Todorov came up with a theory that all narratives could be split up into 5 sections.
1. Equilibrium - the setting is established and key character(s) are introduced. The storyline is set up.
2. Disruption - oppositional characters appear and the story begins to take a particular direction.
3. Recognition of disruption - the lives are characters and events become connected. This is normally the longest section and tension is building.
4. Attempt to repair disruption - when the highest point of tension occurs. There is some change in dynamics after this point.
5. Reinstatement of equilibrium - problems are resolved and questions answered. Life can go back to 'normal' although it may not be the same equilibrium as the beginning - things are often very different; it's just about searching for balance again.
This is my attempt at breaking down the film "Eagle eye" using Todorov's ideas.
1. - The man's twin brother has not long died; he's trying to get back to 'normal' life again.
- The woman has just sent her little boy off on a music trip to play at a presedential conference.
2. - Guns/bombs etc appear in the man's house. He calls the delivery service and they say his brother had ordered them before he died. He hears a strange computerised woman's voice on his phone. The police are going to arrest him for having the guns etc but the computer voice tells him to run. He then tries to run away from the computer voice, but she can contact him anywhere. He has no option but to obey her.
- The computer voice is watching her son and could kill him at any point. She immediately obeys the computer voice to save her son.
3. Both characters have to work together (do what the computer voice says) to keep the little boy safe and themselves from death. The voice is everywhere they go. It controls exactly what they do.
4. They manage to find the computer voice system and shut it down. The man's deceased brother had left clues for them because he knew what the computer was evil and was responsible for his killing. After the computer is shut down, two parts of a bomb come together (which is what the computer wanted) at the presidential conference where the little boy is playing with his school orchestra. To stop the two parts coming together, the man jumps at the President and gets shot.
5. The man survived the shooting. The little boy returns home; never knowing how much danger he was in. The man becomes a good family friend of the little boy and his mother.
2 Dec 2010
1 Dec 2010
Hitchcock research...
Here are some of the features often used in Hitchcock films.
- Make sure your audience are absolutely drawn into your piece or no atmosphere will be able to be created.
- Frame shots to show emotions best.
- Let the camera take on the feel of a person. This allows the audience to feel like they are actually involved in uncovering the plot.
- The focus of a scene should never be solely on what a character is saying, but the things they are thinking.
- Keep the story as simple as you can! If an audience are having to battle to keep up with the plot; then suspense and tension are never going to be created.
- Hitchcock criminals tended to be wealthy, upper class citizens who you’d never suspect. The innocent would always get accused. And the criminal would often get away with it because nobody suspected them!
- Humour is always a good thing to aid building tension. Put your character in the most ironic situation to deal with and the worst possible things that can go wrong.
- Build tension into a scene by using two contrasting situations. The audience will be focused on the momentum of one, and be interrupted by the other.
- Show the audience things that the characters can't see.
- Include surprises and twists. This will un-nerve the audience.
This is an example of an emotion close up from "Psycho".
- Make sure your audience are absolutely drawn into your piece or no atmosphere will be able to be created.
- Frame shots to show emotions best.
- Let the camera take on the feel of a person. This allows the audience to feel like they are actually involved in uncovering the plot.
- The focus of a scene should never be solely on what a character is saying, but the things they are thinking.
- Keep the story as simple as you can! If an audience are having to battle to keep up with the plot; then suspense and tension are never going to be created.
- Hitchcock criminals tended to be wealthy, upper class citizens who you’d never suspect. The innocent would always get accused. And the criminal would often get away with it because nobody suspected them!
- Humour is always a good thing to aid building tension. Put your character in the most ironic situation to deal with and the worst possible things that can go wrong.
- Build tension into a scene by using two contrasting situations. The audience will be focused on the momentum of one, and be interrupted by the other.
- Show the audience things that the characters can't see.
- Include surprises and twists. This will un-nerve the audience.
This is an example of an emotion close up from "Psycho".
This is an example of humour being used from "The Man Who Knew Too Much". Humour is often used to break the tension. There could be one scene of high drama and tension followed by a humorous scene to make the audience feel at ease before the next high suspense moment. (This technique dates back to Shakespearian times when he would use a humorous scene between two tragic ones!)
