Mise En Scene!

is everything that appears before the camera.

1. Setting
2. Costume and make up
3. Figure, expression, and movement by actors
4. Lighting
5. Positioning within the frame

The Style Scale:

Formalism, Expressionism form over content - how things are shown as most important, beyond a usual representation of reality. Expressionist films are highly stylized with oblique camera angles, distorted shapes, bizarre settings, high contrast lighting, surreal, subjective

Realism -  Content over form - looks like real life, wants us to suspend our disbelief, "the syle of no style"

Setting:

• Where the action takes place 
• When
• The mood
• The characters
• The genre

Mise en scene involves:

• Dominance - where audience's eye is attracted 
• Lighting key - high or low key, high contrast
• Type of shot and distance
• High, low, oblique, neutral angles
• Colour values, dominance and symbolism
• Lens/filter/stock 
• Subsidiary contrasts - main eye stops after the dominant
• Density of visual info and textures
• Composition - segmentation, organisation
• Form - open, closed, window view, proscenium arch
• Framing - tight, loose, characters having room to move
• Depth - how many planes of depth are utilised, interrelation 
• Character placement - part of the frame they occupy
• Stagining position
• Character proxemics

1990s Theatre

Kitchen Sink Drama:
'Kitchen Sink' is the term given to a particular type of drama, which focuses primarily on the trials and experiences of the urban working class, itself stemming from the wider 'Kitchen Sink' movement of social realism in art. It became popular in the post-war years, but became increasingly used in drama throughout the 20th Century. The leading characters are often 'anti-heroes' and are usually dissatisfied with their lives and the world. Socialist authors are often linked to this style as they try and reveal the truth of lower class life.

e.g.) Look Back in Anger; Coronation Street, many of Shane Meadows' movies, such as This Is England; and (although more humorous) Paul Abbott's Shameless Partly, social realism developed as a reaction against Romanticism, which promoted concepts such as the beauty and truth of art and music, and even turned them into spiritual ideals. Social realism focused on the "ugly realities of contemporary life and sympathized with working-class people, particularly the poor."

In Yer Face Drama:

It is defined by the New Oxford English Dictionary (1998) as something 'blatantly aggressive or provocative, impossible to ignore or avoid' implies being forced to see something close up, having your personal space invaded and the crossing of normal boundaries.

It emerged in the 1990s predominately in London theatres but also around the rest of the UK, with its most important playwrights including Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill and Anthony Nielson. It tries to shock, unsettle and disturb audiences by the extremism of its language and images, emotional frankness and its acute questioning of moral norms. They want audiences to feel the emotions that are being played out on stage, and are often highly experimental.

Often contain bad language, nudity, explicit sex scenes, violence, controversial subject matter, focusing more on personal politics than ideology.

Links To Arcadia:

1. Septimus is somewhat of an anti-hero as he is very promiscious
2. There is lots of sex in the play
3. Opposite of 'gritty realism, so is perhaps a reaction against it?

Essay: Isolation in Eliot and Yeats

Compare how Eliot and Yeats present Isolation in Animula and any other poem...

Isolation is a prominent them of both Eliot and Yeat's poetry, as Eliot explores the effects of it on individuals and how it corrodes society as a whole, whereas Yeats focuses more on the way an individual produces it's own isolation.

A recurrent theme in Eliot's work is the isolation of separation of people from spirituality, and how isolated one feels without an ideology to sustain you. In Animula, Eliot explores how humans erect barriers, or grow more distance from ideas of spirituality and god,as the little souls corrodes from when it was 'issue[d] from the hand of God' until 'after the viaticum'. Both 'God' and 'fairies' could represent the spirituality or the beliefs the little souls starts off with, and the capitalization of 'God' suggests that he is real and present in the little soul's life until he gets pushed out. This distancing from early beliefs is shown through the change in tone from light and happy to despairing and dark, and the change from an imperative heavy first half - 'advancing', 'running', rising - to a adjective filled second half - 'dusty', 'irresolute and selfish'. This represents the freedom and happiness of early life compared to a frightening and sad later life, where the words of the poems itself, full of plosives and sibilance, seem to oppress the little soul, hounding it and isolating it from the comforting things it once knew.

Just as Eliot presents people as isolated from God, they are isolated from other people, and likewise in Yeats he presents people as unable to truly know one another. Both 'The Mask' and 'The love song of J Alfred Prufrock' explore the inablity of people to understand one another, and find out what they are feeling or thinking. For Prufrock, his inability to understand the woman he loves is his purgatory, as he constantly frets 'Do I dare? and Do I dare?', with the repititon representing the frenzy of his thoughts and reiterating his isolation from her thoughts and feelings. Prufrock craves companionship yet does not fell he is capable of or deserves it, saying that he does 'not think [the mermaids] will sing to [him]'. The word 'mermaids' is reminiscent of sirens that used to lure men to their deaths, and perhaps Prufrock feels as though he would not worth their wooing,and this self hatred leaves his helpless and indecisive. His 'bald spot' and 'thin' 'arms and legs' are as much of a mask to his inner self as the 'mask of burning gold' is in 'The Mask'. However Yeats, unlike Eliot, seems to suggest that a 'mask' is able to provoke lust, as the word 'burning' connotes lust and passion' and 'gold' makes it seem precious, and worth keeping on. Both poets agree on the outer self being  brarrier to the inner self and true love however, as the questioner in 'The Mask' grows more dismayed as they are unable to discover whether 'love or deceit' lies behind the mask, just as Prufrock is isolated from his love's true feelings.

