Friday, October 21, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Inspiration and Idea Development.
The conventions used in this 'Phones 4 U' advert, are recognized by the vast audience and it forces the viewer to assume it's a horror film trailer. When in fact, after the antagonist confronts the protagonist, it's a simple mobile phone advertisement, and the company that invested in this advert, used a small budget in order to achieve the appropriate horror-genre semantics and conventions, such as dim lighting, dark and unclean setting, a simple and also unclean night gown for the antagonist to wear. The producers have made the genre in this advert easily recognizable by abiding by the rules of horror, with fast jump cuts in chase scenes and close up's on reactions etc, and the producer used these conventions, to then structure a narrative by abiding by the rules of simple horror syntactics, the main character first being unaware of the antagonists presence, then a pivotal point and change in the pace of the film where the protagonist is being chased, and then a abrupt and fast ending that then changes the tempo, and the two characters then confront each other.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Genre, Audience and Representation Theory.
Genre Theory.
Genres have characteristic features that are known by, and recognized by the audience. This 'formula' is reproduced again and again. For my short film horror, the recognizable conventions, which include characteristics such as costume, setting, characters and situations, will all help the audience recognize that the genre of the short film is horror. Producers of generic horror narratives depend on a certain amount of immediate communication with the audience, that's why I've interviewed my target audience, in order to establish and recognize what expectations they want to be met, when watching a horror. As the role of the Producer, I want the narrative to be easily comprehensible to the audience, and to ensure this I will stick to, and use, key components of horror genre, with semantics such as characters, locations, props, music and significant shooting styles. The relations between theses elements that structure the narrate in my chosen genre of horror (the syntactic) should be obvious to the audience from the beginning, the audience should immediately expect at the start of the film a fairly stable equilibrium, and the lead character is suspecting that she is being followed, then a disequilibrium as the antagonist is established, and this leads to a face paced chase scene, followed by a brief moment of suspense and anticipation as the protagonist escapes and ponders at the enigma of if their escape was actually successful. Genre is not set however, it is fluid and defined by the audience, which is why I need to interview my audience in order to familiarize myself with how they perceive horror films, and what they expectations they are wanting to be met.
Representation Theory.
Representation refers to the construction, in any medium, of aspects of 'reality' such as people, places, objects, events,cultural identities and other abstract concepts. The term refers to the processes involved as well as to it's products. For instance, in relation to the key markers of identity - Class, Age, Gender and Ethnicity (the 'cage' of identity) - representation involves not only how identities are represented and constructed within the text but also how they are constructed in the processes of production and reception by people whose identities are also deferentially marked in relation to such demographic factors. For mine and Cassie's short film (aimed at a fairly young demographic) I need to take into consideration how the main protagonist will be represented, I need to ensure that when my audience watches my short film, they have a preferred reading and don't disagree with mine and Cassie's ideologies. To achieve this, we have taken popular aspects of mise-en-scene, camera, sound and editing in order to make the representations feel natural and unmediated. In a film, the director wants the audience to be on the side of the protagonist and hope that the antagonist will fail. This means that the audience has to identify with the protagonist – they have to have a reason to be ‘on his/her side’. But directors only have a couple of hours to make you identify with the protagonist – so, they have to use a kind of ‘shorthand’. This is known as typing – instead of each character being a complex individual, who would take many hours to understand, we are presented with a ‘typical’ character who we recognize quickly and feel we understand. To ensure this me and Cassie interacted with our audience demographic, in order to establish crucial concepts that would represent our antagonist and protagonist in such a way, that the audience would immediately side with the protagonist. The typical horror stereotypes that have been idealized by society and reused constantly in horror films over the years, are a 'ditsy' blonde, innocent looking woman protagonist, and a dark haired, pale faced with a partially covered face. These representations have been used frequently, in films like Paranormal Activity and The Grudge, the audience is immediately sympathetic towards the female protagonist as she is faced with an opposing force, which is the desired result for mine and Cassie's short film.
