Film Editing Research

In a film, editing is perhaps half the battle in terms of achieving a decent product. To explore this idea, I looked at two films that use editing to great effect; “Psycho” and “The Bourne Supremacy”.

“Psycho"

The scene initially starts with an eye-line match edit of the victim looking at the notebook she is writing in, familiarising us with her and her situation, as well as psychologically placing ourselves in her position. After that, there are no cuts for a while; they are extremely low speed at this point to create an air of mundanity. This is, of course, to make the upcoming murder scene even more of a surprise to the audience. The change of shots speeds up somewhat as the character gets into the shower, and the sound of the shower curtain is also digitally enhanced via editing to increase the tension building to the appearance of the killer. Again, we get an eye-line match of the woman looking up at the shower, followed by a shot of the showerhead itself to further affiliate us with her point of view. A series of close-ups follow for emphasis, as well as showing the passing of time as the woman gradually washes her hair. After a long, slow shot of the shadow through the shower curtain, the editing turns to high speed. There is a quick shot of an extreme close-up of the woman’s mouth as she screams. The sound of the knife is synchronised to some of the shot changes as the killer stabs her again and again. The editing does a shot, reverse shot combination several times, intermingled with shots of the woman trying to hold back the killer’s knife, all increasing the shock of the scene and the impact of the music. We get another series of close-ups showing the woman to be in pain, and then a shot of her blood washed away by the shower water. This editing style means we never see the stab wounds presumably being made by the knife, which is a clever technique for the time (as it would have been nigh impossible to replicate the level of gore this scene would entail in real life using the special effects available then). The fast-paced editing slows down again as we see the woman losing blood and an extreme close-up shows her sliding her hand down the tile of the bathroom wall; she is losing blood, and the slower editing matches this idea of sudden weakness. The extreme close-up of the water running down the drain followed by the visual match of the woman’s dead eye staring at the camera brings a new dimension of horror into the situation. The final close up implements motivated editing, as we assume that the package on the victim’s dresser was left there by the murderer.    

“The Bourne Supremacy”

As with the previous film, the sequence begins with eye-line match editing of the officer looking at the main character’s passport. This is followed by a shot and reverse shot combination that shows the point of view of both the interrogator and the interrogated, immersing us in the scene instantly. This is all done at fairly low speed to, as before, build tension before the stand-off. There is then a cross-cut to a different location, as well as a few seconds of split audio edit as the two men talk on the phone. As soon as the interrogator puts his phone away, the editing becomes so fast-paced its essentially hard to follow, mirroring the explosive, short fight on screen. The cuts are synchronised with some of the exaggerated punching sounds. Following this, we get a series of extreme close-ups, cut together equally quickly to convey the sense of urgency in what the character is doing. Once again, there is a cross-cut between the main character and the secret agency workers trying to track him down. The editing shifts back to low speed as we hear another conversation between the previous interrogator and the leader of the agency, during which more split audio is implemented. A series of final close ups of the main character and the leader as she talks to the interrogator is used to highlight the importance of what she is saying.

DY

"Gladiator" Opening Analysis

The primary scene of “Gladiator” – the nigh-legendary film released in 2000 starring Russell Crowe – comprises perhaps one of the most intriguing (albeit lengthy) cinematic openings of the modern age of film. In this scene (and, indeed, throughout the whole feature), excellent props and character design are expertly combined with pacey editing, evocative colour, clever use of camera and an unforgettable soundtrack.

The first thing the audience is presented with via sound bridge is the theme song, which is prevalent throughout the whole 3-hour experience. The music is slow, spiritualistic, mournful.  Its tone tells us with certainty that the movie will be a tragedy, and it surges with even deeper melancholic notes as the title of the film appears in blunt but graceful capitals: “Gladiator”. The very first real shot contains a written explanation (contextualising the story in archaic, dramatic story-telling language), pasted on a sandy, windblown background and backed by the same music as before. This is typical of epic cinema; whenever an in-depth narrative is about to be presented, directors use this visual cue to prepare their audience for the fact that the journey they are about to take will be full of minute detail, will follow a truly monumental tale and will be set in a complex fantasy or antique world. The background is rust-coloured and desert-like not only to create a historical feeling (as the main character is a former general in ancient Rome), but also to imply the severe dryness of the barren landscape where our hero will eventually end up.  