Eliot presents individuals isolation as a result of an oppressive society, as both the little soul in Animula and Prufrock are held back by society's expectations. The little soul becomes increasingly baffled by 'the imperatives of 'is and seems' which Eliot uses to connect societal rules to oppression. The way the little soul 'curl[s] up'likens it to a small child or animal, frightened of the world around it and turning in on itself. the fact that there are no other characters in the poem could serve to emphasise the little soul's isolation or alternatively to create a feeling of everyone else being united in their oppression of it. Similarly in Prufrock, he feels trapped by polite society's never ending rules, and has grown tired of 'the eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase', trying to manipulate and keep him in line. his fear of what 'they will say' keeps him in isolation, unable to express his feelings, with the anonymous 'they' keeping him in fear, in the end he has to take his love away from polite society into 'half deserted streets' in order to try to confess his love. In both these poems Eliot seems to express the loneliness that comes from following society's rules, and how it drives people into themselves and separates them from others.

Both Eliot and Yeats portray isolation as springing from a yearning for the past. For both the little soul and Marie in 'The burial of the dead' it is the past that holds the key to their happiness, and Eliot uses nature and water imagery from Marie's past like the 'Starnbergersee', 'rain' and 'sunlight' to present her past as fertile and full of life. In fact, Marie's memories are one of the few images of fertility in 'The wasteland', reflecting the happiness she felt at that time, just as the little soul's early years are full of the light of 'sunlit pattern[s]', the 'brilliance of the christmas tree'. These images of beauty juxtapose with their present experiences, with the little soul 'fearing the warm reality' and  Marie 'read[ing] much of the night and go[ing] south in the winter'. In Yeat's 'The Lake Isle Of Innisfree' a similar feeling of being isolated from reality is explored, as the fantasy island of Innisfree seems too beautiful to be true, with Yeats sharing Eliot's technique of using nature (such as the 'purple glow' and 'beeloud glade') to insinuate joy and peace. The fact the narrator can 'hear lake water lapping' 'night and day' could connote that it is an imaginary place he has created in his mind, or that he lives in his memories of it and they absorb him. either way, Yeats seem to portray a happy past as a source of isolation in the future, as the narrator, just like Marie, seems to prefer the past to engaging with the present.

In conclusion Eliot and Yeats both explore isolation from others and the present and it's detrimental effects upon the individual, with Eliot suggesting that the original source of isolation is a lack of relationship with God.

Research on 'Arcadia'

• Arcadia involves a lot of clever people who wittily discuss ideas and then hurry off to have sex with each other
• iterated algorithms, landscape gardening, Euclidian geometry, rice pudding and Newton's third law of thermodynamics
• Simply everybody loved this comedy of ideas when it opened at the National in 1993
• wise and yearning play spans the Georgian sublime and the disillusioned days of the last Tory government, spinning ideas about the shape of the universe and the needs of the heart
• Arcadia is a supreme play of ideas, sealing its classic status. Chaos theory, poetry, ethics, the end of history: they're all in there
• The play also has an aching emotional pull
• the way in which word and image work together, culminating in a wrenchingly beautiful final scene in which past and present-day couples waltz around each other, phantoms just a breath away from touch
• Arcadia tries to imagine what a careless paradise might look like, and which imagines the universe only to flirt with its disintegration
• set in a country house, and switching between its aristocratic inhabitants in the 19th century and nearly 200 years later 
• is a literary puzzle interweaving so many themes (not to mention love affairs)
• there is poetry and passion behind the mathematics and metaphysics
• Stoppard opens up supposed collisions between science and literature, classicism and romanticism, deterministic and unpredictable theories of the universe
• one group of characters seeks to plot the future while the other tries to reconstruct the past
• past and present slowly converge
• science is instrinsic to the story, and itself a vehicle for emotion - Valentine trying to woo Hannah
• Thomasina and Septimus' relationship is both intellectual and erotic
• Lady Croom is a 19th aristocrat filled with hauteur and desire
• Thomasina spots the incompleteness of Isaac Newton’s laws of physics, Bernard unearths what he believes to be a dirty secret in the life of Byron

Articles:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2009/jun/03/tom-stoppard-arcadia

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/jun/08/arcadia-tom-stoppard

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/jun/05/review-theatre-arcadia-duke-of-yorks-london

http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/theatre/arcadia-provides-feast-of-ideas-from-tom-stoppard-7414750.html

Mathematics and Science in Arcadia

Chaos Theory:

• Energy has dissipated so you can't rewind time
• Difficult to put everything back together
• Patterns and links - just like in the play where there are links between the present and past, eg the deja vu of Bernard emulating Lord Byron's behaviour
• Difficult to find a start, only obscure patterns
• Can't account for the infinite number of variables - confusing
• It's as much about what we don't know as what we know
• The enlightenment thought that one has to be able to explain everything easily and rationally - replaced by romanticism - emotion and knowledge are intertwined

Valentine: 'It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing.... A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It's the best possible time of being alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.'

