Primary Research:
What is your relation with food?
A: For myself I think that I have somewhat of a relation with food. Some foods can bring back memories. Like I once got sick eating some fish and now I can’t looked at fish without feeling the same way again.
A: Food is a comfort for myself, whenever I feel sad I always seem to find myself turning to something like chocolate.
A: Food is a means to survive and have energy.
A: It’s something that can make my day better.
Overall I found that most people find food as a comfort or a way that can make them feel better. Such as having a cake can make people happy when they feel down. It’s interesting that this is a view that a lot people have as it’s different to that of my own, I see food as just food there was only one other people that had the same type of thinking as myself. It shows how important food can be to some people and their views on life.
How important is the role of music for you in film?
A: It makes it more interesting for me to watch, it helps me get into the movie.
A: I very much enjoy the music in some movies and can sometimes listen to them when I’m not watching the movies.
A: I think it depends on what you are watching sometimes music just seems to be added on for no reason.
Overall most people thought that music was important to make the film more enjoyable. This is something that I agree with I don’t think some of the best-known senses would have been as good without the music. One of my favourite senses in a movie in the back to the future skateboard chase something that wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good without the music.
Can music in film impact the way you think/feel?
A: Yes it can music has the ability to keep us on the edge of our seats. Horror films do this the best, it can really help build atmosphere to make us feel scared.
A: It can help us to understand how we should feel at that time in the film.
Overall almost everyone agreed that music is useful in helping to understand the emotions in film. It’s showing that you with always see if they want you to feel sad slow sad music will play, want to build action the music will be high tempo.
Some parts of my research was useful, the way that people interact with food is something I didn’t really think about. It was also interesting to see that people seem to think that music is almost as important as the film itself.
I think in terms of my primary research it went OK, looking back I should have asked better question and explained them better. I didn’t think that the information I got was very detailed with why people felt this way, but I didn’t layout my questions that well so I was never going to get these types of answers.
Secondary Research:
The oxford dictionary describes food as ‘Any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink or that plants absorb in order to maintain life and growth’
Food is something that we all know as we need to eat to live but can it mean more then just our survival? For many people food as more meaning then just needing to eat to live. We create memories of food that create more meaning behind them. Along with this the way that food is represented in the media and how that can impact our life.
Food has been known to have some type of link with memory, this can be why we change what we like and dislike throughout our lives. If you consume something that ends up making you feel sick or weird, then if you try to consume it again our brain will remember how it made us feel before and can cause us to create emotional respond of disgust to that food. This is called taste aversion and is a survival technique seen in not only humans but also animals. But this has also become a way to enjoy our food as we can also recall our positive memories in food making us want something more.
One of the main ways foods is displayed to us in media in through the use of advertising. You can’t get through an ad break without some sort of food advisement showing up whether it’s a fast food chain like McDonalds or your local shop displaying all the food and drinks they have for you. The key feature to any advisement is sell the product to you, for food adverts to sell the product it’s all about making it look good. “Many ads use association. They attempt to link something desirable with a product”, (Perdew, 2015:21) this is seen throughout food adverts take new Sainsbury’s food advert for Christmas it shows their range of food that they want you to buy but it’s covered up by association. By making it seem like it’s all about sharing with your loved ones “ the implied subtext is that if you eat the same thing, you will experience the same positive results” (Perdew, 2015:21), whether this works or not is another thing but association to something through food has some power behind it in the same way you are more likely to buy a fitness program adverted by someone in good shape over someone who is not.
Music in film:
“music has been inextricably connected with film performance. Weather used as a backdrop for film action, or as the principle focus for a cinematic scene, moviegoers have come to expect that film and music go together to the extent that the absence of music is considered a distinct stylistic choice on the part of a film director”(Beeman, 1981:77)
Music is just as important as the film side and can be seen as the principle focus depending on what is happening. When done right music can be iconic part of any film. Take John Williams work on star wars, the music became a core factor of the movies.
Music has the power to play on our memories, most people that listen to that music will think about the star wars movies, their favorite parts and why they liked them.