What comes next, however, truly begins to reveal the ingenuity of the picture. The screen shows a closed-frame, extreme close-up of a strong, tanned male hand, adorned by a single ring and a leather cuff. The man carefully, haltingly slides it through the tips of a wheat field, and the camera follows his progress for around 30 slow seconds. The colours are warm but muted to imply a dream-like state, showing the scene to be a memory as opposed to immediate reality. The lighting is natural but idealistic and soft (similar to sunset or sunrise) to further this effect. The iconic music from the opening titles continues, but behind it the distant, echoing voices of children playing can be heard. This haunting background noise causes the viewer to realise the character in question is missing home – a safer, calmer place than the one he is in – and is using sensory memory to recall these feelings and images as vividly as possible. As we later realise, the main character, Maximus, is doing this before a final battle in order to calm himself down. Similarly, the character’s hand itself is very telling of his personality; even if we hadn’t seen the film before and didn’t know anything about him, we could tell that he is of fairly high social standing (because of the ring) and that he spends a lot of time outside (as his skin is tanned). His fingers shake slightly as he moves; he is careful and extremely reverent of the place he is picturing himself in.   

The scene cuts away suddenly, and we get the first close-up Maximus’s face. He was looking down, but he slowly looks up and past the camera, still in a reverie, blinking as he emerges; pensive, distant, untouchable. This close-up lasts over 15 seconds without interruption; we thus recognise this man as our main protagonist, as it is made apparent to us that we must remember his face well. The light is still fairly natural, but now cold and wintery, giving a certain sense of hostility and danger to the situation. There are elements of backlighting (the face is shadowed, if slightly, to create an underlying sense of loneliness and heroism). There is also a suggestion of chiaroscuro; the soft shadows on the face and the black background contrast with the white fur around Maximus’s shoulders, dramatizing him and making him stand out, as well as suggesting a certain purity of character due to the symbolism of the colour of his clothes. A few new notes enter the music, but no other background sounds are heard yet, signifying the character has returned to reality but remains passive for the time being; the world is still far away to him. Maximus looks down slightly again, and the shot changes.

Via a point of view close-up, we are shown a small, red-breasted bird (presumably a robin or sparrow) sitting on a bare bush in the fog right in front of our hero. Mere seconds later, it flies away. This follows with another close-up of our main character, showing him craning his head to watch the bird’s ascent with a soft smile. The series of shots is brief, but the symbolism is apparent; Maximus yearns for freedom, and more importantly, for home; for a warmer place than the wasteland he is in. The arrival of birds is also often associated with spring and migration – the thought that the bird might be flying back to his home, to his family, makes Maximus smile, as does the fact that his campaign is almost over and he himself is almost free. The smile additionally serves the function of showing the audience that this flint-jawed man is, in fact, kinder on the inside than he looks, and finds happiness in the small things in life (a fact supported by his fond remembrance of running his hand through the wheat field in his homeland). Not only that but, just like our protagonist, the warmly coloured bird looks out of place in the fog; much like our protagonist, a good man, is essentially out of place on a battlefield, no matter how great a leader or fighter he is. Digging deeper, it should be noted that in ancient Rome the flight of birds was associated with the flight of the soul after death and so, to a certain extent, the inclusion of this scene is almost foreshadowing the ending of the film, as Maximus watches the small creature fly towards heaven, soon to join it himself. The sequence ends with our hero growing serious, and the shot cutting away to the next scene, wherein an establishing shot accompanied by fast-paced music shows him galloping from his vantage point to his advisors – away from solitude and relative safety, and towards his men and the looming battle.  

The entire described sequence thus boasts a certain elegance and sadness as a result of, predominantly, the attention to costume detail, the use of measured lighting and the melancholic tone of the music used. The effect is aided by the fact that the camera remains largely static throughout, only moving slowly once in a tracking shot when following the character’s hand at the very beginning of the film. All this creates an overall feeling of the calm before a storm – a feeling that is entirely justified, as the rest of the movie is full of suffering and hardship for Maximus.

DY

Opening Scenes Research

In order to understand more about how good opening scenes are filmed and constructed, I briefly analysed three very different films – “Collateral”, “Kidult Hood” and “The Dark Knight Rises”.