Chaos Theory and the Structure of the Whole Play:

• Lots of 'noise' to be cleared away so that Hannah, Bernard and the audience can discover what really happened
• Similar things happen in each time period - life follows patterns
• Peices come apart and then come back together wrong
• Characters misinterpret historical data
• Lots of information but do we really get answers or not
• Lack of linear time
• Newtonian physics = classicism   being ousted by...
• Picturesque = chaos theory

Newtonian Physics vs Chaos Theory:

• Newton invented rules for physics
• You can never measure things exactly
• Newtonian physics isn't wrong it just relates to the first model of the universe
• No theory works in every circumstance
• Septimus is talking from a belief in Newtonian physics - Nothing is ever lost
• When he loses Thomasina he sees that this isn't true/wants to make her famous by proving her theorem
• Everything is interlinked but things are random
• Classical gardening is more order compared to picturesque landscape and chaos theory - questioning old simple rules
• Valentine loves chaos theory

Septimus 'We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?'

Entropy in the play:

• Entropy in increasing in the universe/increasing the chaos (the entropy increases in a closed system or usable, ordered energy is dissipating) - amount of props on the shared table is always increasing
• Impossible to recover initial conditions - trying to figure out what happened in past, and how they will evolve in the future

The Coverly Set:

• Valentine finally completes Thomasina's algorithm
• Thomasina was on the cusp of discovery but because she only has a pencil and paper she can't get that far
• Time periods merge to work together

Determinism states that everything happens because the conditions are such that nothing else could happen

Chloe: 'The universe is deterministic all right, just like Newton said, I mean it's trying to be, but the only thing going wrong is people fancying people who aren't supposed to be in that part of the plan.'

Essay: Media Ownership in the Film Industry

Discuss the issues raised by media ownership in the production,
distribution, marketing and exhibition/exchange of media texts in
your chosen media area:

Media Ownership has changed dramatically over the last 100 years, from the end of the Hollywood system to the advancement of new technologies like Web 2.0 that have allowed audiences to consume films in new ways. The different ownership models in Hollywood and the UK affect the films they produce, as smaller British films have to compete against Hollywood blockbuster, with smaller institutions competing against huge media conglomerates.

The budget sources and profits hugely differ in Hollywood and the UK, but both use their profit to reinvest in future films, though it does affect the types of films the different industries are able to make. The 6 major studios in Hollywood makes 90% of box office revenues across the global market, hence being able to invest huge amounts into action adventure blockbusters like 'Avengers Assemble' which had a budget of $220 million. Compared to the budget for smaller British films like the period drama 'The King's Speech' (which had a budget of $15 million) it is easy to see why Hollywood films take such big revenues as they can spend more on all areas of production, especially marketing. Hollywood's huge profits mean that they are able to invest in expensive high concept films and new technology like CGI, which the UK film industry does not have the investment to develop. 'The King's Speech', like most British independent films, was unable to get finance from just one company, instead a range of investors such as the Aegis film fund, The Weinstein Company and the UK film council contributed. This does however, gives production crews greater creative control, allowing Tom Hooper - The King's Speech's director - to keep a swearing scene in the film and appeal the rating where a Hollywood studio would have cut it, Indeed, 'Avenger's Assemble' had to recast the role of the Hulk as it was felt that the actor who had previously portrayed him, Edward Norton, was not young or relevant enough to match the international appeal of the film's other stars, like Robert Downey Jr or Scarlet Johannson.

Another difference between the Hollywood and UK film industries is their ownership models. Media conglomerates like The Walt Disney Company who produced 'Avengers Assemble' are both horizontally and vertically integrated, so can handle every aspect of the production under one roof, owning production companies like Marvel, post production houses like Disney Digital Studio Services and even home entertainment companies like Buena Vista Home Entertainment. This means that they can easily market and distribute their films, however, as UK films are co-productions they also have the nessesscary expertise to needed to help a film do well in the box office, just as 'The King's speech did, making $414 million worldwide. 'The King's Speech' benefited from the expertise of its different distributors, including The Weinstein Company, Momentum Pictures and Transmission Films. In fact, Transmission films is the sister company of See-saw films, one of the production companies involved, who made sure that Transmission Films got the rights to distribute the film in Australia and New Zealand as they knew the market well and had a vested interest in the film. The film's distributors enabled it to become the box office success that it was, which shows that British films can compete with high concept Hollywood films despite a lack of integration.

Another area in which Hollywood institutions benefit from their dominance of the market place is marketing, as they are able to afford huge 360 degree marketing campaigns whereas British films usually have to rely on traditional marketing and word of mouth. For instance, 'Avenger's Assemble's marketing budget was $150 million allowing it to invest in things like a highly interactive website with flash animation and music. It also benefited from being part of a long term synergistic campaign. Before watching 'Avenger's Assemble' I, and countless others had already been introduced to  many of the characters, themes and narratives by watching other films in the Marvel canon like 'Thor' and 'Iron Man'. This meant that the 'Avengers Assemble' characters had a pre-established fan base, though this could not have happened if Disney had not bought Marvel so they owned all the rights to the characters. Indeed, the reason that Spiderman was not in the film despite featuring in the comic book series is because the rights to his character belong to Sony. British independent films like 'The King's Speech', don't benefit from being part of a long term synergistic campaign like 'Avenger's Assemble', instead drawing from a tradition of previous British films and as well as new media which encouraged the spread of word of mouth. 'The King's Speech' was able to use the success of previous British period dramas which had already established an international market through poster and trailer campaigns. Also, famous British stereotypes and iconography were central to its international marketing campaign, with the American trailer featuring not only frequent mentions of the monarchy, but the stiff upper lip. These globally recognisable British stereotypes appealed to a wide audience who relish the individuality of British film, allowing 'The King's Speech' to compete with blockbusters like 'Avenger's Assemble'.

