A QUESTION OF IDENTITY

2016 SECTION B "A QUESTION OF IDENTITY"

 Genre  Narrative  Representation  Audience     Media language 

 

 Genre At A2, I made a trailer, together with a film poster and film magazine cover for a thriller film called  A Question of Identity. The trailer promotes a film set in London in 2016, at a time when the issue of immigration dominates the headlines throughout Europe, when millions of people are on the move fleeing their homelands and looking for sanctuary in Europe. People smuggling is rife. Unscrupulous criminals set up people-smuggling networks and greedy individuals are taking advantage of easy money at the expense of the migrants. My thriller evokes this criminal underworld through its focus on one individual's story but its narrative stance is unusual: the tale unfolds of a brother caught up in his sister's deadly experimentation with the easy pickings on offer as a people-smuggler.

My thriller taps into moral panics about 'foreigners' - topical public anxiety about immigrant numbers, their impact on British life and their 'otherness'. The title signals this through its wording, A Question Of Identity: do we really know our neighbours and where they are from; do we really know our families and what they are up to? In my trailer, I depict this other side of the coin: the network of British underworld crime and the seedy knock-on effect on British culture and family life. The function of the trailer genre is to persuade audiences to watch the film and I am convinced that such a topical treatment will interest audiences.

 

A trailer exhibits specific genre conventions, such as compressed narrative, as it moves rapidly through the narrative arc. This ellipsis leads to rapid editing techniques, including hard cuts.

 

Trailers feature non-linear narrative, that is, the use of retrospect, jumbles of scenes, rapid clips and snatches of dialogue. Events must be visualised but not entirely transparent as surprise, tension and suspense must be retained through witholding key information. 'Spoilers' would do just that: spoil the surprise.

 

 Narrative

Narrative in the trailer genre is by its very nature elliptical as it is subject to different editing techniques from a feature film because it must sketch out the narrative arc from start to finish, in order to entice audiences, yet not disclose too much too explicitly, for fear of destroying the thrills. It must also end on a cliff-hanger to leave audiences wanting more. My trailer, for instance, uses fast paced editing with hard cuts to lead the audience from the exposition of the opening scenes which set out the teenager's dangerous involvement in The Ghost's migrant-smuggling network through to her death and the launching of her brother's vow of revenge. Will he succeed, or will he be destroyed by sinister forces? The powerful climax of my trailer shows how close he comes to death, tied up in a lonely garage, a pool of petrol around him and the flame of a match about to be thrown, leading to his certain death. Or will it? My narrative positions him as a man who deserves pity, as he kneels facing his sister's grave and vows to avenge her; the camerawork serves to emphasize his pain (through close-ups) and his righteous anger (ECU of his indignant face showing justifiable anger as he is set up). By contrast, the antagonist is a shadowy character who appears much less often, whose motivations are financial and whose ruthlessness is indubitable: he shoots the teenager at point blank range, we are led to believe by some deftly subtle editing.

 

Had we developed this production (a trailer) into a full feature film, therefore, it would be easier to demonstrate how it mirrors Todorov's framework of narrative being an arc that moves from equilbrium through disequilibrium to a different renewed equilibrium. To illustrate, the smooth migrant-smuggling operation turns sour when The Ghost decides that he cannot trust the teenager and disposes of her and attempts to incriminate her brother, only to underestimate his fury and determination to turn the tables. We cannot show that he succeeds, but that would have been the likely way to develop the 'new equilibrium' and bring satisfactory closure for the audience. As Oscar Wilde remarked, "The good end happily; the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means."

 

For Vladimir Propp, stories can be reduced to a recurring set of basic narrative functions and seven key character types: a hero is prompted by a dispatcher into a quest, aided by a donor, accompanied by a helper, the quest-object usually being a princess, but the path blocked by the villain and the false hero. Propp asserts that these 'serve as stable, constant elements in a tale, independent of how they are achieved'. Three of these occur in our trailer: the hero is the brother who sets out to protect his vulnerable sister but is thwarted by the villainous character of The Ghost, the shady fixer. As a trailer is brief, we inevitably go no further introducing other characters as we need clear lines and strong simplicity at this stage to convey the broad brush strokes of our plot. My poster certainly identifies as hero.... as villain.... through the visual codes of.....

