Altman's theory of syntactic/semantic approach (1984)

I have taken a look at Altman's theory of syntactic/semantic approach (1984) and have explored and analysed it in terms of my own media text. I feel it will heavily relate to my short film as I can approach it in different ways. Getting my genre across clearly to the audience is important and I will use both semantics and syntax to do this.
I will need to take into account my target audience as well as the theory itself as they might take in media information differently to other audiences.
This means that both the specific contents of my video, and how I brand the video/what I call it will add to what genre it is placed in. The rest is down to the audience to decide what genre it is placed in, as not only one person can decide.
I may aim to put my video into an horror comedy genre, but end up creating something more suited to an abstract sub genre accidentally. 

Self review for this point on the blog

Audience profile

I have created a full audience profile using felt tips in various colours on a piece of paper. The person in the middle is the perfect member of my audience. Right down to the fashion, the hobbies and interests and the general facts like age, gender and class. 

Something I haven't mentioned in the sheet is the socioeconomic group of the person. 

They would be apart of the C2 socioeconomic group, meaning they have a job quite reliant on skill and talent. This suits because a lot of the audience will be in university or school, and will later get jobs concerning these things.

Researching my target audience

To identify my target audience I will first need to identify similar texts to mine and work out who the audience for these are.

Since my production is going to be somewhat of a parody on horror conventions, scary movie is a great film series to compare it to. 

The film in itself is a very blatant parody on horror films and the audience that enjoys this film may be interested in mine. 

Firstly, the film is rated R, so this instantly shows me that the target market for this film is over 18. Most films enjoyed by this wide demographic are usually also enjoyed by younger teenagers, which is especially true in true case due to the immature comedy. 

Given that I expect my main character to be male, I will be mostly targeting a male demographic giving me an audience that enjoys both horror and comedy films from the ages of 16 to 24. 

Changing project

The basis for my project is going to stay similar to my initial idea involving the animation of a bear or puppet, but I feel it would work better as a short film. The narrative would involve a boy in his home who is terrorised by a stuffed animal using over the top and emphasised elements from existing horror films. The analysis on music videos I have done previously is still relevant to my work and has affected my decisions on the project so they will stay on the blog.

Slow motion test

I want to have quite a few slow motion shots in my video, so I've done a test with the DSLR that I'll be using to get the best results. The camera only goes up to 50 FPS, so that is the highest I'll be able to use.



I've compared slowing down the 50fps shots with 25fps shots to see how much of a difference it makes. I've also added frame blending to some of the scenes.



After looking, I'd believe 50fps with frame blending looks by far the best. This is the setting I'll use when I am creating my actual video and need the slow motion scenes.

Day For Night Video Conversion - Tutorial

After looking at how to correctly film at night, I'm going to look at how to make a scene shot in the day look like it was shot at night.

Though the tutorial is for adobe after effects, the techniques used will still be relevant as a lot of the things can be done on all editing programmes.

First I would need to desaturate the picture, not completely but so most of the colour is gone. Then I would need to decrease the light in the scene, followed by adding a blueish colour corrector. Finally, there is a setting called extract on a few editing programmes in which certain colours can be taken out of a scene. I would do this to the sky to get rid of all of the whites or blues causing it to look like day, and replace it with a darker colour.

Researching night scenes/how to shoot in low light

http://www.izzyvideo.com/low-light-video/

In one of my main scenes for my music video, I'd like it to be set at night near a campfire. This setting has connotations of family, fun and innocence and is perfect for somewhat of a "teddybears picnic" premise.

I used this site to research how to film in low lighting. I will also be creating another post researching how to give the impression of night when actually filming at day. I will then compare the two and decide which is the best option. As of now I can definitely see that changing a lighter scene into a night scene could rely on my technical skill as opposed to good use of lighting.

text2mindmap.com/cEek6cb

I created a mind map using text2mindmap which is a helpful way for me to present my work so I can come back and understand it later.