Genre Narrative Representation Audience Media language
Narrative (note the overlap with the other 5 topics)
By 'narrative' I understand 'character and plot', and the means by which these are represented, such as media language and how representations are constructed. Our short film has a clear linear narrative arc, but it is also a very compressed one that uses ellipsis because the nature of its genre: short films like Dreaming Daisy tell their compact stories with intensity and focus on one main narrative strand. The last weeks of Daisy's short life are compressed into the six minutes of our film. We open with ellipsis: a montage of shots with a series of hard cuts that introduce Daisy to her audience as she selects and discards an array of different outfits to wear before settling on her final choice and going out for the day. The montage is accompanied by non-diegetic music in the form of a song with vocals that speaks to the teen audience and reflects Daisy's world. Its upbeat pace and the repetition of the refrain "bounce, bounce, bounce" positions Daisy as the stereotypical optimistic, outgoing teen without a care in the world. Its pace drives the montage forward with the energy typical of a healthy teenager. From this point forward, the narrative is carried by several devices such as Daisy's voiceover and the turning pages of her scrapbook 'dairy' which document her days. Thus our narrative conforms to what Barthes terms the 'proairetic code', that is, the major structuring principle is the curiosity of the reader to follow Daisy's actions and thoughts as she is engaging, lively and outgoing. There does not appear to the audience to be any mystery that has to be solved (the hermaneutic code) although the final scene, which is a big 'reveal' suddenly offers us an explanation of certain subtle enigmas in the narrative, such as repeated close-ups of Daisy's hand taking tablets, over-the-shoulder shots that offer glimpses of a hospital gown, the edge of a wheelchair and an increasingly sedentary protagonist.
Daisy’s scrapbook is a vital narrative device: it is the anchor to which the camera returns every scene, zooming in to key factual information (trip to the States, seaside day out, a festival) then panning across ‘selfies’ and Instagrams that turn from stills to live action as Daisy’s final weeks unfold. Her diary documents her 'bucket list' of dreams that she sets out to fulfill with an urgency that is only fully understood at the film's climax. The turning of the scrapbook pages also functions as a symbolic code, marking the fulfilment of each dream until the final scene in which the book of her life closes at her deathbed. Our narrative ends with a shot positioning Daisy centre frame facing the audience for the first time, seated in her wheelchair throwing open her arms as if she were catching all the loose pages of her scrapbook diary (the symbolic code for her memories) and settling the closed book shut tight on her lap with bowed head. For the first time, the audience sees the wheelchair, her hospital gown and the tubes. We applied reverse edits to this scene to create the illusion of all the pages flying back together, to create the symbolic visual code of her life also shutting for the last time. For Barthes, imagery has its own rhetoric and here the denotative meaning is the completion of her bucket list but the connotative meaning is that her time is up; it signifies her death. The scrapbook has an important role in connecting the film to its target audience as it documents Daisy's activities which are also aspirational teen audience desires (boyfriend, foreign travel, festival, day at the beach, sleepover with best friend). It fleshes out the mise-en-scene of Daisy's world as we see inside her bedroom, kitchen and garden, bringing us close to her.
The voiceover is an important narrative device. It creates the narrative viewpoint, ensuring that the audience see events through Daisy's eyes, bonds with her and sympathises with her. We pick up on her uncrushable spirit as we share her adventures. The voiceover represents her as likeable, bubbly, adventurous and friendly. Propp suggests that stories have a set of common recognisable character roles. In our short film, Daisy is clearly the heroine on a quest (the bucket list) with a best friend (the sidekick) who launches her on her mission to fulfill her dreams (travel, festivals, skinny dipping and so on) and the helper is the boyfriend. Our film has only three named characters but feels like a bigger narrative because Daisy reaches out to the audience through direct address and through her make-up video tutorials which bring her into touch with an admiring audience. For Todorov, narrative moves from the equilibrium of the status quo through disruption into a new equilibrium. Our film challenges this narrative model because Daisy is fatally ill and the end of the film marks the end of her life. The disruption is the illness that we witness in her tablet taking and which we start to pay attention to as it is a repeated motif, along with gradually more explicit framing that reveals more of her hospital gown and wheelchair. The disruption also is visible in her gradual loss of mobility: where initially she is playing with snowballs in Central Park NY, dancing at festivals and skinny dipping, these activities give way to more sedentary pleasures like borrowing a 'pat dog' and doing her make-up video tutorials and blog. The final scene reveals her intubated and trapped in a wheelchair, with bowed head. The camerawork becomes more static until the edit of the final scene is in slomo.
