Narative Question

My AS Production was a apocalyptic film with a restricted narrative as there was a nuclear explosion which wiped out the life on earth and the film depicts the aftermath. The other films I looked at were films like Resident Evil.

The use of camera was extremely important during the production of my film because I wanted to capture the lifelessness of the world after a nuclear blast because of this I decided to focus on high angle shots of barren locations as I felt these camera angles allowed full understanding of what devastation a blast would cause. I also decided to use handheld camera shots of me walking through the undergrowth to create enigma I felt this worked well because people were questioning why the camera was pushing itself through undergrowth and it was later released that the shot was filmed through the eyes of the last animal on the planet. This use of restricted narration enables me to restrict the information I give the audience as this will lead them to question what is going on. The camera shot of the bomb blast follows Todorov's theory that Equilibrium needs to be disrupted in order to create narrative and within my film opening the blast disrupts the normal every day life and this equilibrium needs to be found again and this is the base of the film.

The use of editing within my film opening is extremely important because I needed to create a sense of normality before the blast, this normality was portrayed by fast cuts between shots showing the hectic and busy every day life, after the blast I want to create a sense of complete emptiness to create a binary opposite between the two parts of the film opening this is something that Levi Strauss has wrote about as he has said that all different media texts represent characters as completely different and I wanted to create this but not with characters but with normality before the blast and complete emptiness after the blast I feel this enhanced the narrative and created enigma as to what is going to happen for the rest of the film. I also changed the colour of my footage after the bomb blast to remove the colour from plants and vegetation as this would have contradicted the idea of total emptiness and again this creates another binary opposite with the green of the plants which signifies life and then the brow on the leaves signifying death.

The use of sound within my film opening was important because I wanted to create normality and this cannot be done in silence so I needed to use combinations of diegetic and none diegetic sound to create a soundscape to ensure that everyday life is portrayed as effectively as possible. The sound of the blast is also extremely important because it is vital that the equilibrium is disrupted to enhance the narrative and the use of an explosion disrupts normality exceptionally well then in marked contrast there is silence after the blast this creates the feeling of emptiness that is vital for my film opening as this creates enigma as to if anyone has survived and why the blast happened. Vladimir Propp suggests that media texts need certain characters in order to develop a narrative and I have tried to include this to some extent within my film opening as the villain is the nuclear bomb but the hero has not yet been disclosed this is because I am creating a restricted narrative which will slowly unravel.

Mise-en-scene is important within my film opening because