Jodie Birkbeck's media blog: April 2015

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Our horror trailer

Ashley: Editor Jodie: Filming Laura: Filing Charlotte: Scripts and story boards

Evaluation: Question four answer

Evaluation: Question four

This is the question:

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages.

Evaluation: Question three (part three)

Evaluation: Question three answer (part two)

Evaluation: Question three answer

Evaluation: Question three

This is the question:

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Evaluation: Question two answer

Evaluation: Question two

This is the question:

How effective is the combination of your main media product and ancillary task?

Evaluation: Question one answer (part three)

Evaluation: Question one answer (part two)

Evaluation: Question one answer

Evaluation: Question one

Evaluation: Question one

In what ways did your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Audience response- Final horror trailer (2)

Audience response- final horror trailer (1)

Preliminary audience response (2)

Preliminary audience response (1)

Audience response- Front cover (2)

Audience response- Horror poster (2)

Audience response- Front cover (1)

Audience response- Horror poster (1)

Friday, April 17, 2015

Narrative structure: Memento

Memento:

Black and white is used as a constant feature throughout the movie, it established some sort of flashbacks and we constantly know when we see Lennie talking in his bedroom on the phone.
The use of sound in the fact that they refer to it is 'The incident' emphasises the narrative structure.
Repetition can take the form in sound, edit and sequence. Within narrative structure repetition can correlate with Lennie's condition.
The sequence is showed once and the it repeated again and the black and white sequence is played with Lennie speaking on the phone about his condition.
Personally I think that Lennie could be seen as all of Propp's character.
Edit: The photo changed from black and white to colour as the scene did, this shows how the sequence was in the moment and he wont remember however the photograph would stay with him forever.
Non-diegetic music and voiceovers are used throughout to develop the narrative structure.

Equilibrium---->Lennie has short term memory loss, he cant make new memories
Disequilibrium---->Uses pictures and notes to remember things, the phone sequence is the disequilibrium
New equilibrium---->Already killed John G, Teddy remembers and tells Lennie the truth but he doesn't believe him

Beginning filming

Narrative structure: Pulp Fiction

Pulp Fiction:

There is also evidence of Todorov's narrative structure in the used of an equilibrium, a disequilibrium and a new equilibrium.

Within Pulp Fiction there is a handful of many difference narrative structures with reference to Todorov's theory:

The first storyline with evidence of this narrative structure is Vincent's story.

What Tarontino done throughout Pulp Fiction, is he split the entire film up into different stories, therefore narrative structure is present throughout the entire film, but particular Todorov's narrative structure is present in each different story throughout the film.

Narrative structure

Narrative: "The way in which a story is told in both fictional and non-fictional media texts."

Vladimir Propp:
- Russian critic and literary theorist.
- He proposed that it was possible to classify the characters and their actions into clearly defined roles and functions.
- Films such as Star Wars fit Propp's model precisely but a significant amount of recent films such as Pulp Fiction fit this model.

Propp's character role:
Victim
Hero
Villain
Donor
Dispatcher
False hero
Helper
Princess
Father

Tzvetan Todorov:
- Bulgarian literary theorist.
- Suggests most narratives start with a state of equilibrium in which life is 'normal' and protagonists happy.
- The state of normality is disrupted by an outside force.

Roland Barthes:
- French semiologist.
- Suggests that narrative works with five different codes which activates the reader to make sense of it.

Barthes codes:
- Action= A narrative device by which a resolution is produced through action.
- Enigma= Teases the audience by presenting a puzzle to solve.
- Symbolic= Connotation.
- Semic= Denotation.
- Cultural= The audience recognises as being part of culture.

Claude Levi-Strauss:
- Social anthologist.
- Examines how stories unconsciously reflect the values, beliefs and myths of culture.
- These are usually expressed in the form of binary opposition.

Binary oppositions:
Homesteaders---->Native Americans
Christian---->Pagan
Domestic---->Savage
Weak---->Strong
Garden---->Wilderness
Inside society---->Outside society

Make up

Costumes

The costumes were very simple for us and our horror trailer as it was quite a modern trailer. We would therefore use just our everyday clothing for the scenes before the main protagonist became possessed by the diary. Once the scene occurred where Charlotte had become possessed we would then change her into a white gown, as this is stereotypically a costume that is associated with this type of trailer.

Characters

We decided that for our horror trailer it would be the better option to feature ourselves throughout the trailer. This would therefore mean that we would never had to rely on other actors/ actresses to be present when we were filming, we could simply rely on each other. Charlotte was designated the main role throughout the horror trailer as she was most experienced with acting and she could really relate to the part well. She would play both the victim and the possessed (horror character). Myself and Ashley would also feature in the trailer as we were the friends of Charlotte and we all lived within the same house. Ashley and I would only feature on short staccato snip its of the trailer.