Short Film Analysis- 'Sold'

Sold is a short film directed by Nadia Attia, and has been publicized throughout the BBC network. 'Sold' is about the aspirations and hopes of a down on luck male, whose luck suddenly changes whilst watching a surreal shopping channel.

The film does well to convey the structures and techniques that we commonly associate with a short film. For instance, we have a linear narrative in the sense that it is in real time, whereas the main thing we see in the film is a circular narrative, something ever presemt in the films we have watched, as we see that the film ends where the plot started, being his neighbour coming ask for cookoing utensils, and ending with him buying the same cooking utensils she had asked for previously, this can be labelled as a narrative twist, which is also synonymous with the cult of short films. 'Sold' is also has an open ended narrative as ultimately it lacks resolution, which in a sense is an advantage to the author who is able to reach out to many different audiences with many different expectations on how they would envisage their ending in the way they wish it to, mainly being that the man ends up with the woman.

What's more, we see many cinematic technique, synonymous with feature length films in 'Sold'. Firstly, when in the main protagonists appartment, we see clear high key lighting which in a sense shows the realism of the communal spirit in Britain, the fact that he is secluded shows he is unwilling to live up to the communal spirit. The further contrast we see is with regards to the telivision screen which is a juxtaposition to the rest of the flat which is grey and dull, whereas the screen is bright and almost shows the 'promised' land. Equally, the idea is that 4th wall is broken as it seems the auctioneer is directly talking to the protagonist and the audience, which does bring a surreal element to the film.

The idea of this being a traditional short film is furthered by the simplistic way that titles are utilised in the film, they are used to open and close the film and are in black in white, which is something of low cost and ineffective, as well presenting the full credits.

In addition to this, we can relate this film to a variety of British theme, nominally consumerism and the cult it has, the fact that people sit down everyday to watch tv to buy arguably unimportant things, showing idleness. On a more contemporary scale we can see the lack of community spirit, shown through the fact that he was reluctant to even open the door to his neighbour.

Conventions of a Film Poster

Symbolic analysis of a film poster

The way in which we analysis of a film varies greatly, it is necessary that we look at it from three different perspectives. Firstly, we have technical codes, which we can define as the techniques used in the construction of a text, i.e. the inclusion of a 'film title' and a 'tag line'. Equally, there are written codes, which is the range of contexts in which words are used in the test itself, such as the actual words creating the film title or tag line. Lastly, we have symbolic codes, which is the system if signs embedded within the text itself, i.e. the connotations of the images used, as well as the colours and font styles. All codes give out different messages, but are all valid. For this reason, I will analyse the symbolic codes of a film poster, being 'Platoon'.

what are the main film magazines in the uk and how do they differ?

There are many film magazines in the UK they differ in certain ways if its from layout, audiences or film genre. some of these magazines are cinema retro, film review (magazine) and eye for a film but the largest in the UK are Empire and total film these by far have the largest audience and most prestigious. these magazines are used to provide opinions about films, they give more information

then film posters do, they offer people guidance on what films they should go and see. They can make or break many films like "the kings speech" which was very successful due to the reviews it received and on the other end "cat women" this failed due largely to the negative reviews.total film magazine have very simple typography with large font big headings and large pictures there is a head line columns pictures image caption break out boxes and many other stander things. the mode of address there are very simple examples from a text on the road it is written for audiences which have a general knowledge of cinema using words like "comprises tense, terse dialogue. this is simple language that movie fans would understand.

the intended audiences for total film is the genreal public who have a little intrest into film its good for light reading and gives you a good rang of films. it is not a alternative film magazines only for art house films with only small

audiences.

this is an example of a film review in total film you can see the large picture and title along with the large break up boxes this cuts up the article.

Two very different film magazines when compared are total film and sight and sound sight. Total film is very much directed at the main stream audiences and also for men there are often good looking film stars like the picture i used as an example above of Megan Fox on the front cover. this is an ideal example of how they are trying to attract male film fans. on the other hand sight and sound is a art house film magazine concentrating on more individual films. it is 100% for proper film buffs and gives lots of information and in depth discussion on the films. If you look at a film review in sight and sound there ratio between the amount of writing and the size of the picture is very different to total film. This is an example below, which shows the difference.

Film Poster Analysis - Pulp Fiction

Conventions of Magazine Page Layouts

The conventions of a magazine page layout is what makes that article more enjoyable/readable, you can tell by how many columns and the size of lettering whether the page wants to write loads of information rather than a more formal article.

