Silence evaluation task 1
- 1. Task 1 In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
- 2. Setting and location For the setting and location I chose this shot as it gives a good view of where the whole opening is set and no other shot in the opening gives this view. This shot gives a small glimpse into the surroundings around the house which are a few trees and grass, the building is a detached house and gives the impression of isolation. The theme of isolation is commonly explored in psychological thrillers, an example of this is in Shutter Island as the whole film is set on a prison island isolated from everyone.
- 3. Introducing the characters Darcy is introduced In the shot straight after the opening establishing shot, this shows her significance to the story. At first she seems harmless and innocent, this is similar to films such as Donnie Darko where the character is introduced on top of a mountain but is portrayed as a harmless boy. From this point on we started to introduce Darcy’s role in society as a cleaner. This is a medium shot of Darcy before entering the house
- 4. Narrative, and how the opening starts it I chose this shot as it shows a turning point for the audience’s first impressions of Darcy as a sweet innocent girl as she starts to rip up the teddies. The audience is left with more mystery and questions such as ‘why is she doing this?’ this meets our goal of creating a sense of mystery. In the case of most Psychological thrillers there is mystery introduced very early on and gives the audience some food for thought, this is why I chose this shot.
- 5. Font The font that we chose was simple and plain, we did this because we wanted the audience to be able to read the titles without difficulty as this would not subtract their attention from the film. We had a separate font for the film title that is more striking and bold, this is also why we chose a simple font for everything else as it creates more of a contrast to the font for the film title, showing in more clarity its significance.
- 6. costume and props The costume we chose for darcy had an impact on the viewers first impression of the character. We chose something that had a neutral feeling that didn't’t enforce a particularly negative stereotype as we wanted Darcy to come across as an innocent girl. The props we used were just cleaning supply's to start with while Darcy is in control of her feelings, again nothing too revealing about Darcy’s darker side. When the mood changes and Darcy starts to lose control of her calm, we introduce more sinister props such as scissors and a permanent marker.
- 7. Genre, and how the opening scene suggests it The reason that I chose this shot is because it shows the darker side of Darcy, this is the first insight into the sinister plot that Darcy Is planning. This breaks the audiences illusion that this will be a lighthearted film. We set to have subtle clues throughout the film to give hints into Darcy’s insanity, with this being the first one. This clues the audience in and should start to get them thinking about links between the scenes as they subconsciously build a sort of mind map leading to solving mystery of the film.
- 8. Title of the film The title of the film, ‚Silence‛ has several different meanings, the first meaning being that of a physical silence where the children remain silence as they start to notice Darcy losing her mind. The second meaning of it is a psychological silence, referring either to the loneliness and mental silence of someone suffering from depression, or the lack of silence in somebody's mind who is suffering from schizophrenia. We chose the font from a website called dafont. We chose this font because of its weird, distorted nature that we imagined would be similar to that of a mentally ill persons mind.
- 9. Camera work and editing The camera work we used for the opening consists of many medium shots and few close ups, this is why I chose this shot as it gives the impression of power and shows that this is a main character early on in the film. This also brings the audiences attention to the character causing their mind to think about her, causing more mystery which links into our genre of physiological thriller.
- 10. Special effects The reason I picked this shot for special effects is because we changed the lighting on the mac using iMovie, we added more red into the shot and turned the brightness down slightly, this gave more contrast to Darcy’s face and made her facial expressions look more defined showing her mood and devious intentions. In many psychological thrillers they use colour correction to give the scene a darker feel to emphasize the sinister or dark acts being carried out, examples of this can be seen in films such as Shutter island and Seven, as well as Fight Club and Donnie Darko.