Tuesday 30 September 2014


Mix Tape

Audience
I would say mix tape was mainly aimed at a young audience as both characters are children. The video has an energetic theme to it which is shown in many different ways, one example would be the boy jumping on the bed playing the 'air guitar' as it's fast tempo and it also reflects a child's behaviour very accurately. The music also gives off a happy childlike vibe as well.

These songs also give off a nostalgic feeling to an older audience as well, as one of the songs aged from 1965 by the kinks and the other was from 1976, this is effective as they give off a de-ja-vu like feeling to an audience who'm grew up in this time period.

The film also revolves around mix tapes which were most popular throughout the 70's and 80's, so this may also bring back memories for an older audience. I would also say Mixtape's target audience is aimed more at males as the film is based on the experience of a young boy and his love of the girl next door, so it revolves more around how he feels.




I got these two graphs of different types of target audiences off of a website called pearl and dean, I would say mix tape would fall in between these two types of audiences. This is because I would say that teens (15+) could relate to it, but I would also say older audiences because of the nostalgic time period.























































Lovefield

Narrative
Lovefield creates tension and gives us a very misleading sense of the narrative by using many different types of semantic codes, as it starts with very eerie and creepy music which makes us think something bad is going to happen and creates tension.

At this point we cannot see anything which is going on because of the chosen location, the corn crop is an effective location as we'd usually tend to link this type of setting with a thriller/horror as in these films people usually tend to go missing in the crops at night. Also the crop helps hide what is actually going on as it enables this film to have extreme longshots without showing what is actually happening, so it makes it seem mysterious and once again misleads you to think it's a thriller. This location is also effective as you can clearly see it's completely laches life and no one is around which stereotypically would be a great place a murderer would attack it's victim. We then have a slow tilt shot which leads up to a crow sitting on a swinging sign, this is a good prop as you usually connote crows with death. This crow also becomes a great asset to the film later on as it starts crowing more and more through out the film creating more tension as it becomes almost symbolic for a cry of fear or a scream for help as the man is going to get a blanket for the boot of his car.















The Offering -
                 

Summary of the offering
As it's edging midnight, a pick up truck speeds down a old icy woodland road. Inside are two men which are on a mission which includes an offering of some sort for someone or something, but they forget an important ingredient, Meat. This film is a thriller/horror which builds tension in various ways which is effective for this genre.

Media language
This film starts off with a longshot on a very dark ambigious setting, eventually two lights appear to emerge from the distance. As the lights become closer you can manage to tell it's a car with it's head lights on, then using a continuity transition it cuts to a medium shot from behind and you can tell this 'car' is a truck and because of the use of the low key lighting you can tell they're racing through a woodland road. The speed the truck is going at is also ambigious as it makes you wonder why're they going so fast. As the title "The Offering" comes up you can see the car in the distance vanish once again. Once it's vanished it cuts to a close up of a man with his hands above the steering wheel looking very focused, so this makes us as the audience presume he's the driver of this truck. It then cuts to the passanger seat and it's an older looking man whom from his actions looks more impatient and frustrated, cutting to a shot of the time on the dashboard "11:55" makes it seem like they're rushing to get somewhere instead of rushing away from something. Cutting to a 2 shot of both the driver and the passanger you can see there's worry and awkward tension between both the characters, the driver then cuts this tension by saying "Relax... It always happens this way remember?" So this dialogue tells us that what they're about to do they've done before, but the response he gets is "It's not exactly something you forget" in a spiteful tone, so this also makes us feel that it's something quite contreversial in the context of the film world as it's something that the characters are disagreeing about and that's it's something quite serious that they're about to do.

It then cuts back to a longshot where you can only see the headlights throught the darkness again, but because of natural lighting from these lights you can see a silhoutte of the trees, like someone is watching them within the darkness.




















about a girl
Representation
The extract begins with the 'girl' dancing in silhouette to pop music which she's singing, this is effective as the fact that she has to sing this music instead of dance to a backing track shows that she probably can't offered a device to provide the music. Also how she is dancing in what looks like a field represents that she also doesn't have enough money to go to a place which provides her the space to practise. The low key lighting is effecting because how she is in silhouette foreshadows her dreams, the fact that she wants to be 'rich' and famous, but this silhouette represents that we cannot see her just like the rest of the world can't, they don't know who she is yet. You could also say the lyrics she's singing may relate to her life and this song is quite personal to her. The font chosen for the title is an old style texting font. This font would be the only available on a mobile phone when this short film was released (12 years ago). This gives you an impression that she’s of a working class before the film has begun because if this had been made a lot more recently it indicates she has a phone which would be aged and also valued very cheaply.   

When she’s walking along the river many things indicate she’s of a lower working class, the location looks very industrial and also worn down. The un-saturated colour this film has connotes this location to be quite dull and lifeless and you could say in this way editing is used to give this outlook of working class too the audience. Also the graffiti on the walls could be linked with rebellious youth and makes the audience judge the area and also the guardians upbringing of these teens. There's also a lot of litter in the river which represents this class' outlook on life and this indicates that they don't really care about how they live and what the area they live in looks like.