Theorists

Narrative
Todorov- Theory of Equilibrium

Propp's character types

Genre
Fowler- Not all characteristics of a genre always appear in a text.


Audience
Stuart Hall- Reception Theory
Encoded Message, Decoded Message, Preferred Reading

Holloran- Active- Researchers should look at what people do to the media not what the media does to people.

Roland Barthes- texts can have multiple interpretations

Judge Dredd Drug Scene Deconstruction

Within the narrative of this 2012 drug fuelled film Judge Dredd a new drug has been created causing everything appear to the consumer to be happening at 1% of its normal speed. Therefore within these drug using scenes an incredibly effective slow motion edit is utilised in order to depict the drug usage.

In addition to this, another post-production effect is used, where the colours are greatly enhanced and saturation of the shots is highly increased. It is interesting to note the contrast between the dull colours used to convey the rest of the film, for example the grey-tinted establishing shots at the start of the official trailer, and the enhanced colours used to portray these drug induced shots. It can be suggested that this drug usage presents the characters a sense of escapism, as they can leave their dull, crime-filled lives, and be lit up in the vivid, colourful and enjoyable life of drugs. The colour usage present a physical contrast between the life they have and the life they desire.

The fade from vivid to dull used in this shot demonstrates as the effects of the drugs wear off and reality of the situation sets in:


via GIPHY

The colours  switch from very saturated and bright, to dark and dull, the most prominent colour changing from yellow to grey.

The use of extreme close ups demonstrate the importance of this drug and the significant effect that it has on its users, in this shot the focus is on the drug, even though it is not the centre of the scene, as everything in the background in blurred ad faded, this really depicts the strong effect the drug has, and how it takes control of the person and the situation.

Editing

Editing is one of the most significant parts of making a teaser trailer. Because they are conventionally short (1 minute 30 seconds and under), a lot of fast paced editing is required, in order to show a range of shots throughout the movie.

Here is a list of editing techniques we have used in our trailer:

Straight cuts

These are used in almost every type of film and are a simple, effective way of changing to another shot.

Fades

This is a fade to black which we have used to separate the trailer into two halves, before and after the drug. The concept of day turning into night is often used in films to create a sense of foreboding- something is going to occur now that it is night as this provides a more sinister, mysterious environment.

Layering Shots

A theme in our Teaser Trailer, is that the protagonist almost transforms into a whole other person when she is under the influence of the drugs, which is why we used layering. More than one image of the protagonist on the screen not only created a visually distorted shot, it also depicted the sense that something sinister was occurring- and that both sides of this character can't co-exist forever.

Montages

A convention of a teaser trailer is fast paced montage editing- to allow a variation of shots to be included. The two main montages are the one at the beginning, representing the protagonist's life before, and the next one is when the bass drops in the non diegetic song and the protagonist's life spirals out of control. There is a juxtaposition between the two and they highlight the effect drugs can have.

Vignette

When  filming in the Theatre, we realised the light was best placed, if it was behind Bethan, creating a red outline around her silhouette. However there were items in the background that we needed to remove so the vignette tool was very useful on Final Cut Pro. We were able to darken the edges around the shot, without making the entire shot darker thus fading the vibrant colour.

Cutting shots and changing the order, to create a jittery effect- causing an effect of distortion was another Post-Production technique we used. Rather than a simple shot of the protagonist putting the drug into her mouth, we experimented with moving frames around and the final result was something that we believed worked well with the theme of addiction.

Typography

Since our plot is focused around drugs, there is an element of distortion. We would like this to be reflected in the title.

These are some ideas we had for our title's typography. In the end we chose a font similar to the bottom one, but added an animation.

The way the letters disintegrate, fits in with the theme of drugs, possibly hinting at cocaine.