From our brief, one of the rules lists:
'It is important that image, text, and audio are seriously examined in an attempt to truly consider audience engagement and interaction'
The images I have taken, for me, make up the main part of the piece, they are story telling.It would be a rough understanding, but you could follow the pictures throughout and get what this piece is on about, without text or speech.
On another level however, the images are highly emotive. Talented authors can certainly draw out great feeling from their readers by use of finely crafting the words and syntax in their texts. Images too have the ability to do the same thing.
This picture, for me, really says it all. (If you maximise the picture) you can see the emotion in Sarah's eyes, her sadness. The way they are looking down, as in, she cannot even look at her boyfriend who is ordering her about, creates a real vulnerbility. It is one of the skills, us, as humans are able to do: communicate through body language, and so, anybody looking at this picture should be able to fully understand what is happening, how she is feeling and how you feel for her; thereby engaging in the piece. Definitely emotive.
On the other side, this picture shows the negative aspect of emotion: anger or nastiness, painting Steve as the clear villain. The dominance he has in the picture, he is right in the centre, fills it from top to bottom and there is nothing to distract our attention away from him. Again, the look on his face tells a thousand words, no text is needed to say how he feels. The audience should be involved with the piece in that I've created this to make a feeling of strong dislike towards Steve. He clearly isn't in the right throughout the piece, in any way, at all.
This is quite a dynamic shot, focusing on the violent action. His arm is raised, quite close to her face, whilst the knife remains in place meaning she can't thrash out against him. Again, the dominance is represented by Steve being the most forward, foregrounded?, whilst Sarah is behind him, further back in the shot. The body language displayed by Sarah, particularly her facial reaction shows this to be a VERY uncomfortable, horrible and dangerous situation. The audience should definitely be able to perceive this, whilst at the same time being shocked at Steve's actions, a sort of gasping moment?
The various pieces of text in the form of narrative or dialogue help build up the scene. I have been careful to word the piece and structure it so to replicate realistic situations - so the text can be found to use features of natural speech (elipsis, colloquial language, dialect).
"I'll start over again for you. I'm sorry. It's my fault. I forgot you don't like carrots."
This line has several aspects to it. 'I'll start over again for you' shows that she is still willing and wants to do things to please her boyfriend ('for you'). We have Sarah blaming herself, a typical act of somebody enduring domestic violence, which she apologises for too, showing a submissive position. Also, the last bit of 'you don't like carrots' shows this is a petty thing for Steve to have gotten angry over. The audience should be able to see the unfairness of how he treats her and thoroughly feel sorry for the girl.
"I don't think... I don't think I can take this anymore"
This line occurs when at last she is seeking help. Her hesitancy shown by the dots/elipsis, shows she is timid and scared, especially to talk about this subject. In addition, the use of 'I think' again reveals something emphatic in that she is unsure in whether she is in need of help. She is unsure on whether she is being out of place or if she should be able to deal with this. The audience may perceive this as the turning point, a break through. They should want to get on with the story in aid of finding that help, whilst also feeling sadness from her above mentioned emotions.
"Oi, where's my dinner. You're no good at remembering anything."
This line from Steve lets us see that he demands things of Sarah 'where's my dinner?', as well as using "Oi" to get her attention, quite bluntly and rudely. He also puts her down by saying that she forgets things - this may well be true, but nonetheless, it isn't nice for partners to be voicing this opinion. It would come as quite a hard hitting negative. The accumulation of Steve's dialogue should completely dissuade viewers from finding him to be a likeable character, helping them to cast opinions about him and engaging with the story.
-As a side, the general character I sought for Steve is that of a highly sexist man. He expects his partner to cook and clean, whilst he 'goes out to work'. Furthermore, he shows no remorse after being violent towards her, he instead goes down the pub with his mates. He is in no way grateful for what Sarah does for him, this seen by him just dropping his magazines on the floor and also pushing her out of the way when he wants his shirt ironing faster - he is very simply, an abuser of his patriarchal position and exploits her vulnerability - a very unnice man.
The last thing to comment on is the use of sound, more particularly background soundtrack and the sound effects.
The dialogue I took a few attempts at recording with the actress. We did it using different types of intonation: soft, quickly, powerful. The voice used seems quite soft, unharmful. Contrast this then with the deep, alpha male type voice I created for Steve and you can see a distinction. I created Steve's voice using a program called Audacity. Here it gives you the options to amplify, change the speed, and even the pitch. This came in useful as the male voice I recorded, in my opinion, was higher for what I wanted. So editing it in Audacity produced a better result.
When it came to the sound effects and background noise, I think these work well, they are the little touches that make the interactive narrative seem better overall. Instead of just seeing her iron, we have the ironing noise of steam and going across the material. At the start, where we see the front door and are told it is a normal suburban house, there are birds tweeting. It is all these little bits that whilst recording seem stupid, when connected with an image, fit.
I was torn between adding a running soundtrack throughout. Being honest, with Flash being a totally new venture for me, I could predict that I would have problems with getting it at the right volume at the right point, not having it interfere with the sound effects and dialogue. Also, I had no idea what sort of music should accompany it. To just use a soundtrack from a movie would have been simple, but then it might not have been perfect. This is one area in the future where I'll definitely expand: I'm going to pursue getting music produced, whether that being myself on an instrument, or finding a musician around and about!
@
No comments:
Post a Comment