Narrative Essay - 1

In my AS production, I produced a film opening based on a mix of both a thriller and romance genre.  I constructed the plot to make the audience realise that a person’s class does not defeat the object of being in love, whoever they may fall for.  Tez was a lower class 18-year-old boy, a stereotypical character of someone who was brought up from a more unfortunate environment.  Alicia was an upper-class, upcoming businesswoman who worked in the city.

Levi Strauss created a theory in which films are stocked with several binary opposites.  This is immediately effective for the audience without them subconsciously knowing about it.  An example of this is my film opening was that Tez came from a lower-class foundation and Alicia, an upper class surrounding.  I decided to go through with this theory as when watching existing media texts such as; Twilight, it is not predictable and this is what makes an opening of a film so gripping.

Todorov’s theory involved the idea of having an equilibrium.  This was the idea of the plot starting calm, disruption interrupting in the middle, causing a complete different outcome in comparison to the beginning.  Due to our production being a film opening.  I decided not to apply this as it would look like a short film instead.  Therefore, we decided to challenge the theory by making our film original, creating enigma at the end.  An example of this is we used our camera shots and editing skills to create tension about Tez, to make the audience question his personality.  Is he dangerous? Why does this music implement fear towards Alicia?

For Propp’s theory, we created Alicia’s character to be portrayed as sweet and innocent.  Whereas, with Tez we created him to cause enigma for the audience, by making him look like a villain.  Yet, we challenged this theory and subverted the audience’s expectations as Tez is not a dangerous character but his stereotypical view of the way he dresses, walks and acts causes him to be portrayed as this type of character.  Also, as mentioned before, we wanted to make our film opening as original as we could by not having these type of characters in the film as it then becomes predictable and repetitive especially for the audience we have.

As mentioned before, Barthes enigma coding theory was exactly the theory we were inspired by.  As a massive fan of loving being left on a cliff hanger, we decided to use this theory to grip our audience.  We made the audience question why Tez sat next to Alicia on the train, why is Alicia oblivious to Tez and many more.  Because of this, this causes the audience to want to watch more and find out the answers to their questions.

To conclude, narrative was a crucial consideration when constructing my film opening.  However, for me, the most influential theorist is Barthes.  This is due to how much his theory inspired the narrative of our opening.  If it wasn’t for this enigma coding invention, films today would not be half as gripping today.

Media Language Essay - 1

For my a-level productions our cross media promotional package had an urban/electro pop genre.  Our aim was to create consistent synergy throughout the music video, website and digipak.  Therefore, we decided to maintain a continuing red colour scheme.  Not only this, we then chose to stick to the same fashion costume as the audience would then recognise our artist by her casual attire of black jeans and red hoodie.

Within our music video, we chose to include a range of camera shots for different reasons.  We used close-up shots to create a brand image for our artist.  This was because we had to consider that she was new and upcoming.  Therefore, we also used long body shots to establish ‘Tori Lorente’s’ star image for the same reason.  Our aim was to create a recognizable face for our artist so the audience to get to know this new urban teen.  Again, because of these chosen camera angles, this gave us the chance to maintain the synergy as Tori wore the famous red hoodie.  We wanted to make sure the audience could relate with Tori as she is a young girl, in the age range of our target audience.  Therefore, the mid shots were used on Tori as it makes her not intimidating and so the audience are on the ‘same level’ as her.

Our mise-en-scene had many different aspects such as; costume, lighting, props and the setting which were altered to suit our artist.  Our setting we used was in Soho in London.  This was because it is an urban, different location and reflects Tori’s genre.  It was also where she grew up, which initially makes the video personal to our artist which is a huge attraction for the audience.  We choose to film everything in daylight to give the video a bright, successful feel to it.  This was consistent across the whole package which kept the synergy.

With the editing of our video, we used an effect called ‘leave colour’ which graduated the red colour on certain objects.  This was edited on the heart, as a sign of love, on the hoodie, to enhance brand image and on the post box, to symbolise Tori’s fan base across the country.  Most shots were made in slow motion so the audience would focus on Tori’s face to make it recognizable.  The cuts ion the video was sharp but had flowing transitions which was effective and made the video smooth.

As our genre was urban/electro pop, we decided to locate our video in Soho as it was original and subverted the typical location of a pop artist.  Tori was fully clothed wearing a red hoodie and black jeans, which is almost masculine.  This conformed Laura Mulvey’s theory of not selling women sexually.  Also, there is only Tori in her video, one woman, which shows women are powerful enough on their own, our chosen song ‘Hold Me Down’ had lyrics which our target audience would relate too.  Therefore, this enhances the attraction to Tori.

As part of the cross media promotional package; we created Tori her own website and digipak.  For both, we kept a similar layout, the same text, format and colour scheme to continue the synergy.  These we created to talk to the audience in a different way than the music video.  This included; social media sites constantly being updated.  We used the same images and consistent theme throughout.  It was a way of communicating with Tori’s fans as the target audience is aged from 16-25 years old, which is the most popular age to use social media sites.

To conclude, as a group to create media language, we used this to communicated with Tori’s audience and enhance her brand image as a fresh, upcoming, successful artist.