Before creating our poster, we decided to look into design theory of posters, in order to help us create an effective poster for our production.
From this video we came across on YouTube, we noticed the significance of having key elements of the film in the centre of the poster's design, making it a focus of the poster. We also have from this considered how important it is to have appropriate colours and image to suit the genre of the film, so that when people look at the poster, they immediately are interested and have an understanding of the genre.
From this design theory video we considered the important aspects of our film poster and what needs to be included and how, as shown below.
On Thursday 23rd January we attended a talk held by the British film institute on we-media and democracy.
We learnt about the changes in production and consumption of media, and how they undermine the traditional hierarchy of media
We also discussed the value of media texts.
-Communal value - shared purely for fun on aggregate sites such as YouTube, Vine and Flickr.
example:
-Civic value - created to help society and spread information, e.g citizen journalism.
examples
- Creative value - media texts which show genuine talent, but the creators aren't professionals
example
We hope that our trailer will obtain creative value, and that we can harness the power of social media to promote and advertise our film.
Also since our film is independent, it will rely strongly on the power of we media to obtain success
After our research into narrative theory we found that Barthes theory was the one we felt best fitted to our trailer's narrative, therefore causing us to research further into Barthes work and theory.
Hermeneutic Code: elements of the story are not fully explained, this creates a mystery or enigma, keeping the audience guessing and to encourage them to view the trailer, as they are left with unanswered questions.
Proairetic Code: builds narrative tension, relates to something else that will happen, unknown, audience are kept guessing.
Barthes considers three other codes (semantic, symbolic and cultural), however these are less directly relevant to theory applied to our trailer.
Both of these codes work in relation to each other to develop tension in a narrative. We felt this theory was best to apply to our trailer as, by their nature, trailer's do not tell the audience everything, henceforth leaving mystery and enigma. This is something we can develop within our trailer, incorporating to our advantage as mystery is a key element and convention of the crime genre.
Examples of shots creating an enigma/mystery:
Question screens
Variation of questions makes the audience think, puts them in character's position
Laura Mulvey is a British feminist film theorist that
believes film are mostly seen from the heterosexual male point of view.
Mulvey argues that the only way to eliminate the
patriarchal Hollywood system is to radically challenge and re-shape the filmic
strategies of classical Hollywood with alternative feminist methods. She calls
for a new feminist Avant- Grande filmmaking that would rupture the narrative
pleasure of classical Hollywood filmmaking, she writes;
'It is said that
analysing pleasure or beauty annihilates it. That is the intention of this
article"
An example of a male view of a film/ scene is Psycho as its degrading view as it shows the character in a vunerable state as she's naked in the shower unable to defend herself. This scene is a classic look in to showing how they use the women figure to shock and excite the audience as the director manipulates the girl and her body to add excitement, terror and thriller in to the scene and film which was shocking and unseen at this time.
Laura Mulvey's, 'Male Gaze' theory says how the camera lingers on
the curves of the female body, and events which occur to women are presented
largely in the context of a man's reaction to these events. Relegates women to
the status of objects. The female viewer must experience the narrative
secondarily, by identification with the male.
Jacques Derrida believes that a "text cannot belong to no genre, it cannot be without...a genre". This view shows that all texts have at least one genre, many have multiple genres, or sub genres. "There is no genreless text."
A hybrid genre is a genre that includes elements of two or more genres combined, for example romantic comedies and thriller/ horror. This shows Derrida's theory well as it shows that there are a lot of examples of films with more than one genre.
The examples below show how more than one genre can be given to a particular text.
E.g. romantic comedy
E.g. thriller/ horror
Derrida's theory is something we will be able to show in our trailer, as we are using a hybrid genre in our trailer. However, Derrida's theory is one that is easy to relate to any text, as it is true to all texts, with them having at least one genre.
'much of the pleasure of popular cinema lies in the process of "difference in repetition"'
'genre is constituted by specific systems of expectations and hypothesis which spectators bring with them to the cinema and which interact with the films themselves during the course of the viewing process'
There would be no pleasure without difference.
We derive pleasure from observing how the conventions of genre are manipulated, and seeing how our expectations shift.
Example of when expectation is defied:
In Django unchained, a hard hitting Action Western, comedy is used to portray the KKK.
This engages the audience because it surprises them and challenges their expectations of the genre.
Example of when conventions are repeated:
Also the typical Western style is exploited, and the audience enjoy seeing the typical opening credits and setting, this is made more satisfying for the audience because it is very similar to the original western films.
Because we are only producing a trailer, we have decided not to include a strong challenge of the genre as we felt it will be impossible to establish the main genre (crime) strongly enough in the course of a short trailer for it not to be undermined by the challenge of another genre within it (e.g comedy).
Carolyn Miller is a genre theorist who suggests that 'the number of genres in any society...depends on the complexity and diversity of society'. She also believes that new media genres develop and formalise quicker than traditional, written genres and therefore genre theory should change for more modern media as the theory no longer applies. Carolyn Miller created a piece of work on the socio-cultural approach to genre theory and argues in her 1984 book that 'rhetorical criticism has not provided firm guidance on what constitutes a genre' and exposed some of the difficulties of applying genre theory to new media.
'rhetorically sound definition of genre must be centred not on the substance or form of discourse but on the action it is used to accomplish'
Taxi Driver from 1976 shows a character who has a military past, and will therefore appear as a hero to much of the audience. This is however proved incorrect through the subsequent actions of the character, on the other hand, in The Place Beyond the Pines, the main character is depicted as someone who would fit a stereotype for a criminal. The protagonist in Taxi Driver is an honourably discharged U.S Marine so he doesn't appear as an obvious threat to the country however the climax of the film sees him trying to assassinate the President. The Place Beyond the Pines released in 2013 shows two main character, one a working class traveler turned bank robber and the other a police officer who is hailed as a hero. The similarity between the two films is that the characters who have served their country get away with their crimes, however the characters are not of the same background, Taxi Driver shows the person committing the crime go free while the opposite happens in The Place Beyond the Pines, resulting in the characters death.
For our trailer we needed to explore different narrative theories that we could possibly use for our trailer. We took different theorists along with people within our class and looked at all of them to see which ones we could use or relate to in our trailer. Here's the finished product:
We will now apply all of these theories to any trailer analysis' and also have them in mind when creating our initial storyboard.
The theory we are most interested in is Barthes' Enigmas as from the trailers we have watched we have found this to be the most effective technique used to engage the audience.
From this we have decided to increase the pace of the shots and decrease the length of the shots as the trailer progresses to build the tension and give the impression of running out of time.
We will also begin the trailer with some mundane simple shots to establish equilibrium as stated in Todorov's narrative theory (for more information see narrative theory)
We will also include snapshots of unexplained dialogue in our trailer as this creates an enigma according to Barthes narrative theory (see narrative theory)
