Ricardo's Cut: AS-Level Media Studies

Ricardo's Cut was an assignment I had to complete for my AS-Level Media Studies course, which I did in 2008. 

Unlike my other A-Levels, I only completed an AS (first year) in Media Studies because I was only allowed to undertake four courses and in my first year I had to re-do my GCSE in mathematics, which took up one of my course slots. By my second year, I had complete my maths GCSE and had a study slot free, so I undertook Media Studies. 

I don't remember enjoying Media Studies all that much. To me (back then), it was just the boring version of Film Studies.

All that remains of the work I produced for Media Studies is Ricardo's Cut.

As you can see, I produced some graphics - a Playstation 2 game cover and a poster - for a fictional game about South American gangster out for revenge. 

I got my friend James to be the model for Ricardo.

I can't remember the specifics of the assignment, but I do remember not spending very long on putting together these two artifacts. 

I remember having fun playing around with the visuals in Google Picasa. Notice how his briefcase has no shadow!

As the inclusion of the Rockstar logo will indicate, the idea for Ricardo's Cut was heavily influenced by the Grand Theft Auto and Max Payne games. 

I had also just discovered The Godfather films about this time, so that Coppola aesthetic played into it as well. 

The Importance of Lying: Documentary idea

The Importance of Lying was a documentary idea proposal I produced for my Short Form Documentary module in the final year of my BA (Hons). 

It was one of the ideas I considered before I partnered up with my peer Tom and we co-created the Fencing documentary.

I produced a few ideas for the module, but I've included this one here on my blog because it deals with the theme of 'What is authentic'. This is a theme which crops up again and again in the projects I produced after I graduated, most notably The Miracle Mockumentary and 365 Frames 2015.

The idea is very thin and is mostly theoretical; containing very little substance or subject matter that could have been filmed and made into a short documentary.

Documentary Proposal: The Importance of Lying

Visual

Maybe

Local

Yes

Do you have access?

Potentially

Why is it interesting?

I believe lying is an integral component of the Human makeup; I think anyone who believes they don't lie is lying to themselves. It would be interesting to explore the role lying plays in day-to-day life, why we do it, why we need to do it, do we need to do it and how Humans are still able to establish a form of trust which transcends beyond the very basic forms of a lie or a truth.

What will you add or what will we learn?

It would be great to do a character study of a con artist for this, but I don't know any con artists (although, you could talk to an MP or a sales person instead). Therefore, interviewing various people from different backgrounds (you decide) you could present their opinions on "the importance of lying" and determine one or more of the things I said in the previous box. At the moment, I can't really think of a way to make it more visually interesting. Although, you could do a reflexive documentary and look at how the documentary is presenting a truth of reality through a lie (something along the lines of 'F for Fake'), a documentary is never going to present reality 100% authentically.