These three posters are part of a collection, and they all contain close up shots of one key dominant signifier. These signifiers show the main characters, being sports players, in a dominant, powerful light and this is reactionary to the audience that would usually consume this kind of product (young to middle aged men). The settings in these film posters are of football pitches/stadiums, and these give connotations of physical activity. The title text is all clearly defined and easy to see, and is often the second sign you will notice after the main character in the centre.
Firstly, this film poster shows a dominant signifier of a sports player, dressed in sports clothing which connotes ideas of physical activity. Unlike the other posters above, however, it contains a lot more text than just the title, such as credits, release date, and the company licensing it. These bits of text are nicely indented to the point that they to not obstruct the view of the dominant signifier, but can be read easily. This creates a paradigm of signs which give information about the film.
This poster shows a similar dominant signifier, but here he is presented in the middle of running, giving connotations of physical activity. The other signs, such as the text, company logo and licensing label are neatly arranged, and the title text makes use of different colours to stand out from the rest of the elements. The number in the title has a different colour to highlight it, as this is a separate edition of the same film series. The signs cover the dominant signifier in such a way that their face is still showed clearly, and his facial expression remains easy to read in the bullseye shot.
This poster shows once again a single dominant signifier in a similar posture, with details such as copyright information and the event the poster is referencing. The title text, being an icon, is slightly hidden by the dominant signifier. This makes it seem like anchorage and makes it more supplementary than this kind of title text should be, however I think this makes it pleasant to look at.
This poster has many images of the dominant signifier, being a football player, partaking in many different sporting actions. They are arranged in such a way that you can easily tell what his facial expressions are, giving connotations of head work and physical activity, and the icons of age rating and company branding are neatly positioned in a way which makes them only relevant if you look for them.
Linear – When a story is told in the order of what happens
Chronological – Following the order in which they occurred.
Sequential – Forming or following in a logical order or sequence.
Circular structure – A circular structure is an object that references itself – A story ends the same way it started (A moral of the story type thing)
Time based – Over a period of time.
Narrative arc– Literary term for the path a story follows. It provides a backbone by providing a clear beginning, middle, and end of the story.
Freytag’s Pyramid – Devised by 19th century German playwright Gustav Freytag, Freytag’s Pyramid is a paradigm of dramatic structure outlining the seven key steps in successful storytelling: exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, and denouement.
Exposition – A comprehensive description or explanation to get across an idea. Exposition is a device used in television, films, poetry, literature, music, and plays.
Inciting incident – The event that sets the main character or characters on the journey that will occupy them throughout the narrative
Rising action – The rising action starts right after the period of exposition and ends at the climax. Beginning with the inciting incident, rising action is the bulk of the plot.
Climax – The ending and leading up to the end of the narrative. The ending and finishing moral of the narrative
Falling action – Falling action is what happens near the end of a story after the climax and resolution of the major conflict. Simply put, falling action is what the characters are doing after the story’s most dramatic part has happened.
Resolution – The ending of the story. Occurs after the climax.
Denouement – Is an aspect of narrative that gives context and resolution to a major theme, relationship or event in a story.
Beginning / middle / end – Different stages of a story.
Equilibrium – One (First) of the stages in the theory of narrative structure of Todorov’s theory. It is explained about the condition that happens with a character. Is the beginning of the film, and the characters life is normal.
Disruption – This is the second stage of Todorov’s theory, where a characters life is about to change / have interference.
New equilibrium – The final stage of Todorov’s theory where a characters life goes back to normal. Is the ending of the film.
Peripeteia – The turning point in a drama after which the plot moves steadily to its denouement. A shift of good to bad in a characters life.
Anagnorisis – A moment of recognition or revelation in a story, where the characters life switches to a reversal of fortune.
Catharsis – The release and relief of strong or repressed emotions and often leads to a resolution.
