Firstly i appeared on the kenyan "NTV" in a news report on the beauty of kena and lake Navasha. this is because of the presidential campaign for popularity and his policy if giving more money to the national parks 

secondly on the 8 hour flight to and from kenya i watched many of the recent films and i would like to say a few words about each of them.

clover-field - an interesting film and i enjoyed the blair witch project style filming but the over half of the dialogue consisted of "ROB" or OH MY GOD" which gets rather infuriating after a while.

The hulk - this film i really enjoyed especially the special effects and the problems of being the the hulk made this film a compelling watch. this is a film that i believe would look  awesome on blu-ray.

Iron man- again a good solid film, the elements of comedy were good and the fact that it didnt try to be gritty and real like the latest Batman really sold the film for me. 

This is vegas- again  another excellent film, the acting was great and there were some really good laughs it in 

Get Smart- this film is on par with many ledgendary films such as anchorman and Dont Mess With the Zohan some of the scenes had me in fits of laughter, it actually brought tears to my eyes

finally i watched: Don't mess with the Zohan - this is now one of my favorite films but seriously not one to watch with the parents. there is a "moral" to the story but it is not rammed down your throat. if you are a fan on Adam Sandler films then this is possibly better that Happy Gilmore.