L3 Unfamiliar Practise

 today we where doing a Practice question to prepare for the Unfamiliar text exam at the end of the year this is my attempt.

Compare and contrast the attitude to departure and arrival presented in each text. Give details from the texts to support your answer.
Both Kassabova and Farrell talk about their arrival in New Zealand in a somber tone. However Farrell talks somberly about what is lost this can be seen in the line “That dream she knows to be corrupted by reality” when she thinks about the beach that she grew up on. Whereas Kassabova is throwing a pity party and is talking about how life sucks and all hope is lost this can be seen in the line “We have arrived in the North just as we arrived in the South before, to sleep above courtyards where immigrant children call out to their future which is our present,” this makes the audience think of little houses crowded with people that are forever moving and never finding peace. More people in the audience will be able to sympathise and understand how Farrell is feeling as we all have someplace that we would hang out as a child but no longer can due to either subdivision or pollution, however not many people will be able to understand where Kassabova is coming from as most people don’t move very often but when they do they don’t have the sense of hopelessness that Kassabova covays in their poem. Another way the two authors differ in their attitude towards arriving in New Zealand is how they talk about it. Kassabova describes the north in very dystopian terms using metaphors such as “the cemeteries lush with centuries of flesh” and similes like “The hills are packed like cement” to describe their new world these make the audience picture a place in their mind without much green and it is just buildings everywhere a City like Dubai where the City has outgrown nature. But Farrell uses the analogy of a waka in the line “...we’ve all woken up and found ourselves together in this small boat, this tippy waka, out here in the middle of a vast ocean…” when talking about Clare’s home Farell keeps nature in what she is talking about this with the line before it of the beach being threatened into subdivision and all the trees have left gives the audience the image of a place that still has some nature but is slowly becoming more city like, similar to the place that Kassabova is talking about.



Farrell talks about New Zealand in the bitter sweet way of remembering what used to be, whereas Kassabova talks about New Zealand as this place of crushed dreams and despair.

Mad Max Practise scene

 In English currently we are doing close viewing for the movie Mad Mad Fury Road we had to look at a scene and then write about it. Here is my paragraphs 

In the ‘redemption’ scene where Furosia talks to Max about how she knows the Green Place exists, Miller uses dialogue to effectively portray the feelings of the characters. Miller does this by Max asking Furosia “How do you know this place even exists?” in a way that makes him sound like he is not fully convinced that it even exists. It is here when Furosia tells Max that “I was born there” this confuses Max and you can tell in the way he asks “why’d you leave?” that he doesn’t understand why she would leave a place that is apparently so nice and somewhere she is desperate to go back to, to which Furiosa replies in a mournful way “I didn’t, I was taken as a child, stolen”. This interaction is used to give the audience a glimpse into Furosia’s backstory and help them understand her motives and why she wants to escape Imortan Joe’s hold. This interaction was also used to show the audience how far Furosia and Max’s relationship has come. It went from where they were constantly at war with each other to opening up and being vulnerable. The dialog in this scene works well with symbolism as when Furosia tells Max that she is looking for redemption it cuts to a low angle shot of Nux cuddling with one of the wives and looking thoughtful. Then he sees a bug crawling up her arm and he lets it crawl onto his fingers before he eats it. The clever use of this shot shows us that Nux is also looking for redemption and the bug symbolises that his world is changing from a world of machines to a world of nature but it has not changed enough for him to resist his upbringing of ‘if it is not useful it is not valued’. The line “I was taken as a child, stolen” can lead the audience to make the connection to child soldiers, child labourers and child trafficking. This is because in these situations they are taken at a young age and forced to do things against their will. Just like what happened to Furosia, she was taken against her will and then used as a wife and then when Joe found out that she was infertile, therefore no more use, he turned her into a soldier against her will.

Music can play a big part in creating the atmosphere in a scene. Miller knows this and uses the music in the ‘redemption’ scene to cleverly create an atmosphere while Max and Furosia are talking about the green place. We can see this when Max and Furosia are talking and we can hear a slow sombre violin in the background. Miller uses this to set the mood of the scene and makes the audience understand that it is a hard thing for Furosia to remember/ talk about as the wound from where she was taken away from her family still hurts even after all these years. Then when it cuts out when Furosia says she is looking for redemption it makes the word more powerful and brings attention to it. This tells the audience that redemption is very important to Furosia and she thinks that because of her background she is no longer human and needs to redeem herself. This makes the audience sympathise with Furosia and makes happy when she does get her redemption. In this scene Miller cleverly ties in the music with the lighting as inside the War Rig there is not much light but outside it is bright showing that Joe still has some hold on Furiosa and her past is holding her back but outside the word of Joe the world is her oyster and she can break free from his grasp and be redeemed. This can also be seen when she is looking out the window and there is a shadow falling across her face where the motor oil used to be when she was working for Joe showing that that is still a big part of her past and no matter how far she runs Joe will always have some sort of hold on her. The audience can use this to create similarities to their own lives as we all have things that we regret or have things that hold us back and make us feel like we need to be redeemed, it may not be as big as what happened to Furosia but we all have something and this scene can encourage the audience to work past that and find their own redemption like Furosia did.

The Hero's Journey

 in English we are studying the film Mad Max, Fury Road and we had to pick one character and then mapped out their 'Hero's Journey' I chose Furiosa. Here is the diagram I made 

The Auteur Theory

 In English we are learning about Auteur theory and we had to write a paragraph about it. Here is what my friend Shristi, from 13Hy and I wrote 

There are three circles to the auteur theory, the first one is about the film techniques that are used to create a film. He states that this is not that important as “Technique is simply the ability to put a film together with some clarity and coherence. Nowadays, it is possible to become a director without knowing too much about the technical side, even the crucial functions of photography and editing. An expert production crew could probably cover up for a chimpanzee in the director’s chair” (Sarris, 1962) and in his opinion the way to tell if there is a chimpanzee in the director’s seat or a human being is watching more than one film that they have made and seeing the similarities between the movies and that leads us to the second circle.
The second circle is about the style of the director, this can be seen through all his movies. The idea of this is you can watch one movie and draw parallels to other movies the director has done in talking about the film Every Night at Eight Sarris states “if I had not been aware if Walsh in Every night at Eight, the crucial link to High Serra would have passed unnoticed. Such are the joys of the auteur theory.” (Sarris, 1962) any director can have recurring themes in his movies but it takes an auteur to put himself in the movie and use his life experiences to influence decisions and this leads us to the third and final circle of the auteur theory.
The third circle is -as Sarris mentions- interior meaning. “The corresponding role of the director may be designated as those of a technician, a stylist, and an auteur … In fact, the auteur theory itself is a pattern theory in constant flux. I would never endorse a ptolemaic constellation of directors in a fixed orbit.” (Sarris, 1962) This shows that without the interior meaning, auteur theory isn’t complete. It’s to say that without putting your soul into the movie you have not become an auteur.
Sarris, A. (1962). Notes on the auteur theory in 1962. The Film Artist, 561-564.

if you want to read the article that I read to learn this you can read it here