Thursday 15 January 2009

AS Media Project.

I foun this video on YouTube, along with hundreds of other that come up when you type in "A Level Media". What i find particularly interesting about this video is theuse of music and sound effects. At the start, when the text appears on the screen, all you hear is a single, slow heartbeat. This suggests fear or panic and the viewer should be scared, or at least, worried. What i love about the next scene, is it's simplicity. All it is is a close up of a door and a guy walking through it. He is wearing plain black clothes and carrying a book. I instantly thought it was a priest. This is a very clever shot as it is counting on the mise-en-scene, such as the door, the clothes and the book to suggets who the person is, or is pretending to be.

You then see the man walking up the isles in a church, i was right, he is a priest. The music here is very effective, there is some gentle violins or something initially and then a choir starts, but fades in and out very quickly. You then see the priest holding and admiring some jewelery. It then cuts to show the Columbia logo, which i'm not sure the should have out on, but still with the violins and the choir. It then flashes to a view through some tree branches, and a crash of thunder.

The music is getting gradually louder, and suddenly you are shown the roof of a house. The camera then looks down to see a person walking past. There is a very loud breath in the background, but at the same time on top of everything, as if from behind the camera, as if the viewer is looking out of the persons eyes. This happenes 2 or 3 times as the camera follows the girl, gradually getting closer and closer, all the time the music building up. Until it gets to it's fastest moment so far, and with a crash you see a man leap at the girl and start to drag her away, kicking and screaming. It then goes to a quick cutaway of the priest wandering up and down the aisle of the church, in the dark. This could suggests he is not the good "man of God" all priests are made out to be.

It then cuts and shows you a shot of two legs hanging out of a tree. Then there are a series of shots showing different things including fire, and several crosses and finally landing on Jesus on the cross. This screen then cuts black and a bell sounds as the title of the film "Genesis" appears on the screen. The bell sounds again when the actors name appears, "Liam Neeson". This is trying to tell the audience that he is the main character in this film, when he isn't and they shouldn't have put this in. It then sounds again ever time some new text comes up on screen giving quotes from big newspapers such as the Daily Mail, which, i guess you can do i'm not sure.

I really like the whole dark, religious atmosphere as it seems like a good film simply because of the suspense the trailer had, it was dark and fast paced and intense. The religious aspect of the trailer is merely another twist that loops into the story to enthrall and attract the viewers into watching the actual film when it comes out. They have, however, given quite a good phrase for the date, playing on the religious theme. Instead of simply putting the date they used the phrase "redemption begins". This i find interesting because redemption is instantly recognised as religious. People go to church to redeem themselves of past sins or something, so to suggest redemption begins when this new horror film comes out is another interesting use of language to attract readers.

Unfortunately, they didn't really think it through. They put a website on the end of the trailer, http://www.genesis.com/, which is infact a website for internet security, not a film. They also used a real production company claiming it was being made by them, and have suggested Liam Neeson (Star Wars, Taken, Batman) was gong to be starring in their film, which isn't true. Apart from that though, i think the trailer is fantastic.


http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb39ViimmNY&feature=related

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