Our editing techniques are thus an important part of our narrative with the voiceover shaping the audience's admiring then sympathetic response until it delivers final understanding of her worsening condition. This is achieved through subtle clues dropped, for example in the make-up tutorial scene in which she states of the videos "It will give people something to remember me by". Equally, while Daisy is petting the charity dogs, the throwaway remark "I'm really going to miss these two" contributes to the enigma. Finally, sound and vision editing come together when she states " I guess that's where my story ends" and we realise the full significance of why she is again taking tablets.
Throughout the film, the beautiful, haunting sound track of a female vocalist contributes to the mise-en-scene of Daisy's world by suggesting its youthfulness, optimism and idealism. Certain words of the lyrics take on more potent meaning when seen in context. Where the 'bounce, bounce, bounce' refrain of the early part of the lyrics lends energy ("It's the freakin' weekend, baby, I'm about to have me some fun"), the later words create first wistfulness then pathos, culminating in the poignant lines, played without a voiceover and at greater volume so that they stand out: "That's when the dreams occurred / She always feared that she'd fade away / Every night for years / She didn't want it all / She'd never had it tho her dreams stood tall / She always knew it when the dreams occurred / She always feared them but she faced the worst.." Suddenly Daisy is positioned as admirably brave, a real role model for her generation, turning her nightmares and fears of mortality as her illness took hold, into a bucket list of dreams that she achieved one by one.
In terms of binary opposites, our production presents Daisy as an apparently fit and young protagonist until, as the narrative advances, one struggling with a fatal illness and moving towards the end of her short life. Levi-Strauss suggests that drama often works in terms of binary opposites that audiences can readily understand. In addition, Daisy's clothes mark the start of a series of visual symbolic codes that form their own language. On a denotative level, Daisy's clothes are those of an active, confident and attractive teenager, who has the world at her feet. But on a connotative level, they symbolise her health and youth. By contrast, her hospital gown, wheelchair, tablets and tubes which are gradually introduced are visual codes that represent her failing health and inevitable death.
We have made a short film called Dreaming Daisy together with a film poster and trailer. As far as genre is concerned, our film is a 'rights of passage' film, as it describes a period of growing up and entering the adult world with all its bittersweet joys. It is also a dramatic film. The genre of our film is born from the new vogue for vlogging and blogging. Its genre is quite difficult to pinpoint because it borrows from other genres. It is very specifically a genre born of our time, the vlogging generation because it's about someone presenting their life to the audience in a very immediate personal way. It mixes direct address, Instagram photos and a diary-like quality. Daisy tells the story of the last months of her life in which she fulfills all her dreams (hence the title) through a series of 'bucket list' wishes that come true. Our film closes with the big 'reveal' or 'twist' (a short film convention) which is the final day of Daisy's life.
The opening montage sequence of our short film establishes its genre, the teen vlog / Instagram world. We catch glimpses of Daisy as she gets ready to go out. We use close-ups and extreme close-up of parts of the body, never revealing her face. We see her try on different clothes such as her mini denim skirt, her Jack Wills sweatshirt, a cute mini-dress and her crop top. These all speak to the teenage audience. As far as narrative is concerned, the montage is used to introduce the audience to Daisy at the beginning of a typical teenager's day as she tries out various looks. The editing with its hard cuts moves very rapidly she tries on then discards a large number of outfits. The teenage audience can relate to this. The montage also creates a deep sense of intimacy between us and Daisy as we watch her and we allowed right into her bedroom and into her world.
The opening of our short film starts with Daisy very active and still able to choose different outfits. It closes with Daisy wearing a hospital gown sitting in a wheelchair with a tube attached her body, clearly her final days. In terms of binary opposites, our production presents Daisy as apparently fit and young then, as the narrative advances, struggling with a fatal illness and moving towards the end of her life. Levi-Strauss suggests that drama often works in terms of binary opposites that the audience can easily understand.
In addition Daisy's clothes mark the start of a series of visual symbolic codes that for Roland Barthes form their own language. On a denotative level, these are the clothes of an active, confident and attractive teenager, who has the world at her feet. But on a connotative level they symbolise her health and youth. By contrast, a hospital gown, wheelchair tablets and tubes, which are gradually introduced, are visual codes that represent her failing health and inevitable death.
The representation of Daisy is very specifically addressed to our target audience as Daisy's aspirations and dreams, her bucket list, would attract and address our teenage target female audience. They represent what Maslowe characterises as higher order needs, the hopes of self-actualisation of a teenage audience, their hopes and aspiration. The sorts of things that Daisy dreams of doing are the things that we see teenagers do: falling for her boyfriend, the sleepover with her girlfriend, skinny dipping, make-up tutorials, festivals and trips away.