Audience Theory
I need to ensure that my media text is heading in the right direction, i.e. my target audience, and I need to know how they will respond to my text. There are several effects models (theoretical explanations) as to how an audience ingest the information of a media text. The Hypodermic Needle Theory suggests that the audience passively receives information, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data. The information passes into the mass consciousness of the audience unmediated, and this suggests that as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media texts, and are behavior can be easily changed my the media makers. It assumes the audience are passive and heterogeneous. Therefore I need to ensure that there is nothing in my film that could be seen as promoting violence or anything else that could be interpreted as offensive. The Two Step Flow Theory was created to prove that the mass media has not reduced the population to a mass of unthinking drones. Instead, Paul Lazarsfield, Bernard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet conducted a variety of social experiments, and their results showed that information does not directly flow from texts into the minds of the audience unmediated, but it's filtered through opinion leaders who then communicate it to their less active associates, over whom they have influence. The audience then mediate the information received directly from the media with the ideas and thoughts expressed by the opinion leaders, thus being influenced not by a direct process, but by a two step flow. This diminished the power of the media in the eyes of researchers, and caused them to conclude that social factors were also important in the way in which audiences interpreted texts. This is sometimes referred to as the limited effects paradigm. The Users and Gratifications Theory (1948) suggests that media texts have the following functions for individuals and society; surveillance, correlation, entertainment, cultural transmission. This was expanded later on in 1974 with the added functions of media texts; Diversion, Personal Relationships and Personal Identity. The Reception Theory extended the concept of an active audience further, in the 1980's and 1990's a lot of work was done on the way individuals received and interpreted a text, and how their individual circumstances (gender, class, age, ethnicity) affected their reading. This work was based on Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model of the relationship between text and audience - the text is encoded by the producer, and decoded by the reader, and there may be major differences between two different readings of the same code. However, by using recognized codes and conventions, and by drawing upon audience expectations relating to aspects such as genre and use of stars, the producers can position the audience and thus create a certain amount of agreement on what the code means.
Genres have characteristic features that are known by, and recognized by the audience. This 'formula' is reproduced again and again. For my short film horror, the recognizable conventions, which include characteristics such as costume, setting, characters and situations, will all help the audience recognize that the genre of the short film is horror. Producers of generic horror narratives depend on a certain amount of immediate communication with the audience, that's why I've interviewed my target audience, in order to establish and recognize what expectations they want to be met, when watching a horror. As the role of the Producer, I want the narrative to be easily comprehensible to the audience, and to ensure this I will stick to, and use, key components of horror genre, with semantics such as characters, locations, props, music and significant shooting styles. The relations between theses elements that structure the narrate in my chosen genre of horror (the syntactic) should be obvious to the audience from the beginning, the audience should immediately expect at the start of the film a fairly stable equilibrium, and the lead character is suspecting that she is being followed, then a disequilibrium as the antagonist is established, and this leads to a face paced chase scene, followed by a brief moment of suspense and anticipation as the protagonist escapes and ponders at the enigma of if their escape was actually successful. Genre is not set however, it is fluid and defined by the audience, which is why I need to interview my audience in order to familiarize myself with how they perceive horror films, and what they expectations they are wanting to be met.
Representation Theory.
Representation refers to the construction, in any medium, of aspects of 'reality' such as people, places, objects, events,cultural identities and other abstract concepts. The term refers to the processes involved as well as to it's products. For instance, in relation to the key markers of identity - Class, Age, Gender and Ethnicity (the 'cage' of identity) - representation involves not only how identities are represented and constructed within the text but also how they are constructed in the processes of production and reception by people whose identities are also deferentially marked in relation to such demographic factors. For mine and Cassie's short film (aimed at a fairly young demographic) I need to take into consideration how the main protagonist will be represented, I need to ensure that when my audience watches my short film, they have a preferred reading and don't disagree with mine and Cassie's ideologies. To achieve this, we have taken popular aspects of mise-en-scene, camera, sound and editing in order to make the representations feel natural and unmediated. In a film, the director wants the audience to be on the side of the protagonist and hope that the antagonist will fail. This means that the audience has to identify with the protagonist – they have to have a reason to be ‘on his/her side’. But directors only have a couple of hours to make you identify with the protagonist – so, they have to use a kind of ‘shorthand’. This is known as typing – instead of each character being a complex individual, who would take many hours to understand, we are presented with a ‘typical’ character who we recognize quickly and feel we understand. To ensure this me and Cassie interacted with our audience demographic, in order to establish crucial concepts that would represent our antagonist and protagonist in such a way, that the audience would immediately side with the protagonist. The typical horror stereotypes that have been idealized by society and reused constantly in horror films over the years, are a 'ditsy' blonde, innocent looking woman protagonist, and a dark haired, pale faced with a partially covered face. These representations have been used frequently, in films like Paranormal Activity and The Grudge, the audience is immediately sympathetic towards the female protagonist as she is faced with an opposing force, which is the desired result for mine and Cassie's short film.
