ANCILLARY TASK FLAT- PLANS

MY ANCILLARY TASK FLAT PLANS

Album of Greenday 'Wake me up when september ends' music poster

Our protagonist Ollie's face will be on the main highlight of the poster.  The face on the right will be central to the poster design on the left. The image will be dark over one side of his face and light on the other, showing a conflicted mind and a change in himself during the video. As the darkness in his mind begins to overpower him. His eyes will be visible on both sides however through editing skills to draw the audience into his mind.

The Digipak

Design for my front cover of my Greenday digipak. 'Ollie' is out own protagonist and therefore the 'star image' of our band and being influenced by Goodwin's theory, I have decided to focus on his face for the front image. 

The inside keeps up the theme of the silhouette faces for the other band members, which will either be filled with song lyrics or information on the band!

The back page will contain a band shot showing the backs of their heads with their particular instruments raised. The song titles will be places at the bottom of the page in the structure I have laid out.
The reason I have chosen to use silhouettes is to represent the darker genre of music that is punk/rock alternative which mainly focuses on the colour black. Not only this but using silhouettes takes away the identity of the band or person, which is a particular theme of struggling for an identity within P.T.S.D. as people can lose who they are.
I also chose this digipak as inspiration because I liked the idea of separating the band and giving them each a platform to be displayed on, highlighting the importance of the band as a whole but still giving 'Ollie' the star image on the front cover and poster.

REPRESENTATION

REPRESENTATION

Representation is the re-presentation of information. It is when we view a text and choose to re-present that information in a particular way as their are different interpretations of the same text. We mediate what goes on.

We use representations to engage and entice the audience quickly as we only have a short time to grab attention.

One particular use of representations are:

• Stereotypes
• Archetypes - (extreme stereotypes)
• Counter-types - (challenges stereotypes - opposing)

Media texts, such as films, television programmes, books etc. all feature stereotypes of one way or another, and because the media mediates what we see, these representations have become part of our own look at life; even when representations are changing all the time.

Gender stereotypes are a massive stereotype that is beginning to change across the world, giving women especially more equality and this particular stereotype is one Eddie and I have taken particular interest in regarding our music video.

The Punk Rock genre in general features a mostly male group of people, as most of their artists and bands tend to be male with a strong lack of female members.
Here are just a few punk rock bands that are just male members:

• The Clash
• Nirvana
• My Chemical Romance

These three very well known punk/ rock bands feature all male members, which leads us to question why there is an absence of women.

By challenging the stereotypes of a male drummer in a punk/rock band we have also modernised the music video into the 21st century where these representations are lowering.

We also chose to add a female into our army scenes as it is another known stereotype that women are girly and wouldn't be in the army, or that the army is just for men. So we added Alice as a counter-type to this stereotype to modernise our music video into the 21st Century. Therefore we have subverted this gender stereotype.




Representation is also all about what visual and technical codes you use to present an idea - for instance the colours, the dress, camera angles, lighting, miss en scene etc.

For instance all of our actors are either wearing black, red or green which are the typical punk colours, and we chose to do this as it represents the punk genre of music making it identifiable to an audience.

The media has the power when constructing stereotypes and representing information as they choose what we as an audience, see. Unfortunately for us as an audience though, the media usually only shows bad things and negative views, often portraying people in a bad light, sometimes with stereotypes. Whereas the good, positive views and portrayals of people in a light way is not often shown.

FACEBOOK FEEDBACK

Before going ahead with our choice of music video, I decided that we needed to know a little bit more about our audience and if our video would appeal to the mass audience, not just a niche audience. To do this I got people to fill out a survey-monkey online to get this direct audience feedback.

One of the questions asked was about which social media sites they used, which would be useful to know for more audience feedback and to advertise!










We found that Facebook was used by 100% of our respondents and target audience, so we decided that this would be the best way to get our video across to our audience.

With this in mind we posted our video so far onto Facebook which people could then comment their feedback onto.

Above you can see some of the feedback we received which was very useful as we have positive points and improvements that we can use in helping our work further. Many have already been sorted and added into our video. Getting feedback via social media is incredibly useful as people feel more comfortable with saying what they really feel. Although they are identifiable vis Facebook, there is still an element of greater confidence because they are behind a screen. This way we can get honest feedback better than we can do in person.