A big issue that both the Hollywood and UK audiences face is that of piracy. Illegal downloading films has been on the rise, with audiences gaining easy access to them online. An early copy of 'Avenger's Assemble' was leaked online, and became the most torrented film in history. However, audiences still flocked to the cinema to see it because of it's excellent use of 3D technology that they could not experience online, and the revenue lost from illegal downloads only accounts for 0.5% of its revenue. Media Conglomerates are still trying to crack down on piracy though, putting pressure on the UK government to introduce protective measures such as the Digital Protection Act. Piracy also affects UK films, and 'The King's Speech was illegally downloaded 6.25 million times, but this might have helped the film reach a wider audience who then, impressed by the quality of the film, might buy the DVD or see it at the cinema, or at least spread word of mouth about it, encouraging others to go and see it. Piracy is a big loss for institutions of all sizes but 'Avenger's Assemble' and 'The King's Speech's box office success shows that audiences will still pay to see high quality films.

In conclusion, ownership affects the markets that Hollywood and Uk films reach as well as affecting the way they are produced. Both industries however can and have made high quality successful films like 'Avenger's Assemble' and 'The King's Speech' despite their relative creative freedom and budgets that have been huge box office successes. This shows that ultimately making a good film is what will make profit despite differences in ownership model they are produced under, though Hollywood's dominance of the market place does limit British film's ability to compete.

Technologies Used in The King's Speech

In Production:

• Shot on the Arriflex LT and Arriflex ST
• Used 3.091 metres of 35mm film
• Heavy focus on quality cinematography to get the look right eg lighting, real sets created, attention to period detail 
• Streets were sprayed with grit and houses covered with grime, smoke machines were used to create thick smog - so much in fact it set off the fire alarm in a nearby boutique
• The crew took over the Pullens buildings in Southwark. The entire street was transformed into 1930s London
• Used wider than normal lenses for certain shots and very intrusive close-ups for certain emotional scenes - 18mm
• Shot at locations around the UK, mainly shot indoors. 
• Aimed for harsh lighting and filtered huge lights through cotton sheets to create the right effect, with giant black tents erected around the sets to provide harsh light
• Converted into digital format by Molinaire for post-production. 
• Non-period details removed in post eg burglar alarms and grading aimed to reflect a 1930s feel – looked like it was ‘filtered through tea’. 
• No SFX or CGI used in this film but additional people were added for the stadium scene
• Score recorded on antique microphones to create a dated sound

In Distributing/Exhibition:

• Distributed in digital and 35mm format
• Released at 395 cinemas across UK – approx. half. 
• 2D format, not 3D or IMAX. 
• Both Blu-ray and DVD with extras including cast Q+A, Making of and an audio commentary. 
• Sky Movies purchased the exclusive subscription rights for UK TV. 
• Free to air purchased by Ch4 for use across their channels in March 2013. 
• Available for UK download/stream/rent on Lovefilm and Amazon UK

In Marketing: 

• Traditional format poster and TV/ theatrical trailer across UK
• Had to redesign poster
• Viral marketing predominated: heavy reliance on word of mouth and positive critical acclaim from the Oscar successes. 
• FB page with 2,424 likes and 33 ‘talking about this’. 
• Page includes photos and link to website and twitter feed. 
• Website relies heavily on Oscars success, and video interviews with cast and crew. 
• Features heavy promotion of the DVD, the full length cinema trailer, link to the soundtrack, social media and an educational guide to the film. 
• DVD release timed for just after the royal wedding.

In Exchange:

• 6.2 million illegal downloads in 2011 alone. 
• One of the top 10 most downloaded films of the year. 
• UK opening weekend: £3.5m in the opening weekend alone
• $138m UK gross 
• $430m worldwide gross
• 2m dvds sold worldwide.

New Technologies used in Avengers Assemble

In Production:

• Shot on Arriflex Alexa in digital and Canon 5D
• Used the ARRIRAW format
• Used Codex workflow technology
• CGI + SFX though Predominantly GCI
• Starting with real images and using CGI to build from there. 
• 1:85 aspect ratio to cope with varying character heights. 
• Used Motion capture with Mark Ruffalo and an Athlete to create Hulk's movements
• Used four motion capture HD cameras to film him
• Filmed in greenscreen studios
• High speed shots captured on 35mm (Super 35)
• Used digital in dark mise-en-scene eg the forest scene
• 2,200 digital FX developed across 14 companies:  Industrial Light & Magic, Weta Digital, Scanline VFX, Hydraulx, Fuel VFX, Evil Eye Pictures, Luma Pictures, Cantina Creative, Trixter, Modus FX, Whiskytree, Digital Domain, The Third Floor and Method Design 
• Only had 3 days to film in New York - Used Composited digital backgrounds - thousands of pictures of New York streets stitched together
• Inserted Tom Hiddleston's agonised face onto a CG version of Loki's body when Hulk is beating him up
• Didn't use CGI for Thor's storm clouds as it was easier just to use a stock clip
• Efilm and Deluxe

In Distribution and Exhibition:

• Distributed in digital 2D.  
• Digitally re-mastered in 3D and IMAX 3D - had to reanimate some shots so that they would fit better
• 2^nd screen app on blu-ray version.
• Blu-ray 3D combo pack, blu-ray combo pack,  DVD and HD digital. 
• Released as a digital download

In Marketing:

• Marvel UK channel on youtube
• Teaser Trailer 'leaked' online
• Trailer debuted on iTunes Movie Trailers and was downloaded 10 million times in 24 hours
• Many cast member's highly popular Twitter accounts kept fans updated on news about The Avengers release, home entertainment and merchandise
• Had a global twitter chat before the films release with Joss Whedon, Samuel L Jackson, Tom Hiddleston and Clark Gregg
• Avengers Assemble specific marketing adapted for UK/Ireland market by Disney UK.
• FB game: Avengers Alliance
• The Avengers FB page: over 1m likes and 7,000 ‘talking about this’. 
• 2^nd screen app on i-tunes, i-pad, via website. 
• Live wallpaper android app. 
• Pictures of Robert Downey Jr driving an Acura on set were released online (on of the Avenger's promotional partners
• Highly interactive website. 
• Character downloads and interactive virtual world by entering the SHIELD database via 2^nd screen
• Nominated for Best Visual Effects
• The Avengers game released on Xbox 3, playstation 3, Wii U
• Mobile Game 'Avengers Initiative'

In Exchange:

• 8m illegal downloads – 4^th most illegally downloaded movie of 2012
• Over $1.5b worldwide gross. 5^th biggest US sales on DVD for 2012. 87M DVD sales to date. 

Poetry: On Art

I despise all art
And Yet I write poetry
Better Stop Now Then

Burning In Arcadia

• Leaves nothing behind - contradicts Newton's theory of everything being rediscovered, and nothing being lost
• Cuts the link to the future - people will never know
• The great library of Alexandria burnt - Thomasina mourns over this
• Thomasina burns and all her genius and potential is lost
• Do things really get picked up by future generations?
• Flame between Septimus and Lady Croom - fire of lust/ passion

Academic Disciplines in Arcadia

• Hannah and Bernard vs Valentine
• Book geeks vs maths geeks

  vs  

Bernard

• Bernard sees himself as a literature critic
• Bernard's discipline is not as publicized any more - he's publicity hungry and angry about scientist's power and status
• Bernard thinks that reading makes you a better person - classical literary idea
• Literature teaches us about humanity
• Bernard is a balance to the many scientific theories in the play
• Saying you don't need to understand Newton to understand the universe

Hannah

• Likes discovering things
• Joy in exploration and learning
• Censuring the past with her more liberal/reasonable hindsight
• Very skeptical but is always right
• Idealizes human endeavour
• Takes underdog's side

Arcadia Scene 2 Summary

Same room in 'present day'. Hnannah looks through Noakes and Lady Croom's gardening books then leaves with the theolodite. Chloe and Bernard enter looking for Hannah.

Chloe steps out to look for Hannah while Valentine enters, says 'Sod' and leaves.

Chloe explains to Bernard:

• that Hannah is writing a history of the garden
• that the room has been cleared for the dance

Bernard asks Chloe not to tell Hannah his real name when she goes to get her.

Gus enters and leaves straight away.

Valentine enters, once again saying 'sod' then leaves again. He returns and talks to Bernard about:

• Not being able to get into the commode/toilet
• How his father hates typewritten letters and japanese cars
• Talking to Bernard on the phone
• Hannah and her book
• Lady Croom (modern day)
• A seminar they both attended and how one of Bernard's friends was proved wrong by maths

Gus enters and leaves again.

Valentine exits. Hannah enters and Bernard tries to charm her, but starts talking about 'ha-hah's.

Bonhomie exuberant friendliness or a good-natured manner; geniality.

Bernard: Early nineteenth is my period as much as anything is.

Bernard continues to come across as a dickhead, endlessly rambling until Hannah interrupts him by saying...

Hannah: I'm putting my shoes on again.
Bernard: Oh. You're not going to go out?
Hannah: No. I'm going to kick you in the balls.
Bernard: Right. Point taken. Ezra Chater.

Bernard tells her:

• That Chater only wrote 2 poems, the last of which was 'The Couch of Eros' 
• After 1809 Chater 'disappears from view'
• Reads out Chater's inscription on Septimus' book
• Bernard wants to write about Chater
• There is only one other Chater known of who was a 'botanist who described a dwarf dahlia and died there after being bitten by a monkey
• There are two reviews of his work from the Picadilly Recreation
• Found the book in a private collection
• He wants information on Chater, Septimus or Sidley Park

  

Hannah: The Byron gang unzipped their flies and patronized all over [her book].

Hannah starts to tell him things and, depending on the production, starts smoking.
 or 

Hannah says that Valentine is her fiancee, Bernard says that she is lying. She is. They discuss the family:

• Valentine is a post grad biology student
• He's 'doing computer grouse'
• What is wrong with Gus
• 'father sounds like a lot of fun'
• 'mother is the gardener' called 'Hermione' and Hannah is 'helping'

Bernard: I'm beginning to admire you.

Hannah: Before was complete bullshit?

Bernard: Completely.

Hannah starts to tell him information:

• Septimus was tutor
• Croom's daughter his pupil
• septimus studied mathematics and natural philosophy at Cambridge
• Has nothing on Chater
• There is a 'Sidley Hermit' who died in 1834

Hannah: English Landscape was invented by gardeners imitating foreign painters who were evoking classical authors. The whole thing was brought home in the luggage from the grand tour. Here, look - Capability Brown doing Claude who was doing Virgil. Arcadia! And here, superimposed by Richard Noakes, untamed nature in the style of Salvator Rosa. It's the Gothic novel expressed in landscape. Everything but vampires. There's an account of my hermit in a letter by your illustrious namesake.