11 Nov 2010
Preliminary task...
This is my final edited version of the footage Harvey and I shot for our preliminary task.
Evaluation of Preliminary Task...
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
My piece was created to be an extract from a TV drama series. A convention of TV drama series are close ups to show characters' thoughts. In hindsight, we should have included a close up of the boss' face when he was thinking lustful thoughts about his new employee. This would have conveyed more easily to the audience that he was a very shifty character and should not be trusted. Also, adding this one shot in would have enhanced our story line to the viewers.
Some conventions of TV crime dramas are: having two opposing sides (good Vs bad), power is dominated by males, predictable plot lines (reused time and time again) and sometimes comedy elements to lighten the mood. So therefore I believe that my peice would have conformed to the 'typical plot line' of revenge, having the two opposing sets of characters and male dominace in terms of power. However if I were to produce this full-length programme, then I would have chosen to include a small amount of humour. For example a policeman may make a joke to another, however this would not be at the crime scene (or in a serious situation) because I felt this would be inappropriate and could raise issues of fair/true representation of police officers and how seriously they take their jobs.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
I believe that in my piece, men are represented as more powerful than women because the boss, of the company feature in my piece, is male. The woman isn't represented as particularly weak; it's just in comparison to the male, she appears to have less power. In addition to this, in the final scene, the woman looks quite nervous and slightly intimidated by the boss. In comparison to this nervous and afraid woman; the man remains powerful and bold throughout. I believe that (in terms of class) the boss would be an A category and the woman would be a C1.This again gives the boss a higher status and more power over the woman.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I believe that the BBC may want to distribute my product. I think this because if you look at the history of the BBC's drama programmes they screen; mine would fit in with this 'typical' stereotype. My research into the BBC's history of TV drama's from http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tv/network/genres/drama.shtml shows that all the BBC channels show dramas and often become very successful shows - with high viewing figures. They even have BBC4 which shows singles or two-parters which would be a good way to test whether our product would be successful or not. Most of the dramas on the BBC channels follow a typical structure of equilibrium - disequilibrium - equilibrium. Our storyline also follows this. The boss hires the woman employee; she starts work and likes the new job. (eq.) The boss then asks the woman out, she turns him down and he turns violent. He stalks the woman and attacks her after she's been seen out on a date with another employee from his company. (diseq.) The woman is found. When she regains consciousness, tells the police what happened. They then find evidence to convict the boss. The woman is then able to return to her job. (eq.)
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
Target audiences for conventional TV dramas tend to be 18-45 year old male or females (sometimes dependant on content). However the time when the programme is shown may highly affect the target audience. For example if the programme was on during the 9-5 bracket of the weekday, then the target audience is likely to be retired/unemployed/carers because everyone else would typically be at work. However if the programme was shown in the evening (e.g. ) then the target audience could quite easily be 18-45 year olds. I believe that the target audience for our piece should be 18-45 year olds (post-watershed).
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
We aimed to have a target audience of 18-45 year olds by having a storyline which could include some post-watershed content. For example if the boss asked the employee out on a date and she turned him down; then he would turn quite nasty and violent. If the programme was on after (the watershed) then we could show the boss displaying these traits rather than just implying them (pre-watershed). I believe our piece would suit post-watershed because the violent nature of it would add to the drama. (The violence would not be totally graphic/horrifying, because this would not suit the needs of all the range of the target audience, but enough to enhance the drama of the piece.) We aimed to engage our audience and 'hook them in' to watch the full length drama by leaving the story so it was at a cliffhanger in our extract.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I have learnt that with the equipment we had, certain shots are difficult to complete (and don't look as professional as I has wished). For example we attempted to do a track shot with just a hand held camera. The quality of the shot was shaky and in hindsight we probably should have used a simpler shot.
Because of my past experiences with media, the only real new piece of technology I dealt with was the editing programme. In my previous pieces, we have always used the editing programme iMovie or Final Cut Pro for Mac. However for this task I used Windows Movie Maker. This whole experience was a learning curve for me as I rarely ever use Microsoft software. I feel that I relatively quickly got to grips with the editing software as I only desired simple techniques to be used in my piece.
