WELCOME TO EDEN

· Genre · Narrative · Representation · Audience · Media language 

· Media language (note the overlap with the other 5 topics)

 The 'film language' of the trailer genre includes camerawork, editing, sound and representation, all of which are tailored to fit the purpose of the trailer genre, which is to attract an audience into the cinema to see the full-length film. My A2 production includes a film poster and film magazine cover as part of the promo package, working as a synergistic whole, with visual codes that are cohesive in their style, imagery and representation, in particular, the trio of characters depicting a young couple being manipulated by a sophisticated older man.

A key aspect of film language in this production is embedded in the film's title, 'Welcome To Eden', and that is the use of intertextuality. The production is a modern-day reworking of the Paradise Lost myth, that is, it reworks the tale of a couple who lose their innocence and forfeit their unity when a third party succeeds in splitting them up. 

A Western audience familiar with Biblical language would initially pick up the term 'Eden', that is, Paradise, in the title, which is a symbolic code. Here, film language in the form of diegetic sound (dialogue) makes the meaning of the title explicit: the phrase 'Welcome to my little slice of Paradise' is uttered by the villain of the film, a flamboyant seducer named Ular, as he opens his door to an impressionable young couple who are seeking accommodation. It is ironic, of course, as the audience sees them swiftly being sucked in out of their depth into a glittering world of luxury and excess, a world of conspicuous consumption that will tear them apart as Ular targets Eve and deliberately marginalises Adam. Paradise turns out to be what they leave behind in Evie's naive quest for self-fulfilment.

The representation of  Ular through a number of visual codes is certainly what Barthes would refer to as a 'language' of imagery that has both denotative and connotative levels of meaning. In terms of intertextuality, Ular represents the serpent in the Garden of Eden, the snake who insinuates himself into Eve's confidence and persuades her to trust his judgement and betray her beliefs. We use a number of symbolic codes that position Ular as 'snake-like' and therefore untrustworthy and sly: he wears a skull ring, sports a snake bracelet, and toys with an animal skull and a decorative snake in his house. In order to relate to a modern audience, we have updated Ular by dressing him flamboyantly in the style of John Galliano, known for excess and showmanship: Ular wears a red fur coat, a leopard skin hat and slinky eye make up. He is red-carpet material, casually ostentatious, Instagram ready. His penchant for animal fur slyly hints at his bestiality. His dark glasses conceal his eyes as he conceals his true intentions. In our trailer, we see Evie dazzled by his self-confident display of wealth that he uses to flatter and seduce her. For Adorno, capitalism creates 'false needs'  by stimulating our consumer desires through seductive advertising. Evie is the stereotypical needy, easily played consumer. Adorno suggested that culture industries churn out a debased mass of unsophisticated, sentimental products which have replaced the more 'difficult' and critical art forms which might lead people to actually question social life. False needs are cultivated in people by the culture industries. These are needs which can be both created and satisfied by the capitalist system, and which replace people's 'true' needs - freedom, full expression of human potential and creativity, genuine creative happiness. Commodity fetishism (promoted by the marketing, advertising and media industries) means that social relations and cultural experiences are objectified in terms of money. We are delighted by something because of how much it cost.We see Evie enchanted by Ular's expensive gifts of roses, clothes and necklaces, his luxury pad.

During our trailer, Ular's role as serpent-like seducer is reinforced through sound and vision editing in a soundtrack, a voiceover of Ular softly speaking the words to William Blake's poem The Sick Rose. He revels in his destruction of Evie's happiness as he murmurs 'O rose, thou art sick / The invisible worm that flies in the night /...has found out thy bed of crimson joy / And his dark secret love / Does thy life destroy'. This editing  is an important part of media language here as the audience sees Ular destroy the red rose that he has presented to Evie petal by petal, denoting his knowing evil. He is the worm ( snake) and Evie the rose. Evie takes the rose to mean a gesture of love and admiration (a conventional symbolic code) but the audience has insider knowledge of its true symbolic meaning (it is infested with the 'sickness' that will destroy her); therefore it works on two levels.

