One Last Touch

One Last Touch

Audience
1. Richard Dyer
  1. Audiences want media products that offer them idealised solutions to their problems. Audiences enjoy emotional/action films to disagree with the events and may feel better after crying/being scared. This can lead to catharthis.
    1. The middle of our film does offer utopian solutions as the couple falls in love. However, at the end of the film, the couple is separated and the female lead is left alone.
    2. In Your Eyes is a film that offers a utopian solution as the two characters end up together and eventually meet each other after already falling in love. The film shows that the couple can be still be together despite not meeting until the end of the film and having difficult pasts.
2. David Buckingham
  1. Young people use media to make sense of their experiences and their media use fits in with their social activities and experiences. The media acts as a wallpaper that decorates the world around us but also acts as a wall of noise to fill up downtime. Many interactions with the media are fleeting, visceral and meaningless.
    1. My film will be light-hearted and fun to watch but also fairly easy to follow and make sense of. The time-travel aspect will be something different and the events that take place (e.g. the couple meets at a house party) will fit in with the audience's social life.
    2. The Host is a sci-fi romance film about a robot species who invade Earth. The film's main characters are teenagers/young adults who are relatable to the audience yet the storyline is different to real life and offers the audience a sense of escapism. Because of this, the film is exciting so would pass time for the viewer. However, contradictory to Buckingham's theory (interactions with media are often meaningless and used to fill up time), this film teaches the audience a lesson. One of the main - and eventually most loved - characters is an alien and is thought to be evil at the beginning of the film. However, this alien grows to be loved by many humans and lives in the community as a friend of the people, teaching the audience the moral of 'don't judge a book by its cover', making them think about the film and its meanings.
3. The Frankfurt School
  1. The audience is passive and manipulated as their opinion, intelligence and experience is not relevant.
    1. The audience to my film is not passive as I have listened to their opinions regarding the production of my film and have tailored my film to something they will enjoy. However, the audience is slightly manipulated as I will use music to set the atmosphere of a scene and engage the audience. Our film is also part of a sequel so the audience will be manipulated to watch the second film to see what happens next.
    2. An example of a series of films that manipulate an audience is The Divergent Series. This franchise has many plot twists and sudden changes that change how the audience think about a character or a plan. The films' main storyline follows the main character and her boyfriend trying to escape from various threats of the outside world and other factions. The series manipulates the audience but also makes them think about different scenarios. This goes against this model as the audience are active in their thinking.
4. Blumler and Katz
  1. The audience is active and chooses what media to consume to fulfil their identified needs: Identified needs: entertainment and diversion, personal relationships and social interactions, personal identity and information and education
    1. In my film, the story-line, characters, mise-en,scene, genre, etc. has been made so that the audience will enjoy it and choose to watch it. The film will allow the audience to fulfil their needs so they will discuss it with others, engage with the narrative, etc.
    2. The Time Traveller's Wife is a sci-fi romance film that is entertaining and captivating for the audience meaning that it will fulfil the need for entertainment. The film is also a typical 'date night' film as there are strong aspects of love and romance as well as scenes that put the audience on the edge of their seat and give them something to talk about - fulfilling he need for social interaction. The Time Traveller's Wife can also fulfil the need for a personal connection to the film as the audience may be able to relate and emphasise with the characters and their situation and compare their own life to that of the characters.
Representation
1. Angela McRobbie
  1. Men and women are represented through media. Women are weak/victims whereas men are aggressive/leaders. Stereotypes are a problem.
    1. In my film the characters are represented equally. I have done this because I don't agree with unequal representations in the media. My audience will appreciate this because both men and women will want to see my film and
2. Laura Mulvey
  1. Women are objectified and are looked at through a 'male gaze'. This is due to a predominantly male directors environment who decide how women are portrayed. She suggested the virgin/whore dichotomy where women are often represented as a virgin or a whore.
    1. My partner and I are both females so there will be no 'male gaze' that will impact how the characters in our film are represented. The female characters in our film are not represented as virgins or whores because there is only one romantic relationship in the film and the females characters are not together to discuss men or relationships.
