Sunday, 16 March 2014
Evaluation: How does your media product represent particular social groups?
An analysis of representations in my opening sequence:
The opening sequence starts with very slow paced editing – which helps in focusing the audience’s attention on the dialogue between the cashier and her daughter, as nothing too exciting or colourful happens. During this dialogue, the mother cashier says to her daughter that “It doesn’t look as if it’s getting any brighter does it love”. The use of words such as ‘love’ and the overall colloquial language suggests a friendly and close relationship between the two – showing there are no barriers or conflicts between the young and older age groups as they both speak equally to one another. It also enforces the stereotype that women are more caring and loving than men, as the friendly nature of the conversation contrasts sharply with how the teenager speaks to the cashier.
The opening sequence starts with very slow paced editing – which helps in focusing the audience’s attention on the dialogue between the cashier and her daughter, as nothing too exciting or colourful happens. During this dialogue, the mother cashier says to her daughter that “It doesn’t look as if it’s getting any brighter does it love”. The use of words such as ‘love’ and the overall colloquial language suggests a friendly and close relationship between the two – showing there are no barriers or conflicts between the young and older age groups as they both speak equally to one another. It also enforces the stereotype that women are more caring and loving than men, as the friendly nature of the conversation contrasts sharply with how the teenager speaks to the cashier.
The sudden eerie roar of the soundtrack that kicks in when
the male teenager walks into the room suggests that there is a new, powerful and
somewhat unusual presence. Since we already had a teenager in the room and this
audio was not present – this may lean towards the representation of males as
being dangerous and capable of disturbing the peace, as the room was peaceful
and calm before. This is probably fairly conventional in film, as dangerous
antagonists are usually portrayed as men.
The absence of dialogue when the cashier asks the teenager “Can
I help you at all” – can be uncomfortable for the audience as they wait for a
reply. The long pause could connote the stereotypical representation that
teenagers can be rude and unsocial towards older generations – as if there is a
communicational barrier between them.
There is use of a long take of a panning up shot from the
teenager’s feet and legs up to his face – to form a low angle shot. This low
angle shot frames the male teenager to look large on the screen, making him
seem more powerful in relation to other objects and characters in the scene. Males
therefore seem to be cast as more dominative and powerful than females, who
aren’t shown to be nearly as large in later shots. It also shows a
non-conventional perspective on representations of age, as the younger age group
appears to have the advantage against the older one with the teenager
overpowering the cashier.
The tracking close up shot on the gun as the teenager draws
it onto the cashier has obvious denotations that the teenager is involved with
the crime world. This can have follow up connotations that men can be prone to
crime – which follows a film cliche that criminals and antagonists tend to be males,
representing men as being more aggressive and risk-taking then women. It also
could suggest that teenagers can fall into crime fairly easily too.
There is a long take where the camera is positioned so that
the gun points directly at the shop cashier – this emphasises her struggle and
lack of leverage – further developing the representation of men as being
overpowering towards less aggressive females in this sequence.
The cashier – hoping that the male teenager’s empathetic
side will be unravelled – tells him that “I have a daughter, she was here
earlier!”, but the teenager swiftly cuts her off, insisting that he doesn’t “care
about your daughter”. This represents the teenager from even being cut off from
his own age group, as he feels nothing towards the cashier despite her having a
girl who is around his age.
When the armed teenager presses the female cashier – she ends
up giving him the information that he wanted. This is probably a fair reaction
to being held at gun point, but it could still be interpreted to represent
women as being weak willed, as she knows it could put other lives at risk.
After she gives him the information, the teenager character
breaks the forth wall and looks directly at the camera for a split second.
Throughout the entire opening sequence, the teenager lacks emotional expression
and readable body language and therefore in a way this break of character seems
even more eerie to the audience. It could be interpreted as the teenager
actually ‘showing off to the camera’ before he pulls the trigger and shoots the
woman. This makes him seem psychopathically dangerous and you could say that in
a way he distances himself from any kind of group.
The male may belong to the male gender group and the
teenager age group, but his actions are that of such psychopathic degree that
audience members are likely to disassociate those actions from meaning anything
in terms of representation. It is also a good point to make that it is so
unconventional for someone of his age to dress the way he does – in dark smart
attire – and be involved so heavily in crime. It’s so unconventional that it
may not represent the teenager age group at all.
