Transcript:
We used blood to immediately indicate to our audience the genre of our film (the blood acted as a genre trope of our film's genre) which as we were editing developed from a psychological crime-drama into more of a psychological thriller with crime elements. The blood is a typical convention of a crime-drama as well as thriller-at times-so our inclusion of this prop enabled our audience to relate the blood they viewed to the genre we were representing.
At first I felt this would be overly complicated for our audience because our film's genre might not be understood as a result of its overly and diverse aspects.
On the other hand our hybrid genre enabled our audience to take a more polysemic approach to our text and helped to create a more active audience that interacts with the moving images within our film's production.
Our titles are simple with no effects so that we wouldn't derail our audience's attraction from the actions in the scenes they are watching. We also positioned some of the titles in unique positions, instead of the usual horizontal format, to express to our audience the detail and effort we put into the creation of our film and to show that every aspect of the film, including the titles have been thought of in great detail. As a result our audience were well informed on those that were involved in the production of the film they are viewing, without being too overwhelmed by the names of the main casts and crew. The simplicity of our titles highlights the maturity of our target audience, because they can be aware of the titles and withdraw its information and not need it to be presented in an ostentatious for their attention to be grabbed. The simplicity of our titles helped to produce a balance between grabbing our audience's attention without maintaining it for so long that they are distracted from the moving images.
There are a lot of flashes within our opening sequence in order to highlight and identify the important features within our clips to our audience. It was an effective way for us to categorise the main aspects and evoke a multitude of emotions within our audience, such as surprise when the main female character is briefly shown to them in subtle and minute pieces; from her profile, to her hands and then finally her face. The flashes were also a genre trope, as they assisted in guiding our audience to conclude the genres of our film- especially the thriller elements.
Furthermore, the flashes connote professionalism to our audience because it is a technique adapted by many established directors, such as Darren Aronofsky, director of Black Swan, a psychological thriller film.
We used extreme close ups of the female character's face before the flashbacks begin in order to create a personal relationship between the character and our audience. The camera movement of an extreme close up enabled the audience to clearly the painful expression of the female as she recalls her past relationship. As a result the audience can evoke empathy as they watch her and 'enter her mind' as they see what she sees-in essence our audience becomes our Sarah and the two merge into one. This aspect of empathy will be easier for our female audience than the male, as they can relate to her tears as she looks at herself in the mirror whilst crying. Our use of extreme close up established the uses and gratifications model of personal relationship, especially amongst the females. For the happy scenes it is likely that our male audience might be passive, whereas the females would be more alert and willing to deconstruct the text.
The happy scene has overt editing of black and white and the mise-en-scene connote romance, however we used the non-diegetic instrumental to create a juxtaposition between the action taking place in the shots and to highlight the hidden secrets and violence that actually takes place.
We also used jump cuts and an effect of a broken TV to symbolise Sarah and James' unsteady and damaged relationship. The interruption of the scenes caused by the TV effect shows the audience that the joy shown within the clips are an illusion and the soundtrack further identifies this.
The psychological element of our genre is made evident to our audience because, although the audience is Sarah and is connecting with her mentally, they are still able to see beyond the facade that is Sarah and James relationship, and the effects and music allow these thoughts to be formed within our audience.
There is a rapid change in the soundtrack, which becomes a lot more fast paced signify the transfer of Sarah's mind to reality. The fast pace of the music makes the voice over sound a lot more annoyed and angry and represents the brutality that Sarah has faced by disclosing her satirical attitude towards fairy-tale beliefs and fantasies.
The rhetorical question proposed by her made the audience think and question themselves on the truthfulness of her words.
The audience can deconstruct the infuriated tone in Sarah’s voice; due to her immediately answering the question she asked, therefore revealing her distaste of the ideologies that fairy tales produce, and sharing with the audience the disappointment that trust in the reality of fairy tales have brought her, Sarah is in effect advising the audience on the importance on realism and the negative impact false hope has on individuals. Sarah tone indicates that she is talking from experience and that she has been a victim of being a dreamer.
The result of this is mystery, because the audience now becomes intrigued and wonders the reason behind those words and the provocation for her stating them.
The voice over enables our audience to know more about the character they are viewing (Sarah) and gives her a chance to express herself to her audience.
We made the voice over synchronous to the images so that as she is talking the audience can understand what she is saying, but in order to maintain the enigma codes and hook our audience we made sure that the voice over had contrasts between her words and the images as well, so that the audience are left asking question that will make them continue to watch our film to get the answers- this is a convention of a crime drama that we adhered to.
An example of when we made our images parallel to our voice over was when, as Sarah stated “Prince Charming”, James appears and an active audience would review that, as a direct result of his costuming and use of low key lighting, James is not the stereotypical “Prince Charming” and is likely to be the exact opposite, this knowledge coupled with the cynicism in the voice over’s tone confirms the correctness of our audience’s judgment.
In addition the voice over conveys better depth, insight and meaning to the audience regarding the current functioning of Sarah’s mind. We introduced a voice over to act as an active agent, in order to provide a greater impact and understanding to the audience in a way that Sarah’s actions and our mise-en-scene alone could not provide.
The specific words within the voice over:
“A Mimic…A Fraud…A Wannabe… An IMPOSTER” are separated from her other words so that the audience focus particularly on them and this separation highlights its importance to the audience. These words sum up the purpose of the voice over to the audience and induce feelings of interest within them as they want to find out the person who fits this description and why.
In addition, the words are supposed to look like a female's handwriting ( represent Sarah's) and the effect of this on my audience is personal identification, because it is supposed to represent a letter format presented to the audience by Sarah- the writing, along with the voice over is Sarah telling the audience through direct address her story-the impact of this is to engage my audience. The voice over is supposed to be the beginning of a letter towards the audience, by Sarah about her situation and the opening sequence is the beginning of that letter.
We used a multitude of flashes, to make the images appear as if there was no “structure.”
The images fluctuate and alter between the happy scenes, violent scenes and winter scenes.
The effect this has on the audience is confusion, which is the desired impact we wanted when placing the clips together using faced paced editing in the form of jump cuts. We wanted to educe feelings and emotions of confusion within our audience because we wanted to expand on the psychological aspect of our production and make it easy for our audience to empathise with Sarah. We did this by enabling them to see her “mind’s eye” and the disarray her thoughts are in, as a result of her recollecting the past.
We wanted to take our audience on an “emotional roller-coaster” and ended the visible shots with a slap given through a Point of View (POV) shot to create shock amongst the audience and exclamations, as a result of not expecting such physical violence. The slap acted as a conclusion to the opening and revealed a snippet of the film’s main content and theme to the audience. The POV shot also guides our audience to produce yet again feelings of empathy towards the victim at the receiving end of the abuse and anger towards the perpetrator of the pain.
Memories are what make a person who they are. The fact that we have shown the audience Sarah’s memories, especially the ones she tries to suppress help create a personal relationship and identity between her and our audience.
The impact our opening sequence would have on our audience would be a large one because empathy is an emotion that we have tried to provoke in numerous ways within them. We have tried to involve our audience in the scenes that they view as much as possible and provided opportunities for them to be the main character. Due to the main character being a female it is likely that our female audience would be able to relate to her more than those of the opposite sex.
I also received verbal feedback from two of my possible target audiences, they are both discussing their initial response to my film production and the impact it had on them. Both felt they were addressed well and deconstructed a number of key aspects within our production, but they also felt that there were parts within our opening sequence that we could have improved to create more of an engagement with them.
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