'SOUP' review

We have now completed our Little White Lies reviews on our film 'Soup', click the link below to view a high quality PDF version!

Our Little White Lies inspired review

HAVE A GREAT CHRISTMAS/NEW YEAR!

Editing Our Film Review

Our next task is to edit our film review and mimic the popular film magazine, Little White Lies. Here, we have a very basic layout and have included our screenshot from our film. We have ensured to keep the same (or similar) fonts, layout structure and keep a house style.

We have decided to split up the writing between the group to get more done in a smaller amount of time. 

We will update the blog as we edit and move things around!

Our Final Film Review Layout Conventions & What We Will Include [Meg]

The Generic layout of a review in Little White Lies

Learning about Little White Lies in class we learned the generic order of how a review in their magazine works

• The opening paragraph usually comments on the contexts for the film, whether historical, literary or directors previous work. 

                     - For example, with the horns review, there were references about other films which have had an impact on or are similar to the film made (which are opinion based).

• A summary information of the protagonist or other main focuses of the movie, potentially commenting on their traits, their representation, key aspects and evaluation of the actors performance.

Within the second paragraph, it almost reveals the entire opening sequence, in quite a bit of depth, but nothing else. This leads you to wanting to read on. You get an insight of the main character, which is interesting, the actor is known by their character rather than their real name (Ig (Daniel Radcliffe)). in our film we will be revealing the female antagonist, intead of being Kierah.

• Key themes, issues and a basic narrative of the plot.

Themes in our film consist of:
- The loss of innocence 
- Good vs. Evil
- Youth/Vulnerability 
We will summarise our themes and issues, without revealing the ending.

• Narrative devices used.
• Use and adaptation of genre conventions (e.g. Steve Neale's theory of repetition and variation) 

• Reviewers opinion on the film.

Positive/Negative points of the film. Being honest and descriptive, backing up why we are giving this opinion.

• Summary sentence which overall comments on the whole film. 

A snappy sentence leaving the reader with the choice of seeing the film or not. This sentence will almost act as the decider for the audience.

LWL what we will include in our final piece- Holly

• The opening paragraph usually comments on the contexts for the film, whether historical, literary or directors previous works.    

I would include a brief overview of our film, with the basic plot points and commenting on the context, our previous works as a production company.

• A summary information of the protagonist or other main focuses of the movie, potentially commenting on their traits, their representation, key aspects and evaluation of the actors performance. 

I would briefly overview our film, the protagonist Isobel and her role, her representation in the film as an innocent child, her scenes trick or treating contrasting with the actions of Kierah, and Kierahs previous performance in our films.

• Key themes, issues and a basic narrative of the plot.

The film commenting on a female villain the stereotypes of an innocent child in exposure to dark events and the basic tone of the plot without mentioning the ending.

• Narrative devices used. 

Unrestricted narration used and the effect it has on the audience.

• Use and adaptation of genre conventions (e.g. Steve Neale's theory of repetition and variation) 

Semantic and syntactic codes used, aka themes of horror and touching on the genre, which is not typical of short films as the expansion of knowledge on a character is something we do not use, which however is typical of a short film, in the time they have to convey the narrative.  Use of female villain which is used more in films recently.

• Reviewers opinion on the film.

Commenting on the negative and the positive points of the film.

• Summary sentence which overall comments on the whole film.

Without giving away the ending, positive short sentence to sum up the movie, commenting on dark horror themes in the entirety. 

Little White Lies - Layout & House Style Conventions [Meg]

In class we looked in great detail the layout of a few reviews. Majority of the reviews are set out the same.
In the lesson I learned that:

The page size including the margins is 196mm x 245mm 

The columns are approximately 52.4mm x 107mm with 3 columns

Fonts used: Aparjita, Century Gothic, Yahei

3 numbers for a page number (e.g. 003)

Usually 5/6 paragraphs

The title and director/main character 

information is centred in 2 different fonts

                 - Names are bold but not italic

Very particular writing is in bold and italic 

 

"Reviews" is on the left/right depending on the page in capitals

The image will always remain at the top of the page which is often a main character of a film, and will be from the film itself.

