Nova Eden-Astrid-Dragon fruit-Anunciata Bogg

 

Name: Nova Eden-Astrid-Dragon fruit-Anunciata Bogg.

Age: 21

Gender: Female

Height: 5,7

Ethnicity: Indian, Irish, Caribbean, Ghanaian, Comorian  

Personality: A free-spirited, creative individual, loves life, mature but at the same time not too serious, whimsical. Expressionate and passionate.

This is the initial profile of our character from combining all our cabinets of curiosities. The first thing we did in the process was to mix together all our ethnicities to create her. Then judging her extremely mixed background we imagined her to come from an extremely cultured family and to be a very free-spirited person which is where the inspiration for the name came from. We knew it had to be an overly long name to show her background and so we looked for very alternative names to compile for our character, Nova being the first name as it’s astronomical nature alludes to her very free-spirited personality.

More on Nova’s and how she came to be here.

 

Presentation Research and Planning

Our goal for this assignment is to deliver a presentation on the character we have created as a missing person. In order to do this we thought of the different ways she could have gone missing and different ways to present said information. We soon came to the conclusion that the best way to present of missing person character would be as a performance to give a realistic representation of Nova’s life.

One of our initial ideas was to deliver our presentation in a police conference format. For large scale missing person investigations it’s likely that there will be a police conference broadcast for the police to deliver any information from themselves and the those related to the person and also an opportunity for the media to ask questions. This was our original plan for the presentation however we chose a different idea as it wasn’t very creative and didn’t allow space to indulge more personally into our character.

 

Crimewatch was another inspiration to the format of our presentation. Crimewatch is a BBC crime news programme that reconstructs recent crime events happening in Britain and internationally, allowing viewers with information to come forward to help with investigations. The Show usually consists of interviews, reconstructions, and statements from police and other relevant people often including evidence and clues to the investigation etc. Although we have used elements from Crimewatch, we decided not to follow the programmes exact format as it would have focused to much on the investigation and not enough onto the character.

 

In our presentation there is an element of The Jeremy Kyle Show in that we discuss the issue of Nova’s disappearance and the different characters begin to argue which is a typical convention and a large part of the appeal for the show. We thought this show was a good way to present our character in a comical way as the discussion of her disappearance from her close relatives informs the audience more about her. We also added a paternity test which is another convention of the show and informs the audience about our characters struggle without a father.

 

We incorporated elements from all the previously mentions media broadcasts however, the main inspiration for our presentation came from the game Cluedo. As our character is a missing person we instantly saw this as an opportunity for investigation hence the murder mystery game. The game Cluedo, is a board game in which the play must use their deduction skills to solve a murder case. The game has five different characters which as the suspects. We changed the characters names to become more modern as our missing person and is set during 2017. Five members of our group are playing the characters from the game:

Mrs Peacock – Lil’p (Akshay) Nova’s (on and off) boyfriend

Mrs White – Snow White Bogg (Chante) Nova’s mother

Miss Scarlett – Scarlett Johan (myself) Nova’s bestfriend

Professor Plum – Percy Plum (Derick) Nova’s “father”

Colonel Mustard – Carl Mustard (Alex) Nova’s manager

We all gave each other roles of close friends and family to Nova and decided on motives for each character on Nova disappearance, following the format of the cluedo game. We are also not revealing what actually happened to Nova in the presentation but instead leaving it to the audience to decide, just like the game. We thought this would make for an interesting presentation as we are still introducing our character and telling her story up until the point where she goes missing, leaving several different possibilities but leaving it on a cliffhanger.

 

Missing Persons Investigation – Suspect Interview Filming

For our missing persons presentation, we decided to film interviews with all the ‘suspects’ related to the whereabouts of Nova’s disappearance. The video we made is quite short at only 01:56 as it’s main purpose was only to introduce the audience to the characters and their relationship with Nova and allude to their possible motives for the disappearance of Nova.

The cast for the Nova’s relatives was decided to be our group as this meant when presenting we could keep consistent characters to tell the story and also because we have a deeper knowledge of Nova than anyone else. For the location we decided to film in the basement as it had plain white walls and no windows which fitted the description of a police interrogation room.

To make it look as realistic as I did some research into typical crime genre interview techniques. One common convention I noticed was the recording overlay as it gives the effect of raw unedited footage, showing the suspects in their true light. Another common convention I noticed was that the lighting of most interviews used the three-point-lighting technique. After having learnt about this technique in a skills session, we decided to book three LED panel lights from the loan shop to try make our video look as professional as possible.

Other equipment we used included the canon 60D with a tripod and a 50mm lense to get a clear medium shot of each character. The sound equipment we used was the Zoom H2N 3 and headphones. We did multiple rehearsals and tested the equipment several times on the day before filming.

 

CABINET OF CURIOSITIES

To put it simply, a cabinet of curiosity is a collection of items, typically rare and valuable to its collector. Historically, these cabinets often featured antiques such as objects of natural history and works of art. These collections were often organized into about four categories (called in Latin): Artificialia, which groups the objects created or modified by human (antiques, works of art); Naturalia, which includes creatures and natural objects (with a particular interest in monsters); Exotica, which includes exotic plants and animals; and Scientifica, which brings together scientific instruments.

hhtps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_curiosities

 

Originally, these cabinets were made of physical objects of interest, stored in cabinets or rooms however with the rise of the digital age, when asked to create my own cabinet of curiosities, I found that most of my dearest interests live online.