“Collateral"

The “Collateral” opening starts with an effective sound bridge of an echoing, crowded place, which sets the scene seconds before any footage even has a chance to begin. The first shot we get of the main character is an open-frame close-up through a blurred crowd, instantly highlighting his importance to the plot. The lighting is typical of an airport; almost harshly bright and mundane. To the same effect, the background sounds remain faded and seemingly slowed, and yet the audience can clearly hear the man’s measured steps overlaying the humdrum, showing his confidence. The fact that he is wearing sunglasses adds a similar effect, as well as the element of facelessness. The cut to the second man isn't hurried but is direct, and the camera swaps back to the first man and allows for an extreme close-up before they bump into each other. At this point, the cuts and camera work drastically speed up to portray the urgency of the situation. The sound-effect of the suitcase falling is digitally enhanced and we are also given a close-up of it to show that it is something the audience must notice and remember. After the brief dialogue executed through a series of close-ups (wherein we see that the two men have, in fact, swapped suitcases), the music changes, speeding up significantly as we get a point of view shot over the shoulder of the man with sunglasses. All this adds excitement to the exchange we had just been shown, and begs the question how the suitcases are important in the story.

A fast-changing montage of close-ups on the typical elements of a taxi drivers’ waiting room accompany this change of soundtrack and are used to introduce a third new character. Usual car and general transportation sounds are run in the background (hiss of a cooling engine, rings of a telephone, muted alarms) to really set the scene and make it realistic and vivid. An extreme close-up of a man’s hand carefully writing on a crossword is presented to highlight the fact that the person we will soon meet is careful and intelligent. The camera pans over the waiting room and tilts on a different shot to show one of the workers fixing a car. All this is done to contrast the rest of the taxi drivers present with the man we are interested in – while they talk on the phone and fuss over their vehicles, he is calmly sitting and waiting for his shift whilst completing an activity to train his mind. Finally, to the sounds of running engines and clicks, the camera tilts up to show us a close-up of the new character – he is working with his head down and is wearing a pair of glasses. All this is done to show his intellectual nature. After a brief point of view establishing shot of the commotion around him (again, to contrast him to the rest of the people present), we are shown him getting into his taxi. A series of extreme close-ups show him quickly clean the wheel and headboard, and then check that the turn signals work, establishing his character as not only clever but meticulous and neat (or indeed practically a perfectionist). The general sounds of the station are suddenly muffled as he shuts the car door (creating a sense of isolation and frustration with the mundane), and we see, via another extreme close-up, that he has a picture of a landscape fastened where his personal mirror should be. This further establishes the taxi driver as a man bored with his day-to-day life and dreaming of a better place. At the end, a mid-shot shows him pull away in the car, which looks exactly as the one that follows it, implying that any other taxi, really, could have been involved with the story to come but, by chance, it happened to be him.  

“Kidulthood”

The opening to this film is much shorter than the previous one, and the filming style is completely different. The first shot is a close-up of someone wearing school uniform playing football, shown in slow-motion to capture the audience’s attention straight away and set the scene as any average secondary school. The lighting for the whole sequence is slightly washed-out but natural, presumably to create the feeling of a cloudy day outside. The camera moves erratically, speeding up and slowing down intermittently; it’s almost a mirror of the human eye, creating the sinister feeling that these teenagers are being watched by an outsider. The shot even flashes white and blurs from time to time as if replicating the action of blinking. The music equally follows a similar pattern; it has a static-like, shaky beat and somewhat creepy but fast-paced tune. We are shown a few mid-shots of random kids before we go to an extreme close-up of someone putting the nib on a drill, making the audience wonder what that has to do with the previously shown footage. The camera then pans over a girl pacing and talking on the phone, and we hear a brief snatch of her conversation – again, it’s as if we’re experiencing someone watching these teenagers. The shot changes to a group of boys standing nearby, this time talking about a party, then showing another close-up of the football game going on a few feet away to keep the camera moving. As viewers, this sort of swapping and changing creates the sense that we are everywhere at once, and is in fact realistically reminiscent of actually being in a crowded scene such as this where there are hundreds of details vying for your attention. After the change of shot, we actually see part of the face of the person about to drill something; they remain essentially mysterious to us, and their purpose is still unknown, which creates further suspense around these short scenes in-between the chaos of the playground. We return to a shot of the girl that had been talking on the phone; she is now talking with another girl, and then, via reverse shot, the filming turns to point of view as they look at and discuss a few of the people standing nearby. Throughout this, we again hear snatches of dialogue from the different groups, establishing their personalities somewhat and even showing a little about their social status within the school. This is interrupted by the final shot of the given sequence; the reverse shot switches back suddenly and shows one of the boys coming over and giving the girls an invitation to his party via a last mid-shot. With this, the story finally begins properly.    

