Analysing Intro Sequence ZEN

Today in class we watched the intro sequence of a TV series called ZEN.

From the first moment it was clear that would be a crime drama  because we see men in suits and shades looking very strict and concerned. To emphasize this further we see a close-up of a pistol lying on what looks like a table and in the hands of what looks like a detective. In addition, we see a whole screen filled with different pistols which looks like they have been hung in the evidence locker of some police station. We also know that pistols are usually used by the police force and the criminals which yet again connotes that this series will be based on crime drama. 

Also we see a monument which says QUESTURA which is usually found above a police station in Italy. In addition, we have other codes of Italianicity found throughout the clip. An example of this could be identified in a still life image of a whole row of parked original Fiat 500 which are often related to the country in which they were invented. Also we see most of the images with a red, white, green filter which are the colors of the Italian flag.

 

Research for the second advert

We've been told that we could now can create an ad on almost anything we like. Because I didn't think that the perfume advert was working out for me I decided to do it on something which I knew a bit more about, cars.

After quickly looking through some of my Top Gear  magazines I realized that some ads were made with a very short shutter speed which gave the image a feeling of slow motion. Some of them also feature water as part of them, for example the BMW 6 series Joy flows through you advert where the water is flowing if in droplet form off the back of the car forming a beautiful shape behind it. This is used to emphasize the cars looks.

Then there are adverts that have the car in front of a nice view, such as a view of the sea, in the background. Alfa Romeo used that in their I am Giulietta advert but they also decided to make the background monochromatic whilst the car was the only thing to have color, which tells us the adverts message is that if you own this car your bleak life would be filled with color. This is again used to make the car look nicer to make people buy it. 

Other ads which feature budget cars, such as the Suzuki Swift, can't use their car's looks to promote them so they use other things such as mpg and to show that they are good for the city they do city sketches done in a simplistic style. Vauxhall use bright animated graffiti to promote their cars. This technique they used to promote their Corsa to show it as an urban car which is fun to drive.

Overall I think this would be the easiest advert to create, however most of the print adverts I saw featured only the car and no person but there are many poses a man can take to make the car look 'sexy', such as when he/she is getting out or looking out from the window with a dreamy stare.

Social Stereotypes

Media industry uses many stereotypes so that it is easier for the audience to get a grasp on the movies story line and so that they don't grow connections to the antagonists. One example of a stereotype is presenting the women as the weaker sex and if they are by chance the protagonist they are usually quite 'curvy' so that it allows the audience to grow attached to them more easily.

The antagonists are usually presented as devious and tricking so that the audience could easily tell them apart from the protagonist.

A Comparison of how women and children are represented in fragrance advertisement from the 1920s, 1970 and 2012

Vivavdou (1920 Print Paris)

Mavis

 Mavis decided to advertise their perfume as an exotic perfume which will enter you into the world of Middle Eastern dreams. We see that there is a woman mid jump with a man behind who assists her and it all seems like ballet. The woman is wearing harem pants to emphasize the atmosphere and the romance of the Middle East. Between her and the man there is some sort of fabric, which looks like a Persian carpet.

The writing at the bottom saying ‘Irresistible!’ tells us that you become something that not many men could resist, even the ones in your dreams as this whole text has a strong feeling of dreaminess because the woman is half floating in the air as it doesn’t seem that her cavalier needs much effort to lift her.

The whole image isn’t very clear or direct which is done in order to catch the audience’s attention because they get curious. The presentation of the woman is very athletic, beautiful and she looks as if she is doing this for herself because there isn’t any audience to admire her. The print uses art noveau to give the print a feel of a dream because art noveau tends to have smooth lines and lines that flow one into another and also the image uses many dark colours such as black and very dark so that there could be warm bright colours. 

In the top left corner there are two lamps hanging in the sky which might be leading to the fact that this whole set up is a dream. The lamps are also drawn in the art noveau style so that they go nicely with the other elements of the text. Also the flowing harem pants that the lady is wearing enhance the feeling of the dreaminess of the whole situation.

