Crafts and Media Video : Task


They was a email Guy sent to use containing task that we was meant to do that lesson. If i remember rightly you have to watch a range of videos and describe what the meaning of the story is and then the lighting and camera shots they had used in each scene. So i will attach what i did in that class to the bottom of this post:

Research – Critical Analysis Task

Clara’s Interview

Well in this video it’s an interview about someone sharing their life with the camera. Clara is mainly just sat on the porch of her house in Colorado, so as you would expect her being the leading role they are a vase amount of mid shots, medium close up and close up shots. These are very effective because it’s feels like you are interviewing Clara and would not work if you just had wide shots of her because you wouldn’t really get the full effect of her detail when she is telling her story. Not to say there isn’t any wide shots of her in this video, the camera does tend to throw the odd wide shot of the house in there now and again but this is when she’s had a break from talking just to get the full scale on how big her house is and where she actually is sitting on her porch. Also the camera does a lot of work on the composition of Clara, I mean one minute she is on the right facing the camera in “Interview” manner but then the camera moves to the left of her and she is facing onto her lawn. This is also very effective because it fits a lot more into the film and is not as boring as just planting her smack bang in the middle of the shot.


The Feeling of the film is like a look back into the good times and bad times of her life with the right tone of music feeding through the video like words in a book.


Errol Morris Documentary

This documentary starts like something off Godfather or Goodfellas with the explosion then similarly starts which looks like a mafia boss but is soon to be made a mob lawyer by the caption in the video. The full video has the mob feel to it from the way he talks, to the way he acts and tells stories. With this being a documentary you wouldn’t think that he would use any close up shots because Errol Morris is more focus on getting the message out to the viewers. On the other hand it is like he is giving the mob lawyer an interview about his role within being a mob lawyer and the kind of trouble he gets his self into. Murray Richman (Mob Lawyer) gives his story on all his cases and the background of all his cases and how he feared his clients. The camera does a lot of work in this documentary because its moving around a lot and it feels like his every sentence the camera moves.

They are two main camera shots within this documentary and these are medium close up and close up. With these you really get to feel Murray Richman’s stories, especially when he talks about his clients getting killed you actually feel that you are in the scenes of these murders. The overall feeling of this film is that you’re risking your own life by being in any part of the mafia, especially when you’re a lawyer because if you don’t win a big court case they will be after you.




CATS – Third Lecture

This Lecture was about semiotics and we went deep into the meaning of what it actually means. We was given various handouts that i have in my file but havent had chance to scan them to put them into my blog. This was also a reminder that the deadline for the visual analysis task was next week.

CATS – Second Lecture


The Second lecture we started off with the homework we had been set and reviewed the answers that will on a picture on the end of the post. After that we split into groups and the task was to pick a game/logo etc then talk about it. For example colour scheme, history, reputation, what it means to us. I had a picture of the Apple logo because i am a big fan and i talked about my notes to the full class with my partner. These notes are in a picture also at the bottom of the post.

After this was over Madeleine set our first visual analysis task about the same task we did in class but a written document that had at least 500 words and the submission being the 19th October. This will be in the 19th October Post.