We chose to represent our antagonist character in this way so to intrigue the audience. They might want to find out about his background after seeing how ruthless he is - to find out why he is like how he is. We represented the woman the way we did because we thought it depicted realistic reactions to the situation that she was in, and we chose to make her seem possibly weak at points to put emphasis on how dangerous the male teenager was.
We chose to represent our antagonist character in this way so to intrigue the audience. They might want to find out about his background after seeing how ruthless he is - to find out why he is like how he is. We represented the woman the way we did because we thought it depicted realistic reactions to the situation that she was in, and we chose to make her seem possibly weak at points to put emphasis on how dangerous the male teenager was.
Evaluation: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Throughout this course, I have had to learn a great deal about emerging and already popular technologies in order to produce my film. The appliance of many of these technologies to the construction of my product has been essential, and without my new gained knowledge it would have been impossible to create the opening sequence that we had made.
Cameras: In my opening scene, I was restricted to being in front of the camera rather than behind it, as I was one of the main roles in the film. Fortunately this did not stop me from learning about how cameras work and how to use them, as there were many times where I would step behind the camera to record a take of one of the others in my group filling in for my character - just to demonstrate how the shot should look once I step back into the character's shoes. This can be shown below:
This helped me with concepts of how to get a great shot, and even down to just how to hold the camera to keep it steady for a take. There were instances where we were stuck on how to stabilize our camera (such as on our slow paced start, where we filmed a long tracking take (which was then cut up by opening credits) that tracked backwards from the door and then moved sidewards). We found ideas on how we could achieve a steady camera and settled on using a trolly before overlapping audio WITHOUT the trolly to eliminate unwanted audio of clanging. I also tinkered with the white balance on the digital cameras as I attempted to perfect the cooler lighting of the scene that we wanted to establish. An advantage of this equipment is first of all that the cameras are capable of pulling off some good shots - vital for our film. And vitally, digital cameras are cheap for film makers like ourselves to use. Yet a disadvantage we found is with the often poor sound quality that would prove to be difficult to get round when it came to editing, with lots of fuzzy grainy background noise and often quiet recordings of dialogue.
Lighting: We also had to learn to get to grips with lighting in our opening scene. Despite our scene literally being set in a lighting shop, it proved very difficult at times to perfect lighting conditions in the set. We ended up having to try different combinations of top lighting through the actual ceiling lights of the shop before we were able to find a sinister looking top lighting effect - which emphasized the physical features of the teenager. We also used key lighting in places, shining a light at a certain angle directly onto our actors faces. Lighting is something I have learnt a lot about through the construction of my opening film. I have recognized how important it can be, and also how difficult it can be to get right.
Live Type: In the construction of our opening sequence, Live Type was something that I struggled to get along with. However, this wasn't through a lack of understanding. Most of our group's ethos was always to create as professional and non-intrusive an opening sequence as possible - we found that the possibilities that Live Type offered us in terms of opening credits or the film title (which other programs did not) felt out of place, unprofessional and unrealistic in the context of our film. While we could have persevered with the Live Type program to create our title or credits, we decided to invest our efforts elsewhere. However, I did find out why film makers might use LiveType, as it can be used for many different purposes including impressive animation - as shown here:
Pixelmator: While I was not fond of Live Type as a possible way to create our film title, I found Pixelmator matched our ideas of a more professional looking and less-the-top film title fairly well. Pixelmator allowed us to easily create a design for a our film title in ways that Live Type would find difficult to match. The process was a simple matter of steps and took no more than half an hour to perfect from scratch by Phoebe Davies. Phoebe had even found tools that would make the second boot imprint to look somewhat degraded - as if blood or dirt was covering the shoe and was coming off with each step. This is shown below. While we didn't use them, we found tools which might be helpful in the future which allowed us to freely crop images, create sci-fi-like effects and more.
Blogger: After having gone on an English lecture school trip this year, it somewhat emphasised how enjoyable the experience of using a blog for learning and working can be. The pressures of having your work easily found by others all around the world were a definite positive to me, as it encouraged me to create more polished work. I found that working with blogger was also a pleasure due to the many different ways that you can choose to work. Although your standard blog post could just feature text, there are also many ways to create more interesting content by embedding different formats such as a 'Prezi' presentation, or YouTube videos or even gifs. These all allow for excellent ways to get points across.
At the same time, the pressure of having a blog can weigh you down a little. I might feel a need to update my blog when it might be unnecessary at the time - and the vague nature of how to approach different tasks through a blog can be difficult to decipher at times.
