Analysing my AS Production in Terms of Narrative Theories and Representation

For my AS production I contributed to making an opening for a thriller movie called 'Ignotus'. The synopsis of the opening is about a man who discovers an artifact and is captured by a secret society but only one of the people working for the captors is shown within the opening. The captor interrogates the man and forces him to remember what happened when he discovered the artifact in order to find the location of it. Each time the man remembers something a flash back will play revealing little bits about the artifact.

Todorov's theory of a protagonist and an antagonist has been used in our opening scene to allow our audience to understand what is going on. The man being interrogated is the protagonist and is the one the story will follow and the audience will see flash backs from his perspective. The antagonist which is the interrogator is hardly seen and his voice is deep and forceful, this character will be the one that the audience will identify as the antagonist. Propp's 'hero' and 'villain' characters can be applied similarly.

The whole opening is shrouded with enigma from the blurry opening-of-the-eyes establishing shot to the purple-misted opening credits surrounded by darkness having conotations of the 'unknown'. Here Barthes enigma code theory can be identified and we have used this to attract our audiences and create a narrative that doesn't happen in real life to provide diversion/escapism for our audience (Blumer & Katz). The opening reveals slowly things about the artifact and the situation of the protagonist.

The audience can see that the protagonist in a position of panic, something which Strauss referred to as seeing the opposition as conceptual. The protagonist is only in panic because of the interrogator. The opposition is also represented through the use of lighting in our opening scene. The dark room and spotlight on the protagonist shows that the opposition is there and trying to falter the 'hero'. The use of sound is mysterious and repetitive like that of other horror and thriller movies.

The way we have represented the 2 characters within our AS production through sound and light makes the audience assume the that they know that the interrogator is the "villain" and the protagonist is the "hero". Bordwell's theory explains that people assume the film process within the narrative of the film. This can be used to make good twists within the storyline to keep our audience entertained. As we have only made the opening, further through the film the protagonist could be the one who stole the artifact from the secret society and the interrogator is actually the "hero".

In terms of representation, we dressed up the interrogator in a suit this is a 'short-cut' type of stereotype where information about the interrogator can be summed up in a few words but in this case more visually. We knew using a suit can be easily related to stereotype known as "suits". This has connotations of being professional, intelligent, efficient and hard-working which is how we wanted our target audience to view our interrogator character. The interrogator's face is hidden throughout the opening and we wanted to keep this hidden because we want the audience to associate the interrogator as part of an absent group within society.

We can see an entropic view when we looking at the representation of the protagonist. He is portrayed as weak and dominated. This is represented through the blood on his shirt, being tied up, answering weakly to the interrogator's deep, intimidating voice and being beaten for answers. We did this so that the audience can see an obvious dominant hierarchy relationship between the two characters.

To conclude, my AS production conforms to most narrative and stereotype theories to create a conventional thriller opening.