3. Stanley Cohen
  1. Particular groups in society are demonized and marginalized through negative representations. This may cause a moral panic where society fears this group.
    1. In my film I have used actors that are relatable to my audience. Although I have used no negative representations, the first scene in my trailer is a house party which could be seen as a negative stereotypical representation of teenagers. I chose to include this because it fits in with the demographic of my target market and, when they understand that the actors in my film are like them, they may want to see my film. When people see actors who they can relate to, they trust them more and want to watch them.
Genre
1. Rick Altman
  1. Semantic elements = signs, easy to recognise (knife, blood, eerie music). Syntactic elements = themes and plots, more subtle (revenge, fear, rage, etc.)
    1. In my film, although the plot may be hard to follow when written down, I have used aspects of media to tell the story and make it easy to understand for the audience. I have used signs to represent the different periods in time which clearly indicates the time-travel genre of my film. I have also included themes (such as love) that show how my film is a romance.
2. Steve Neale
  1. Aifference in repetition = the audience recognise similar elements in a film but they may be orchestrated differently to avoid them watching the same thing over and over again.
    1. Genre evolution: 1. the form finds itself. 2. the classic. 3. stretching the boundaries. 4. parody. 5. homage.
    2. In my film, there are aspects that are typically found in time-travel romance films that the audience will immediately recognise and enjoy. However, the actual narrative of my film is different to what is already out on the market. Our film is a homage as it takes elements from classic time-travel and romance films and orchestrates them in a way that is new and exciting.
Narrative
1. Propp
  1. Narratives often contain a set of key characters that were found in fairy tales: Hero, villain, donor, anti-hero, princess, princess' father, dispatcher.
    1. In my film I have chosen to not include many of Propp’s characters as his theory is very restrictive and does not relate to my chosen narrative or genre. In my film there is no hero to be saved or villain to be stopped but there are relatable characters who overcome problems together. I think that this makes my film more appealing to my target audience as the characters are not at all ‘far-fetched’ or typical.
2. Levi-Strauss
  1. Narratives contain binary opposites that can create tension and conflict: love vs. hate, good vs. evil
    1. Although my trailer does not focus on binary opposites, there are some that I have included. For example, the present day vs. the past. My film is a time-travel adventure-romance film and the characters are trying to find their way back to the present day but problems and mysteries seem to take them back to the past every time they touch.
3. Todorov
  1. There are 3 stages in narrative: equilibrium-disequilibrium-new equilibrium. They can be repeated throughout the course of a narrative and the 1st 2 stages are shown in the trailer.
    1. I have included stage 1 and 2 in my trailer and detailed narrative. I have done this to add suspense to my trailer and make the audience want to find out what happens and because my partner and I wanted our film to be a sequel because if the audience enjoy the 1st film then they will want to see another one to find out the ending. The two stages of Todorov’s theory are repeated in my trailer as the characters meet, face a problem together, fall in love and then come into contact with another problem.
4. Barthes
  1. Narratives can be open or closed and contain codes: action, enigma, cultural and symbolic codes.
    1. In my film I have used a lot of Barthes’ codes to give the audience an idea about the narrative. I have used certain camera shots to show the characters’ hands touching which implies that something will happen. I have also used sound and mise-en-scene to tell the audience what era the characters are in (e.g. sirens and gas mask boxes to represent the war and jazz music and flapper dresses to represent the ‘roaring twenties’).
      1. Barthes’ theory was really helpful in my coursework because the codes gave me ideas about what to include in my film. When writing my shot list, I took into account action codes so that I could create suspense using camera work and when planning my mise-en-scene I tried to focus on symbolic and cultural codes to represent the time periods that the characters travelled to.
5. Fields
  1. A narrative has 3 acts: act 1 (set up), act 2 (development) and act 3 (resolution), each with turning points in-between.
    1. This theory is a more restricted version of Todorov's theory so, because of this, I chose not to use Fields' theory. Instead I repeated the stages from Todorov's theory. In my detailed narrative I have separated the story-line into 3 sections as acts but these do not contain the set up, development or resolution that Fields describes.

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	Created by hannah fletcher about 8 years ago