POST PRODUCTION: Meaning in Film

I enjoyed Mondays lecture, it made me want to go away and watch films again considering the intentions of the directors and teams that make them. My role within our team is researcher, so I want to try to incorporate or experiment with some of the current semiotics used today within our final piece later down the line, as well as try to make sure that we don't reinforce any negative or incorrect stereotypes.

Our group is currently discussing the idea of basing our film on mental illness, in particular depression. However after today's lecture it's clearer than before that such a delicate subject needs to be addressed in a sensitive and useful way.

I found looking at colour schemes and how they're used really interesting, it reminded me in particular of Wes Anderson's work. I recently watched The Grand Budapest Hotel and was struck by his use of dreamy pastel colours in contrast with the dark themes held by the plot. It seems that the light and playful pastel tones and used to signify to the viewer when the scene refers to the past rather than the present day, from when the narrator speaks, rather than specifically pointing out the tense. Could this also be to refer to the younger perspective of the main character?

Looking at the different conventions attached to different film genres, reminded me of Community, a sitcom series now available on Netflix. Throughout the show, one of the main characters, Abed, presents the different characters stories through the lens of different film genres, often if not always parodying them. The sitcom parodies the narrative and film conventions of zombie films (Day of the Dead/28 Days Later/ Night of the Living Dead), action films (Die Hard/Rambo/Scarface) and gangster films (Goodfellas). What's most impressive about this is that even without being able to connect with every last reference, the series has still made me laugh throughout and has developed all six of it's main characters equally.

This week we also had a session in the production studio, setting up film cameras and shooting takes to practice working as a team and learning the procedure involved to efficiently capture a scene. 

I can see that planning ahead will be really important, as with only five minutes to create a script, we weren't able to consider the angles we wanted to use, or what depth of shot would work best. As a result of this we had a few takes that we think worked great, but were spoilt by the view of the studio ceiling, as we hasn't adjusted the cameras angle to account for switching to a taller actor. I think with enough forethought, we can communicate much more than we initially imagined, using tools other than speech.