TZVETAN TODOROV

Tzvetan Todorov:

Todorov was a Bulgarian philosopher who suggested the theory of an Equilibrium that many stories often follow.
This was a simple five step narrative:

1. A state of Equilibrium where all is well
2. A disruption of that order by an event or occurrence
3. A recognition of the disruption of order
4. A form of attempt to fix the damage that the disruption has caused
5. A restoration of the new Equilibrium

• As you can see from the diagram above, Todorov's Equilibrium Theory is a circular narrative which means that the story can start from any point of the theory. 
• The characters usually take a journey which involves some transformation in their character. 
• Lastly some genre's can have multiple disruptions.

Eddie and I chose to use Todorov's Equilibrium Theory throughout our own work and used it to influence the way in which our music video narrative would turn out.

1. Our music video starts off with the present day of a new equilibrium, everything is in order but there is some underlying disruption, yet this is not made clear to the audience at first.
2. We then foreshadow what happened in his life at war - the disruption.
3. Regardless of these two factors which do fit in but not in order, the army narrative is a complete form of Todorov's Equilibrium.
4. Our beginning shots show our army troop as friends, happy, innocent and naive of what's about to come.
5. The audience gains a sense before they do that something bad is going to happen through point of view shots from the enemy soldier - highlighting a disruption in the Equilibrium.
6. When 'Lewis' one of our soldiers gets shot the troop recognise the disruption as it gets worse and worse.
7. 'Dan' attempts to repair the damage by fighting the enemy soldier, which goes wrong and using our ideas of an alternative music genre, 'Dan' gets killed, creating another disruption in the Equilibrium!
8. The new Equilibrium comes about with our protagonists future, as although things are now in order, he is still struggling with the effects of the Equilibrium.

THE FILMING

After getting our actors kitted up into their army costumes, the next stage was to capture the strong bond and friendship that this group of soldiers had. This was of vital importance to make the enemy attack a more distressing sequence of images for our audience, in order to show the sheer velocity of our protagonist's memories. Plus this also adhered to our narrative in showing Ollie and Dan's close friendship, giving Dan's death a bigger impact.

We have chosen to do a music video however, so we understood that the video could not be too dark (according to music videos modern conventions), yet we still wanted the music and lyrics of the song to enhance the clips our audience would be shown, therefore we wished for a video to have a powerful meaning and message.

Using wide angled shots we managed to capture the bond of the army soldiers, showing their interactions with one another and by using close ups of each of their faces gives the audience a glimpse of the people they will be following. 

'Alice' arrives after a little while to join their group as we wanted to subvert the stereotype that it was mainly men in the army. She is clearly well accepted into the group from the hugs she gives the other members, showing equality within their job.

Our main aim however was to focus on the friendship between 'Dan' and our protagonist. It would be their friendship that is lost and enhanced in 'Ollie's' mind. To do this we decided to film them play fighting to emphasise the fact that they might be closer than the others were. By choosing play-fighting for them to do was also an effective idea as it highlighted their youth. This could increase the emotion felt by the audience as they were so young and naïve to be fighting in the army, and the attack was so unexpected that you feel tremendous empathy for them.

These shots are quite key in the themes of foreshadowing we have used in our music video. The position that our actors hold here is particularly significant. This shows them at their best, with Ollie above Dan laughing. However this theme is also repeated when Dan is dying and reflected in the image below.

This image shows their closer bond and reflects the emotions of the situation. Their proxemics have become closer as the reality hits. I really like how we have used a reflective shot to mirror the progression in their journey.

After showing the relationships between the soldiers we began to add in long shots which gave the impression that they were being watched. 

Next we headed over to a large clearing which featured a giant puddle to which we thought was the ideal setting for our next shot. The idea of this shot was to have our soldiers all chilling around the water when 'Lewis' gets unexpectedly shot.

Amongst this we showed shots of the enemy watching them and getting ready to shoot. We made the enemy clearly distinguishable through the use of a gas mask, however we chose to also have him in army gear to show that although they are fighting, we are really the same and its humans killing other humans.

We chose to use a variety of different shots highlighting both the onlookers view and point of view shots were used to see the attack from the enemy's part of view, looking over the young, innocent victims.
A variety of different shots were also used for the first death of the group. Using the sun as a link motif to death and heaven which we have used in this scene but also in the major death scene with 'Dan'.

Once Lewis is dead, we show the split in the army team, and our main focus comes onto Ollie and Dan as they seperate. Dan (the best friend) takes on the enemy soldier, complimenting the fast key change in music which the speed of the cuts.
We intermix the 180 degree tracking shot of the band with shots of Dan fighting the enemy, along with Ollie finding the bodies of his diceased soldier friends.

 

 
Ollie then finds the bodies of his friends which spark up anger for him to go and kill these enemy soldiers. Not only this but Dan is nowhere to be seen - so he must find him.