“The Dark Knight”

The first scene of this outstanding film starts with an establishing shot that slowly rolls via dolly across a skyscraper town in natural daylight, gradually zooming in on a particular black glass building, setting the scene as urban and modern. This is backed by a low, quiet whining sound that is typical of a thriller building tension. Suddenly, with an enhanced shattering, one of the many windows is neatly blasted open from inside, and we are given a close-up of an anonymous man in a clown mask. Clearly, he is up to something illegal, and the fact that he has chosen a mask with a circus performer’s face gives the sight a ghastly, surreal feeling (as well as instantly linking him to DC’s most beloved villain, the Joker). Thus, both the character design and the unknown purpose of this individual draw the audience in straight away, even more so when we see there are in fact two men in the room, not one. A circular tracking shot swings round to show us out of the window just as, with a loud swish, the first man shoots a harpoon wire at the other building’s wall. The shot changes suddenly to show us another man from behind, standing at a crossing with a bag and holding a similar, angrier clown mask. The camera slowly zooms in on it and the tension builds along with the music, calling into obvious question who the man is and why he’s separate from the others. The moment is interrupted by a car pulling up hastily next to him, accompanied by the loud, pained screech of tyres, suggesting an illegal speed.

As the slowly mounting music continues, we return to the first two men as they get up onto the tables in the room via a mid-shot that uses back lighting to reveal only their silhouettes, further layering on the mystery of who they are. A tracking shot follows their descent down the zip wire and then sharply tilts down to reveal how far away the ground is. This is played alongside a timed hollow booming sound to add an even greater sense of drama to the events. An aerial shot rolls as the two men continue down the self-constructed zip wire and onto the roof of the new building, wherein a low shot shows them rather impressively landing on the gravel. The interior of the car from before is briefly shown; there is no lighting inside and the camera is positioned behind the three passengers and so, again, all we see are mostly silhouettes and sometimes the sides of their clown masks as they briefly discuss their endeavour. An allusion is made to the fact that there is money involved in this job as the men load their guns, and the benefactor for the undertaking is confirmed – the Joker, of course.
The shot changes back to a mid-shot of the two men on the roof, (the changes between shots come faster and faster now, building excitement) but the Joker’s name is repeated once more to highlight his importance to the viewers. With an exaggerated clang, the first man opens a circuit board on the side of the building; all sounds in this sequence are, in fact, made much louder than in real life to impress the audience as much as possible. 

Meanwhile, the camera pans across the other men getting out of the car and, looking round, hastily walking up some stone steps. They rush inside a bank (finally, their intent is wholly revealed) and one fires a round of bullets into the ceiling, making a woman scream in fear (these are all typical blockbuster cues used in bank robbery scenes, and they are deployed here to quickly familiarise the audience with the situation). In the corner of the screen, the viewers will notice the guard get knocked down within seconds – he is unimportant and ineffectual against the attack, so much so that we never even see his face. The camera then tracks the clown robbers on a dolly as they run through the bank, to create the sense that the viewer is following along with them and is caught right in the thick of the unfolding events. The motion is continued, but this time backwards so the robbers run towards the screen as they make general chaos and shout at the bank staff against an undertone of far-away screaming. This makes them seem powerful and essentially unstoppable in their advance through the building. There is an element of dark humour as one of the men yanks an employee over and across the counter whilst gruffly yelling “Let’s go, pal, I’m making a withdrawal here!” – the sort of morbid playing around that the more experienced DC viewer would expect of the Joker’s henchmen and, indeed, of the Joker himself.

An extreme close-up of the hand of one of the men on the roof holding a coding pad follows, and then changes to a normal close-up with him in the foreground and with the other robber deeper in the shot, blurred out in a sinister, insidious manner. This setup causes a creeping feeling that something bad is about to happen. After more long shots of the other clown-masked robbers harassing the bank employees, something does, in fact, happen; the man standing behind shoots the first man right in the base of the skull as soon as he is done disabling the alarms. The kill is so quick, realistic and graceless that the sheer blunt shock of it is incredible. The camera rolls after the surviving clown robber as he runs down the corridor alone, and the music picks up pace and volume to match his hurrying footsteps.

