4 questions to ask BBC executive Fran Unsworth

Fran Unsworth is a British journalist and media executive who was previously acting director of news at the BBC. From November 2012 until August 2013. She is also a member of the BBC's executive board. 

Fran Unsworth was appointed Director of the BBC World Service Group on 8th December 2014. In this role she leads the BBC's global news services - BBC World Service, BBC World News and BBC.com/news - as well as BBC Monitoring, and chairs the BBC's international development charity, BBC Media Action. The BBC's global news services have a weekly audience of 265m.

MY FOUR QUESTIONS:

1)Why did you want to pursue a career in the media? 

2)What was it that interested you in the media industry?

3) What is the most interesting part of the current position that you hold?

4) What types of apprenticeships does the BBC do? (As I am an aspiring journalist)   

Editing Task

This clip is from the film Sky fall, it was released in 2012 directed by Sam Mendas. It is the clip of the opening train fighting scene. 

The first form of editing that I noticed in the scene was the use of a tracking shot; this is when the camera follows the action along a pre laid track. The use of the tracking shot during the fight on top of train makes the audience feel as if they are moving with the action through space; this sutures them into the narrative which is making them feel like they are on top of train with bond. Another editing strategy that I noticed was continuity editing, this is when shots move in a logical order. Continuity editing is used throughout the scene which gets the audience to automatically piece together the joining of the shots. This may then have the audience guessing how the narrative might pan out.

The third editing strategy that I saw was a jump cut. This is an unexpected edit where the audience is forced to focus on something very suddenly. I think that a jump cut was used when the shot on screen when from us looking at the men fighting to us looking at them fighting down the barrel of the lady’s gun. The use of the jump cut creates a sense of suspense and tension among the audience and enigma codes; Will the lady hit Bond (Protagonist) or will she hit the antagonist?

In this scene there is use of dramatic irony, this is when the audience knows something but the character doesn’t. Dramatic irony was used in this scene when the lady is aiming her gun ready to take the shot at which point we are looking at the fight down the barrel of her gun. At this point the audience is aware that she is at risk of hitting bond but he doesn’t know this and gets hit anyway when she is ordered to take the shot.

In this scene from Sky fall I have also noticed the use of a shot reverse shot. This is used directly after Bond has been hit between the woman who took the shot and the antagonist. This makes the audience feel sorry for the woman because as a result of it not being a clear shot she killed Bond and let the antagonist get away at which point he looks around to see who took the shot. From this we can tell that the woman is feeling guilty and the use of the shot reverse shot almost makes the audience want to feel her guilt with her but they can’t.

In the scene there is use of straight cuts throughout the majority of the clip. These are the most common form of editing which means that the audience would hardly ever realise them. Right towards the end of the scene there is use of a fade out where the screen faded to black. This use of this technique makes the audience guess how the narrative might pan out which therefore encourages them to watch the whole film. The style of editing throughout the whole clip was carefully chosen by the directors and editors for the film because it fantastically conveys the violent scene that it shown. I think that the editing technique of fading out was also used during the fight scene when our protagonist and antagonist come towards the tunnel at which point the action dips to black and makes the audience wonder who is winning.

In this scene I believe that I have covered all the editing techniques that I can see immediately. However, there were also some particular camera movements that caught my eye. The first is the use of a panning. This is where the camera moves slowly on its axis from side to side. In this scene panning was used when the camera moves between filming the fight and filming the woman driving along the road. 

From what I researched I found that there is a type of editing called action editing. This is when a clip has been edited in a certain way to make it seem more action packed. I think that was used in this Sky fall scene because the scene was edited to show the audience the fight from multiple perspectives which make the film as a whole more appealing to them.

The scene uses parallel sound which is diegetic and non diegetic is used. In this particular Sky fall scene it was used when the train is about to reach the tunnel. Parallel because that is the sound we would expect to hear .    

  

Cinematography

For this post about Cinematography, I have chosen to look at the opening scene from The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 1.

In this opening sequence, there are a variety of camera shots, angles and different types of movement. The very first scene is a medium close up (MCU) of Katniss from the side. Katniss and her surroundings are shown in even balance.  This sutures the audience into the narrative creating enigma codes about why Katniss says what she does? Where is she? Why is she in a fragile emotional state?  At 0:17 there is a close up of Katniss, this emphasizes her facial expression and her emotions. This helps to draw the audience’s attention to Katniss as a character.  At 0:52 there is a low angle shot, this makes the audience feel dis-empowered. Then at 1:16, there is evidence of a long shot, where larger amounts of the setting are shown along with a full body shot of Katniss through the panel of glass in the door. At 1:29 there is a establishing long shot which helps the audience figure out where Katniss is. It seems to be some sort of hospital for the District Tributes. There is also an extreme big close up of Katniss’s hand while the rest of the image is blurred out. While still focusing on her hand there is a bit of a whip pan motion to looking at Katniss’s face as she lifts her head from the pillow. After this there is an over the shoulder shot at 2:00 where Katniss is talking too (Ben?) who is another tribute from another district. 

Parallel & Contrapuntal Sound Presentation Feedback

This is my parallel and contrapuntal sound presentation with the choice of music being the HAWAII 5 0 Theme Song, it was already uploaded in a previous post, but this includes my feedback and the presentation that I thought was the best in 12C.

Feedback:

WWW: Well thought out and fantastically presented .
EBI: Varied the contrapuntal sound images slightly more to include some other law based images
WWW: Good use of media terminology in my explanation to the class
EBI: My explanation of contrapuntal sound could have been slightly clearer and a little bit more in depth
WWW: A good explanation behind my thoughts of why I picked out particular pictures
EBI: I could have taken it upon myself to edit the music to the specific part I needed, and adjusted it so that the ending was fading out to signal what be about to happen in the forthcoming episode.

Learner Response

From the presentations of 12C, I picked the best one from the boys and the best one from the girls. For the boys I picked Sunny's presentation because the images shown in relation to the music were well thought out and well presented particularly with the moving images which helped me to understand his thought process more clearly as just like a movie it engaged people in his presentation making them want to listen to the forthcoming explanation.

For the girls I picked Ra'eesah's presentation. This is because she thought outside the box when she was told to chose a piece of music to analyse rather than a standard theme tune to something. However, I thought that she could have varied her contrapuntal sound images a little as they only consisted of traffic jams. Personally, that wouldn't have been the only contrapuntal sound images that I would have picked to do with her piece of music which was music for a fabulous wedding entrance. 

Sound Task

This clip is from the film Jurassic World, it is a scene of the two boys being chased by the indominus Rex.

This scene uses parallel sound (Expect to hear this type of music as part of the scene). The parallel sound is a sound of terror. This engages the audience  and builds up suspense and makes them wonder how the narrative shall develop. The clip also uses diegetic sound which is the dialogue between the two boys as they are about to jump. Examples of non diegetic sound would be the roar of the indominus Rex.

Just a few seconds prior to the boys jumping off the cliff there is also a slight example of contrapuntal sound.  I would say that it is the gushing of the waterfall as it slowly gets louder and louder. This is because it a such a terrifying situation you wouldn't normally hear a waterfall in the background. Waterfalls tend to be associated with a calmer and more relaxed atmosphere. Finally, there is also a very small sound bridge this is the scream of the boys as they jump of the cliff because begin to hear it while on the screen the audience is begin shown the indominus rex's mouth closing after just missing the boys when it tried to eat them.