Music creates meaning and adds dramatic effects to my scenes. I chose a few so-called underground electronic songs to convey a party in a non-conventional way, not a crazy frat party full of drinks and stereotypical collage students, but place where Alexis can feel as though she is free; free from society and free from herself. Click the button and find out what mood they give you. After creating my video and editing it, I decided upon of the songs from my playlist that works the best, after many times listening all the songs. Its muttered screams and harsh electronic tones work perfectly with the atmosphere I wanted to give at the beginning. Afterwards, no music was used in order to focus the viewer's attention on the relationship between the two characters and get to understand Alexis as well as possible in those two minutes. At first I thought of using parts of the song in the short snippets where she hallucinates the blonde girl, but then I believed adding the tv static and parts of her narration at the beginning would make a lot more sense, as this is the 'entity', the devil she is talking out, haunting her. This way it adds more sense to the story and clears up some possible plot holes that the audience might have felt. As for the dialogue, I didn't record their voices while filming and only after I realized that the sound recorded on my camera wasn't good at all, so I asked my actors to say their lines again, this time recorded on my iPhone 7. What was a little hard was matching the visual with the post-recorded sound and getting rid of the echo, but I managed and I learnt to be patient with my work.
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The following props will be used in my intro to match the genre and create either mundane realism, or an odd feel to the scenes. I. Black light - a spontaneous idea of mine to create an interesting twist on the ordinary scenes II. Little fireworks - same concept as the black light III. White and black clothes - for the party scene IV. Fairy lights - same party scene V. Old TV - used in the first scene, making the audience question Alexis' sanity and her possible reason for watching a broken TV VI. Pills + little paper or plastic cups - needed for Alexis' and patients' illness VII. A cigarette + lighter - to add meaning to one of the character's personae
I chose three different locations for my intro: An abandoned house - This is the place where the first scene is going to filmed to highlight Alexis' emotions of loneliness and sadness. It's all in a dark brown color, perfect for a dramatic effect and for adding meaning to the scene and the character. Hospital/Asylum - This is where most scenes will be shot as Alexis is a resident of the asylum because of her present or less present illnesses. I believe it's the best place to portray the type of image I'm giving her, of mental claustrophobia and despair. Simple room indoors - This location is the least important as it won't have much of a significance. The role of it is to locate the four characters is a dark place with a blacklight showing their beautiful patterns of glow paint, and giving off an ambiguous party mood.
I strongly believe that planning is a necessary part of any good media text, thus I jotted down a few ideas for each of the following: characters, locations, props, and music. In this post I'm going to talk about the characters, and implicitly, about the actors playing them The main character - Alexis, played by Alexiana Alexis is a troubled girl, she has been put into a hospital for the mentally insane for unknown reasons. Whether she is actually mentally impaired or not, is never revealed but only subtly understood differently by each viewer. She is in a negative mood most of the intro, as her only wish is to get out of the place taking over her every move. She feels alone and stuck, until KL (discussed more about him down below) tells her to follow him, where Alexis seems intrigued yet confused and reluctant to do so. I chose my friend, Alexiana, because she doesn't look 'basic', or common, she has auburn-ginger hair, which is shown in the media as more unique more 'sui generis', compared to blonde hair. She has a particular softness to her appearance, but some stronger, so to call them, facial features which represent a perfect balance for Alexis. She is a strong empath and has the capability to understand the struggles that Alexis is going through, therefore being able to portray her accurately. KL, played by Iulio KL is quite a peculiar character, not much is known about him either. I chose Iulio to play this role because has a mysterious aura to him which I believe matches KL's. He has black hair, in conformity with the ambiguity of the character and different facial features than most boys in my area, or my school. He dresses mostly in black, with unique pieces of clothing and jewelry, and not following fashion trends, which shows the fact that he's not afraid to step out of the mainstream and be himself. KL has been in and out of the hospital for ages, and seems to know his way around it. This is denoted by knowing a secret room in the hospital where him and his friends, that also seem to have been in the place for quite a while, meet and get away, even for a bit, from the mundane lifelessness of the hospital. He is the 'unofficial leader' of them all, as he is quite confident and has a plan of escape for his group. The reason why he chose Alexis to take part in this risky getaway is a willingness and power he feels in her. Two more characters have only small roles, played by Francesca and , two of my friends, to add to the idea of KL having spent a lot of time in the asylum and having acquired trust-worthy friends. Alexis' hallucination, played by Francesca Tighinean She is going to appear close to the end of the intro, and plays an important part in the creation of the story. She is a fragment of Alexis' distorted view of reality, and by her facial expressions and body language the audience will be able to view the world from Alexis' eyes, and will understand what she was referring to in the begging, in her narration. I chose Francesca to play this part as she is very expressive and can switch from one mood or from one role to another.