Audience Theory
I need to ensure that my media text is heading in the right direction, i.e. my target audience, and I need to know how they will respond to my text. There are several effects models (theoretical explanations) as to how an audience ingest the information of a media text. The Hypodermic Needle Theory suggests that the audience passively receives information, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data. The information passes into the mass consciousness of the audience unmediated, and this suggests that as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media texts, and are behavior can be easily changed my the media makers. It assumes the audience are passive and heterogeneous. Therefore I need to ensure that there is nothing in my film that could be seen as promoting violence or anything else that could be interpreted as offensive. The Two Step Flow Theory was created to prove that the mass media has not reduced the population to a mass of unthinking drones. Instead, Paul Lazarsfield, Bernard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet conducted a variety of social experiments, and their results showed that information does not directly flow from texts into the minds of the audience unmediated, but it's filtered through opinion leaders who then communicate it to their less active associates, over whom they have influence. The audience then mediate the information received directly from the media with the ideas and thoughts expressed by the opinion leaders, thus being influenced not by a direct process, but by a two step flow. This diminished the power of the media in the eyes of researchers, and caused them to conclude that social factors were also important in the way in which audiences interpreted texts. This is sometimes referred to as the limited effects paradigm. The Users and Gratifications Theory (1948) suggests that media texts have the following functions for individuals and society; surveillance, correlation, entertainment, cultural transmission. This was expanded later on in 1974 with the added functions of media texts; Diversion, Personal Relationships and Personal Identity. The Reception Theory extended the concept of an active audience further, in the 1980's and 1990's a lot of work was done on the way individuals received and interpreted a text, and how their individual circumstances (gender, class, age, ethnicity) affected their reading. This work was based on Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model of the relationship between text and audience - the text is encoded by the producer, and decoded by the reader, and there may be major differences between two different readings of the same code. However, by using recognized codes and conventions, and by drawing upon audience expectations relating to aspects such as genre and use of stars, the producers can position the audience and thus create a certain amount of agreement on what the code means.
Costume.
For our main protagonist, instead of challenging costume conventions of a typical Horror, me and Cassie decided to study how female antagonists are portrayed in Horror films, and we decided that the best costume idea, was the classic white gown, covered with blood and dirt. The white gown is used on several antagonists in films such as the last exorcism the ring and the grudge. Therefore due to it's frequent use in horror films, the white gown is associated, by the audience, with dark, female antagonists. The reason why it's such a popular item of costume is because the usual connotations
After this research, Me and Cassie have decided to change the costume, in order to match these horror conventions and therefore, we will be meeting the expectations the viewer will have, and they will then recognize that our short film is a horror.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Equipment Testing.
Cassie and I tested the equipment to familiarise ourselves with it. This would mean that we are efficient and organised on location so everything runs within our filming schedule.
Monday, October 3, 2011
STORY-BOARD.
1) Within the first establishing long shot we are introduced to the protagonist she runs across the car park, slightly running as if she feels uncomfortable with her surroundings she wraps her coat tighter around her. The lights are natural with the sounds being diegetic with wind whistling to connote loneliness. Jump cut to put her keys in the lock but drops them, jump cut to close up on keys on floor and her hand picking them up.
2) Jump cut to mid shot of protagonist unlocking her car and stepping within. As she pulls away long shot of Harriet standing on the side of the road as the protagonist drives past.
3) Zoom out and panning shot of the car leaving the car park it should be mostly or entirely empty to connote her isolation. The sound will be diegetic with the sound of the car pulling away. The lights again are natural.
4) Jump cut to a zoom shot of the car pulling up the long drive that was shown in the location shots it will then zoom out to show again a sense of isolation and desolation within the area she is driving. Sound will be ____________ and the lights will be natural. The car will slow to a stop and appear to breakdown.
5) Jump cut to a close up of her arm turning the key in the ignition the engine wont start. Jump cut to a long shot of her getting out of the car and checking the engine. The engine will be smoking.
6) Jump cut to mid-shot of protagonist on her mobile phone, jump cut to close up of phone with no signal.
7) Long shot of her running to the house the sound track again __________ lighting still natural. It will zoom in on her running towards the house and the zoom will follow her as to represent her being followed or haunted by harriet. A jump cut will then show a shot of her running towards the house through a window giving achieving voyeurism.
8) Jump cut to long shot low angle, of the house showing it is imposing. The light will be natural and the sounds ______ the protagonist will walk up to the house.
9) Jump cut to mid shot of her knocking on the door of the house and entering. Sounds will be diegetic.
10) It will then go to a jump cut of the previous shot of it being a low angle long shot of the house and the door will slam shut showing a sense of "no escape."
11) It wil then jump cut to a long establishing shot of the inside of the house within a room filled with old furniture and books showing age and a feeling of untouched history she will walk around looking with wonder, wide eyed.