The 3 Unities: Action, Time, Place – Action (a play / film should have one unified plot), Time (all the action should occur within one day), Place (a play / film should be limited to a single locale / location)
Flashback / flash forward – Flashback / flash forward – A interruption of a character remembering past tragic events.
Foreshadowing – An indication or hint of what is to come.
Ellipsis – A jump or skip in time in film
Pathos – The persuasive technique that appeals to an audience through emotions and to gain an emotional effect from the film. The quality of pity and sadness.
Empathy – The ability to sense other people’s emotions and to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling.
Diegetic / non-diegetic – Things that emanates from the story world of the film.
Slow motion – When a scene is slowed down in editing so the watcher can focus on a particular moment and aspect of the movie
In Media Res -Starting mid-action
Metanarratives – drawing attention to the process of storytelling
Unreliable narration – deliberately deceive audiences, providing plots that deliver unexpected moments – usually by revealing that a character is not who they claim to be.
Frame Stories – stories told inside of stories, testing Todorov’s ideal narrative structure through the presentation of nested moments of equilibrium and disequilibrium.
Synopsis and statement of intent
It’s about a poor family and the teen sons parents are struggling to get by, they have one son who wants to become a professional football player but can’t afford to pay for football training so he spends all his time playing street football and playing with his best friend, but his parents want him to get a job to help provide.
In this movie I will have the main character, the hero, being the teen who wants to become a football player. He will have a best friend at the start but then becomes the false hero, he then joins a rival team to his friend after the hero manages to get into a team through very hard work and training and being able to get free training due to his large skill and ability. The false hero will purposefully injure the hero out of spite that the hero is a greater player than him. So the hero has to go back home and start working for his family for a while. After being injured for a while we have a dispatcher (a coach) who convinces him to play again and carry on his training. To where he then gets scouted by a premier league team and this will be the anagnorisis where he earns enough money to provide for him self and his family.
The film will be funded and produced by Warner Brothers. It should have a least a mid level budget due to the simple nature of the story not needing many high level filming attributes or techniques. The poster will have the main hero at the front holding the football in his hands or at his feet, with his friend next to him but slightly behind to indicate his insignificance compared to the main hero and as also a slight foreshadow of his false hero intentions.
The genre of the film will be a feel-good type idea that focuses on a classic and conventional base story line following ideas of the Tripartite narrative structure. The genre would loosely be based on the films techniques and genre of “Blinded By the Light” where he young teenager faces antagonists and hardships to make his dream come true of becoming a professional football player, making his parents proud and taking them out of poverty.
Tztevan Todorov (Tripartite narrative structure):
A really good way to think about NARRATIVE STRUCTURE is to recognise that most stories can be easily broken down into a BEGINNING / MIDDLE / END. The Bulgarian structuralist theorist Tztevan Todorov presents this idea as:
Equilibrium
Disruption
New equilibrium
In the beginning of a movie such as Harry Potter, his equilibrium is that he lives in a foster home under the stairs and they are disrespectful and unkind to him, then begins the disruption where he finds out he is a wizard and gets sent to Hogwarts when now Voldemort wants to kill him, lastly, there’s the new equilibrium where it goes back to the characters being happy once again and the conflict is over.
A more sophisticated application of Todorov considers and recognises that stories are constructed in ways that test and subvert the three act narrative structure outlined above. A more sophisticated application of Todorov might also consider:
Plot and subplot(s)
Multiple equilibrium/ disruption sequences
Flexi-narratives
Sometimes there may also be an audience who expect action quickly and have a short attention and quick boredom span, so, Condensed equilibriums:
This structural approach could also be referenced to Freytag’s Pyramid:
exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, and denouement as illustrated below.
Vladimir Propp (Character Types and Function)
His theory is about narrative structures, as his work (based around an analysis of fairy tales) suggests that stories use STOCK CHARACTERS to structure stories. That is not to say that all characters are the same, but rather to suggest that all stories draw on familiar characters performing similar functions to provide familiar narrative structures.