Costumes The first combination of clothes will be for the abandoned house scene, where Alexis will be wearing old looking clothes (ripped jeans and a flannel), to convey her lack of self care. Secondly, in the hospital scenes, Alexis will be wearing a rope and slippers, while KL will have sweatpants and a hoodie, as he has spent way more time in the hospital while Alexis is new, therefore doesn't have certain advantages such as different clothes. Francesca will be wearing some simple grey clothes, simply to stick to the grey color palette. Any good film has a script behind it, therefore I created one and let my imagination flow using the Celtx website. I mentioned everything from characters, a few props, clothing, to location. The genre is drama as I mentioned in one of my posts, so I put an effort to create the script in order to fit its genre. The main message that it conveys is the freedom that Alexis, the main character, lacks and the ever-present urge to escape from the asylum, a metaphor representing the 'box' we are put into by society from a young age and the ambiguous, wrongly created concept of 'normal' and how one should act and look to fit into this label. The movie is about Alexis, a teen girl who currently lives in an asylum against her will, and does her everyday activities in the institution until KL, an unknown patient gives her hope of escape. These are the only things that are going to be shot for the intro, but following them would be planning the escape, overcome obstacles in getting out of the place, successfully reaching their goal of breaking free after almost getting caught. After this, they would enjoy their freedom but this feeling would be short-lived, only to realize that the freedom they were craving from was from their own minds.
I chose these particular scenes in order to portray the protagonist's current situation and desires, and the dream of escape being at the tip of her fingers. I wanted to find out about my target audience and their preferences, so I created a questionnaire to do just that. It consists of a few questions about the characters, music etc. that are going to be present in my film intro. I enjoyed creating it, and it gave me more ideas to carry out in my work. You can click the button below to look over it.
In order for my audience to understand the genre of my movie intro, that being drama, and the atmosphere its going to transmit, I created a moodboard, consisting of different images of props, locations and ideas that I might implement in my work. I created a tumblr blog for it, and all you have to do is click on the button down below.
The first movie intro I analyzed was Lolita, from the website 'Art of the Title', shown to us by our media studies teacher. I found it very useful to find so many movie openings in one place, and categorized, so I can search for them better! Lolita This intro relies on little editing and has no special effects. The music is a soft, instrumental music,which is portraying Lolita's innocence. The first we see is the media company that produced and distributed the movie, along with their associates: Metro-Goldwin-Mayer and Seven Arts Productions. Everything is in black and white, considering it was filmed in the 60s, it's absolutely normal for movies to lack a color palette. Afterwards, we see Lolita's small and delicate foot while a man of a grown-up male starts painting her nails, this remaining the background during the whole intro. This strongly conveys that the man makes Lolita slowly become more of a woman while her naturally complying, which is inappropriate of her tender age of 12. As she is not resisting in any way, it makes us believe that the man is messing with her mind and manipulating her into thinking that everything is right and ethical. The following text that appears on the screen is the name of the main actors, the credits for the music producers, directors, and everyone involved in the production and editing of the movie, along with the writer of the book. Split The first thing I observed was very short clip of a man wearing a hygienic mask over his mouth and aggressively getting closer to the camera i.e. the audience. Everything in the clip has blue hues, creating a cold, unsettling mood. Following that, the producer of the movie, Universal Pictures and the production companies appear on the screen. What is interesting is we see an image created from many of the same pictures, only after which we are able to actually read the text. This, I believe, is used to create an unsettling atmosphere, with rapid appearing images and eerie instrumental music, perfectly fitted for it’s psychological horror genre. Furthermore, short, 1-2 second clips are introduced in between credits, shot from a low angle (the point of view of the girl in the following scenes) with white neon lights. After, a quite blurry clip of a girl probably sitting on a hospital bed is moved across a hallway. The blur conveys the mental state that she is in, not quite conscious and awake. Afterwards,the girl opens her eyes and a canted angle is showing her being put down on a bed. The camera in totally out of focus and the bed sheet on which the camera is situated on is clear. The last thing we see, after all the necessary credits, is the girl slowly opening her eyes midway. Overall I liked the fact that these openings revealed little about the actual plot of the movie, but set the right mood by lighting, music, pace and symbols. In the first opening, from 'Lolita', the conventions were the small foot of the girl indicating innocence and the nail polish indicating maturity and femininity. I chose to analyze this intro because I enjoyed the movie and wanted to broaden my perspective regarding genres and how these are represented throughs signs and conventions. If I'd say I took inspiration by these two it would be from 'Split', it's fast paced, gives off an eerie atmosphere and is probably set in a hospital, like my opening. I found it useful to analyze these two and to take a few ideas which then would be incorporated in my work.
In addition, I also watched the opening for Se7en, which inspired me to use the glitchy effect on the credits |
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