A long shot of a bank worker taking off his glasses whilst seated at his desk appears onscreen, and then quickly changes to a close-up of one of the robbers putting a grenade in a hostage’s hand and pulling out the pin, and next changes back to the killer robber running up to an impressive-looking safe. The changes of shot go quicker than ever now as the scene works up to fever pitch, driven on by the soundtrack. The grenade trick is explained quickly, but a side-shot of the other robber holding an impressive hand-drill interrupts it – these technical details are included to give us logical coherency of the plan these people are following. A slow close-up of the same man from behind his banker’s desk as before is shown again, and then a shotgun bullet shatters the glass of his cubicle and kills one of the robbers. The fact that the existence of this gun had not even been hinted at before makes the sudden blast an excellent surprise, and raises the stakes even higher – now the attackers finally have something to contend with. A long shot shows the man standing and walking towards the other robbers; he is now in control, as shown by one of the criminals scrambling away behind a desk. The gun blasts continue; sparks fly, smoke rolls off the barrel, the robbers’ shoes squeak as they struggle to move away practically on all fours. This brief change in power dynamic and the use of sound effects is especially good here in terms of continuing to build interest.

The man shouts at them – the robbers quickly confer and one jumps up and gets wounded – the second jumps out next, knowing the man is out of bullets, and shoots him repeatedly at point-blank range. All this happens within a matter of seconds, but then the camera takes a moment to slowly zoom in on the robber left standing, his mask tilted sideways as he stares at the crumpled business worker metres away. This causes the audience to wonder what’s so special about this particular criminal (of course, having watched the film we know the actor behind that mask is Heath Ledger). There’s another mention of the Joker’s name as we return to the robbers taking care of the safe, and, as before, the one behind shoots the one in front unflinchingly once the job is done. The first man’s shouts of realisation (“No, no–!”) are coldly cut off by the sound of the bullet. Whilst this happens, we are shown only the close-up of the man doing the shooting, and his mask’s smiling, bright mouth and dead, dark eyes only heighten the horror of the situation.

The clowns have complete control now, and the music eases up slightly as we see an extreme close-up of an absolutely preposterous amount of money being shoved into a bag by the surviving robber in the vault. The shot is slightly blurry, perhaps suggesting these criminals’ lust for money is stopping them from seeing or thinking clearly about what they’re doing and how many peoples’ deaths they will end up responsible for at the end of the day. Another rolling dolly shot zooms in on the stack of bags the two robbers have collected, but the camera ends on the face of the previously highlighted clown rather than the actual pile (again making us question his identity). We get a point of view shot from the other man, now standing behind, and the click of a loading gun is heard. The man in front turns slowly and we see a point of view shot from him this time via a reversal. The robber with the gun continues pointing the weapon even though his hands shake a little as he talks. In comparison, the other man is not nervous at all; he looks at his watch nonchalantly and replies in an almost bored tone, even though he is the one being threatened. This interesting psychological dynamic only heightens the tension (and, for some, perhaps forces the realisation of the identity of the last robber before it is fully revealed). After a few close-ups in the form of more reversal point of view shots and the loud shout of “What bus driver?, the scene reaches its special effects-driven climax with a bus loudly and chaotically crashing into the room of the bank. With this, the tension built across the rest of the opening scene is fully paid off in the audience’s eyes although, as we all know, the best plot twist of the opening comes a few minutes later.    

DY

My Views on the Current Media

In a perfect world, media would also be perfect. Representation in all its forms would be realistically balanced in terms of race, sexuality, gender, religion and others; the able-bodied would not blot out the existence of the disabled and the distinction between romantic and sexual orientation would be a topic so thoroughly explored it would be obvious to everyone. Furthermore, overtly and humourlessly cliché or socially insulting media would, if not cease to exist, then at least lessen in number. Flat-out false or obnoxiously sensationalist articles both in physical and digital print would cease being published, and governments all over the world would cease to have any kind of monopoly, no matter how slight, on the news industry.

