For the foundation portfolio we had to create an opening sequence to film. My group was a thriller in which the opening sequence shows a stalking scene between the films antagonist (the killer) and one of his victims. It then shows a news report that follows up the story on the previous nights actions.
If you were to apply Laura Mulvey’s theory to it the points that would arise is the voyeuristic treatment of the female characters. This especially applies to the victim characters since the majority of her onscreen time is from a POV shot from the killer’s perspective. The theory would state how the woman are treated voyeuristically and how the audience which will be assumed as male treats her a an object of gaze this voyeuristic gaze will continue up until the point of her murder then the audience will arch over into a scopophilic state of mind. In short if Laura Mulvey’s theory was used to analyse the opening sequence it would say that it adheres to the theory of male gaze through the use of character portrayal and camerawork.
Roland Barthes is a theorist that believed that all forms of culture media are made is primarily made up from a system of signs. The two main points of his work are semiotics which is the study of individual signs and structuralism which looks at the relationships between signs. The narrative code part of his work can be easily applied to the portfolio. The code that stands out most in particular is the enigma code which like many thrillers will cause the audience to question what they are watching (what are the full details of the killing, what does the killer look like etc.) The other codes aren’t as prominent as because of the opening sequence’s length it only really raises questions for the audience to find the answer to later on in the film.
Representation is a very important concept to media as it allows the audience to temporary see the world the same way in which the maker of product does and helps them to identify with the maker so that the product can be easier to view as the producer had intended it. Without proper representation of essential elements such as protagonists the audience will not properly identify with them and will not become properly engaged with the media product.