Music can be more then just a theme it can play a major role in our actions . Like how listening to the star wars film impacts on the way people think at that time, such as it could make them fell happy through the link with the movie them love. The use of music can also impact the way that we feel in that scene, like how horror film make you think something is about to happen because of the build up in music. this is called suspense.(DisneyMusicVEVO, 2015)
Film Research:
(looking mainly at 1:30-1:55)
The soundtrack for jaws has become a classic with almost everyone being able to tell what it is. One thing that it does is build suspense we know something bad is going to happen we just have to wait for the music to build and build. The fact that the music becomes linked with the shark been that we don’t need to see it to understand the attack is going to happen. This is the sort of thing I want for my artefact idea, I want the music to suspense so the audience wait to see the shark attack. (Movieclips, 2011)
Hitchcock’s ideas of the element of suspense is interesting, for me the main thing I got from it was that if you give the audience the smallest of information about what is going on and allow them to think how they believe the sense with play out. The other thing that stood out was that Hitchcock claims that he made a mistake letting the bomb go off in sabotage; he claimed that the explosion becomes strangely anti climactic. This goes to show that you can build suspense up with out using what built the suspense in the first place. Like with my own idea I want to build the suspense throughout but not really have it lead to anything. (Eyes On Cinema, 2015)
William C. Martell goes on more about the creating of suspense. In screenplays he talks about suspense is mainly about the idea that the audiences know something that the characters don’t. He says that this is most likely the main issue in suspense that doesn’t work. While for my own idea I don’t have characters I can’t really do suspense in the way it is norm, but I think that by taking the idea of drawing it out. This is what I want for my artefact to draw out the scene so people think and think that something will happen even if it doesn’t. (Film Courage, 2014)
Artefact Idea:
Food was a weird topic for myself as to be honest to me food is just food and I find it a little boring. It’s just something to be eaten; I don’t really have any other relate to food like some other people. I found it difficult to think of anything and wasn’t going to use the topic, but I thought after some discussing that I could play on the fact that I find food boring. The idea I have is going to play on the use of music and how it can impact how we watch films. I plan to have music designed to build suspense throughout the video giving the effect that something is about to happen. Visuals will be simple I was thinking about focusing on something like a food bowl as the camera slowly zooms in. While the camera zooms the music will build up more and more leading the audience to believe that something big will happen when in fact at the end someone will just pick up an apple. I want to look more into the role music plays so I believe that I can do this with this idea.
Aftefact 1:
Reflection On Artefact 1:
As you can see by my video my origin idea has changed. When I first came up with my plan I was going to just to a slow zoom but it never felt right. Firstly I had the issue of not really being able to get a fully smooth zoom, this meant that it was bumpy throughout and just didn’t look good. I was able to do one that was almost prefect but when watching it back something seemed to be missing, I knew i had to change it around somehow. I have been thinking for a while now about making a film where the camera is the character i thought that this could be the time to do it. I created a little story of someone walking up in a room in front of some apples. The idea was that while this character can go to the door to see where they are ( is why i look at the door a couple of times) they are pulled into the apples on the table. This is were my use of music came in I used a slow paced track through most of the film as it was meant to match the character in the way they were slow to understand what was going on. It’s only when they focus on the apples that in the space of 10-15 seconds the music builds up before reaching it’s climax. while that happens the character moves closer and closer to the apple but nothing happens. I changed this part as well, before I had someone pick up an apple but i remembered in my research that Hitchcock said it was a mistake letting the bomb go off in sabotage so I changed my mind and made nothing happen. I shown my film to a few people that don’t study media and everyone of them said they were waiting for something to happen at the end and that the music played a big role in this.
Overall I was happy with the turnout of my artefact. I now have a better understanding of music and when to use or not use something, also that you don’t always have to lead to something for it to be understood.
References:
Richardson, M.W. (2015) Savor the moment: The peculiar connection between taste and memory. Available at: http://www.brainfacts.org/sensing-thinking-behaving/learning-and-memory/articles/2015/taste-and-memory/ (Accessed: 26 November 2016).
Perdew, L. (2015) Asking questions about food advertising. United States: Cherry Lake Publishin
Beeman, W.O. (1981) The Use of Music in Popular Film: East and West. India International Centre.
DisneyMusicVEVO (2015) John Williams – main title and the attack on the Jakku village- YouTube [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8ac1Qg-r-8 (Accessed: 30 November 2016).
Movieclips (2011). Jaws (2/10) Movie CLIP – Get Out of the Water (1975) HD – YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW23RsUTb2Y&t=107s. [Accessed 26 November 2016].
Eyes On Cinema (2015). Alfred Hitchcock explains the element of suspense – YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md6folAgGRU. [Accessed 26 November 2016].
Film Courage (2014) How To Create Suspense In A Screenplay by William C. Martell – YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpPyTdBnypM. [Accessed 26 November 2016].
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