Book research!!!

Books that I looked at which are useful:

Makinnon,Kenneth (2003) : Representing Men: Maleness and Masculinity in the Media. London, Arnold.

This helps for the representations of heroes.

Mulvey, Laura (1989) : Visual and other pleasures. Basingstoke, mackmillan.

This helps for how the audience view the text so in my case it would be how children and family view the text.

Brod, Harry (1987) : The making of masculinities: the new men’s studies. Boston and London, Allen and Unwin.

This helps for the representation of heroes.

Neale, Steve (2002) : Genre and contemporary Hollywood. UK,BFI.

This is useful as it talks about the genre of animation and as my main text is a hybrid of adventure, fantasy and comedy

Gauntlett, David (2004) Media, gender and ethnicity. London, Routledge.

This book is useful as the gender bit will be useful as it ties in wit the roles of heroes and heroines.

Lacey, Nick (2002) : Narrative and genre, New York, Palgrave

this helped as it explained propps and levi strauss theory.

Tasker, Yvonne (2004) : Action and adventure cinema, USA, Routledge

this was a bit helpful as it talked about adventure which is one of the sub genres in shrek 2.

Branston, Gill and Stafford, Roy (2003) : The media studies student’s book- third edition. Usa, Routledge
This had a paragraph about shrek which was useful.

Tim o Sullivan, Brian Dutton and Philip Rayner (2003) : Studying the media (3rd edition) London, Arnold

this was useful as it talked about repesentation and had stuff about hollywood.

Simpson, Paul (2004) : the rough guide to kids' movies. New York, rough guides.

this has been the most useful book so far it talks about the diffrent genres and its got a lot of texts i could make reference to.

Books I am going to look at:

Gifford, dennis (1988) : the great cartoon stars: a who's who. UK, Bloomsbury Books.

Barrier, Micheal : Hollywood cartoons: American animation in its golden age

Giannalberto, Bendazzi : Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation

Lacey, Nick : Introduction to Film

Maltby, Richard (1995) : Hollywood Cinema

Cook, Pam and Bernink, Meike (1999) : The cinema book. UK, BFI

Ross, Mandy (2002) : Changing Role of Women. Great Britain, Heinemann library.

The initials "SKG"(in the DreamWorks logo) stand for the company's co-founders:
(Dreamworks' hopeful founders in 1994: From left, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg and David Geffen)
Spielberg (film director and founder of Amblin Entertainment),
Katzenberg (former head of The Walt Disney Company's film studios),
Geffen (founder of Geffen Records)

DreamWorks Animation SKG is an American animation studio, producing primarily feature animated films. DreamWorks Animation was formed by the merger of the feature animation division of DreamWorks SKG and Pacific Data Images (also known as PDI). Originally formed under the banner of DreamWorks SKG, it was spun-off into a separate public company in 2004.


Its films are currently distributed by Paramount Pictures (in turn owned by Viacom) who acquired the rest of DreamWorks SKG in February of 2006. DreamWorks Animation maintains two studios: the original DreamWorks feature animation studio in Glendale, California and the PDI studio in Redwood City, California in the Silicon Valley region.

In 1997, DreamWorks SKG signed a co-production deal with PDI to form PDI's subsidiary PDI, LLC (PDI owned 60% of PDI, LLC while DreamWorks SKG owned 40%). PDI, LLC would produce computer-generated feature films beginning with Antz (1998). In the same year DreamWorks SKG produced The Prince of Egypt using traditional animation techniques.


In 2000, DreamWorks SKG created a new business division, DreamWorks Animation, that would regularly produce both types of animated feature films.
The traditionally animated feature films were produced by the division's Southern California branch. DreamWorks SKG acquired majority interest (90%) in PDI, reforming it into PDI/DreamWorks, the Northern California branch of its new business division.
The business division separated from its parent in 2004, forming DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc. and purchasing the remaining interest in PDI as well as its subsidiary PDI, LLC.
Since 2004, DreamWorks Animation is dedicated solely to producing CG animated films in-house. No more traditional 2D animation is expected.


DreamWorks Animation also has a partnership with Aardman Animations, a stop-motion animation company in Bristol, England. This partnership has DreamWorks participating in the produciton of stop-motion films in Bristol, and also has Aardman participating in some of the CG films made in the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DreamWorks_Animation_SKG

The only major studios DreamWorks have not co-released movies with are :

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

and

Walt Disney Pictures.

this is not surprising, given Disney's hostile relations with DreamWorks co-founder Katzenberg: when Disney’s then-second in command, Frank Wells, died in a helicopter crash, CEO Michael Eisner refused to promote Katzenberg, firing him after he pushed the issue. Katzenberg then filed a lawsuit against Disney to recover money he felt he was owed and settled out of court for an estimated $100 - $250 million (the actual amount remains secret).

representation of the big bad wolf:

A mixture of the Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, and The Three Little Pigs. He is a friendly misunderstood crossdresser (apparently wearing Lil Red's grandmother's clothes) and on good terms with the three little pigs. This depiction, along with a transgendered bartender and Pinocchio's expansive nose in Shrek 2, raised the anger of some conservative groups who objected the film's sexual content. However, these concerns were widely made fun of in the media. In Far Far Away Idol he sings "Hungry Like the Wolf". In Shrek 2 Fairy Godmother calls him a gender confused Wolf. His line when every one looks at him confused is, "What?".

