Barthes codes

In class we have watched various different films that do not follow the typical conventions of todorov's and propps theorys yet follow the thoery of a french theorist Roland Barthes, he dicovered the Hermenutic theory in which the audience is enigmatic where the audience doesnt get the whole story straight away and have to ask themselves questions. The purpose of this is so that the audience builds up tension and it's kept like that until the end when all is revealed.

This is a brief explanation of the code and the code that can be pair with the hermeneutic code called Proairetic code.

The hermeneutic code (her)
- refers to any part of the story that is not explained fully and then becomes a mystery to the audience and the full truth is often not explained.
Snares: deliberately avoiding the truth.
Equivocations: partial or incomplete answers.
Jammings: openly acknowledge that there is no answer to a problem.

The Proairetic Code (ACT)
-also builds tension, referring to any other action or event that shows something else is going to happen, and which gets the audience guessing as to what will happen next.
The Hermeneutic and Proairetic Codes work as a pair to develop the story's tensions and keep the audience interested.

Notes on narrative

www.aber.ac.uk/media

Information isnt just controlled by signs but also being organised into 'Narrative devices' which can be use to control how the information is revealed to the audience and to who and when. One form of narrative device is shifting in time, which includes flashbacks , flashforwards , notions of the present, , repetition of a sequence, dream sequences , hallucinations, premonitions and supernatural projection.

An example of this is a flashback can include signs that will after the meaning of the signs in the present time frame and vise versa. In saving private ryan, which is almost entierly in flashaback revelas the identity of the person whos memories have been viewed , which also reveals a shift in narrative point of view which had until the return to the notional present been concealed.

the second type of narrative device is shifting of the narrative point of view. Most commonly the sharing of knowledge between the main characters and the audience reveals the story information. However there are other methods of information disclosure that rely on gaps of knowledge between different groups or individuals.

We could use this sort of narrative in our film as we are doing it about dremas so that we could use lots of flash backs , flash forwards and the obvious deram sequences that will dominate our trailer.

Technique used in films 'effect'
Flash back
flashforward: The information revealed in one time frame will alter the understanding that the
present audience has of another time frame eg. Saving private ryan and citizen caine.

Repetition: Information can be revealed by increasing the duration of a repeated incident or by changing the narrative point of view of the incident eg Memento.

Dream : Dreams can be used to mislead the audience by making them belive that some events are actually taking place but in reality are only dreams eg. Mullholland drive, Jacobs ladder.

Hallucinations: Again hallucinations can mislead the audience and situates them with the character in terms of thier knowledge eg. a beautiful mind.

Premonitions : premonitions set upm expectations about what is to occur in the narrative, but these expectations can be subverted eg Dont look now/

Voice over : Voice- over discrepancies can create humour or be used to show decit between characters. Further they delimit the terms of narrative disclosure between the characters.

Mood board

Here is the mood board that we did we decided to use a creepy background like with the trees so its dark and creates an unpleasent atmosphere then the horror typography complements that we purposely decided also to use a stereotypical type face. With the title of the film deep sleep we decided to have it centeral so it creates a focal point to the whole of the mood board and the typeography used here and the type face used on it makes it appear to be old and dream like. We put things associated with dreams like the person sleeping and the dream catcher and the music box also we put in a fear with the clown we decided to do that because we wanted to show a fear rather than just gore and horror also people find clowns very frightening and creeepy. We went into the location with the house even though this wont be the house that we will be usuing we wanted to show it on the mood board as it is setting the scene without giving too much away. the knife and the person holding the knife we wanted to show a killer/ killers but not giving it away this is why the face is balcked out also we just have the knife there becuase we want our audience to know that there will be some sort of blood and gore in our film. Finally we have the films that have influenced us to make our trailer we have decided on halloween and nightmare on elm street as they are quite low budget horror films and use simple shots which we could do on virtually no budget.

Todays work

Today me and emma have started to do our mood board we have listed all of the ideas which we would like to have on it for example the style, actors setting etc. We have decided to do the mood board as we both take a level art so we thought that we could do the mood board justice. Matt and rathe are drawing out the draft idea for our story board and making rough notes on camera shots and angles.

We have had an idea for a scene for a trailer we were going to have sort of clincky child like music as if like a child's mobile or a music box then we are going to have the camera in a over head shot looking down on the actor then they are going to wake up and panic then calm down and think everything is ok then hands are going to come down and grab the actor then they are going to let out a horrified scream.

Group ideas and contrubitions

We have discussed in our group previously about doing the genre of a horror/ teen slasher film, in out group we have all had a few ideas how to do this genre of film but we havent become certian as of yet.

One of the ideas was to do a convetional teen slasher film where the setting was in the woodsand the kids get killed off one by one and then the camera jumps to happier times to compare and contrast there good times to the current event that is happening.

The current idea that we have is about teenagers and children having dreams/ nighjtmares that actually come true. We have brain stromed a few ideas about what characters that we want the scenery, props and angles. The camera shots that we were thinking about using were close ups to show the characters fear to whats happening also to mka eit scarier for the audience as you cant see whats going on and can only tell by the victims facial expressions.