I was interested to examine our trailer in the light of Barthes' analysis of what drives narrative codes:the hermeneutic code and the proairetic code. The hermeneutic code reflects most crime and detective drama that opens with a crime that must be unravelled: this is not what we do. From the start, our audience sees the sorry tale unfold of a young girl foolishly believing that she can benefit financially from the seedy underworld network run by The Ghost and get away without putting herself in danger. We see what happens to her and who is responsible. Therefore, our trailer (and our film) follows the proairetic code: we wait to see what unfolds as the brother launches his revenge and nearly comes a cropper himself. We wait to see if he kills his opponent or is killed himself. The proairetic code is driven by action: one action leads to another action. Suspense is created by action rather than by the audience's desire to have the mystery explained.

The clear-cut opposition of good and evil in our trailer reflects what Levi-Strauss refers to as 'binary opposites'. As well as Aristotle deciding that 'all drama is conflict' Levi-Strauss suggested that all narratives had to be driven forward by conflict that was cause by a series of opposing forces. he called this the theory of Binary Opposition, and it is used to describe how each main force in a narrative has its equal and opposite, for example, good /evil, light/dark, poverty/wealth, youth/age, strength / weakness. Analysing a narrative means identifying these opposing forces and understanding how the conflict between them will drive the narrative on until, finally, some sort of balance or resolution is achieved. Our trailer positions the brother as wiser / older than his sister and in conflict with her as she leaves the house dressed provocatively, spends unwisely and falls foul of The Ghost. Equally, he is positioned as righteous (heroic?) in his revenge, bringing to justice an unscrupulous man (the villain who puts the girl's life in jeopardy) who has taken advantage of vulnerable migrants for profit. A villain in a position of strength is positioned in opposition to the weak (migrants) to whom he is selling fake passports.

For Barthes, the 'symbolic code' in narrative is similar: it is about about inscribing antitheses within the text. In addition, his 'semic code' he explains as using connotations to build cultural references for the audience. In our trailer, there is symbolism within the text which we use to create deeper meaning by developing character, and creating drama and tension. For example, ...

 Audience

In A2 I created the trailer for an action-thriller film called A Question of Identity. The plot is about a young girl who is murdered after she foolishly tries to gain an income through selling illegal passports to migrants. The girl is killed by the leader of the operation and her brother then tries to track down her killer in order to avenge her.

My target audience would be an age range of around 18-35+ and predominantly male, due to the high intensity of action and danger. My target audience would enjoy films such as Taken and Abduction, along with TV shows like Prison Break. Taking Blulmer and Katz’s model of audience behaviour, which argues that people actively choose their media products based on their needs, it follows that the media has less power to influence than previously thought. Although my film contains violence and off-screen death, my audience will not be passive consumers who are at risk of copying these behaviours.

Rather, my audience can be seen as active users of media who use media texts like mine to gratify their needs (the uses and gratification model) and there are four categories of need gratification: diversion, personal relationships, personal identity and surveillance. A Question of Identity offers diversion from the world and emotional release as it entertains the audience and therefore makes them escape from everyday problems and routines. With its topical subject matter, it also offers the social utility of information in conversation (to enrich personal relationships).

Along with this it also offers as surveillance information about matters that could affect the audience as A Question of Identity goes into the topical issue of immigrants and the impact of their influx into our society. As this features in the news a lot, audiences are likely to see the film due to the curiosity about what London would be like if this was happening. This could also tap into the audience’s moral panic. Equally, with its strong male character who fights back against the vile and dangerous trade of human trafficking with its often fatal consequences, my trailer meets the need for media texts to reflect and support our personal identity, to reinforce our values and beliefs.

My trailer uses a number of devices to attract and address our target audience. (Have a topic sentence!) During the opening scene of my trailer the audience sees a gloomy, overcast London skyline from a God’s eye view shot in a moving aircraft.  The use of the establishing shot lets the audience know from early on in the trailer exactly where the film is set. This is recognizable from the key features such as the River Thames. Text appears on the screen also saying ‘London 2015’ identifying the place and time further to the audience. Text then appears on the screen alerting the audience about a ‘migrant influx’ this text is vital to the narrative and in order to intrigue the audience as it creates a contemporary twist in order to engage the audience. For Steve Neale, it is important to add a fresh twist in the repertoire of film to prevent the audience becoming bored. By showing us a familiar place with its well-known landmarks, then presenting us with a new way of looking at London (as a place changed by uncontrolled immigration), our trailer partakes in what David Bordwell calls ‘defamiliarization’, a formalist term for how art shows us familiar objects and concepts in a manner that encourages us to experience them as if they were new entities.

From Maslow’s explanation of society’s hierarchy of needs, we learn that once lower-order needs have been met, society then turns to self-actualization, which includes turning to media texts (among other things) in order to seek self-fulfilment (such as meeting the needs outlined by Blumler and Katz).

