Representation Theory

Auteur Theory

Tarantino’s love of music often plays an essential role in his films: Reservoir Dogs without “Stuck in the Middle with You” or a Pulp Fiction without “Misirlou” as not Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction at all. In the booklet that comes with The Tarantino Connection, a collection of soundtrack songs from Tarantino’s movies, Tarantino describes his perhaps unsurprisingly musically-inspired method of film conception as follows: “One of the things I do when I am starting a movie, when I’m writing a movie or when I have an idea for a film is, I go through my record collection and just start playing songs, trying to find the personality of the movie, find the spirit of the movie. Then, ‘boom,’ eventually I’ll hit one, two or three songs, or one song in particular, ‘Oh, this will be a great opening credit song.'” Hence his use of Dick Dale, the “King of Surf Guitar,” for the opening credits of Pulp Fiction. (From http://www.openculture.com/2014/09/quentin-tarantino-the-art-of-the-music-in-his-films.html)

Tarantino is also known for his stylised violence. All of his films include death and gory detail.

Additionally, strong female leads are also predominately used throughout Tarantino’s career, thus he does not follow stereotypical 'Damsel in Distress' Propp character types. For example, Jungle Julia (In Death Proof), Bridget Von Hammersmark (Inglorious Basterds), Alabama Whitman (True Romance), Mia Wallace (Pulp Fiction), Zoe Bell (Death Proof), Santanico Pandemonium (From Dusk Till Dawn), O-Ren Ishii (Kill Bill), Jackie Brown (Jackie Brown) and The Bride (Kill Bill). All of these characters require aid from other characters at some point in their films, representing that they are not all typical protagonists. However, The Bride is the strongest and the most represented 'hero' within his movies because she has an ability to portray an assassin when necessary. This is unique for many films because we find that the protagonist is often male, however it is positive for post-feminism and the modern day that female characters are playing the main hero roles.

Narrative: Quentin Tarantino follows a non-linear structure, due to flashback's. In this case, 'Kill Bill' is presented with a series of flashbacks explain Beatrice's circumstances and how she became jilted and desperate for revenge. Whilst, in 'The Hateful Eight' the ending is altered to connote that the whole plot was a plan, on behalf of Jody (played by Channing Tatum.) This provides variance and a twisted format, to tell the plot uniquely and with tension, to enhance the audience.

Trademark shots:
1. Trunk shots and point of view cinematography. These provide the characters with power, and cause the audience to believe that we are in the trunk looking at them.

2. Close ups of human features or objects for verisimilitude and fine detail, creating audience information and a sensual mood. Furthermore, the extreme close ups connote emotions and create intimacy between the audience and the action. 

Link: https://vimeo.com/124258143

Film Noir/Horror: Character and narrative theory research.

Conventions we are planning to follow or subvert

Conventions to Follow:

• Dark, isolated location - This will appeal to our target audience because this is a conventional location for Film Noir, thus the audience will expect this. Additionally, this will connote the themes of corruption and mayhem, and allow the exploration of low-key lighting.
• Use of colour red - This will appeal to our audience because it is a modern way of denoting the conventional themes of blood and to represent a stereotypical Propp antagonist.
• Low key lighting, shadows - These will attract our audience because they connote mystery, relating to the genre narrative and style, whilst engaging the audience through suspense.
• Eerie atmosphere - This would attract our target audience because it will put them on the edge and encourage them to watch the film, wanting to be informed. Again, it creates suspense, thus the target audience.
• Dutch and inverted angles - These shot types and angles are common in Film Noir, as well as the horror genre because they provide distortion, making the connotations and audience experience more complex and awkward. As a result, tension is formed, relating to the plots of both genres. Moreover, the angles provide variation for audience pleasure.  
• Reflections/blinds-This will appeal to the Film Noir primary target audience because this prop type is essential within this genre. So, this is an audience expectation and will soothe them through recognition.
• Betrayal-This theme is conventional for our hybrid genres, being commonly used for plot twists, especially in relation to love or affairs. Therefore, this theme provides variation to widen the audience interest to various demographics and further psychographics in the way that females in particular stereotypically prefer aspects of love.
• Smoke/fog (perhaps, depending on location etc)-This will be exciting to explore and incorporate because it will clearly create mystery and as a convention we want to use this, especially when it will work well with the horror genre. However, this convention will be hard to use because of the lack of profit and our inability to get and use a smoke machine.

Conventions to not follow:

• Teenage victims (horror)-This convention is only use in horror films, so it will not relate to the Noir style. Thus, in order to prevent confusion we are not planning to use this convention.
• Last man standing (horror)-Again this is a particular horror convention that would likely not suit the Film Noir genre because we do not intend on killing of a lot of the characters, especially when we are approaching a tongue-and-cheek style.
• Typical horror weapons such as chainsaws-Another subjective convention, that we will not use because of lack of realism and relatability to Noir.
• Eroticism-We are struggling to find and think of an appropriate actress to play a Femme Fatale, so this will instantly prevent the use of profound eroticism.
• Deep Focus-Due to technical limitations this will be hard to incorporate, however we will experiment with our camera work to get more footage that might actually work.
  

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Font Research

The font for the film 'The Honesman' is Cheltenham Bold Extra Condensed. Saban Films have likely chosen this font for this Drama/Western because it creates a sense of roughness and violence, perhaps connoting the sand and desert location. We personally like this font because it looks classic, with modern details, allowing the presentations to be denoted in a similar way to what we desire.

The font here is Times™ Roman. This choice of font is used in Lucas Film Production in order to provide recognition and unity within this franchise. In my opinion, it works effectively with the title lexical choices, in the way that we can instantly see the key words.

The font used here is Industria™. This font is used for classic crime films, and I think that the size and the tightness appropriately reflects the 'silence' and eerie atmosphere (both being Horror conventions.)

This font used is called Egyptian Bold Condensed, commonly incorporated in a Warner Bros production. This was effective for the Romance/Drama genre. The white colour signifies the wind and it effectively juxtaposes the flame colours.

This font was used by United Artists in 1988. Caslon 540 Roman is suitable for a Drama with a melodramatic style. This font is effective because it is synchronised and neat, perhaps suiting a straightforward idea. Also, the white colour adds to the simplicity.

Differences and similarities between a theatrical trailer and a teaser trailer.

A Theatrical and a Teaser trailer share similarities and difference, since being released at different times of the production cycle and due to the separate objectives and reasons behind them. I have completed this research because the teaser trailers offers an insight to our production in the early stages as well as enabling us to get feedback and a hype, both from the potential target audience. Additionally, it will develop our practical skills because of the different requirements to successful make a Teaser in comparison to the full length Theatrical trailer.

Textual Analysis of Student Work (William Guy)

Will has completed this analysis of another students work as part of the research for our own production

I enjoyed watching this trailer and I am keen to use some of the elements for our production. In particular I would like to make use of darkness in a similar way to how I discussed on slide 5 of the analysis because this I feel this is very effective and it also an important convention of Film Noir. However, I would avoid the psychological problem/possession theme because this is not very conventional of film noir and although we are planning on using some horror elements, our main genre is still film noir.