12) A close up of her face with her eyes wide looking about frantically clearly feeling on edge and uncomfortable, she will shut out "hello?" until she is answered with running footsteps from another room .
13) Jump cut to POV shot of her running around to face the door and the place of which she can here the footsteps coming from.
14) Jump cut to mid shot of behind the protagonist as she opens the door from which behind she heard the footsteps. Then jump cut to low angle of her descending the stairs she will be silhouetted by the light behind the door and again she will call out "hello?"
15, 16, 18) Jump cut to mid-shot of her walking towards a mirror showing her reflection within the mirror, she will turn around and it will be a POV shot of her looking behind her. Then as it goes back to the mid shot of her looking back in the mirror but the reflection will have harriet behind her. Protagonist will scream and run out of the room.
19) Jump cut to high angle shot of her running back up the stairs. The high angle will give a sense of her being trapped within Harriets games.
20) Jump cut of her running passed the window while harriet looks within giving a sense of intrusiveness and intimidation.
21) Jump cut mid shot protagonist rushing into a room to try and hide from Harriet.
22) Jump cut to POV view shot of her backing away from the door as the foot steps walk backwards and forwards, the camera zooms in as they walk finally to the right, and no more shadows, sound __________
23) POV shot of her hand reaching for the door handle, jump cuts between close up of her face scared and wide eyed and POV shots and opens the door.
24) Jump cut to shot reverse shot of POV with her looking both ways down the corridor, left, right and left again. Upon the last look Harriets face will be there.
Black Out.
2) Jump cut to mid shot of protagonist unlocking her car and stepping within. As she pulls away long shot of Harriet standing on the side of the road as the protagonist drives past.
3) Zoom out and panning shot of the car leaving the car park it should be mostly or entirely empty to connote her isolation. The sound will be diegetic with the sound of the car pulling away. The lights again are natural.
4) Jump cut to a zoom shot of the car pulling up the long drive that was shown in the location shots it will then zoom out to show again a sense of isolation and desolation within the area she is driving. Sound will be ____________ and the lights will be natural. The car will slow to a stop and appear to breakdown.
5) Jump cut to a close up of her arm turning the key in the ignition the engine wont start. Jump cut to a long shot of her getting out of the car and checking the engine. The engine will be smoking.
6) Jump cut to mid-shot of protagonist on her mobile phone, jump cut to close up of phone with no signal.
7) Long shot of her running to the house the sound track again __________ lighting still natural. It will zoom in on her running towards the house and the zoom will follow her as to represent her being followed or haunted by harriet. A jump cut will then show a shot of her running towards the house through a window giving achieving voyeurism.
8) Jump cut to long shot low angle, of the house showing it is imposing. The light will be natural and the sounds ______ the protagonist will walk up to the house.
9) Jump cut to mid shot of her knocking on the door of the house and entering. Sounds will be diegetic.
10) It will then go to a jump cut of the previous shot of it being a low angle long shot of the house and the door will slam shut showing a sense of "no escape."
11) It wil then jump cut to a long establishing shot of the inside of the house within a room filled with old furniture and books showing age and a feeling of untouched history she will walk around looking with wonder, wide eyed.
12) A close up of her face with her eyes wide looking about frantically clearly feeling on edge and uncomfortable, she will shut out "hello?" until she is answered with running footsteps from another room .
13) Jump cut to POV shot of her running around to face the door and the place of which she can here the footsteps coming from.
14) Jump cut to mid shot of behind the protagonist as she opens the door from which behind she heard the footsteps. Then jump cut to low angle of her descending the stairs she will be silhouetted by the light behind the door and again she will call out "hello?"
15, 16, 18) Jump cut to mid-shot of her walking towards a mirror showing her reflection within the mirror, she will turn around and it will be a POV shot of her looking behind her. Then as it goes back to the mid shot of her looking back in the mirror but the reflection will have harriet behind her. Protagonist will scream and run out of the room.
19) Jump cut to high angle shot of her running back up the stairs. The high angle will give a sense of her being trapped within Harriets games.
20) Jump cut of her running passed the window while harriet looks within giving a sense of intrusiveness and intimidation.
21) Jump cut mid shot protagonist rushing into a room to try and hide from Harriet.
22) Jump cut to POV view shot of her backing away from the door as the foot steps walk backwards and forwards, the camera zooms in as they walk finally to the right, and no more shadows, sound __________
23) POV shot of her hand reaching for the door handle, jump cuts between close up of her face scared and wide eyed and POV shots and opens the door.
24) Jump cut to shot reverse shot of POV with her looking both ways down the corridor, left, right and left again. Upon the last look Harriets face will be there.
Black Out.
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