Production Logo - Leanne's Task

This was the last part of our task where each group had to come up with a production company name and logo. 

In our group we brainstormed and got these four ideas for our name: 

• Midnight Pictures
• Armored Ink Productions
• Black Winged Productions
• Silver Arrow Pictures

In my group we descided to use the name ArmouredInk and this was our first try and making the logo for our productions company. 

We decided to use DaFont to get the font that we wanted and once we chose the bottom image as our logo we decided to invert the colours to make our font match our genre. 

Emily's Lesson/ homework on Roland Barthes - Enigma Codes

On Fridays lesson with Emily we were introduced to a theorist Roland Barthes who poses questions to the audience without them realising it and his theory of five enigma codes. 

Barthes says that all narratives share structural features that are brought together in different ways. Although there are differences between individual narratives, they all have a limited number of organisational structures that affect our reading of texts - this is called 'narrative/ enigma codes'.

Barthes' enigma codes is a theory that suggests a text portrays a mystery to draw an audience in, pose questions and as such, become intrigued in the piece. Whether that be through television, film, a poster etc... 

An example of this would be, a murder mystery will often not reveal the identity of the murderer until the end of the story (a film example of this would be se7en) which poses a question 'who is the murderer.' 

Narrative/ enigma codes

Barthes theory of the five codes is a way of grouping signifiers according to the role they play in the text. 

These are categorised as:

The Hermeneutic Code - the voice of truth -

This is the way the story avoids telling the truth or revealing all the facts, in order to drop clues in through out to help create mystery.

The Proairetic Code - the voice of empirics -

This is the way the tension is built up and the audience is left guessing what happens next.

The Semantic Code - the voice of the persons - 

The semantic code points to any element in a text that suggests a particular, offer additional meaning by way of connotation which that story suggests.

The Symbiotic Code - the voice of the symbol -

This is very similar to the semantic code, but acts at a wider level, organised semantic meanings into broader and deeper sets of meaning. This is typically done in the use of antithesis, where new meaning arises out of opposing and conflict ideas.

The Cultural Code - the voice of knowledge - 

This looks at the audiences wider cultural knowledge, morality and ideology.

Leanne's Planning Tasks

During the Wednesday lesson we have with Leanne we got set a task that included;

• Research Codes & Conventions of your chosen film genre - paying particular attention to title sequences.
• Write an audience profile for your film's target audience; remember to consider Primary and Secondary audiences.
• Analyse at least one sequence from your chosen genre individually and one as a group, considering its use of generic conventions. note down any features which you might like to use in your own work.
• Invent a production company name and design a logo for your production company.

For our first task my group created a PowerPoint on the Codes and Conventions of our chosen genre which was Horror/Thriller

http://www.slideshare.net/LucyHorton/codes-and-conventions-of-horrorthriller-films

During the lesson we discussed with Shaun about what the demographics and psychographics are, we used humans as an example that the demographics of a person could not be changed and these were:

• Age
• Gender
• Sexuality
• Race
• Ethnicity
• Education
• Annual income
• Disposable income

Psychographics are changeable and the example that we came up with was:

• Personality traits 

We then went off in our groups and started the task and for the audience profile of our genre this is what my group got as a result:

Saul Bass

Conventions of title sequences

In Emily's lesson we discussed the codes and conventions of film title sequences and how it breaks down into smaller chunks by using 'Stincs' 

S - Setting: where and when is the film set? 

T - Theme: what is the mood of the film? (Love, jealousy, revenge) 

I - Iconography: costumes, makeup, props etc (relevant to the genre) 

N - Narrative: what is the story about? 

C - Characters: who are they? What are they like?

S - Style: cinematography, sound, editing. What the film will look and feel like. 

Nearer to the end of the lesson we then looked at some film titles that are on ArtOfTheTitle these were:

Catch Me If You Can 

Se7en 

Presentation on Kyle Cooper

Film Pitch

Film Pitch from Welling School

Credit Timeline

Napoleon Dynamite

Napoleon Dynamite

A title sequence sets up the story for every TV series or film this means that it is a very important factor for a film to have as it sells the film to the audience. Within the film Napoleon Dynamite there are many things to think about in the title sequence and the most important of these would be mise-en-scene. Throughout the friendly title sequence of this film there is only carpet of the background places which creates a mystery for the audience as they have to evaluate where the shot is being taken. Some of the floor designs give you a hint about where Napoleon is at the time an example of this would be where he is eating at school with his school lunch. The audience see a constant close up of the characters hands and only see how the character moves around the objects that are in front of him. The objects used in this title sequence are; carpets and flooring, meals and food, food trays, U.F.O. Abduction insurance card, Preston High ID card, a plain black wallet, grass landscape, self-made ninja spike, library books, fat free sweets, chap stick, school stationary and drawing of warriors.

When the food is displayed on screen it shows different types of food and most of them are greasy which gives the audience an idea that Napoleon might have acne due to all the bad, unhealthy food he eats despite the fat free sweet. Also, when the food is displayed the audience can see that it is set out perfectly and different types of food that are on the same plate do not touch each other, this could hint that Napoleon has OCD.

When the UFO Abduction insurance card is displayed the audience can tell that Napoleon is a geek any other school stereotype, for example a jock, would never have one of these cards as it may ruin or jeopardise their popularity. The library books then back up this theory as one of the books is titled ‘Sciences and Centaurs’ this is a very geeky title for a book and therefore backs up the idea that Napoleon is a geek. Another way this can be backed up is by the ninja spike and the drawings of warriors.

The first sound of the film title is the sounds of birds chirping this suggests that it is in the morning as this is usually the noise you hear when you first wake up in the morning. The happy, friendly music then starts up before the UFO Abduction insurance is displayed is could suggest that the music picks up when it shows more of who Napoleon is as a person and what his interested in.

AS Continuity Edit

The project was to create a scenario that would include two people having a conversation, I did this and made the scenario about a gang and how a man owes money to the gang leader. In the project we had to use two kinds of shots these were; match on action and shot-reverse-shot.

For the match on action shot I decided to use the movement of walking to the door, a close up of the mans hand pushing the door handle down and finally a shot of the man walking through the door when the camera was on the other side of the door.

The shot reverse shot that I used was seen in the first part of the clip, the man makes an awkward joke before the woman says to hand over the money that he owed. The first shot is taken first from over the woman's shoulder when he makes the joke and the cuts to over his shoulder as she reply's bluntly. The scene then carries on from over the woman's shoulder.

When the man hands over an empty bag the woman gets angry and tries (and fails) to shoot the man, this then makes an object fall from on top of a cupboard as the woman's shooting skill is minimal. The man then looks at the fallen object and says 'what the?' then shoots the woman in the head. The project also required me to use people sitting down at a table which I did as they were talking about the money.