From cameras to Pixelmator, this project has taught me excellent skills on a variety of different areas, which I hope will come again to help me in the long term future. While tasks like editing were at first difficult, it now comes fairly naturally as I feel as though I could edit scenes even just by myself, and while I might not be fond of the Livetype program for this task, all that I have learnt about it could help me in the future.
Cameras: In my opening scene, I was restricted to being in front of the camera rather than behind it, as I was one of the main roles in the film. Fortunately this did not stop me from learning about how cameras work and how to use them, as there were many times where I would step behind the camera to record a take of one of the others in my group filling in for my character - just to demonstrate how the shot should look once I step back into the character's shoes. This can be shown below:
This helped me with concepts of how to get a great shot, and even down to just how to hold the camera to keep it steady for a take. There were instances where we were stuck on how to stabilize our camera (such as on our slow paced start, where we filmed a long tracking take (which was then cut up by opening credits) that tracked backwards from the door and then moved sidewards). We found ideas on how we could achieve a steady camera and settled on using a trolly before overlapping audio WITHOUT the trolly to eliminate unwanted audio of clanging. I also tinkered with the white balance on the digital cameras as I attempted to perfect the cooler lighting of the scene that we wanted to establish. An advantage of this equipment is first of all that the cameras are capable of pulling off some good shots - vital for our film. And vitally, digital cameras are cheap for film makers like ourselves to use. Yet a disadvantage we found is with the often poor sound quality that would prove to be difficult to get round when it came to editing, with lots of fuzzy grainy background noise and often quiet recordings of dialogue.
Lighting: We also had to learn to get to grips with lighting in our opening scene. Despite our scene literally being set in a lighting shop, it proved very difficult at times to perfect lighting conditions in the set. We ended up having to try different combinations of top lighting through the actual ceiling lights of the shop before we were able to find a sinister looking top lighting effect - which emphasized the physical features of the teenager. We also used key lighting in places, shining a light at a certain angle directly onto our actors faces. Lighting is something I have learnt a lot about through the construction of my opening film. I have recognized how important it can be, and also how difficult it can be to get right.
Live Type: In the construction of our opening sequence, Live Type was something that I struggled to get along with. However, this wasn't through a lack of understanding. Most of our group's ethos was always to create as professional and non-intrusive an opening sequence as possible - we found that the possibilities that Live Type offered us in terms of opening credits or the film title (which other programs did not) felt out of place, unprofessional and unrealistic in the context of our film. While we could have persevered with the Live Type program to create our title or credits, we decided to invest our efforts elsewhere. However, I did find out why film makers might use LiveType, as it can be used for many different purposes including impressive animation - as shown here:
Pixelmator: While I was not fond of Live Type as a possible way to create our film title, I found Pixelmator matched our ideas of a more professional looking and less-the-top film title fairly well. Pixelmator allowed us to easily create a design for a our film title in ways that Live Type would find difficult to match. The process was a simple matter of steps and took no more than half an hour to perfect from scratch by Phoebe Davies. Phoebe had even found tools that would make the second boot imprint to look somewhat degraded - as if blood or dirt was covering the shoe and was coming off with each step. This is shown below. While we didn't use them, we found tools which might be helpful in the future which allowed us to freely crop images, create sci-fi-like effects and more.
Blogger: After having gone on an English lecture school trip this year, it somewhat emphasised how enjoyable the experience of using a blog for learning and working can be. The pressures of having your work easily found by others all around the world were a definite positive to me, as it encouraged me to create more polished work. I found that working with blogger was also a pleasure due to the many different ways that you can choose to work. Although your standard blog post could just feature text, there are also many ways to create more interesting content by embedding different formats such as a 'Prezi' presentation, or YouTube videos or even gifs. These all allow for excellent ways to get points across.
At the same time, the pressure of having a blog can weigh you down a little. I might feel a need to update my blog when it might be unnecessary at the time - and the vague nature of how to approach different tasks through a blog can be difficult to decipher at times.
From cameras to Pixelmator, this project has taught me excellent skills on a variety of different areas, which I hope will come again to help me in the long term future. While tasks like editing were at first difficult, it now comes fairly naturally as I feel as though I could edit scenes even just by myself, and while I might not be fond of the Livetype program for this task, all that I have learnt about it could help me in the future.
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