In what ways does your media product usedevelop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
- 1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
- 2. Staircase Our final production Staircase attempts to perform explore the genre of crime thriller. By doing so, we have conformed to many theories and features of this genre, including elements such as low key lighting. However we have also attempted to challenge some of these ideas by altering certain aspects which will be displayed later in the presentation.
- 3. Characters and Equilibrium When we were producing the opening scene we considered theorists such as Todorov and Propp. Propp proposed the idea that there are several categories people can be classed as in a film, to which we have mentioned two; the villain and the victim. There is also an offset of equilibrium in our story which follows Todorov’s idea of how a story starts in equilibrium but follows into disequilibrium.
- 4. Enigma One of the main features of our short is the building of tension and mystery through hermeneutic code (leaving questions unanswered) proposed by a theorist called Barthes. Elements such as the use of parallel editing, the blacking out of the killers face and the lack of information surrounding characters creates enigma which gets the audience to ask questions and stimulate interest.
- 5. Editing We have also implemented an unusual style of editing known as parallel editing in order to show a dream sequence where the killer is remembering the past events. This can be seen in films such as Memento and Silence of the Lambs. This initially creates confusion between the audience as the scene keeps changing location, creating enigma.
- 6. Sound The two predominant features of our opening scene is the use of drones and the whistle. The drones incorporate Barthes proairetic code as it builds anticipation, indicating that an event may occur. The whistle featured the song Donald Where’s your Trousers to indicate the mental state of the villain. The whistle has EQ applied where there was a change of shot, to indicate where there was a change in location.
- 7. Lighting Lighting was also essential to filming in order to highlight proposed ideas, such as the use of low key lighting when the killer was present to emphasize that he is a villain, while higher key lighting was used instead on the victim. The minor use of chiaroscuro lighting was implemented to show the contrast between the villain and his surroundings. We also used additional lights to project the killers shadow onto the wall which adds to the mystery.
- 8. Location We decided that the best places to film would be places that are murky and obsolete to build on the enigma. For us the CCVI stairwell was one ideal location with mouldy patches spreading across some areas on the wall. The CCVI Drama Studio was ideal as the ability to black out the room could provide ambiguity to where the killer is, stimulating the audience to ask questions such as ‘where is he’ and ‘why is he here? Image
- 9. Mise-en-scéne Another element we has to consider carefully was the positioning of our characters and use of props in our shots in order to convey who our characters were. The use of the bloodied knife and heavy black sack indicates that the suited man is the villain, where as the positioning of the grey-jumpered man implies that he is the victim. The shot angles emphasize these ideas, with a variety of low angle shots to suggest that the villain is the one with the power whereas the victim can be seen from a high angle shot to show that he is weaker.
- 10. Costume • Countertypical – explain why?