DYSTOPIA Magazine cover

This is our magazine cover that I have managed to do today. I used Photoshop for this task and found it a bit difficult to move all the little pieces around for example the tiny text. I managed to stay after school to make sure and complete it, I like how it looks so far but I think it can do with some improving though and I also think I could have put more on the magazine. I think that the colors I have used work really well together and it really gives it an eerie atmosphere.

What I have contributed to the group

For last week and this week I have managed to complete many tasks to benefit my groups trailer.

On Saturday 21st November I went to the Red House to get pictures of the location. These pictures would help us to determine where we could shoot in that location. I toured the house and used my iPhone to take pictures of the different rooms that I thought were potential shooting locations and can be used in our trailer. I then sent the pictures to my group so that they could see what the Red House looked like and give them an idea of where we could shoot.

On Sunday 29th November I went to shoot a sequence for the trailer along with another group member; Caius Woodroffe. We managed to shoot a scene where one of the characters hung herself and committed suicide. The character that we used was Emily who is played by Afia, we got her to hang from a tree branch and only filmed her legs dangling from the tree, giving the illusion that she hung herself. We did this scene in Abbey Woods park, where there were was a forest/woods and loads of trees that had low branches where the actor hung from. After that Caius and I took and establishing shoot outside the woods and then we went into the woods and took establishing shots of the middle of the woods.

I think that for everything I have done in the group I would give myself an D/C because I think that I can do more and contribute more to the group and also I still have loads more work to do on my own.

Props Mood Board

This Mood Board is about the props that we would need for our trailer. These props are important because it would give the audience an idea what our film is about and what kind of genre it is.

Locations Mood Board

This Mood Board is about the locations that we have decided to look at that could be used in our trailer. It gives us an idea of where we would like to film our trailer.

Sub Genre Mood board

This mood board is based on the Sub genre of our trailer.

Media Language

Semiotics - Barthes

Semiotics is the study of signs and their meanings.

Denotation -  The literal or primary meaning of a word, in contrast to the feelings or ideas that the word suggests.

Connotation - An idea or feeling which a word invokes for a person in addition to its literal or primary meaning.

Blue can connote

•  Emotionless
•  Masculine
• Cold

Hitler can connote:

• Evil
• Fascism
• Holocaust
• Power
• Propaganda
• Death
• Racism

Eugenics - The science of improving a population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics.

For example; The Nazis preferred blonde haired and blue eyed people and so killed everyone except for the people who had blonde hair and blue eyes.

Barthes:

He argued that the audience look for signs to help them interpret narrative, those signs are based on their expectations the audience has due to their prior knowledge of old tales or myths.

His theory of how we interpret is:
Signifier/Signified: The meaning

Semiology: The relationship between the signifier and signified.

Sign: The total he signifier and signified e.g. how we interpret the combination of the signifier and the signified.

Signifer and signified (Connotes): the meaning behind this is...

Paragraph 1: Symbolic codes. (Mis en Scene)
Paragraph 2: Technical codes. (Camera and editing)
Paragraph 3: Written codes and Audio codes. (Text and Sound)
Paragraph 4: Reception Theory - Stuart Hall

Audience Feedback (Trailer)

Audience Feedback (Poster)

Audience Feedback (Magazine)

Drawn Treatment

Audience Research questions

Film Crits

Audience Theory - Slasher Films

Final Treatment

Treatment for our chosen horror film by jada from Jada Ramsammy

Essay of Representation

For this task I have decided to analyse the trailer for 'Dead Silence' as it was one of the films that influenced my own pitch idea. Right at the beginning of the trailer we see a woman who presumably lives in the house in which she is walking in, she walks past a mirror and looks at herself in it. The radio she has turned on mysteriously begins to act funny and tunes out. The woman in this scene us wearing a nightdress which is short and shows off her body. She only says a few lines in the trailer and also does not have much screen time, from this we can assume that she is just an object for the audience to look at as well as a victim to make the show interesting. The cuts before the woman removes the bed sheets from the object that is covered on the bed, builds suspense for the audience also when she slowly reaches for the covers to pull them off. We see that she gets attacked and she is one of the first to be a victim. This could represent the fact that women are helpless and they are only there to look at. Even when she is being attacked there are flashes and loads of cuts, this could be used to build tension. In the second scene we see two men talking about this ghost that is haunting the man because of the past. The woman is the ghost called 'Mary Shaw'. For this particular woman we can sense that she has control over the men and women in the film as she inflicts fear into them. This leaves the men helpless as well as the women which is not a typical representation of men. This one man by the name 'Jamie' is represented as the protagonist and he is the only person who is not threatened by Mary. We learn that Mary was a ventriloquist and she owns a few puppets, from the way that Mary is dressed we can infer that in her time, people thought women couldn't make it as what they wanted to be. In one of the shots we see group of men searching for a missing boy, this can represent the men are brave to find the little boy. Also the time of day they are looking is when it is very dark at night, which gives us the impression that they have been searching all day meaning that they are truly determined.

My Film Poster

Media Pitch Idea

Mute pitch idea from Jada Ramsammy