Examples of what is included in Thriller:

Themes+settings:                                                             Characters:
- Urban                                                                              - Protagonist vs. Antagonist
- Modern                                                                           - Hero vs Villain
- Crime                                                                              - Psychics
- Deaths                                                                             - False hero
- Missing people                                                                - Victims
- Greed                                                                              - Love/sex interest                                                                      
- Paranoia                                                                          - Comic relief

Narrative:                                                                        Emotions for audience
- Murder                                                                            - Suspense
- Protagonist threatened/ captured                                     - Tension
- Assault                                                                            - Scared
- Chase scenes                                                                   - Fear
- Gun fights                                                                       - Shock
- Mind games                                                                    - Excitement
- Twists
- Plot twists

Technical codes: 
- camera angles
- Movement
- Editing (cuts&fades)
- Mis-en-scene
- Sound
- Colour/lighting

Theories

Vladimir Propp 

Character roles: 
The hero - seeks something
The villain - opposes the hero 
The donor - helps the hero 
The dispatcher - sends the hero on his way 
The false hero - falsely assuming the role of hero 
The helper - gives support to the hero 
The princess - the reward for the hero, but also needs protection from the villain 
Her father 

Example of Propp:

Shrek 
The hero - Shrek as he saves Princess Fiona and wins her love
The villain - Lord Farquaad as he wants Fiona to himself 
The donor -  The donor is not a particular person but a magical dragon who helps stops the wedding of Lord Farquaad and Fiona when Shrek realises he loves her, and finds out that she is an ogre too.
The dispatcher - Lord Farquaad is the Dispatcher as he is the one who sends Shrek to go and rescue Princess Fiona.
The false hero - The False hero is Lord Farquaad because he earned the princess even though he had to get Shrek to complete the mission to save her from the castle,  however Shrek and Fiona end up in love.
The helper - Donkey is the helper in Shrek as he provides Shrek someone to talk to as well as moral support throughout the film. 
The princess - Fiona 
Her father - king Harold 

Claude Levi-Strauss 
Binary oppositions 
              - symbolic oppositions 
e.g. Hero vs. Villain 

Tzvetan Todorov 
Simple narrative structure. 
Start with equilibrium - in which life is normal then something happens to disrupts that then there is a new equilibrium 

Roland Barthes

codes - denotation and connotation to analyse images 
Action - a narrative device by which a resolution is produced through action e.g. shoot out 
Enigma - a narrative device that teases the audience by presenting a puzzle or riddle to be solves. Works to delay the story's ending pleasurably. 
Symbolic - (connotation) - secret hidden meaning 
Semic - (denotation) - what is literally happening
Cultural - a narrative device  which the audience can recognise as being part of a culture e.g. a 'made man' in a gangster film is part of the mafia culture. 

Trailer 2 analysis

Trailer 2

The purge:

At the beginning of this trailer we see a sunset, which usually implies happiness and new beginnings, which is then followed by a family holding hands with calming music in the background, so we see no connotations of it being a thriller making it misleading, which could be a theme within the film. Again the trailer has fading transitions, which adds to the calming affect with the writing “unemployment at 1%”, which could be a suggestion about the target audience, being an older age group.  

We then see a zoom in of a woman’s face who is smiling, which emphasises the happiness of the scene followed by two teenagers kissing with the caption “crime is at an all time low”. This could also be a hint about who the target audience is; also teenagers are often associated with crime which could be a slight stereotype within the trailer.

After we get a glimpse at why society is doing so well as it says “But once a year”. This also makes the viewer want to carry on watching as it leaves questions in their head.

Once we start to see the night time approach the scenes begin to speed up, making us the audience forget about the happy scenes we have just witnessed. We also see what is going on through an unusual way of viewing things, which is through a CCTV camera; this suggests crime is big part of the film. This also shows a technical change as the lighting has changed to low key lighting.

We also see props within these scenes, one being the sharpening of a machete, which implicates death. Therefore what we saw at the beginning was almost a cover up.

Half way through the trailer it then tells us what the story line is about by saying “all crime is legal”. Although it gives away part of the storyline we are still not certain to what happens in the film.

We see a massive contrast from the beginning of the trailer compared to end due to change of music as it starts of calm and becomes rapid and unsettling. We also see change due to the emotions of the characters shown, as the main protagonist (the woman) is seen smiling and with her friends to begin with but is shortly seen scared and screaming. This shows how the relationships between the protagonists begin to change and so do their facial expressions.

Usually within thrillers if you have wealth you are powerful, but this film contrasts to this as although the family we are shown lives in a big house and has good security they at just at as much risk as any other people therefore making them vulnerable.

Nearer the end we witness more violence as the protagonists and antagonists are introduced. During this scene we see a mixture of high and low key lighting due to the battle between the two.

The antagonists are introduced wearing masks and the men are wearing black and the women white this shows how the purge is bad but also removes evil from the town. 

Trailer 1 analysis

Trailer 1:

The lovely bones

Through the first shot of the trailer we get a clue to what age group the target audience as it says “ for appropriate audiences”, which suggests people aged 12 and over, however this is not stated. We then get more of an idea of the target audience when we see the main protagonist Susie, who is a teenage girl. We get clarification that she is of this age due to a shot of a typical school, which has two yellow school buses to suggest she is in middle school.