The authors name will also be included in bold capitals at the end of the review, in the same font as the directors and starring characters shown at the top.

Style Conventions of 'Little White Lies' - Alex

'Little White Lies' has a very particular style of writing that we will mimic for a review on our own film. I looked at two reviews in class ('Zero Dark Thirty' and 'Jack Reacher') and made notes on each paragraph of the review. Each paragraph could be summarised, and there were some common trends. Obviously with each journalist's own interpretation, there will be some variation.

"ZERO DARK THIRTY"

1ST PARAGRAPH: Historical/Social contexts for the film

2ND PARAGRAPH: Historical/Social contexts + Links to protagonist

3RD PARAGRAPH: Character "backstory"/profiling, links to director style+genre conventions

4TH PARAGRAPH: Plot Development; genre, repetition & genre

5TH PARAGRAPH: Themes/codes of the film, director intentions & aspects of style

"JACK REACHER"

 1ST PARAGRAPH: Literary contexts, casting of protagonist
2ND PARAGRAPH: Character profile,  Linked to star persona; genre departures
3RD PARAGRAPH: Description of plot opening and link to title
4TH PARAGRAPH: Description of plot development & actor references
5TH PARAGRAPH: Evaluation of protagonist as character & star performances compared to standard genre films of this type. Negative closing sentence.

Things I have learned:

• Start with contexts, whether discussing historical, social, literary etc. Why has this film been made? What's the purpose? Has it got a background story? Discussion on context could last a couple of paragraphs.
• Discussion of characters don't start until at least the third paragraph before any mentions of the plot line are revealed. 3rd Paragraph usually introduces the reader to something, whether it is the character's back story or where they are positioned.
• The 4th paragraph will show the plot development
• Paragraph 5 is the indication on whether the author favoured the film or not - almost as though they are evaluating the film and all visual aspects.

What is Little White Lies and Who Reads It? [Meg]

Little White Lies is a magazine internationally distributed for movie lovers. It focuses on giving reviews about different films, with a main film in mind for every issue. "The magazine uses a three part ranking system. The categories ("'Anticipation", "Enjoyment", and "In Retrospect") are marked out of five and accompanied by explanatory text." - Wikipedia
The magazine is distributed under a bi-monthly frequency, meaning there are 6 magazines a year. The magazines also sell for £6 each. The publisher "The Church of London" first introduced this magazine in 2005 and now also produces the 'DIY Culture' magazine "Huck" which was founded in 2006.
The audience consists of 37% female readers and 63% male readers between the ages of 25-35, this already shows us that more than half of the readers are of a male demographic.
The collage I created on the left show 2 different magazine covers, concluded of 2 main actors/characters (Jim Carey: The Mask & Kristen Stewart: Twilight) and the layout of 2 different films. I did this just to show the use of bright colours, and realism of their illustrations, but also that they keep it to the same layout inside each issue.

www.littlewhitelies.co.uk

Style Conventions of Little White Lies

Little White Lies has a standard language form, paragraph content and language conventions for their reviews. This mainly consists numerically along the paragraphs and could vary due to different authors opinions on the film.

• The opening paragraph usually comments on the contexts for the film, whether historical, literary or directors previous works.
• A summary information of the protagonist or other main focuses of the movie, potentially commenting on their traits, their representation, key aspects and evaluation of the actors performance.
• Key themes, issues and a basic narrative of the plot.
• Narrative devices used.
• Use and adaptation of genre conventions (e.g. Steve Neale's theory of repetition and variation)
• Reviewers opinion on the film.
• Summary sentence which overall comments on the whole film.

Language conventions of the magazine consist of complex vocabulary and many restricted film codes in language, which specifies more the LWL's target audience.

commonly used language devices such as nouns, complex nouns, metaphors, adverbs and adjectives are used to catch the readers attention, with devices such as puns to create humour in the article and rhetorical questions to let the audience review the film and possibly more complex issues as whole.

The style of writing uses many restricted codes, which leaves the target audience to be more specific to people who are interested and know about the specific theories or previous films mentioned. For example in the Zero Dark Thirty film review published in LWL, the author comments on previous characters from the directors preceding films, which means the audience would of had to see the previous films to understand the reference.