'The Missing' - Textual Analysis

As we have chosen our narrative to surround a child being taken, or going missing, I have researched media products with a similar theme. 

The modern TV drama 'The Missing', directed by Tom Shankland, follows the abduction of a young boy. As an audience you are shown the fallout of his family and the wider community as they attempt to find him.  

The entire series experiments with time as it merges both the disappearance and immediate effects, with the long-term effects including the separation of the parents. 

The piece uses sound to impact the audience as eerie music accompanies ordinarily pleasant scenes of the family pre-abduction. After the scenes of the child's disappearance editing is used to quickly cut between happy shots of the family and the father frantically searching. 

When the father is looking, a hand-held camera is used to show his panic which is later contrasted by steady camera work reflecting the organisation of the police force. 

Mise en Scene is especially prevalent through the colours Blue and Yellow. The boy is wearing a yellow scarf when he disappears, a colour that ironically ordinarily signifies joy, and a blue jumper, a colour of serenity. In the most recent scenes, in years after he is missing, these colours are shown both in what the parents wear and their surroundings, such as the yellow walls and blue chair of the mothers future house. 

Nearer the end of the episode when the Dad searches for the second time, the local team has just won a football game so they are celebrating. This emphasises his discomfort due to the juxtaposition between his panic and their joy. In addition the fireworks are shocking and sound like guns which adds to his panic and stress.

Finally when the Dad goes for a drink with the detective, in the more modern times, prophetic fallacy is used through the torrential rain.

The main elements of this piece that we could use in ours is the idea of colours as symbols (you can see a further post for this here) and the juxtaposition of terror and joy of others.

Narrative Ideas

We have drafted three ideas for the narrative of our film, that are all of a similar genre. We have storyboarded a few shots from each and evaluated the pros and cons of choosing them as our final storyline.

After evaluating the ideas, and discussing it with our classmates, we concluded that Narrative 2, with the taken child, was our strongest idea.

Time and Place

Where to find us....

To keep in contact with our audience we have two social media accounts. 

We have Instagram (as you can see in the widget at the side of my blog) - @officiallensproductions

This is our main way of keeping in contact with our audience and reaching out to them. We will post updates on our filming and editing, as well as post photos with questions looking for audience research. 

We also have a Tumblr account. - 

We use our tumblr to brainstorm and create an ongoing mood-board for our film. We will post ideas but can still reach out to our audience through original posts. We can look for inspiration from both professional film companies and also other media students. 

Tumblr

Our Logo

History of Genre - Horror

Theatrical vs Teaser Trailers

There are two main varieties of trailers; Theatrical and Teaser. 


Teaser - 
             can be released very early into filming
             doesn't include much footage from the film 
             very short 
             one main theme and concept 

Theatrical - 
                 footage from the film 
                 quick cuts
                 lines from the film as voiceover 
                 lots of disruptions (Todorov's theory of Narrative)

Hulk 2003

The timelines below show the difference between the Hulk teaser and theatrical trailers. The green line shows the changes in tension and the emotions of the audience (higher the line, more dramatic). 

The teaser trailer has much fewer cuts and contains one lasting theme. It contains more fades of images but more text at the end. The music is more prominent in the theatrical trailer as the musical emphasis matches the change in scenes. They both include a voice over however the teaser trailer uses a monologue and the theatrical takes lines from the film from different characters and plays them over a variety of scenes. The levels of tension for the teaser trailer slowly increases until there's a climax and then a drop at the end for the credits. For the theatrical trailer there's a few climax's to keep the audience's interest.