Dawn, founded by Muhammad Ali Jinnah before the birth of Pakistan, in 1941, is one of the largest English-language magazines in Pakistan and evidently the oldest. The main publication which formats as newspaper deals distinctly with covering the news, covering all global and national events including politics, sports and entertainment. Furthermore, Dawn indulges in media through the information technology magazine, Spider, and the advertising marketing and media magazine, Aurora.

Herald Magazine, which had its final issues released in 2019, was another one of the largest magazines in Pakistan, also owned by the Dawn Media Group. The Magazine, founded in 1970, was a monthly magazine which dealt solely with politics and current affairs, overall having a circulation of up to 10,000.

Furthermore, the Sunday Times Magazine is Pakistan’s premiere fashion and lifestyle weekly magazine, owned by the Daily Times publication group. The magazine focuses primarily on events in the perpetually blooming entertainment industry within Pakistan, giving insights on the latest fashion progression in Pakistani culture as well as keeping the public up to date with premiere events.

Urdu Digest is a monthly Urdu magazine within Pakistan which was founded in 1959 and has since become famously known for its issues on the traditional ways of a religious Pakistani life. The Magazine, much like the famous American, Reader’s Digest, works to strengthen nationalism within Pakistan using it’s national language, unlike many other fairly popular magazines in Pakistan.

Global Science is a monthly magazine published in Pakistan, originally founded in 1998.. The magazine in published in Urdu and aims to fulfill its scientific and journalistic goals to inform the public on the matters of science, technology, astronomy, nature and biodiversity.

We filmed almost 70% of our film opening but due to the pandemic, it was nearly impossible for us to meet up, shoot the remaining bits and edit everything. Our teacher advised us to split up and work on a magazine cover individually and so we started our research on that. With our deadlines approaching very soon, we spent day night researching on magazine covers and did a few exercise tasks with our teacher. We critically analysed many magazine covers with the help of each other and our teacher, we were able to complete it in time.

We shot the first sequence of our film opening and remaining bit will be shot on another location we have in mind. I edited the film titles and the first few scenes on Filmora for a trial run. We will be using Final Cut Pro or iMovies for the final product.

My team members and I visited the location we had in mind for the shoot and it seemed perfect for what we had in mind. Since our story was based on a teenage girl who comes from a very small, abusive household, this darkly lit, shabby area was just the right location.

The few pictures attached below are behind the scenes of our shoot. We made a few fake bruises on our actors face to show she belonged to an abusive household.

https://prezi.com/view/oH1JJ69s7fzs9UNrIaz9

My team members and I were supposed to have the final cut for our film opening project ready by March-April this year till the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world and completely shut everything down. Looking at the current situation and the entire world being under lockdown, we cannot film our project anytime soon. Meanwhile, till school is online, we’re working on our planning and trying to get done with whatever can be done online.

Previously, it was just Ayla and I in the group. In a class of 6, we were divided into 3 groups of 2 each but since one of our class fellows left, Eesha was now working alone. We decided to ask Eesha and our teacher if she could join our group and both of them agreed so now, it’s the 3 of us.

1. Zoha Ahmed
2. Ayla Alam
3. Eesha Sajjad

Looking forward to working with my team members.

Today, in class we did the ‘six minute exercise’ to help come up with an idea for our final A1 film opening project. Our teacher Mr. Zia wrote down names of different locations, characters and objects chits and we were asked to pick one of each and come up with an idea based on these 3 things.

My group member Ayla and I came up with a story about an old man who had been admitted into a rehab and how he drank something out of a bottle that he thought was alcohol but was actually a mind-altering chemical. This gave him some unusual super-human abilities.

This exercise really helped us think out of the box and gave us a new idea that we can build upon for our final project.

Since my final A1 project is based on a film opening, I must understand all the important elements that go into creating a film opening that immediately grabs the attention of the audience. To better understand this, I will be analysing a film opening in detail to demonstrate the ideas I have perceived from it and what tips and trick I’ve learnt along the way.

The film I have chosen for my first analysis is a very popular DC film – ‘Wonder Woman’.

The film Wonder Woman is a super hero film based on Diana, the Princess of the Amazon, and how her character progresses to becomes Wonder Woman who comes forward as a saviour because she fights the god of war, Ares.

The opening sequence of the film helps the audience understand who really Diana is where she was brought up and why her character evolves into wonder woman later on. It gives us an insight into the lives of the Amazonian women who devote their life to fighting the god of war Ares.