The hermit was clever, but Hannah is not allowed to finish what she is saying as Bernard spots an oppurtunity to show off his knowledge, lecturing her on Thackeray.

Hannah: The hermit of Sidley park was my...
Bernard: Peg.
Hannah: Epiphany.

Hannah mentions that the hermit was suspected of being a genius and had covered the hermitage with papers covered in maths.

Hannah: The whole romantic sham, Bernard! It's what happened to the Enlightenment isn't it? A century of intellectual rigour turned in on itself. A mind in chaos suspected of genius. In a setting of cheap thrills and false emotion. The history of the garden says it all, beautifully. There's an engraving of Sidley Park in 1730 that makes you want to weep. Paradise in the age of reason. By 1760 everything had gone - the topiary, pools and terraces, fountains an avenue of limes - the whole sublime geometry was ploughed under by Capability Brown. The grass went from the doorstep to the horizon and the best box hedge in Derbyshire was dug up for the ha-ha so that fools could pretend they were living in God's countryside. And then Richard Noakes came in to bring God up to date. By the time he'd finished it looked like this (the sketch book). The decline from thinking to feeling, you see.
Bernard: That's awfully good.

They discuss possible research, until Hannah finally twigs that Bernard actually wants to research Byron. Chloe enters with mugs and mentions that Bernard's last name is Nightingale not Peacock, and Hannah gets angry.

Bernard: The Byron gang are going to get their dicks caught in their zip.

Bernard explains his argument:

• Couch of Eros that was in Byron's possession when he died
• Has underlined passages
• Links to the reviews in the Picadilly Recreation
• Reviews sound like Byron
• 3 letters in the book
• Chater disappeared after 1809
• Byron went to Lisbon for 2 years afterwards

Bernard invites himself to stay, and Hannah reluctantly tells him that Septimus and Byron both went to Trinity College at the same time. Bernard is so pleased he kisses Hannah on the cheek and Chloe re-enters. Bernard leaves, and Hannah and Chloe awkwardly discuss Bernard and Gus. Chloe leaves Hannah alone on the stage.

Analysis of Gender Representation of Nashville

(2.50 to 7.07) Series 1 Episode 8:

Camera

• Opens with CU of Juliette sniffing flowers - emphasises her femininity and beauty
• ELS of Juliette's house shows her luxurious house and the many flowers she's been sent - enjoys elegance, wants perfect home, hasn't got man to share with - boyfriend comes into her house, she doesn't go out - domestic space is her's - she has the power there
• Camera pans and then tracks around Juliette - everything revolves round her, in charge, demanding - matches with her demands to her manager
• Cuts from ELS to MLS to focus in on Juliette - exasperated body language, facial expression
• CU of phone shows who is calling
• CU of juliette with boyfriend coming in behind her - not startling, he feels at home there, her back to him - some distance between them
• Tracking MS to CU as Juliette walks forward to meet boyfriend - see her happiness
• Frame within a frame - doorway puts division between them - problems in their relationship?
• LA and HA shots reflect the character's height difference
• Establishing HA shots pans over pool and tables
• LA mid of rockstar with woman behind him - she's not important, just an accessory of success
• Camera follows male characters as they walk around - commanding presence, demand attention
• Lots of 3 shots and 2 shots to show the possible unity of the band members
• Lots of 3 shots of the friends, indicating their closeness
• LA of friend shows her power as a modern career driven woman
• HA of Scarlet shows her uncertainty and fear to step out of her comfort zone
• MS of Scarlet compared to tight framing of her friend - alone, confused, scared, doesn't feel capable

Editing

• Cut from MS to CU - emphasises Juliette's surprise at her 'mom's rehab' calling her
• Shot reverse shot of Juliette and boyfriend - cuts to Master shot while they kiss
• Cuts for OTS MS to CU of newspaper
• Music provides a sound bridge to link to different storylines
• Each different segment begins with an ELS establishing shot and ends with a CU to introduce and then intrigue the audience
• Cuts from one 3 shot to another - solidity of their friendships

Sound

• Car horn constantly - quickens their conversation, son controlled by father, father as demanding controlling - sets up potential conflict for later on, keeping the audience watching
• Southern Accents - country music, stereotype of church going and polite explains Juliette's boyfriend's refusal to have sex with her
• Birds tweeting in the background - shes lives in the ideal
• Country music in background and for transitions - empahsises it's importance in the show
• Sound bridge as man speaks - shows reluctance 
• Man doesn't answer question while the music builds up, not letting the audience in on the answer and building suspense, or suggesting that he can't say
• Music fades out agian with dialogue

Mise En Scene

• Opens with shot of Juliette sniffing pink roses - traditionally feminine imagery -to appeal to her her record label sends something girly - traditionally feminine character?
• Juliette wears dark silk dressing gown - promiscuous
• Juliette's clothes, furniture and house are all greys and white - modern architecture=style, class, rich - concerned with her image, shallow?
• Pale Blue swimming pool - living the high life
• Even Juliette's boyfriend matches her house's colour palette - controlling, image driven
• Black nightdress with pink flowers - femme fatale, sexual, stereotype of promiscuous woman manipulating man to give up morals
• Boyfriend's sports gear - healthy active physically strong - stereotypical man
• Scarlet is more of an 'Angel is the house' - pink clothes, long princess hair, hairband - innoncence, childish, lacks strength on her own
• Guitar shaped swimming pool - successful musicians, country music's importance in the culture and in show
• Red haired woman matches rock star in front of her with her clothes - unimportance, male supremacy, women just waiting on man
• Monochromatic outfits - 'bad' men of country music, rock
• Blue shirt and jeans - sympathetic colours, nice, calm, laidback
• Blue and yellow kitchen - friendly nice people
• Stickers, magnets, posters - youth, interested in music
• Other girl wears white shirt and black trousers - she encourages Scarlet to go for a music career - modern woman, confident, attractive
• Scarlet continues holding onto mug throughout scene - comfortable in domestic sphere, afraid to break out into career world 

