Thursday 21 March 2013

Evaluation Question 1

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

I have included 12 frames from my final edit of 'Furor' to support my explanations of how and why the thriller opening uses, develops or challenges conventions from existing media. I carefully chose frames that showed an array of aspects from the opening, including; titles, mise - en - scene, lighting and characters.



Frame one - How characters are introduced:
Excluding the titles, Nikita standing with her eyes closed is the first shot to appear in my thriller opening. Not only does this establish the main character, but it creates a sense of ambiguity as it is uncertain as to why she has her eyes closed, or even who she is. This is a close up shot so only her head is seen which stops the audience from knowing much else about her surroundings. In later shots she is seen opening her eyes and then applying red lipstick. This shows her getting ready, as she puts her lipstick on neatly, before unexpectedly smearing it up her face. This immediately raises questions as to why she would purposely smear her lipstick. The colour of the lipstick is also important, as the colour red has connotations of danger, passion, seduction and death. This links further into themes of seduction and provocativeness, and it could be suggested she is a woman who uses this to get what she wants. The panning shot used then reveals a great deal more about the woman as she is seen imitating a poster of Glenn Close holding a knife in Fatal Attraction. The shots creates the effect that there is something different, and almost peculiar about this woman as she is standing in her room with lipstick up her face, holding a large knife. The main character was purposely a woman, to undercut the conventions in thrillers that the protagonist is always a strong man, and that the victim is usually a vulnerable woman. Here, our main character is a woman and her victims are in fact men, giving the narrative a role reversal that plays with the representation of women in media products.

Frame two - The title of the film/Title font and style:
The second frame, reveals the title of the thriller; 'Furor'. We chose to call it Furor which means fury, rage or madness. This is because people  asked did not know the meaning of the word in the context I am using it and this misinterpretation reflects the personality of the main character who's actions will defy narrative expectations of her. The font and style of my film titles were heavily influenced by those of the film 'Se7en'. This idea of having them hover on the screen before disappearing really appealed to me, as again it reflected the unstable character I am portraying. However, the titles of 'Se7en' sometimes appear on a black background, but then also appear over the footage. I chose to insert all of my titles over a black background to create a sense of consistency. Below I have inserted a screen grab from the title sequence of'Se7en' for comparison.



Frame three/Four/Six - Genre and how the opening suggests it:
My thriller opening shows the genre used, being Film Noir, in many different ways. Firstly, the soundtrack used was inspired by jazz instrumentals that I researched on YouTube. I then went to the music department in school and sat in on their rehearsals and asked if they could recreate a piece of music I found. One of my friends listened to the jazz piece and wrote his own interpretation of it, before recruiting two boys; one who plays the saxophone and one who plays the drums, to play the song for us. My friend then played the piano parts and we recorded it in the school's recording studio.
This allowed us to have a soundtrack that perfectly fitted our Film Noir genre, and even better, it was  made specifically for my media work. In addition to the soundtrack, the first shot notably reveals that our opening is in black and white. This is a generic convention of Film Noir and also allowed us to creatively add in special effects. Finally, the mise-en-scene played a huge part in establishing the genre. There was particular iconography of Film Noir movies such as trench coats, alcohol and cigarettes, but then I also used many forms of homage in reference to existing Femme Fatale/Film Noir media products. There were three posters used; 1. Glenn Close - Fatal Attraction,  2,.Lana Turner - The Postman Always Rings Twice  3.Barbara Stanwyck Double Indemnity, and also the shot of Fatal Attraction paused at 12:12.

Frame five - Special effects/Camera work and editing:
This frame explicitly shows the emphasis on colour that I focused on. Right from the word go, my group and I decided that our opening would be in black and white to reflect the Film Noir genre, and that the significant colours would be emphasised. The purpose of enhancing the red lipstick and the purple dress, aimed to reveal more about the woman's character and the powerful colours she wears. The significance of the white dress was to completely contradict the character we created. This undermined conventions as the colour white is usually associated with purity and innocence, two things that our character is not. The camera work was relatively simple, everything was filmed in colour with a light used to create effect in certain shots. The editing process was very long but the finished result was what I had pictured. The footage had to be 'desaturated' in Final Cut and then effects such as 'Colour Correction' were used to highlight particular colours and also brighten or darken shots.

Frame seven - Location/Costumes and props:
This panning shot establishes the setting of the thriller opening, as it becomes clear that the woman is in her bedroom. We used a friend's bedroom as we required a double bed and a windowsill where we could place our intended props. Furthermore, our friend did not have anything extravagant in her room such as a plasma tv, which worked really well as our character was intended to be poor, which feeds into the narrative of her manipulating people and rein-acting what she see's in thrillers to kill people and take their money. For props, empty photo frames were used to raise questions and begin to draw attention to the character's unusual mental state, also we included an upside down clock stopped at 12:12 to mirror the time on the Fatal Attraction clip that was included. Moreover, there was a large kitchen knife used to 'copy' the poster of Glenn Close on the wall(Frame 6), again to evoke the image that the woman is crazy. Finally, there was a shot of a whiskey bottle and glass, and a cigarette(Frame 10). This was part of the iconography that we researched for the genre. There were only two costumes used in the opening of Furor, one was the white dress worn and the other was the purple dress in the wardrobe. It was decided to have just one dress in the wardrobe for two reasons; one being it emphasised the economic situation the woman was in as she has minimal clothing, and two because it drew more attention to the dress that was then gone at the end of the opening, which shows she took it to change into before finding and killing the man. The editing also included fitting in the soundtrack which we had made specifically for our film opening.

Frame nine - Story and how the opening sets it up:
The equilibrium of my film is shown through the shot of the newspaper, which is primarily used to set up the narrative.The story is that a poor but manipulative woman see's a millionaire in the newspaper who has just won millions on the lottery. As she has so little and he has more then he needs, she sets out to kill him and steal his money. Hints of this can be seen when she circles his face in the newspaper which in effect makes him look like her target, as well as the dress missing at the end which is supposedly showing she has got up and gone to find this man.The scenes of her cautiously applying her red lipstick before smearing it up her face, in addition to the upside down clock, empty photo frames, words and rope on the door and her imitation of the knife pose all hint that something is going to happen and that she is potentially crazy, and this is where questions are raised by the audience. The references to various other Femme Fatale, Film Noir films are supposed to imply that she carries out acts of violence that she see's in these films, on people that she is targeting. This use of micro elements to build up suspense through camera work, mise - en - scene, lighting and costumes all contribute to revealing the narrative.















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