How to make a movie poster

You think you just randomly ended up in that movie-theater seat watching things explode? No, that was the end result of a meticulously crafted propaganda campaign by the movie studio, utilizing all the persuasive powers of graphic design—as wonderfully elucidated in the infographic below, from Colour Lovers, examining the posters from the top 10 blockbusters of 2011. There are lots of interesting tidbits—note the preponderance of sans serif fonts and all caps, and the various textures and sight lines utilized. Did these factors alone fill theaters? Of course not. It helped that almost all of these movies were sequels—expanding on the equity built up in previous ad campaigns. Via Fast Company.

 click to embiggen

TV Tropes

I recently found a great resource for teaching/learning about Narrative in Cinema Studies, it's called TV Tropes and it has heaps of links and information. But hey, enough of my yackin' Let's see what they have to say on their homepage.

What is this about? This wiki is a catalog of the tricks of the trade for writing fiction.

Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. The word clichéd means "stereotyped and trite." In other words, dull and uninteresting. We are not looking for dull and uninteresting entries. We are here to recognize tropes and play with them, not to make fun of them.

The wiki is called "TV Tropes" because TV is where we started. Over the course of a few years, our scope has crept out to include other media. Tropes transcend television. They reflect life. Since a lot of art, especially the popular arts, does its best to reflect life, tropes are likely to show up everywhere.

We are not a stuffy encyclopedic wiki. We're a buttload more informal. We encourage breezy language and original thought. There Is No Such Thing As Notability, and no citations are needed. If your entry cannot gather any evidence by the Wiki Magic, it will just wither and die. Until then, though, it will be available through the Main Tropes Index.

We are also not a wiki for bashing things. Once again, we're about celebrating fiction, not showing off how snide and sarcastic we can be.

Enough about what we are not. Go on, have a look at the welcome page, and have fun!

Television 'misrepresents' young people and older women

Broadcasters negatively stereotype young people and fail to put enough older women on screen, says BBC-commissioned report

by John Plunkett, guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 31 January 2012

The BBC-commissioned report comes just over a year after former Countryfile presenter Miriam O’Reilly won her landmark ageism case against the BBC. Photograph: Rex Features

Broadcasters have been accused of negatively stereotyping young people and failing to put enough older women on screen, according to a BBC-commissioned report.

The survey of viewers and industry experts found that more than 40% of young people were dissatisfied with the way they were portrayed on screen.

Younger viewers complained that they were stereotyped as being "disrespectful" and living "unproductive and vacuous lives".

Older viewers also thought they tended to be stereotyped on television, but of more concern was the lack of middle-aged and older women on the small screen.

The report comes a year after former Countryfile presenter Miriam O'Reilly won her landmark ageism case against the BBC after she was axed from the BBC1 rural affairs show.

"There was a particular and strong concern voiced about the lack of middle-aged and older female representation on television," said the report.

"This view was expressed by both men and women of all ages but was much more ardently voiced by middle-aged and older women who believed that a person develops a 'face for radio' at a certain point in their middle years."

More than a third of women over 55 said there were too few of them on television.

The negative portrayal of older people revolved around the perceived incapacity of old people and "perceptions about a reluctance to move with the times and tendency to moan", said the report.

Viewers accused the media of being "insulting" and "out of step" with the ageing society.

"There is some concern about the way different ages are sometimes at best presented as slightly humorous but exaggerated caricatures and at worst as negative stereotypes," concluded the report.

It said the audience would "welcome more middle- and older-aged women on television providing positive role models and greater genderequality".

The research was commissioned by the BBC on behalf of the Creative Diversity Network, a forum of UK media organisations set up to improve diversity across the industry and chaired by BBC director general Mark Thompson.

It followed O'Reilly's high-profile tribunal victory in January last year.

The former Countryfile presenter parted company with the corporation earlier this month and will launch a support network for women facing discrimination in the workplace next month.

The report, called Serving All Ages and carried out by independent social research institute NatCen, interviewed 180 participants, aged from 13 to 92, as well as industry experts.

It investigated how people felt they were portrayed in relation to their age in the media as a whole, including TV, radio and the internet.