MY CABINET

I’ve sorted my cabinet in categories; places, things I watch, things I listen to and people who inspire me, as these are the some of things in life that hold the most sentimental meaning to me. I have physical items and souvenirs from different moments in my life but none of them mean anything without the attached meaning which can change over time.

The places in the cabinet are Coventry and Comoros. Coventry being my birth place, the city in which I was raised and hold all of my childhood memories. I went to school here and lived my entire life walking the same streets I do now, so despite it’s flaws this city does mean a lot to me. Comoros is the birthplace of my parents and where the majority of my family resides. Having only been to the small southern eastern island twice on holiday, I am still coming to terms with my culture however I do find the place very inspiring. Despite it’s many flaws such as the poor economy and many social issues such as poverty, unemployment and crime the country still radiates hope.

The things I watched include films and TV shows I enjoyed purely for aesthetic and narrative reasons such as Luther, The Office and Dear White People. However they also include other genres such as Bollywood and K-Dramas. As I child I was exposed to Bollywood films a lot such as Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Bride and Prejudice, Mujhse Dosti Karoge! and many more by my cousins as the traditional Indian wedding culture is very much admired by my family back home. Korean Dramas is a genre that I familiarised myself with more recently after my plunge into the world of K-POP as I find how they approach the same topics of typical dramas such as Romance, friendships, family and more controversial ones such as abuse and mental health in completely different ways to we do in western society e.g. ‘It’s Okay That’s Love’ is a romance drama based around the topic of mental health. All characters suffer from a mental issue of some sort which already contrasts sharply to the representation of mental health in American dramas as mental health issues are often stereotyped to the ‘alternative kid’ or ‘the outsider’ character. Towards the end of the drama we learn that one of the protagonist closest friends *SPOILER ALERT* does not exist and that the protagonist suffers from  and has imagined this person as a younger version of himself in order to avoid dealing with his childhood trauma.

The things I listen to include artists and albums I enjoy purely for lyrical and musical enjoyment but also other artist which I have more appreciation for because of the more artistic approach to music, namely BTS. BTS are a K-POP group, debuted in 2013 which I value very much. I have always been prone to become an obsessed fan of boy bands however BTS are a group that I have never seen anything like before. They stick to the typical conventions of a pop boyband with style choices and dance routines and good looks however they have broken so many more conventions which have made them one of the most unique pop artists ever. For example their lyrics not only range between Korean and English in singular songs (excluding their Chinese and Japanese music) but they also tackle difficult social issues such as sexuality, self-love, gender roles, the pressures of the education system, loneliness, feminism, the class system, politics and more. These are all matters they hold dear as artists and have intended to discuss rather than whatever’s relevant at the time. There are other things that inspire about BTS such as the androgynous nature of their style, the quality of their performances from dance, to set, to camerawork and finally their music videos are second to none. They’re so incredibly constructed and well thought out with amazing cinematography and extremely complex yet interesting narratives. If I were to go into details about all the reasons why I love BTS this blog post would never end. But as they are one of the biggest inspirations to me right now, I’d say I want the character we create from these characters to radiate the spirit of youth and hope just as BTS do and use her creativity to help her with her problems in life.

 

Sources:

https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/theme/4QKSkqTAGnJ2LQ

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_curiosities

Sound – Research

 

The sound is a vital element of cinema and has a damaging effect to media when done poorly. Sound is used for mood, effect and atmosphere in media.

 

There are three different ways in categorizing sounds in films: keynote sounds, sound signals and sound marks. Keynote sounds are sounds that define the characteristics of the soundscape, so they are not always consciously heard by the audience but still as important as other sounds. Sound signal are sounds which are consciously heard by the audience and used for effect such as warning bells, sirens, glass smashing, screams etc. to signal to the audience that something important is happening. Soundmark is used to refer to sounds which are unique or of cultural and historical significance, highlighting a specific location.

 

The genre for our trailer is a psychological thriller which tells the story of a psychologist who meets a very intelligent patient, who drives her to remember her difficult past and go insane herself. The sound for this trailer will generally be used for effect to frighten the audience, and emphasize specific details to the audience should pay attention to. This will mainly be done using loud, frightening sound effects and tension building music.

 

Psychological Thrillers – Trailer Sound Analysis

 

In the trailer for Se7en (1995), there is a continuous track of tension building music throughout the entire trailer, which starts of very slow paced and eerie but builds up in pace and pitch as the plot unfolds. This is also accompanied by an overhead narrator at the beginning, to introduce the characters and their challenges. Dialogue is 45used continuously throughout the trailer to highlight key points of the narrative and engage the audience. Loud sound effects for jump scare scenes, happen very suddenly without warning to add effect. A lot of emphasized diegetic sound is used to create atmosphere such as rain, a door being busted, cameras flashed, cars skidding, gun shots etc.

 

Looking at other psychological trailers such as Shutter Island (2010), Black Swan (2011), they seem to follow similar rules as in they all have one continuous, tension-building, music track, loud dramatic sound effects for jump scares, emphasized diegetic sounds to build tension and short snippets of dialogue. We will try and apply these same techniques to properly convey conventions.

 

Music

As mentioned previously, a common convention in psychological thriller trailers is that they all have on continuous music track which builds tension, throughout the trailer accompanied by other conventional sounds.

 

After researching online for typical thriller music, I found they all seemed to have an eerie, dark mysterious feel to them. I listened to a lot of the free sample, royalty free (to avoid copyright) tracks from the following websites:

http://www.freesfx.co.uk/soundeffects/horror_sci-fi/http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?genre=horror&page=1youtube.com