Other symbolic codes drawn from the Eden myth reinforce the intertextuality of our tale: Ular presses ripe strawberries into Evie's parted lips and he offers her a ripe green apple; these visual codes signal underlying symbolic meanings  that Barthes describes as connotative language. 

The editing of a trailer often includes intertitles, as does ours. This use of film language frames what the audience sees and guides their understanding of the trailer's visual meanings and narrative arc. In our trailer, the intertitles reinforce the symbolic codes, as the following examples show. "All was rosy in the garden" is placed in between footage of the young couple wandering happily hand in hand in the park. The audience, however, understand the work 'garden' to have both a denotative and connotative meaning (the park where they stroll and their uncorrupted innocence), whilst 'rosy' can also be understood on two levels (happy as well as with the potential of corruption), with the ironic undertones that it quickly takes on because of the Blake poem The Sick Rose, anticipating the destruction of love and beauty. "A snake in the grass" anchors the representation of Ular as the predator who infiltrates their happiness in order to destroy it, whilst "she is the apple of his eye" makes clear the way that Adam adores Evie on a denotative level whilst also on a connotative level making an intertextual reference to the Paradise Lost myth. Film language uses this mix of sound and vision editing to create what Barthes calls symbolic language codes. 

Camerawork is an important part of film language and often develops the representation of characters, for example, a close up of Ular running his hand across Evie's back as if he had ownership embodies his sinister qualities as does the ECU of him forcing ripe strawberries into Evie's mouth. Camerawork also contributes to the construction of binary opposites, with the opening sequence using dreamy hand-held to suggest a naive diary / vlog-like quality as the young couple in love stroll through the park, then some long mid-shots letting the audience focus on Ular's ostentatious wealth and showy clothing, then a series of rapid hard cuts when Evie decides to leave Adam, forcing him into a life of crime to win her back. One of the most striking pieces of camerawork is the dramatic action sequence when Adam smashes the photo frame that showcases the story of their love. The diegetic sound of the violent smash, coupled with the ECU as he reaches into the shards to retrieve an image, frames the narrative for the audience as they understand his remorse and his reinvigorated desire to win Evie back. Reaching into the broken vestiges of his once secure romance is a visual code for his renewed determination to fight for his love, with the shards being the remains on a denotative level and the rescued photo the symbol of their romance on a connotative level.

Levi-Strauss suggests that drama often works in terms of binary opposites that audiences can easily understand, with meanings made clear through oppositions /contrasts. In terms of binary opposites, our production represents the young couple as naive and innocent, then as the narrative advances, struggling with temptation and envy, and moving towards their breakup and loss of innocence. Ular is positioned as knowing and corrupt through his outfits, language and behaviour, where by contrast, the young couple are the innocent victims of his machinations. However, we play with the conventions of binary opposites in our narrative as Evie succumbs to temptation and Adam turns to crime to fund his mission to win her back. They thus do not take conventional narrative roles and our 'twist' in their representation challenges Propp's more simplistic assignment of character 'types' within narrative. Although Ular is consistently the villain, Adam develops into something of an anti-hero, thieving to fund himself.

The media language of our trailer is shaped into a narrative that is typical of the trailer genre. Starting slowly in order to establish the love interest, we use a series of elliptical edits to move the story forward at a fast pace that will generate interest whilst allowing the audience to make sense of the narrative. As this film is for older audiences and for those who can pick up the intertextual clues once we have created their frame of reference, we move more rapidly once the action heats up and confrontation is inevitable between the protagonist (Adam) and the antagonist (Ular). 

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 the series of ploys and toys that Ular dangles in front of Evie to seduce and destroy her: the gifts, way of life, meals and luxurious surroundings are symbolic codes for the irresistible temptations of the flesh. There does not appear to the audience to be any mystery that has to be solved (which would make it the hermaneutic code); rather, one action leads to another as Adam's life spins wildly out of control with his dreams destroyed, like Evie's innocence, petal by petal. The function of a trailer is to stimulate enough sympathy for the protagonists to engage the audience, to whet their curiosity as one action leads to another and to offer excitement. Our film language does just that.