Narrative

Discuss how you used Narrative in one of your coursework productions to create meaning for the audience (25 marks)

In Year 12 for my AS Media studies coursework, we created a film opening, the eZ life. This film opening conveyed our genre which was Thriller. We researched a variety of different film openings such as Zombieland and Project X. From each of these films we found a lot of ideas which we could incorporate into our film opening. Our film opening is non-linear narrative in different parts of the opening itself. We generated different meaning this through the use of camera, editing, sound and Mise en scene throughout our film opening. 

The editing in our video was deliberately constructed to create meaning for the audience. We used a number of fast cuts and transitions to create pace at the start of our music video. In the first refrain, we included Levi Strauss' theory Bionary opposites - we included some quick snapshots of festival shots which symbolise having a good time with everyone having a good time together, whereas at the end of our film opening, there are riots with flashing lights where chaos is erupting. This shows the audience the quick transition between violence and peace which enhances the feelings of the audience. Our first refrain has fast transitions of our main character illegally getting drugs off a drug dealer, we did this to show our audience that he did not think before what he acted and this happens so quickly in life. This gives the audience a sense of realism. We also used Allan Cameron's where we had a anachronic narrative. Through the use of editing we included various flashforwards, where we had a flashing danger sign when he got given the drugs. This was to give the audience an idea of what went wrong at the time. 

The use of the camera allowed us to create a variety of meanings for the audience. Throughout our film opening we used Barthers theory with the same close up of the eye where the pupils dilate. This was a symbolism in our film as it shows the transformation into a zombie. The close up to the pupils gives the insight to the audience that the transformation is so sudden. We created a worms view shot, where our main character walked over the camera. This was something which we felt would confuse the audience and leave them disorientated. We also generated a time laspe at which we had to keep the camera still and in the same position for every photo taken.

The main use of sound from our film opening was the song which was used for the first 2 minutes. This was a song which we felt fitted well with our film as our film was concerning the use of drug use in teens. This gave the audience a sense of realism as young teens across the world are experiencing this situation.