Bloomer and Katz offer us a model of audience behaviour called the uses and gratifications model. Our audience will relates to Daisy on a personal level as she is also a female teenager. They will also be intensely interested in learning how a fellow teenager copes with a life challenge like a fatal illness. They would be curious to know what it feels like (surveillance). We also know that our short film is lively, engaging and entertaining, thanks to Daisy's exuberant personality, so our film will meet audience need for entertainment. Finally, in a society which turns to the media for self-help models and inspirational motivational videos, I believe our production meets the audience's need for a shared belief in optimism and self-help. Audiences tend to prefer media that supports their ideological convictions and Daisy represents our idealised teenage audience, a young woman of resilience, energy and hope.
Daisy’s scrapbook is a vital narrative device: it is the anchor to which the camera returns every scene, zooming in to key factual information (trip to the States, seaside day out, a festival) then panning across ‘selfies’ and Instagrams that turn from stills to live action as Daisy’s final weeks unfold. Her diary documents her 'bucket list' of dreams that she sets out to fulfill with an urgency that is only fully understood at the film's climax. The turning of the scrapbook pages also functions as a symbolic code, marking the fulfilment of each dream until the final scene in which the book of her life closes at her deathbed. Our narrative ends with a shot positioning Daisy centre frame facing the audience for the first time, seated in her wheelchair throwing open her arms as if she were catching all the loose pages of her scrapbook diary (the symbolic code for her memories) and settling the closed book shut tight on her lap with bowed head. For the first time, the audience sees the wheelchair, her hospital gown and the tubes. We applied reverse edits to this scene to create the illusion of all the pages flying back together, to create the symbolic visual code of her life also shutting for the last time. For Barthes, imagery has its own rhetoric and here the denotative meaning is the completion of her bucket list but the connotative meaning is that her time is up; it signifies her death. The scrapbook has an important role in connecting the film to its target audience as it documents Daisy's activities which are also aspirational teen audience desires (boyfriend, foreign travel, festival, day at the beach, sleepover with best friend). It fleshes out the mise-en-scene of Daisy's world as we see inside her bedroom, kitchen and garden, bringing us close to her.
The voiceover is an important narrative device. It creates the narrative viewpoint, ensuring that the audience see events through Daisy's eyes, bonds with her and sympathises with her. We pick up on her uncrushable spirit as we share her adventures. The voiceover represents her as likeable, bubbly, adventurous and friendly. Propp suggests that stories have a set of common recognisable character roles. In our short film, Daisy is clearly the heroine on a quest (the bucket list) with a best friend (the sidekick) who launches her on her mission to fulfill her dreams (travel, festivals, skinny dipping and so on) and the helper is the boyfriend. Our film has only three named characters but feels like a bigger narrative because Daisy reaches out to the audience through direct address and through her make-up video tutorials which bring her into touch with an admiring audience. For Todorov, narrative moves from the equilibrium of the status quo through disruption into a new equilibrium. Our film challenges this narrative model because Daisy is fatally ill and the end of the film marks the end of her life. The disruption is the illness that we witness in her tablet taking and which we start to pay attention to as it is a repeated motif, along with gradually more explicit framing that reveals more of her hospital gown and wheelchair. The disruption also is visible in her gradual loss of mobility: where initially she is playing with snowballs in Central Park NY, dancing at festivals and skinny dipping, these activities give way to more sedentary pleasures like borrowing a 'pat dog' and doing her make-up video tutorials and blog. The final scene reveals her intubated and trapped in a wheelchair, with bowed head. The camerawork becomes more static until the edit of the final scene is in slomo.
Our editing techniques are thus an important part of our narrative with the voiceover shaping the audience's admiring then sympathetic response until it delivers final understanding of her worsening condition. This is achieved through subtle clues dropped, for example in the make-up tutorial scene in which she states of the videos "It will give people something to remember me by". Equally, while Daisy is petting the charity dogs, the throwaway remark "I'm really going to miss these two" contributes to the enigma. Finally, sound and vision editing come together when she states " I guess that's where my story ends" and we realise the full significance of why she is again taking tablets.