The article here is a cut out from the ‘Men’s Health’ magazine and it is giving us insight into actors and footballers lives to success, it doesn’t go into detail but it does mention where they started and where they are now, also the media attention they gained during their come up. The layout has SECRET SUCCESS written in big font to show the article story, following the strapline written by the author also, the article has 6 columns spread across two pages. there is an introduction which allows a breif of the atrticle in a few sentences but there are also breakout paragraphs.

This article is form the film magazine 'Buzz' shown by the screen title on the top left side of the article, the headline reads 'Return of the ring' which introduce both symbolic and written codes because of the font used which is in bold followed by the inner meaning of the title. The article has been broken into 3 columns under neath a strap line which reads 'Taylor presents the best LOTR bits n bobs in Leeds, while looking to the future with The Hobbit...' on the article is also a sub-heading stating comments from Scarlett Johansson from an inteview. Highlighted in orange is a breakout paragraph in which the writer comments about the sword in which Frodo used, also on the article are breakout boxes in which 'Buzz' have the Scarlett Johansson commetary, all together, these technical codes work in unison in order to keep the readers entertained, thus the images all aroung the article edge which allows viewable pleasure, most of the images are looking directly at the reader.

This artcle was a double page article but as you can see it is three quarters of an image which shows the raw image of the film thet the critic is trying to portray, the headline in red and the colour contrasted image which makes it look semi cartoon but real, a possible painting image is also given from the double page picture of the man in sunglasses wielding to revolver guns. The strap line is a 4 line bold white question about if the Director Guy Ritchie has outdone himself compared to previous films, the artlicle has two colums, no breakout paragraphs which show it isn't a discussion it is the critics views, he wants to be direct with the article he is writing.

What are the different audiences available for film magazines?

It is fair to say that the market for film magazines is quite vast, as there are magazines which cater for different types of films, whether it be mainstream, independent or international, equally there are those who look at film from a different perspective, for example the 'arts and politics' of a film. With this, the distribution of film magazines is also highly variable with distribution ranging from bi-monthly to quarterly, each favoured by a certain audience and for this reason, the audience of film magazines is rarely the same for the majority of film magazines.

We find that in Britain the most famous film magazine is without a doubt 'Empire Magazine', due to its commercial popularity, this is also seen with its main rival total film, with both constantly engaging in a war over sales, with the former winning most times. What is most striking about such magazines is that although they both review mainstream and art films, its seems that there are only feature length articles for mainstream films, which in itself infers what type of audience they have, considering that there analysis varies greatly from other film magazines, who show greater concerntration on the stylistic and technical features of films, and ultimately shows a move away from deep analysis of mainstream 'blockbluster' films to looking at independent 'art' films.

If we look at the empire magazine for example we can see that its target audience varies greatly from other film magazines, for instance we can look at the cover of the May 2009 issue. the cover has a big image of Megan Fox, who is viewed as one of the 'sexiest women' in the world, hence the reason why she is labelled as 'the most wanted woman in Hollywood', which we can draw is utimately target at a young males, as this picture is likely to get testosterone flowing, what's more we can further this with the tagline being 'The Hot Issue', again showing the sexual connatations of this magazine. The idea that this is targeted for males is supported by the fact that males dominate the frontpage of the magazines, as seen with the protagonists from 'Wolverine, Star Trek and Angel & Demons'. What's more, we can also see that this film also has a sci-fi audience, as all films seem to have some techonological feel to them, again showing that Empire magazine does reach out to sci-fi films, which are mainly films with big budgets.

With this, another mainstream British film magazine is 'Total Film, which is ultimately a rival to 'Empire' in every sense, merely differentiating in price; Empire £3 Total Film £2.90. It is clear for us to see that with regards to reviews they tackle it in a very similar way, being writing reviews to reach out to the target audience of the magazine, which in a sense means manipulating a film to cater for a certain audience, it is for this reason that we see universal rated films, arguably made for children directed at a much maturer audience a key example of this is with regards to toy story 3 in Empire magazine, which is written in such a way that has a mature feel to it, seen through such devices as rhetoric.

Inversely, althoughempire readers are ultimately film fans, however there are other film magazines which have a complete different audience, we can see this mainly through the prominent British film magazine 'Sight and Sound'. Just by looking at the front of the film magazine, we can see that this films fans contracts greatly, the films main cover is based on the 1927 German film Metropolis, which again shows what a vast difference in audience there is. Firstly, it is a german film, showing that this magazine heralds international cinema, and also the fact that it dates back to 1927, explains that it reaches out to a previous era of cinema. For this reason we can say that the target audience of the film is for arguably more mature film lovers, and those who look at it from a more stylisitic way, such as the themes that this film may convey.