Simply, Vladimir Propp theorised that although characters may seem different, there are 8 stock character types that they follow that relates to their function in the movie and their personalities.
CHARACTERS FUNCTION TO PROVIDE NARRATIVE STRUCTURE; Here are the 8 Stock Characters:
Hero
Helper
Princess
Villain
Victim
Dispatcher
Father
False Hero
Often there is a villain who has done something to a victim. This means that we need a hero, who (often) accompanied by a helper is sent out (by a dispatcher) to fight the villain.
The dispatcher or similar donor (such as a father figure) prepares thehero in his ‘quest‘ and gives theherosome magical object. The hero generally meets the princess as part of his quest / journey which usually provides a happy ending. During the narrative we (and the princess) may be presented by a false hero.
Propp says that a narrative does not necessarily have use all the characters.
Spheres of Action
As Turner makes clear ‘these are not separate characters, since one character can occupy a number of roles or ‘spheres of action’ as Propp calls them and one role may be played by a number of different characters’
However, Propp proposed that his list of stock characters are structured into a narrative that has 31 different functions that play an important role in organising character and story into a plot. Without going into detail for each, overall they can be divided into the following sections:
Vladimir Propp was a folklorist researcher interested in the relationship between characters and narrative . Propp argued that stories are character driven and that plots develop from the decisions and actions of characters and how they function in a story.
Vladimir Propp claimed characters could be defined by their “spheres of action” and the role they played in the progression of the story. After studying 100 fairy tales in tremendous detail, he identified seven archetypes: the villain, the donor, the helper, the princess, the dispatcher, the hero, and the false hero.
His 8 character types:
The Hero – 2 types = seeker hero and victim hero
The Helper – Helps the hero along the way
The Villain – fights the hero and becomes defeated
The False Hero – who appears to act heroically and may even be initially mistaken for the real Hero.
The Donor – who gives the Hero something special, such as a magical weapon or some particular wisdom.
I would like to create a poster of a film for the use of learning about internal structures. I would like my poster of the film to look very sinister and look very interesting so that it can attract the audience. I will do this by making it stand out by adding contrast to the poster as it will look more realistic. For my film there will be about 6 to 7 main characters who embark on a journey to stay alive. They are living in a house and are not allowed to escape or their will be consequences. My poster will have the advantage of the use of the setting and whereabouts if the characters are acting as the hero or the villain.
For my poster, I would like to create it with my own imagination and try to experiment with all sorts of techniques. This giving the impression of thinking of a more realistic storyline to not make it to complicated and being able to edit it easily. To make my poster interesting I will add a varies of different techniques such as having a rising action idea so that perhaps the storyline would be interesting with that.
My film is similar to the hunger games as the main point of my film is to survive and stay alive as long as possible, which is by completing tasks where you earn rewards. However, it is different from the hunger games as it won’t be set in a dystopian place but in a large house with a group of people. Another reason for being different than the hunger games is because they are not aloud to leave the house unless they would like to be a run far to survive, without being court. Their will also be a varies of tension if everyone from the house ends up leaving.
My film will be about a construction worker who is working on restoring an old abandoned house, he will then find a hidden basement in the house which once he enters seals him inside a labyrinth of hallways and different environments he will have to try and find a way out whilst avoiding all of the different creatures that lurks within the hallways. The film will be a horror with elements of humour and suspense.
Statement of Intent I want to create a comedy / horror film and have several jokes about finding a dead body and a gun next to it, it will be dark and funny at the same time. I want it to be mostly funny and quite serious at certain times. I want to target people that watch this film as 16 + as it is a dark comedy. The main character will be about a troubled boy always arguing with his parent until he finally gets fed up and leaves home, to then stumble across a knife and a dead body. For my posters, I will include the troubled boy and his parents in the background, with a knife in his hands. Furthermore in the second poster I will include less characters and just focus on the dead body and the boy.