My piece was created to be an extract from a TV drama series. A convention of TV drama series are close ups to show characters' thoughts. In hindsight, we should have included a close up of the boss' face when he was thinking lustful thoughts about his new employee. This would have conveyed more easily to the audience that he was a very shifty character and should not be trusted. Also, adding this one shot in would have enhanced our story line to the viewers.
Some conventions of TV crime dramas are: having two opposing sides (good Vs bad), power is dominated by males, predictable plot lines (reused time and time again) and sometimes comedy elements to lighten the mood. So therefore I believe that my peice would have conformed to the 'typical plot line' of revenge, having the two opposing sets of characters and male dominace in terms of power. However if I were to produce this full-length programme, then I would have chosen to include a small amount of humour. For example a policeman may make a joke to another, however this would not be at the crime scene (or in a serious situation) because I felt this would be inappropriate and could raise issues of fair/true representation of police officers and how seriously they take their jobs.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
I believe that in my piece, men are represented as more powerful than women because the boss, of the company feature in my piece, is male. The woman isn't represented as particularly weak; it's just in comparison to the male, she appears to have less power. In addition to this, in the final scene, the woman looks quite nervous and slightly intimidated by the boss. In comparison to this nervous and afraid woman; the man remains powerful and bold throughout. I believe that (in terms of class) the boss would be an A category and the woman would be a C1.This again gives the boss a higher status and more power over the woman.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I believe that the BBC may want to distribute my product. I think this because if you look at the history of the BBC's drama programmes they screen; mine would fit in with this 'typical' stereotype. My research into the BBC's history of TV drama's from http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tv/network/genres/drama.shtml shows that all the BBC channels show dramas and often become very successful shows - with high viewing figures. They even have BBC4 which shows singles or two-parters which would be a good way to test whether our product would be successful or not. Most of the dramas on the BBC channels follow a typical structure of equilibrium - disequilibrium - equilibrium. Our storyline also follows this. The boss hires the woman employee; she starts work and likes the new job. (eq.) The boss then asks the woman out, she turns him down and he turns violent. He stalks the woman and attacks her after she's been seen out on a date with another employee from his company. (diseq.) The woman is found. When she regains consciousness, tells the police what happened. They then find evidence to convict the boss. The woman is then able to return to her job. (eq.)
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
Target audiences for conventional TV dramas tend to be 18-45 year old male or females (sometimes dependant on content). However the time when the programme is shown may highly affect the target audience. For example if the programme was on during the 9-5 bracket of the weekday, then the target audience is likely to be retired/unemployed/carers because everyone else would typically be at work. However if the programme was shown in the evening (e.g. ) then the target audience could quite easily be 18-45 year olds. I believe that the target audience for our piece should be 18-45 year olds (post-watershed).
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
We aimed to have a target audience of 18-45 year olds by having a storyline which could include some post-watershed content. For example if the boss asked the employee out on a date and she turned him down; then he would turn quite nasty and violent. If the programme was on after (the watershed) then we could show the boss displaying these traits rather than just implying them (pre-watershed). I believe our piece would suit post-watershed because the violent nature of it would add to the drama. (The violence would not be totally graphic/horrifying, because this would not suit the needs of all the range of the target audience, but enough to enhance the drama of the piece.) We aimed to engage our audience and 'hook them in' to watch the full length drama by leaving the story so it was at a cliffhanger in our extract.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I have learnt that with the equipment we had, certain shots are difficult to complete (and don't look as professional as I has wished). For example we attempted to do a track shot with just a hand held camera. The quality of the shot was shaky and in hindsight we probably should have used a simpler shot.
Because of my past experiences with media, the only real new piece of technology I dealt with was the editing programme. In my previous pieces, we have always used the editing programme iMovie or Final Cut Pro for Mac. However for this task I used Windows Movie Maker. This whole experience was a learning curve for me as I rarely ever use Microsoft software. I feel that I relatively quickly got to grips with the editing software as I only desired simple techniques to be used in my piece.
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