Throughout the film, the beautiful, haunting sound track of a female vocalist contributes to the mise-en-scene of Daisy's world by suggesting its youthfulness, optimism and idealism. Certain words of the lyrics take on more potent meaning when seen in context. Where the 'bounce, bounce, bounce' refrain of the early part of the lyrics lends energy ("It's the freakin' weekend, baby, I'm about to have me some fun"), the later words create first wistfulness then pathos, culminating in the poignant lines, played without a voiceover and at greater volume so that they stand out: "That's when the dreams occurred / She always feared that she'd fade away / Every night for years / She didn't want it all / She'd never had it tho her dreams stood tall / She always knew it when the dreams occurred / She always feared them but she faced the worst.." Suddenly Daisy is positioned as admirably brave, a real role model for her generation, turning her nightmares and fears of mortality as her illness took hold, into a bucket list of dreams that she achieved one by one.
In terms of binary opposites, our production presents Daisy as an apparently fit and young protagonist until, as the narrative advances, one struggling with a fatal illness and moving towards the end of her short life. Levi-Strauss suggests that drama often works in terms of binary opposites that audiences can readily understand. In addition, Daisy's clothes mark the start of a series of visual symbolic codes that form their own language. On a denotative level, Daisy's clothes are those of an active, confident and attractive teenager, who has the world at her feet. But on a connotative level, they symbolise her health and youth. By contrast, her hospital gown, wheelchair, tablets and tubes which are gradually introduced are visual codes that represent her failing health and inevitable death.
Genre (note the overlap with the other 5 topics)
We have made a short film called Dreaming Daisy together with a film poster and trailer. As far as genre is concerned, our film is a 'rights of passage' film, as it describes a period of growing up and entering the adult world with all its bittersweet joys. It is also a dramatic film. The genre of our film is born from the new vogue for vlogging and blogging. Its genre is quite difficult to pinpoint because it borrows from other genres. It is very specifically a genre born of our time, the vlogging generation because it's about someone presenting their life to the audience in a very immediate personal way. It mixes direct address, Instagram photos and a diary-like quality. Daisy tells the story of the last months of her life in which she fulfills all her dreams (hence the title) through a series of 'bucket list' wishes that come true. Our film closes with the big 'reveal' or 'twist' (a short film convention) which is the final day of Daisy's life.
The opening montage sequence of our short film establishes its genre, the teen vlog / Instagram world. We catch glimpses of Daisy as she gets ready to go out. We use close-ups and extreme close-up of parts of the body, never revealing her face. We see her try on different clothes such as her mini denim skirt, her Jack Wills sweatshirt, a cute mini-dress and her crop top. These all speak to the teenage audience. As far as narrative is concerned, the montage is used to introduce the audience to Daisy at the beginning of a typical teenager's day as she tries out various looks. The editing with its hard cuts moves very rapidly she tries on then discards a large number of outfits. The teenage audience can relate to this. The montage also creates a deep sense of intimacy between us and Daisy as we watch her and we allowed right into her bedroom and into her world.
The opening of our short film starts with Daisy very active and still able to choose different outfits. It closes with Daisy wearing a hospital gown sitting in a wheelchair with a tube attached her body, clearly her final days. In terms of binary opposites, our production presents Daisy as apparently fit and young then, as the narrative advances, struggling with a fatal illness and moving towards the end of her life. Levi-Strauss suggests that drama often works in terms of binary opposites that the audience can easily understand.
In addition Daisy's clothes mark the start of a series of visual symbolic codes that for Roland Barthes form their own language. On a denotative level, these are the clothes of an active, confident and attractive teenager, who has the world at her feet. But on a connotative level they symbolise her health and youth. By contrast, a hospital gown, wheelchair tablets and tubes, which are gradually introduced, are visual codes that represent her failing health and inevitable death.
The representation of Daisy is very specifically addressed to our target audience as Daisy's aspirations and dreams, her bucket list, would attract and address our teenage target female audience. They represent what Maslowe characterises as higher order needs, the hopes of self-actualisation of a teenage audience, their hopes and aspiration. The sorts of things that Daisy dreams of doing are the things that we see teenagers do: falling for her boyfriend, the sleepover with her girlfriend, skinny dipping, make-up tutorials, festivals and trips away.
Bloomer and Katz offer us a model of audience behaviour called the uses and gratifications model. Our audience will relates to Daisy on a personal level as she is also a female teenager. They will also be intensely interested in learning how a fellow teenager copes with a life challenge like a fatal illness. They would be curious to know what it feels like (surveillance). We also know that our short film is lively, engaging and entertaining, thanks to Daisy's exuberant personality, so our film will meet audience need for entertainment. Finally, in a society which turns to the media for self-help models and inspirational motivational videos, I believe our production meets the audience's need for a shared belief in optimism and self-help. Audiences tend to prefer media that supports their ideological convictions and Daisy represents our idealised teenage audience, a young woman of resilience, energy and hope.
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