In the background you can see a typical Arabian market place which enhances the feel of mystique and that this print was copied out of the book of 1001 Nights. On a denotive level.

There are tiny speckles, which look like stars which came off the sky, near the left edge. I believe that they were placed there so that to enhance the feeling of dreaminess, because people think that romantic dreams always have starlight in them, and it suites the night because during the day we can’t see stars.

This also matches with ‘Mad Men’ era which was happening roughly at that time because what this advert is telling that all a woman can dream of is fairy-tale like situations where they find themselves a man who is quite rich and possibly good looking. The man will then support them, as the clown in the picture does, and help them manage their finances and do all the work whilst they stay at home and wait for him to come from work and taste the food they made.

Revlon (1970 Print?)

Moon Drop

The image is shot in monochromatic style, firstly because it was taken in the 1970’s and photo’s normally were black and white and secondly because the moon is normally white, radiant and comes out in the dark of night. So the woman in this image represents the moon that came out in the black night, which is represented by the black background. The woman’s face is very calm, cool and expressionless yet beautiful, like the moon.

The woman is wearing a silver necklace because silver is associated with the moon from folk lore legends and Aztec stories. The woman also looks very elegant and subtle in the text which means that she comes from a rich house hold which indicates that the target market should be quite well off but not overly rich because the woman is wearing silver and not gold jewellery.

The photographer purposefully allowed all of the bottom edge of the picture so that he could fit the black writing on top of it so that it will be visible. The font is in capitals only and looks very bevelled and as if it was cut out on rock. This tells us that the woman’s character is solid, strong and granite like. Also the image of the actual perfume bottle is placed in a separate window to the picture of the woman so that it would be clearly distinguished as it is also monochromic.

The lighting was also picked to the theme because in the moonlight the scene looks very bleak, grey and monochromic which is the style in which the text was shown in. Also in the background we see a flower which gives the whole image a more nature and outside look.

This was the so called ‘Mad Men’ era when women were thought to be inferior and advertising companies constantly released adverts showing them as some may say ‘dumb blondes’. For example the advert below which advertises cigarettes which are apparently ‘thin and rich’ and from the text above we could see the link as the woman is definitely rich if you judge her by her appearance and she is also ‘thin’. I believe that this could’ve been caused by the mad men era because both texts show women as an inanimate object which is owned by a man and all they are made to do is look beautiful and provide their husbands with money and that sometimes they become housewives if the situation gets too tough. I couldn’t help but notice the last line in the text saying ‘because rich is better’ which proves the fact that women are only good if they are rich.

Lacoste (2012 moving image Britain)

Joy of Pink

Lacoste’s target market is young people so they decided to create an advert with a couple of young and pretty girls in a car with some magical ribbons falling from the sky and into their car.

These girls are presented in such a way that they look cool. They are also brave in their gestures. This tells us that they are very self-confident and with a hint of rebellion because they are very open and they aren’t afraid of anything because they know that they aren’t doing anything wrong and they are convinced in their innocence.

The background is very simplistic without too much clattering objects such as trees, hanging washing or rubbish bins which we normally see on the streets at this time of day. This first of all gets all of the audience’s attention to the characters and secondly it creates a feel of clarity and dreaminess out the whole situation. The car in which the girls are in is also white/cream coloured which enhances the effect and the silky ribbons are all pink which allows us to guess the name of the product.

Spiderman Extract Analysis

Spider Man is a classic superhero protagonist who is just a boy who's uncle is killed by a car high jacker who had a gun and so the protagonist decides to catch the murderer using his superhuman abilities which as the name states are very similar to the ones of a spider. There are many action and adventure elements featured in this clip but the main one is speed and motion as Spider Man is about to chase a man getting away in a car across the rooftops. There are also other elements such as jeopardy. For example he climbed vertical skyscrapers and shoot web from his hands so that he could swing from one building to another. However he is just learning how to control and use his powers as all what he is doing is new to him which express incredible determination and bravery from his side. This is done so that a bond grows between him and the audience as the director wants to make it clear that he is the protagonist of this movie.