Letters in Arcadia

• They're secret
• Different from the communication between characters that audience see
• Contain truth
• Things aren't always what they seem
• They burn in the fire and therefore create an incomplete picture, which is why Bernard gets confused
• Way of avoiding confrontation
• Insight into characters - Septimus' romantic side
• Poor evidence
• Missing Link
• Like a jigsaw puzzle, with Hannah and Bernard finding the pieces
• 'What use is a love letter from beyond the grave?' Lady Croom
• Give information
• Gives opportunity for confusion
• Double edged - evidence but unreliable
• Sincerity in letters does not take away from the comedy of the play
• Can see the reaction of the recipitents

   

Timeline Of The History of Animation

1906:
Humourous Phases of Funny Phases

1908:
Fantasmagorie (First short of solely animated images)

1908:
Humpty Dumpty Circus (first stop motion)

1914:
Earl Hurd invents Cel Animation

1914:
Gertie the Dinosaur

1917:
El Apostol (first full length feature film)

1919:
Felix the cat

1920:
The Debut of Thomas Cat (first colour cartoon)

1922:
Walt Disney's first animated short Little Red Riding Hood

1928:
Mickey Mouse's debut in Plane Crazy

1929:
Silly Symphonies starts with The Skeleton Dance

1930
Betty Boop debuts in Dizzy Dishes

1930:
Looney Tunes debuts with Sinkin' in the Bathtub

1931:
Peludopolis (first sound used within a feture length film.

1932:
The first full colour, three strip Technicolour animated short Flowers and Trees

1933:

King Kong (several stop motion characters)

1933:

Popeye debuts in Popeye the sailor

1933:

Multiplane camera invented allowing sanimators to ctreat a 3D effect within 2D cartoons

1935:

Russian Film The New Gulliver is first full length feature film too employ a stop morion animator for the bulk of its running time.

Themes of Yeat's Poetry

Ireland: 

• Born in Dublin, buried under Ben Bulben and was Irish
• Triedto establish an Irish Theatrical tradition with his friend Lady Gregory
• Was a Senator of the Irish Free State
• Full of references to Irish mythology, countryside, history and contemporary politics
• Felt himself to be out of the mainstream of Irish life - Born into a protestant family, spoke English not Gaelic, lived most of early life in London with only holidays in Ireland
• Quarrels with the Ireland he knew and his desire to create an Ireland to which he could be proud to belong
• Conflicting feelings eg Innisfree is earthly paradise and Coole Park is an oasis of civilised life, but in The People and September 1913 he presents Ireland negatively
• Yeats wrote Ireland: he 'invented a country, calling it Ireland' (Denis Donoghue) eg in The Municipal Gallery Revisited where actual Ireland has been replaced by one brought into existence by poets
• Yeats' Irealnd has a geographical identity
• Cared about the Irish traditions maintained by the great country houses where a largely Protestant aristocracy maintained standards of literary and artistic sophistication
• Designates people as founders of Irish culture and history, including Ireland's poetic heritage - Raftery, Synge and politicians like Wolfe Tone and Edward Fitzgerald

Easter Rising: 

• Easter 1916 and Sixteen Dead Men
• Gives Ireland identity by writing about the events that brought the Irish Free State into being
• Easter 1916 - Patrick Pearse taking over the Dublin Post Office, which could never be successful, and Yeats implies that it was the folly and thrill of that action that was genuinely Irish which excited the people
• Conveys the change in thought and feeling
• Complexities of politics and what political involvement can do to people
• People in the rising as hard, purposeful, resilient, stable
• Them as fanatics?

Relationship between poet and audience:

• Aware of himself as a poet who speaks
• Wants audience who knows how to listen
• Wanted to speak out of and to the experience of the Irish People
• Aware that Irish People didn't always listen

Women and love: 

• Many of his poems originated from actual events
• Most important relationship in his life was with Irish actress Maud Gonne
• He proposed to her at least 6 times but was always rejected
• Desired but unattainable woman
• Yeats never names her
• Great beauty is ascrribed to her 'loveliest woman born'
• Ledaean - the daughter of Leda and Zeus was Helen of Troy
• Tradition of presenting unobtainable women as fairies- beautiful, alluring, potentially destructive

Info gathered from 'W.B.Yeats Selected Poems'

Arcadia Scene 1 Summary

Key Quotes and Events:

April 1809: Thomasina aged 13, Septimus aged 22

Thomasina: Septimus, what is carnal embrace?
Septimus: Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one's arms around a side of beef.

Septimus and Thomasina discuss:

• Fermat's last theorem
• Mr Chater's poem
• Who Mrs Chater was having 'carnal embrace' with in the 'gazebo'

Septimus: Ah. Yes I am ashamed. Carnal embrace is sexual congress, which is the insertion of the male genital organ into the female genital organ for the purposes of procreation and pleasure. Fermat's last theorem, by contrast, asserts that when x,y and z are whole numbers each raised to the power of n, the sum of the first two can never equal the third when n is greater than 2.

