Preliminary task

Audience study

Introduction: Throughout this blog post i am going to write about different audience theories, simply so I can find the right target audience for my opening sequence.

Three main qeustions that need to be taken into consideration:

• Why do audiences choose to consume certain texts?
• How do they consume texts?
• What happens when they consume texts?

The Effects Model

The consumption of multiple media texts has an effect or influence upon the audience. Audiences are passive and powerless to prevent the influence. Hypodermic needle theory this theory suggests that messages are injected into the audience by the powerful syringe like media, The audience is more or less powerless and the theory suggests that the media works like a drug, the audience of particular media texts are drugged and addicted. One experiment which took place was the bobo doll experiment  an idea turned into controversial research that apparently proved children copy violent behavior. This experiment was carried out by Albert Bandura in 1961, even thought this was a long time ago i feel that this behavior is this present in today's medias texts.

Production and Style study

Introduction Through out this post i am going to research what lighting, camera movement, camera angles and framing does to create dramatic effects in the genre of social drama.

Framing: Framing of the shots in social drama and many other genres are critical to creating a dramatic scene/effect. This is because Framing a shot pertains to how you compose your main subject and the elements surrounding it to fit the rectangular space your camera provides. This plays a vital role in exploring the varying meanings, implications, and emotions of a scene.  "Rule of Thirds." This divides the screen using certain lines to create smaller rectangular boxes where the significant elements of the shot are typically placed. Whether using the "Rule of Thirds" or not when composing a shot, the framing of a footage should lead the eyes toward the intended focal point or main subject.

Lighting: Lighting is usually used to create mood, emotion story or setting which all depenmds on the subject matter of the social drama piece. It is needed for proper exposure of every shot in the film for it to be clear to the audience. For example if the social drama film was covering a subject of domestic violence you'd expect the lioghting to be slightly underexposed and very dull to get the audience feeling the victim of the abuse.

Camera angles: Camera angles in social drama are very important to again set a mood, atmosphere or establish something. here are a list of different camera shot types/angles.

• Closeup
• Mid shot
• Long shot
• Reverse shot reverse
• Dolly zoom
• Dutch tilt
• Establishing shot
• Handheld shot
• Low angle/ High angle shot
• Over the shoulder shot

Some basic shots normally featured in social dramas and film in general. 

Camera Movement: There are a variety of different camera movements, here are some displayed below.

• Camera pan
• Camera tilt
• Camera Trucking/Tracking
• Dolly zoom

Editing Effects practice

 Editing effects practice: To prepare for my final opening sequence piece i decided to go ahead and choose a reliable editing software. At first i thought that it wouldn't hurt playing around with some more basic editing software such as windows movie maker but i decided to get a couple shots together and begin practicing to get a good idea of what to expect.


Simple shots

Motion Blur
Standard framing

Reduced pace of video too 0.5x
mid-shot examples