To make shots of Spider Man climbing the building a high angle far shot was used so with a bit of a tilt so that the audience is disorientated by the height and grow respect for Spider Man who climbs the walls without much effort. The camera crew also use a hand held shot whilst the protagonist is running across the roof tops so that the audience could then see how unstable he is and how quickly and vigorously he is chasing the killer of his uncle.

In this extract there is a lot of fast paced music as the protagonist is constantly running and the music also gets loud to make the tension higher as the audience gapes in awe as Spider Man does what no regular person should do. The music also enhances the spectacle by slowing down and lowering the pitch just before Spider Man makes a web swing from one tall building to another across a very wide avenue.

 

Analysis of my own Perfume Advert

This poster follows strongly the 'Z' shape reading theory as the reader will firstly see the name of the perfume and then switch to other things like the face of the biker and the actual product which is being advertised. This is used a lot in even professional posters as they look better than the ones which have the elements of it scattered without any order at all.

The background is very monotonous except for the extreme right side of the picture which has some trees and a small hill which doesn't spoil the picture at all but gives it a the charm of the road. By being monotonous it doesn't flood the picture too much with detail so that the audience can focus on the main things, the person in the picture, the perfumes name and the actual perfume bottle.

The name of the perfume is written in the same colour as the main colour of the motorbike, bright orange. By doing this I was hoping to the get the effect of the direct resemblance of the bike to the perfume. Also orange is a very bright colour and contrasts with a very dull background so that it can be seen very well and so that it gets the attention of the audience well.

Both windows are closed so that the audience has no idea where the biker has arrived which will lead to curiosity and suspense, which in turn will make them look for a bit longer at the image. This is important for the advert as I wanted the audience to actually see the product and remember it for a bit longer so the chance of them getting it would have increased.

Jet Li vs Donnie Yen Question 2 Analysis

The place where the action is placed in is a chess house courtyard which looks surprisingly like a Buddhist temple. Donnie Yen, aka Broken Sword, is armed with a spear whilst Jet Li has a straight broad sword which has a quite surprising shape because it's middle part is missing. Donnie Yen is wearing yellow robes with a tang of orange whilst Jet Li is wearing black breaches and shirt so that we could easily know which is which. The chess courtyard has also a small bench on which the old man musician sits and plays his strange to us and very native Chinese harp/guitar instrument.

The extract has a lot of video editing involved, such as: wires and the fact that the antagonist and the protagonist seem to be flying through the air when they jump. Also when they have the battle of the minds the scene turns monochromatic to indicate that the battle switches from real life to the battle of the minds. Here we see the characters float again through the air and do acrobatic fight moves such as fighting whilst one is hanging upside down from the roof.

In the background we could see the natural sound of water droplets falling into ceramic vases, oriental music which is played by the old man and there is also the sound of clashing steel. The music keeps changing pace and volume which changes the temp of the fight. For example when it gets faster or higher the fighters do some sort of acrobatic trick. When the music comes to loud snapping stop, the fighters begin the real fight because the music was the source of their trans. The silence is also indicated by the fact that we can  hear the coins hit the bottom of the old mans bowl to show the surreal silence.

In this extract there are a lot of close ups and extreme close ups. This is done for a number of reasons one of them going for the extreme close up on Donnie's face so that we could see all of its cold and expressionless. Most of the time we have a two shot, starting from the moment when the fighters begin the mind battle with the old man sitting in between them overlooking them. We also have a macro shot of Donnie's spear creating a water cloud so that he can distract his opponent, but then we see Jet's face going through the cloud without even blinking.