Jordan Ilan A-Level Film Studies

Captain Fantastic - Key Scenes: Bo – oldest son Kielyr - daughter Vesp – daughter Rellian – son Nai – youngest? Zaja – youngest? Difficult to tell, even gender Hippy names – alienating? 00:00 – Opening sequence – Tracking (helicopter) across vast forest – isolation, wilderness, beauty, birdsong, wind Initially uninhabited – deer – like nature doc Violent death of deer – alignment with Bodevar? Children emerge, mud-caked – like aboriginal initiation rites Camouflage within nature – Ben enters, removes heart – Bo eats it, animalistic – Ben’s bloodied hands – enigma initially with his muddied face Deer on spit, hung from tree, gutted 05:30 Music in – celebratory w/ cross cutting of various preparations – idyllic, almost nostalgic way of life – primal 08:00 Training begins Alignment? Stabbing – Ben = ‘good’. 09:00 Evening Reading around fireside Ben observing his children – strict w education – goes against hippyish representation? Difficul

Captain Fantastic & No Country For Old Men Film Specification Areas: - Film Form - Meaning & response - Contexts - Spectatorship - Ideology Spectatorship: Stuart Hall:  (1932-2014) - Devised encoding/decoding theory in 1973 - Argued 3 ways of 'decoding' a filmic text (Preferred, Negotiated & Oppositional). Another 4th way (Aberrant) Preferred (or dominant): - Spectator derives meaning from film that filmmaker intended; spectators = relatively passive Negotiated: - Spectator negotiates film's messages, accepting some whilst disagreeing with others Oppositional: - Spectator understands film's message but rejects them Aberrant: - Spectator derives unintentional or atypical messages from a film that do not correlate with others' views 'A preferred reading of a media text is one in which the spectator takes up the intended meaning, finding it relatively easy to align with the messages & attitudes of those who have created the t

Amy Film Movements: Documentary Film - Film Form - Meaning & Response - Contexts - Critical debates - Filmmakers' theories Documentary Films: Documentary is a genre of film which is structured around a collection of image/videos/interviews involving a particular subject, in order to inform or manipulate a spectator Documetnary films: strictly speaking, are non-fictional, 'slice of life' factual works of art - and sometimes known as cinema verite. For many years, as films became more narrative-based, documentaries branched out and took many forms since their early beginnings - some of which have been termed propagandistic or non-objective. Possible responses to documentaries: - Truth, - Reality, - Education, - Construction - Subjectivity, - People, - Propaganda, - Information - Genre, - Perspective, - Style, - Positioning - Ideology, - Provocation, - Objectivity, - Narrator, - Entertainment Story - Bias, - Events, - Seriousness, - Critical - Non-Fictio