BLOG BUDDIES

my blog buddies from 13c is anika and kiran

I think my study is sort of similar to anikas as in her one she talks about women superheroes and my study mentions heroines.It also shares the same sub-genre as mine as her main text includes fantasy elements

Furthermore, we looked at similar site on women representation for instance http://mediaknowall.com/gender.html#Femininity

Keywords that overlap with both are studies are:
A- List ,Femme fatale, Stereotype,Marxist feminism,Narrative and Protagonist

In her text it shows women playing and active role similar to shrek 2 Fiona doesn’t play a passive role as she does martial arts in the begin of the film when Shrek is hanging upside down

What I learnt from looking at anika’s blog is a website which talks about women superheroes and how they are very rarely portrayed as superheroes and often played the helpless female who had to depend on the man's strength to resolve the problem. The male superheroes were constantly coming to the aid of a female and even when the female comic book superhero teamed up with her male counterpart she always took orders from him.

and

The drawing of the women in the comic books had an effect on how successful the titles were. Those that were portrayed with curvaceous figures and were very beautiful were more successful than the women who were drawn as ordinary people

This is useful as animation and comic books are similar and it could link in with how in Shrek 2 Fiona’s body as ogre is not slim and neither is fairy godmothers yet the film is still successful.

The keywords that overlap mine and kiran’s studies are:
Binary Opposition, Empathy, Fantasy, Gender, Hero, Propp, Vladimir (1895-1970), Adventure Film, Althusser, Louis (1918-90) and Blockbuster

More similarities are both our primary target audiences are children and both our main texts shares fantasy and Adventure elements. The institution that produces Spiderman Is a big budget Hollywood institution called Columbia pictures which frequently co-financed and co-distributed films with DreamWorks SKG however DreamWorks animation is an independent institution which has not collaborated with any other institutions.

What I learnt from looking at kiran’s blog is a website that could be quite useful
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/realrev.html

This is useful as its a university essay that talks about how children watch the media, and how they intake it. This will be useful to my study as my hypothesis mentions the target audience of my main text which is shrek 2.

from 13d my blog buddie is kavita

Kavita’s study talks about how the different character roles such as hero and villain segregates the black people from the white and so the representation of black people is a major issue in the American serial drama. It’s sort of similar in Shrek 2 as there are prejudice issues and in my study I am going to talk about how heroes and heroines are typical represented in contemporary animation so they overlap as we both will be looking at Propp’s theory on character roles.

Moreover, both texts are set in America

The keywords which I probably going to be using which are the same as hers are:

Stock character

Protagonist

Genre:

Genre Theory: Narrative theory: Propp, Vladamir (1895- 1970):


What I learnt from looking at her blog is about A Russian Formalist theorist, Viktor Shklovsky-Who is like Propp split narrative structure into story and plot.

10 key words

CELEBRITIES
An individual who has become the focus of media attention and is therefore widely known and recognised by the public.
Celebrities used in Shrek 2:

Cameron Diaz as princess Fiona


Mike Myers as Shrek


Eddie Murphy as donkey


Antonio Banderas as puss in boots


Julie Andrews as the queen

CGI-computer generate imagery
The application of computer software to generate a film image

DEVIANCE
Behaviour that “divates”(turns away) from the norm or that which is generally accepted within a socieity. In shrek 2 shrek disrepects the king and queen when he goes to their castle by burping.

DOMINANT IDEOLOGY
The belief systhem that serves the intreasts of the dominant ruling elite within society, generally accepted as common sense by the majority and reproduced in mainstream media texts.
Dominant ideology establishes a hegemonic postion in society which is reinforced by media representations and is consequently diffcult to challenge.
The term arrives from a marxist theory and is addressed in detail in the work of Gramsci,Althusser and Hall.

HEGEMONIC READING
A response to a text in which the reader shares the value systhem of the text and accepts the perferred reading without question.

ELITE
A small group in a society which claims leadership privilages as a result of expertise in terms of knowledge/skill,in a particular field.
Elites exisits in broadcasting institutions where they are determine programme content and representations .
In terms of audience,elites may be viewed as sought-after niche markets
ELITISM is the practise of seperating from the masses through claims of specialists knowledge/ability.

FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS
Marxist term for the effect of dominant ideology on the awareness of workers with regard to their real economic and local capitalism.

FANTASY
A genre built around an artificially constructed reality which could never exisit in real life,often involving classical mythology/fairytales.