My film can be seen similar to the stereotypical horror / adventure film as it has a boy going missing and further finding out mysteries about a murderer. My film will be different however because it will lead you on to what the audience predicts that a boy is going to find the murderer that left a gun by the body, but will have a twist on the whole story line and turn out not to be what the audience expected.
Cultural industries – Distributing cultural goods and services on industrial and commercial terms.
Production– The making of a video such as a commercial.
Distribution– promoting content to online audiences in multiple media formats through various channels.
Exhibition / Consumption– Retail branch of the film industry.
Media concentration– Examples, newspapers, magazines and tv and radio.
Conglomerates– a company that owns numerous companies involved in mass media enterprises.
Globalisation (in terms of media ownership)– the worldwide integration of media through the cross cultural exchange of ideas.
Cultural imperialism– How an ideology or a way of life is exported from one country to another through movement of cultural goods.
Vertical Integration– When a media company owns different businesses in the same chain of production and distribution.
Horizontal Integration– a media company’s ownership of several businesses of the same value.
Mergers– one or more undertakings involved carries on a media business.
Monopolies– concentrated control of major mass communications within a society.
Gatekeepers– Gatekeeping is the process through which information is filtered for dissemination, whether for publication, broadcasting, the Internet, or some other mode of communication.
Regulation– Mass media regulations are rules enforced by the jurisdiction of law
Deregulation– the telecommunications industry pertains to relaxing ownership rules regarding such items as the number of stations a single television or radio owner can possess in a market and whether or not a single corporation can own a newspaper, or television and radio station in the same market
Free market– The free market is an economic system based on supply and demand with little or no government control.
Commodification – Commodification is the transformation of the shape of the relationship
Convergence – media convergence, phenomenon involving the interconnection of information and communications technologies, computer networks, and media content.
Diversity – Diversity in the media is, more than a matter of professional ethics, a matter of questioning that given power.
Innovation– Media innovation can include change in several aspects of the media landscape – from the development of new media platforms, to new business models, to new ways of producing media texts.
Propp arrived at the conclusion that folk tales drew from a highly stable list of characters whose roles and narrative functions he defined as follows:
The hero- two types, seeker hero and victim hero
The villain- fights the hero and must be defeated
The princess and the princess’s father- is the hero’s reward
The donor- provides the hero to help defeat the villain
The helper- usually accompanies the hero and helps them along the way
Peripeteia– a sudden reversal of fortune or change in circumstances, especially in reference to fictional narrative.
Anagnoresis– the point in a play, novel or movie in which a principal character recognizes or discovers another character’s true identity or the true nature of their own circumstances.
Catharsis– the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.
Linear– progressing from one stage to another in a single series of steps
Chronological– (of a record of events) following the order in which they occurred
Sequential– forming or following in a logical order or sequence.
Circular structure– In a circular narrative, the story ends where it began. Although the starting and ending points are the same, the character undergo a transformation, affected by the story’s events
Time based– any artwork that has both physical and temporal dimensions. Contemporary artworks that include video, film, slide, audio, or computer-based technologies are referred to as time-based media works because they have duration as a dimension and unfold to the viewer over time
Narrative arc- literary term for the path a story follows. It provides a backbone by providing a clear beginning, middle, and end of the story \/
Freytag’s Pyramid /\- Devised by 19th century German playwright Gustav Freytag, Freytag’s Pyramid is a paradigm of dramatic structure outlining the seven key steps in successful storytelling: exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, and denouement
Exposition– a comprehensive description and explanation of an idea or theory
Rising action- starts right after the period of exposition and ends at the climax
Synopsis- a brief summary or general survey of something/an outline of the plot of a play, film, or book.
Condensed Equilibrium- Propelling narratives towards moments of immediate disruption to hook audience engagement
Metanarratives- Provide the audience with moments that draw attention to the fact that they are watching a story.
Todorov– most stories can be broken down into a BEGINNING / MIDDLE / END. Structuralist theorist Todorov presents this idea as Equilibrium, Disruption, New Equilibrium