However, the world we live in is far from perfect, and the idea of perfection itself is a flawed construct (if you'd pardon the sheer pretentiousness of the statement). As a result, the media is full of negatives (as well as positives, of course), simply because media is a reflection of society, as well as a tool for shaping it. The fact that change in media causes change in the real world is a distinct, passionate belief that I hold simply because I've experienced the influence of media outlets both second and, more importantly, first-hand. As a result of this, I aim to be an avid but increasingly aware consumer of the endless films, TV shows, animation, comics, music and articles available to anyone willing to look (and able to pay).

Until about 3 years ago, it had been impossible to entice me to turn on a TV and watch it for longer than an episode of the average cartoon would last. The only reason I am so interested in television shows today is thanks to the internet community, which made me aware of the possibility of online viewing using outlets such as BBC iPlayer and Netflix. Also, I happened to be printing homework on the living room computer one day whilst my mum was watching "Downton Abbey". Seeing the single reoccurring queer character of the show, Thomas Barrow, cry over the loss of the friend he was in love with is genuinely all it took for me to spiral down into a pretty horrific obsession with mainstream television shows that only reverted back into a regular hobby perhaps half a year ago. That said, through watching and rewatching popular titles and reading an extensive amount of social and professional commentary on them, I greatly widened my understanding of media. In the end, my pallet extended from my humble beginnings with "Downton Abbey" (which I watch to this day even though in my opinion it has gotten progressively more unrealistic and badly written) to include titles such as "Sherlock", "Doctor Who", "Supernatural", "Merlin", "Hannibal", "In the Flesh", "Orange is the New Black", "American Horror Story", "Orphan Black" and "Game of Thrones". Conclusively, I love both terrible and fantastic television programmes, not least because I recognise moments of brilliance and moments of terribleness in them all.

In comparison to TV, film neither interests me as much nor do I know as much about it. My favourites therefore include predominantly animated titles (from Tim Burton's "Coraline", to Studio Ghibli classics such as "Howl's Moving Castle" and "My Neighbour Totoro", to new-era Disney films such as "Up", "The Princess and the Frog" and "Tangled"). Other than that, I enjoy most Marvel movies, the Pirates of the Caribbean series (even if they are mostly just milking the franchise for money at this point) and most films based off novels that I enjoyed in their original book format. The only time I venture outside this framework is when I find a particularly brilliant actor, in which case I start greedily consuming all movies with their work (in this way I discovered the brilliant Danish film "The Hunt" thanks to Mads Mikkelsen, for instance).

Music is probably the medium closest to my heart, and the one that I feel most comfortable about, perhaps because I understand very little about music and simply stick to what I think sounds good. Due to my interest in writing and poetry, lyrics are of great importance to me, sometimes greater than even the tune itself. I am indiscriminate in my listening; I have no particular genre that I stick to or singular artists all of whose work I love. I have over 700 downloaded songs, the foreign side of which contains 80's Russian rock, German screamo, atmospheric/alternative French music, Korean pop and Japanese songs produced by the singing musical computer programme "Vocaloid". In terms of English-speaking (English-singing?) artists, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift live alongside Twenty One Pilots, Bastille, Panic! At the Disco, Fall Out Boy and Nirvana. All music that isn't offensive to minorities or enforces oppressive societal ideas is basically great, in my opinion.

As to media outlets that I use little; those include podcasts and radio, even though at one point I did listen to Kerrang Radio almost every day, and I still listen to "Welcome to Night Vale" on the Podcast app on my phone whenever a new episode comes out. I sadly have little time for video games, even though I enjoy them immensely and own a truly inordinate amount for someone who's so bad at them. I don't read newspapers or magazines mainly because the information they give is all accessible from less subjective sources on the internet, as well as because a lot of newspapers are either very cheap or free and as a result end up doing little other than causing a litter problem on the tube. For the last year or so, I've even avoided most news programmes, simply because the amount of skewed journalism and misinformation about world issues seen in them made me deeply upset. When it comes to phone apps, I am equally fairly inactive; the most I use is a few for social networking (Facebook, yes, but also regrettably Tumblr, the vortex of which has had me in its grasp for far too long) and a handful of popular free games. Aside from that, my most useful download has to be a countdown app that keeps me motivated and looking forward to things such as holidays, birthdays and new episodes of TV shows.

I could talk infinitely more on all the above, but I am very conscious that I have already talked too much. With that in mind, then, my final thought is this: although I try to be as aware as possible of the influence of media on my life and opinions, writing this post has made me realise that this influence is even more prevalent and important in my life than I previously thought.

DY