GENRE THEORY
An explanation of the role played by genre in a diffrentiating media texts and aligning audiences. Genre theorists consider the relationship between audiences,media texts and media producers and the ways in which genre,particulary in film,can be used by producers to target specific audience groups,with predictable expectations of audience numbers and responses.
e.g RICHARD DYER (1973) argues that genres are pleasurable because they offer escapist fantasies into fictional worlds which remove the boredom and pressures of reality. He sees these worlds as utopian,offering the audience abundance,energy,excitiment,spontaneity and community-none of which are present in their everyday lives.

GRAMSCI,ANTONIO (1871-1937)
Leader of the italian communist party, imprisoned by Benito Mussolini from 1926 until his death in 1937.
Gramsci used the term hegemony to describe the way in which the dominant elite can maintain its power over the economic,political and cultural direction of society.
The values that sustain elites in power are reproduced every day by the media and made to seem like the common sense views id the majority, so that any challenge to them is marginalised.

representation of princess Fiona(heroine)

Princess Fiona is initially portrayed as the archetypal (typical) princess from fairy tales, speaking formally in matters of courtship and presenting high expectations of how she is to be rescued, who is to rescue her, and so forth. Later, Princess Fiona's true self emerges, as she's really a very down-to-earth woman who burps, is a loyal friend, and unlike princesses of fairy tales, expertly fights in hand-to-hand combat with martial arts skills.

'Self-Directed Research'

• Representations of women across all media
• Representations of men across all media
• The budget of hoodwinked and shrek 2
• SHEP in the 1950s
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_villains#Villains_from_animated_films
  villians in animation
• http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Critic_Review/Guardian_Film_of_the_week/0,,1251483,00.html#article_continue
• http://www.kamera.co.uk/reviews_extra/shrek_2.php
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2004/06/24/shrek_2_2004_review.shtml
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/3726323.stm
  reviews on shrek 2

• http://www.filmeducation.org/primary/animation/history.html the history of animation

• http://www.brown.edu/Courses/FR0133/Fairytale_Generator/propp.html

• representation of princess fiona
• institution research
• representation of the big bad wolf
• http://www.allisonmedia.net/downloads/Year_12/Representation.pdf

this site is useful as it exmplains representation and the diffrent types of sterotypes,mediation and diffrent ways of representation.talks a bit about ideolgy aswell

Textual analysis for a scene in Shrek 2: When Shrek and his friends are trying to get into the castle.

Breif summary of the scene I am analysing:
As Shrek rides Mongo to the castle to break in, Prince Charming begins dancing with Fiona and forcibly trying to kiss her (to activate the love potion), but she keeps rebuffing him. Shrek makes it into the castle (though Mongo is doused with boiling milk and falls into the moat), and with Puss and Donkey races his way to the courtyard where the ball takes place. The castle knights give chase, and Puss falls back to repay his debt to Shrek by holding them off so that Shrek may continue.Just as Charming is about to kiss Fiona, Shrek arrives and stops them, enraging the Fairy Godmother.


One of the techniques used in this scene is slow motion it is used when Mongo is drowning this is done to help the primary audience who are children understand that something bad is happening and to create empathy for Gingy. The cinematography used in the scene is a big close up of Shrek which is then into a long shot while the parallel off-screen sound of “I need a hero” is sang by the fairy godmother which is parallel to the action we see (Shrek riding on a white horse which reinforces the stereotypes of a typical hero) this is done to help the younger audience identify with Shrek as he is the one playing the role of a hero. It can also be seen as ironic as fairy godmother is singing the song.


The representation of fairy godmother is challenged as they portray her as glamorous, conviving and selfish women. Moreover, in the beginning of this scene she is shown wearing a blue dress that could relate to the fairy godmother in “Cinderella” this is done so the older audience can recognise this and see the binary opposition, as the fairy godmother in “Cinderella” is perceived as good however the fairy godmother in Shrek 2 is represented as bad. Slightly after her dress changes to red which could be interrupted as her being the villain as red could connote evil/bad. On the other hand, it could connote passion and demonstrate that she is trying to be a matchmaker.


The expectations of puss in boots is subverted as at first they show a point of view high angle shot of the audience and the knights looking down on him with parallel music playing in the background to trick us into thinking he is cute and innocent but after a little while he starts fighting with the guards/knights by himself which shows that he is really tough and not weak. By taking on the knights puss in boots demonstrates how he plays the role of the “helper”.


DreamWorks tends to challenge stereotypical roles by mocking Disney for example when the gate is dropped open the three little pigs and the wolf are working together and cheering this also shows it is a parody of “the three little pigs”. Moreover, as DreamWorks is an American institution it reinforces American hegemony. The secondary audience for Shrek 2 are young adults so they use quite a lot of adult humour in the film. Furthermore, as DreamWorks is a big American institution they had spent a lot of money making Shrek and Shrek 2 whereas other CGI films such as “Hoodwinked” had been produced cheaply.


The narrative pleasures the audience have in this scene are suspense as you are wondering whether Shrek will make it in time to rescue Fiona from Prince Charming. Identification with Shrek is another narrative pleasure the audience feel as they use a point view shot when the knights from the castle are throwing the fireballs at Shrek and Mongo.