Through the Narrative the audience are enticed to watch the movie as all questions are left unanswered, one of these main questions is “who killed Susie”, as we are told by her she was murdered but not how. There is also a huge atmosphere of tension, one of the scenes that best show this is when the family discovers who her killer is, however the police do not believe them and says they need evidence.

Another way, which they entice the audience to watch this movie is through text. We are shown at the beginning the producer of the film and it states he is award winning, which suggests the film will be good. We are also shown two logos of film makers, which are well known one being Dreamworks and the other being film4. At the end they advertise the release date which gives the audience a talking point.

The Narrative at the beginning of the trailer is very calming, due to the background music and the fading transitions between shots, we also get to hear about the main characters life giving it a sense of normality.

This calm atmosphere is then disturbed when we find out she gets murdered as the shots start to speed up and the time of day is much later on.

We then see her murderer who is the man in glasses we assume, however as said earlier there is no evidence to prove this, which makes the viewer frustrated which mirrors how the characters are feeling.

Some of the scenes are interrupted by text, and then when it comes back to the story line we see the main character Susie is in her in-between world.

Due to the beginning the audience do not know that the voice over (the main character) gets murdered so are unsure to why she is speaking, but then come to a realisation when she tells us.

The trailer very clearly shows the film is a thriller due to the mis-en-scene used as there are many associations to thriller films throughout. There is also a use of lighting as the trailer switches to her death the lighting turns darker, which implicates danger.

As well as technical codes to show it’s a thriller, the producer also uses props such as the baseball bat seen which could represent death and danger. We also see a bracelet which is sentimental to the main character, which builds tension.  

Overall The Lovely Bones is not a traditional thriller due to the ‘fantasy’ side to it, and how the trailer shows no violence, however with things such as props, lighting, sound and language we instantly can tell it is a thriller. 

summer work

Through this essay I will be discussing the change of media through time and how media impacts gender roles, mainly focusing on women. Women have come a long way since WW1 where we had only just passed the eligibility of women act, which enabled us to become elected as members of parliament but have things really change?

There are many aspects of media that degrades us, one being the music industry. A lot of music in modern society uses derogatory terms towards women. An example of this is a song called “needy” by 67 which uses the line “that b***h can’t be bae, that b***h way too needy”. This line entails women require a lot of attention therefore making them “needy”, which in the case of this song the man can no longer, so called “go out with her” due to this. They also refer to this girl as a “b***h”, which almost cheapens her.

A current event on television at the moment is the Olympic Games, where there has been too many a dispute about commentator’s remarks towards female medallists. One being a female Hungarian swimmer Katinka Hosszú who won gold in the 400m race, however one of NBC commentators said her husband and coach was “the person responsible for her performance”, but was she not the one in the pool? Another being a BBC commentator who made a comparison between the women’s judo final to a “catfight”.

This then leads me onto the topic of female athletes and the stereotypes that come with them. One being – all female athletes are lesbian. A quote by Andrea Polain says “How can you win if you’re female? Can you just do it? No. You have to play the femininity game. Femininity by definition is not large, not imposing, not competitive.” Therefore any female who’s opposite to these characters must be gay, right? No. According to Nora Cothren, being a gay female athlete herself this stereotype put more and more pressure on her coming out. This was down to the fact her team mates had made comments like “why are there so many lesbians on that team? I hate it! Everyone thinks I’m a lesbian”, which of course was not aimed at her but affected her.

 

This Girl Can is national campaign developed by Sport England and a wide range of partner organizations. It’s a celebration of active women up and down the country, who are doing their thing no matter how they do it, how they look or how red their face gets. This is a positive campaign for females participating in sport to make them feel strong and motivated to keep taking part in sport no matter what they look like. It focuses on the strength and ability of women and not what they look. Above is an example of one of their ad campaigns.

The dream body shape is changing year by year, and is advertised throughout social media. The most popular body shape to have now is a slim/thick figure, which insists women have large breasts, a small stomach, big hips, big bum and big thighs. Women go to extreme lengths to achieve this body shape, one being the waist trainer, which according the Marie Claire website can squish you lungs and ribs which makes it more difficult to breathe.

One person who uses this device is Kylie Jenner, who many teen girls aspire to look like. She promotes lip fillers, dropped out of school at a young age, got caught drink driving and was offered $10 million to make a sex tape with her boyfriend Tyga, and this is the person we are made to look up to.

Because we have so many expectations to live up to we are constantly thinking we aren't as beautiful as we really are. This is best seen in the advert made by dove, where an artist and a woman sat in the same room with a sheet separating them. The artist then asked questions to the woman about her face and he sketched a picture of it. He then bought people who had seen this woman and asked the same questions about her and made a sketch from this. The difference was remarkable; the faces from other people’s perception were a lot happier, thinner and had fewer flaws.

“I have a brilliant heart and a beautiful mind. I am me, a perfectly flawed, beautyFULL work in progress. I promise to lift other girls up, have their backs, and make it safe for them to be exactly who they are. I'm on a mission to raise the standards for how we treat each other, how we treat ourselves, and how we treat the world. Every time I look in the mirror I’ll remind myself that I’m not alone, that I’m beautiful, that my voice matters, and that I am enough.” – I am that girl campaign