MAG: Mothers against guns

The "Mothers against guns" group is an offshoot of a similarAmerican movement, set up by the mother of Damian Cope (shot and killed in 2002) Lucy Cope, and it aims to prevent more young people in Britain becoming victims of gun crime. The organisation calls for people to set up campaign groups in their communities, to help those affected by loss due to gun crime and to see an end to Britain's rising gun culture. Originally based in London it now has meetings and rallies all over the country all through the year.
The initiative uses high profile campaigns to highlight the dangers of gun crime, and to lobby the government to introduce harsher penalties for people convicted of gun-related crime. They wish the government to remove all types of guns (including toy guns) and the largest current campaigning issue for Mothers Against Guns is the wholesale ban of replica weapons.
They are pro-censorship in the sense they believe that new violent films and video games encourage gun crime among young people. They call for stricter methods of censorship regarding these matters, and often lobby for total bans on violent games such as the recent Manhunt 2 and they are especially against the use of "laser" guns in video games and in arcades because they "glorify gun violence".

Authorship Essay

So today we were set our essay questions for Authorship, Why do texts need an identifiable author in the first place. I decided this time, after last year, to work very hard on my preliminary reading and thus gain a wider and more learned viewpoint on the subject. I read at least seven books on the subject and felt I had really gained the knowledge needed to answer the question fully, having written all my notes out I started pieceing together notes and theories into a workable structure.

Coming up with a TV series

I pitched the guys my TV episode idea today, a crazy idea based around a very difficult to sell 'high concept' as those in the industry would call it. Thrown out, but I feel as though this idea may still work somewhere down the road, and it is not as if my pitch wasn't liked, it just wasn't right and I am finally learn how to accept such things in my life.

We did finally agree on an idea based around a famous family of Mixed Martial Arts fighters, this story and idea had legs, and the deeper I researched the better I felt about this.

Finished summer project script

Excitedly the script is done after me and James worked very hard on it for three days in the library, breaking jokes and generally looking very strange laughing all the time in the quiet hardworking library. I enjoyed working with someone else a lot and I think it may well be something I would want to do more in the future.

Results of Audiences script and essay and Summer Project

The results for this assignment were absolute bullshit. It appears as though I missed out on a 1st in my essay because I didn't include page numbers in all my references. This seems entirely unfair, but I understand the bureaucratic nature of this country.

The results of my script are even more infuriating. Apparently my idea is suspiciously like something I have never heard of in my life. The marker didn't understand any single part of a fairly complicated script and marked it down according to this. Once again picking up on me not giving everything away, something I had decided to do due to it not being important to the characters or story. Fair enough the ending might have been tighter but in the time I had it was as good as it could ever have been. This result has not encouraged me at all, the analysis was contrived, poorly explained, overly critical, not at all positive and even included misspellings.

Onto better things: Me and my summer project group have settled on an idea and I will start top write it this very day. It is quite and exciting project with lots of work to do and fun to have.

Finished 40 minute script and essay for Audiences

The essay this time was far more what I was used to and I worked very hard to read as much reading material as I could possibly find. I feel I have done a good job on answering the question and I believe, after comparing it to my Images essay, it is a much stronger essay.

The script, after writing two drafts, is clearly the strongest work I have ever written. It is quirky, well-written, enticing, original and has some great characters. The only thing I would say is that the ending isn't as strong as I wish it could be, it feels almost like the beginning of a series. The mystery contained in the film gets no real conclusion, because in the script itu becomes clear that it is not the mystery that is important but how it affects the characters.

Script and essay results

The essay result was as expected but the script was very unfairly marked. First of all the marker claims that my mother character is still stereotypical, which I highly argue with, there is absolutely nothing about her which is stereotypical. The marker claims that she is "saddled" with all the exposition like that she was married for 22 years, this isn't exposition in my eyes; I mean I don't know how long my parents were married. Further to that ther marker says that the framing device used isn't good, even though in our tutorials she said it was good. Generally the ending let me down as well, which I can accept.