Thomasina: Is it the same as love?

Septimus: Oh no it is much nicer than that.

Jellaby enters with a letter for Septimus from Mr Chater inviting him to duel to defend Mrs Chater's honour and exits with Septimus' reply.

Thomasina: When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red tails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backward, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding des not notice and continues to tun pink just as before. Do you not think this is odd?

Septimus: No more you can, time must needs run backward, and since it will not, we must stir our way onward mixing as we go, disorder out of disorder until pink is complete, unchanging and unchangeable, and we are done with it for ever. This is known as free will or self determination.

Thomasina: If you could stop every atom in its position and direction, and if your mind could comprehend all the actions thus suspended, then if you were really, really good at algebra you could write the formula for all the future; and although nobody can be so clever as to do it, the formula must exist just as if one could.

Septimus mentions that Fermat wrote he had proof for his theorem in a margin of a book. Chater enters. Septimus sends Thomasina out of the room. Chater demands that he and Septimus duel to defend Mrs Chater's honour after Septimus and Mrs Chater 'made love... in the gazebo'. Septimus cajoles him into calming down by saying:

Septimus: There are no more than two or three poets of the first rank now living, and I will not shoot one of them dead over a perpendicular poke in a gazebo'

This flatters Chater and Septimus goes on to allude that Mrs Chater only made love to Septimus to entice him to write a nice review of Chater's poem.

Septimus: ...I order my thoughts, and finally, when all is ready and I am calm in my mind...
Chater: (shrewdly) Did Mrs Chater know all this before she - before you -
Septimus: I think I very likely she did.
Chater: (Triumphantly) There is nothing that woman wouldn't do for me! Now you have an insight into her character. Yes, by God, she is a wife to me sir! (pg 14)

Chater writes in Septimus' edition of 'The Couch Of Eros'. It is hinted that Captain Brice is also Mrs Chater's lover. Noakes enters.

Lady Croom and Captain Brice as she says:

Lady Croom: Oh, no! Not the gazebo!'

Sepimus and Chater assume she is talking about the incident with Mrs Chater when in fact she is bemoaning Noakes' picturesque garden design. They both leap to his defence. Thomasina enters. Thomasina realises what they are actually talking about, but mentions carnal embrace which makes her family think she has had sex with Septimus.

Brice: As her tutor you have a duty to keep her in ignorance.

Thomasina saves the situation by implying she believes that carnal embrace is actually 'the practice of throwing one's arms around a side of beef'.

Lady Croom: Where there is the familiar pastoral refinement of an Englishman's garden, here is an eruption of gloomy forest and towering crag, of ruins where there never was a house, of water dashing against rocks where there was neither spring or stone I could not throw the length of a cricket pitch. My hyacinth dell is become a haunt for hobgoblins, my Chinese bridge, which I am assured is superior to the one at Kew, and for all I know at Peking, is usurped by a fallen obelisk overgrown with briars.

Lady Croom: But Sidley Park is already a picture, and a most amiable picture too. The slopes are green and gentle. The trees are companionably grouped at intervals that show them to an advantage. The rill is a serpentine ribbon unwound from the lake peacably contained by meadows on which the right amount of sheep are tastefully arranged - in short it is nature as God intended, and I can say with the painter, 'Et in Arcadia Ego!' 'Here I am in Arcadia,' Thomasina.

Lady Croom notices something different about Thomasina then is rude to Chater.Byron is introduced  as having shot a pigeon but never seen. Lady Croom exits with Chater, Brice and Noakes.

Septimus: A calendar of slaughter. 'Even in Arcadia, there am I!'
Thomasina: Oh phooey to Death! (She dips a pen and takes it to the reading stand) I will put in a hermit, for what is a hermitage without a hermit? Are you in love with my mother Septimus?

Thomasina: There. I have made him like the Baptist in the wilderness.

Thomasina gives Septimus a letter from Mrs Chater then exits. He puts the letter into 'The Couch of Eros'.

Characters introduced:

• Septimus
• Thomasina
• Mr Chater
• Mrs Chater
• Mr Noakes
• Jellaby
• Lady Croom
• Captain Brice

Themes Introduced:

• Sex
• Knowledge and discovery
• Fermat's last theorem
• Newtonian physics
• Garden design
• Determism vs chaos  theory

An Explanation of some of the jokes:

1. Thomasina: Septimus, what is carnal embrace?
Septimus: Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one's arms around a side of beef.
Caro means meat in latin.

2. Septimus: I am sorry the seed fell on stony ground.

Thomasina: That was the sin of Onan

In the bible Onan disobeys levirate law when Onan he has sex with Tamar, and withdrew before climax and "spilled his seed on the ground", since any child born would not legally be considered his heir.

3. Septimus: Mr Chater being engaged in closing the stable door.

A well known phrase is 'Don't close the door if the horse has already bolted'

4. Septimus: 'When I cannot sleep I take up 'The maid of turkey' like an old friend!'
Chater: (gratified)
Implies that Chater's poetry is so boring it sends him to sleep, audiences laugh at Chater's stupidity and arrogance.

5. Lady Croom: A lesson in folly...
Double entendre of the garden folly and the folly of Septimus and Mrs Chater's affair