"Layer cake" deconstruction Wednesday, March 03, 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcG99G9tfSM

The character “Freddie” from this particular scene is a similar character we had in mind for our murderer. He is presented as a stereotypical homeless person. He has a greasy complexion, with un-kempt hair, and worn out, old clothes. He further exhibits connotations of greed and alertness to his surroundings, which is shown through quick abrupt movements and his ravenous attitude towards food.

I deliberately chose this particular scene to deconstruct, because we wish to use the same approach of the food being eaten as our hook to our film opening. We are hoping that the audience will respond by feeling repulsed and nauseated, but also intrigued by who the character is. The fact that the breakfast meal is a fry up will fit conventions normally attributed to an “evil/murderous” character, such as greed and selfishness. We will keep the ambiguity of the murderer by only showing shots of the mouth eating.

The shots used in the “eating scene” are quickly edited with a variety of shots showing different angles of the mouth. The fast paced editing allows the audience to be continually shocked and disgusted at the close ups. There are 11 shots overall showing both the plate of food and “Freddie”. The use diegetic sound, and the acting in these shots are brilliantly effective in supporting the sickening affect on the audience. We have decided, however, that we will not show the actual plate of food, only the food being eaten. This is because we thought the presentation of the plate might become awkward both for continuity reasons, and the fact that to have a plate will not satisfy the codes and conventions of a murderer, simply because a plate might imply a slight sense of manner and effort.

Mask Research Tuesday, March 02, 2010

In our new narrative, we have decided to mask the murderer. We decided that the scariest masks are the ones that look like scarecrow heads, the ones made from potato sacks.

This mask is a simple design but isn't the scariest of masks and the features aren't like what we had in mind.





This mask is good but doesn't look like we want it to- we want a more sack like look.







This sack mask is good but is hard to be taken seriously as it is smiling. However, it could also been seen as sinister as the smile could be ambiguous- happy smile or the product of satisfaction from killing someone?




This mask is good because it looks angry and is tattered and worn, suggesting that it is well used. It also has stitching over the mouth. We may use this design as it is similar to what we want.





This mask looks really good but it seems too complicated to make in the time we have and again doesn't look sacky.






This mask is really good and fits in well with what we want our mask to look like as it has the stitching over the openings which is really scary. We will probably try to make our mask as similar to this as possible.

Second Narrative Sunday, February 28, 2010

Ok - so when we had uploaded our footage from the camera from over half term onto the school macs, we found that the majority of our shots were wonky due to a faulty tripod and camera.

We had a "sit down" with Ms Hollis and decided that we would have to re-film and do a different narrative.

----> Here is the story I drew up for our second idea.

From our original idea we have cut out the "meat scene" and instead opted for our murderer to eat the "fry up" - thus following slasher film connotations more closely. We will also be introducing a mask for our murderer...