The opening mainly highlights the theme of feminism, as the island is a female dominant place, with only female population. Women are often stereotyped in media and presented as weak, vulnerable and lack the ability of physical strength. Typically, strong armies are comprised of tough men and this film breaks this stereotype by showing women to be as capable as men when it comes to emotional or physical strength. Whether it is Diana’s Aunt, her mother or Diana herself, all these women are portrayed to be strong independent women who are equipped with equal physical abilities as men. This ideology shapes the narrative of the film and helps the audience understand why Diana is who she is and why she is so disturbed why war which motivates her later on in life to save people.

Visual iconography is also used to contrast the Island of Themiscyra and the world. The high camera angles and long shots capture the Islands greenery, the blue ocean and ruins of buildings. The color codes of the scenes shot on the Island are bright greens and blues which symbolise prosperity happiness, contrasting the colours of other settings like London, Germany and front lines of WW1 which are mainly blues blacks and greys and they symbolise violence and death. The atmosphere of these areas is shown to be tense, dark and gloomy.

Overall, it is an example of a good opening scene which manages to grasp the attention of the audience simultaneously explaining how the ideology of ‘Feminism’ shapes the entire narrative and the main character, Wonder Woman.

Africa is one of the most stereotyped place to be in films. Africa and Africans have a very negative imagine when it comes to films because of how it is usually shown to be one of the most underdeveloped, poverty ridden places without any infrastructure. Even Africans are stereotyped with being poor, and uncultured and almost every criminal in films is black. Films symbolise the African region by only showing desserts, places with hot and dry climate and lands barren of vegetation which is obviously not true considering it snows there and some of the largest vegetation zones are present there. Films like Independence Day considered to be one of most stereotyped movies as it showed Africans wearing lion clothes and holding spear throughout.

Media still continues to stereotype religions as well. For example, Islam is stereotyped to be the most violent religion and Muslims are considered terrorists in almost all films. They’re considered untrustworthy, barbaric and terroristic, fuelling the idea of islamophobia.

Similarly the stereotype about Jews also continues to be shown in films to date. Jews have long been well represented in the fields of money and riches. They’re innately considered to be good with money and most of the rich businessmen in films are Jews.

Ethnicity and race have largely been stereotyped in media as well. The famous film ‘the godfather is a perfect example of the Italian stereotype of gangsters.

Furthermore, stereotypes on gender are also largely common in present day media. Men are considered to be far more strong than women physically and emotionally. Women are considered weak and emotional while men are portrayed to be strong and sensible. Men are mostly stereotyped as rational and resionble.

Blondes are stereotypedas dumb. Ex legally blonde and Karen Smith from mean girls

In this post, I will be looking into the history of the film title sequence and how it came into being. This research will help me understand the evolution of the title sequences and why it is important.

Back in 1895 when the Lumière brothers first released their film, it had no film titles and similarly up until the 1900s, films would abruptly begin. In 1900, when a short silent film ‘How it feels to be run over’ came out, it become the first ever film to involve something like a title card. A year later, in 1901, the first ever film to have inter titles came out. Intertitles fulfil the purpose of setting the scene and providing dialogue. As time went by, the titles evolved and we started seeing more title cards in the beginning of the film which usually displayed copyright and anti-piracy warnings. Below is the picture of one of these copyright and anti-piracy warnings by Thomas Edison for one of his films.

By the time the first feature film ‘The Great Train Robbery’ was released in 1903, title card were slowly becoming more and more common. These title cards displayed information like the trademark of the production team. Even by this point, titles did not include the names of the actor. This was because the producers felt like if they were given extra credits, it’d add to their popularity and they would end up demanding a higher wage.

By 1911, film titles evolved and films studios started using the ‘star power’ to promote their films. Films like ‘The Birth of a Nation’ came forward with its title card that displayed Griffith’s name in five different spots and every inter title that followed displayed his name too. By the 20s, film studios paying special attention to the title sequence and even began to employ special title designers. The first Academy Award held in 1929 even handed out an award for the best title sequence. This played an integral role in the evolution of film titles.

By the 1930s and 40s, the title sequence became an important part of the film and every film had one. They started with the logo of the studio, the names of the main actors starring in the film followed by the actual title of the film. Then, came the names of the rest of supporting cast, followed by cinematography credits, screenplay, wardrobe, music and finally, the director. Some films would add an ending title sequence to display cast credits and a popular example of this is ‘The Wizard of Oz’ from 1939.

After this, film studios really started working hard on the title sequence and adapted different techniques and designs that went with the theme of the films. First, titles were static but later studios started experimenting with more and more. In the process, during the 50-60s, what was called the ‘golden age of title sequences’, many remarkable title sequences were created. some famous examples are, ‘The Man with the Golden Arm’, ‘Vertigo’, ‘Anatomy of a Murder’ and many more.