My intentions for this media text was to appeal to our target audience of 20- 40 years old demographic ranging from A-C1 intended to attract this market through the use of genre specific narrative tools; medium close ups, voiceovers, montages, enigma and various other codes and conventions. The social context of my media text was to comment and challenge the social representation of social solidarity concerning the ideology surrounding normality and the perception of people who don’t conform to these stereotypical values.
Here I used a quote from the memoirs of T.E Lawrence in witch he vividly re-counts the time he spent in the Arabian Peninsula. His memoires had a lot of thematically similarities of self-doubt, loneliness and self-segregation. By using this quote I intended to create an association with him that connotes my intended target audience due to the demographic that his memoirs were intended for, therefore the use of intertexuality. In this quote the protagonist is directly engaging the audience I specifically used this quote for this reason as it incorporates the audience to become part of the narrative and become emotional and intellectually invested and breaks the fourth wall.
I opted not to give the protagonist a name as I saw it creates an enigma code that draws the audience in and makes them invested in the character and who he is and what will happen to him this technique has been successfully narrative tool in many other texts such as layer cake (2004). According to Propp’s archetypal characters the ‘hero’s’ motivations is to save the ‘princess’ and his enemy is stereotypically a singular force, however for my narrative I wished to subvert this stereotype and have the motivations for the not to be the attainment of the princess but to find the truth and to not conform to the stereotype and have not just a singular antagonist by have a ethereal, ever-present and omnipotent force to be the ‘villain’.
For the score I researched a great deal of time into the many different options I could take with the soundtrack (non-diegetic) ultimately I used a track from requiem for a dream (2000) witch shared the same aesthetic and cinematographically similar approach.
In the last third of the trailer I had a voice over (non-diegetic sound) from the hero (according to Propp’s theory) whose purpose was to leave the audience wanting more and for this reason I opted to use this opportunity to introduce the antagonist of my narrative in reference only therefore creating an enigma code because this was the first mention of an antagonist in all of the trailer and by not showing who this antagonist is it creates a sense of ambiguity and encourages the audience to ask questions through the use of a voice over from my protagonist by doing so in this manner I hoped to entice the audience to find out more about my media text also conforming to Todorov’s narrative theory by ending the trailer in the disruption segment of the narrative. I also used this opportunity to show a key narrative focal point in that to show that no matter how much the hero tries to save this woman there are un comprehensible forces at work that are determined to stop him which is a common code and convention pertaining to my texts genre this in itself creates a enigma code for the audience by us not knowing whether he will overcome this coercion. All of these different narrative focal points create a cornucopia of lies and obstacles for not only the characters but also that in this section I opted to use a rhythmic sample of non-diegetic sound that fades away the connotations of it was to show the audience that although this is the end of the trailer this is not the whole narrative and there is much more to see. I also added a web address that was there to promote a cross media platform for the text.
Another technique I used for the trailer was the decision to make was to position the camera at a low angle as the protagonist walks over it, my intention was to connote that despite the fact that he is not in a position of power within the narrative he possess knowledge about key points within the narrative that the audience is cannot comprehend at this point and will have to view this text to know more
For the title card I wanted an image that both reflected my target audience and genre therefore I opted for an image that did not have an abundance of colour the connotation of this was to show the grim tone of the text and narrative, the reason I chose to use a silhouette of a tree at dawn that had no leaves for the main image was to connote two messages; one that this narrative is much like the seasons and how it is the darkest before dawn and secondly as a generic convention within similar texts in this genre. The choice of typography was used to reflect the genre as it is quite gothic.
One weakness was time and budgetary constraints if I had more time and resources available I would have liked to be adding some testimonials of well known individuals within the industry to raise the production values and again to promote a cross media platform ideology.
Another that I encountered was the matter of continuity as we had a problem that the actor who the protagonist had gotten a haircut during principle photography to combat this we had to radically change the various camera angles and shot types to minimise the potential exposure of the character another problem I encountered was the different types of costume codes that were being used again disrupting continuity this was the biggest problem I encountered and if I had another chance then would definitely enforce a much tighter time table and more reliable cast and crew.