Our victim, Sydney, in A Question of Identity exemplifies one such quest for happiness and self-fulfilment through material goods. Sydney thinks she can get everything she wants from life by using money. We see her in high-end jewelry shops, with a short sequined night dress and heeled boots looking like she owes the night. The audience can understand and recognize such a belief system even if they do not share it themselves.

My audience has only a few minutes in the trailer to identify character types and roles, so visual codes and role types (as Roland Barthes and Propp define them respectively) help to deliver the narrative. The three characters shown in my trailer are constructed to deliver conventional action/thriller codes to the audience. An example of this is our villainous antagonist ‘The Ghost’ who seems to appear mostly in dark, abandoned buildings and alleyways. The audience can identify him as the antagonist as he kills a young girl as well as threatening those who cross him with a gun. His clipped dialogue shows how he is a ruthless man who should not be messed with “I need someone whose not going to let me down last minute. I’m not a charity case.”

Other characters, such as Aaron, the protagonist, show the opposite features of The Ghost. We first see Aaron with his sister, being a very passive character with little to no control over his sister as she storms out of the house. As the audience sees Aaron kneeling at his sister’s grave, they interpret him as a wronged character and therefore feel pity for him. However as the intertitle says “How far would you go, for someone you love?” The audience begins to see Aaron as an almost heroic character, which would label him as the hero in Vladimir Propp’s 31 narrative functions and 7 key characters. Another easy to identify key character is the villain, our antagonist The Ghost. We also see a few of Propp’s 31 narrative functions in my trailer such as the victim being fooled into helping the villain. The audience sees Sydney trying to sell passports to two illegal migrants in order to help The Ghost’s operation. We also see the villain causing harm to one of the hero’s family members. We see The Ghost (villain) kill Sydney (the hero’s sister, as well as the victim).

Roland Barthes describes text as “tangled balls of thread which need unraveling” which means text can be interpreted in many ways if it is an open text. If they are a closed text then there is only one obvious interpretation. This ties in with Stuart Hall’s concept of reception theory. Audiences can either have a dominant reading of a text, which is when the audience decodes the message as the producer wants them to and broadly agrees with it, or a negotiated or oppositional reading. In relation to A Question of Identity the audience would believe Aaron is in the right and side with him as he goes to track down The Ghost and avenge his sister. Audiences can also have a negotiated reading, which is where the audience accepts the message but modifies the way it is interpreted.  Some of my audience would believe that the brother should have more confidence in the law, but it is shown to be corrupt. The final reading is an oppositional reading, which is where the audience rejects the preferred reading.

Our thriller trailer operates with what Roland Barthes called the proairetic code, which builds tension and creates suspense through a knock on action effect. This keeps the reader guessing what will happen next. Our trailer follows this code rather than the hermeneutic code, as from the beginning the audience see who killed Sydney and therefore there is nothing for them to solve. Instead they wait to see what happens, will Aaron kill Sydney’s murder or be killed. The suspense is created through action and this is shown in the final scene when we see Aaron tied to a chair as The Ghost pours gasoline around him and lights a match. The audience is filled with suspense as they wonder what will happen next. This forms a perfect ‘cliffhanger’ and does its job as a trailer should that of hooking the audience sufficiently to make them come into the cinema to see the film. I believe that our trailer attracts and addresses its target audience effectively.

 

    Media language

Our film opens with non-diegetic sound in the form of an orchestral soundtrack with an insistent percussive beat that conveys urgency to the audience. As the titles appear on screen informing the audience that London is under threat because of ‘the migrant influx’ and emotive terms such as ‘threatens’ and ‘crisis’. ….

 Representation

Our film’s three characters are constructed to deliver conventional thriller codes in relation to the narrative: the villainous antagonist is a shady figure named ‘The Ghost’ who appears only in darkened, abandoned buildings, threatening those who cross him with a gun and clipped dialogue (“ I need someone who won’t let me down”) which is in opposition to the heroic protagonist, the protective brother, who is set up by the police and evolves into a man who is prepared to take the law into his own hands to avenge his sister’s death. For Barthes, visual codes are a language that can be deconstructed: the brother kneeling at his sister’s grave constructs him as a wronged figure who deserves the audience’s pity and even their approval despite his vow to use ‘whatever it takes’ to track down ‘The Ghost’ and kill him. The audience is positioned sympathetically in relation to the brother through sound codes (dialogue), visual codes (the horrific final scene where he sits bound in a pool of benzene awaiting death as The Ghost lifts a lighted match) and editing codes (the fast paced chase through the streets engages the audience and makes us will him to escape and survive).