The production that I am looking at is Fixation which is a film opening that I made last year in AS level. The first character that we see within our opening sequence is Eileen she is dressed all in black and we cannot see her face, there is also no dialogue. Using Barthes action code even if there is no dialogue the audience are still being told a story by the action that is seen on the screen. We see Eileen in front of a board with lots of information about a boy called 'James' at the moment we do not know who James is and why Eileen has this information. This creates an enigma code, the audience are asking themselves several questions such as who is the woman dressed in black, why is she gathering this information about a young boy and who is the boy? The non diegetic music that we can hear also helps to tell the story, the music is eerie and helps to build up an atmosphere, drawing the audience in as the music changes pace. The music used is parallel to the images shown on screen which are dark and mysterious. Pathetic fallacy is also used as whenever Eileen is shown it is either in a dark room or at night time, where as when James is shown it is in a bright room. Eileen is also dressed in all black which suggests to the audience that she is a dark character, not to be trusted.
In our opening sequence we subverted to Propp's theory. Propp stated that most of the time the character in distress is a weak woman such as a Princess although in our opening sequence the person in distress is James, a young teenage boy who is usually not represented as being weak in stereotypical conventions of films. We conformed to Propp's theory as our Dispatcher is an older strong man, as the plot continued into our film we planned that Eileen's husband had gone away after the death of their son as a coping mechanism, and he decided to come back to find James in Eileen's house. Eileen is portrayed as the villain, but in reality as the plot continues we find out that Eileen has her own villain which is mental health issues that she has, which makes her the way that she is.
We conformed to Todorov's theory of equilibrium by having several obstacles for the characters to overcome throughout the film. In James case his first obstacle is too throw a good party, he overcomes this when lots of people turn up, James must then overcome the obstacle of the 'police' coming to his house which turns out to be Eileen, James must find a way to get out of Eileen's house to overcome this obstacle. Finally once James has been rescued he must get over the traumatic experience. Eileen also has several obstacles that are shown throughout the film, the first obstacle that she must get over is the death of her son, then she has to get over her husband going away. To get over these obstacles she uses James. When James is freed she has to get over him leaving, and finally she must try and get over her mental health issues. Everything is resolved for James in the end as he gets freed from Eileen's house. Although we subverted to Todorov's theory in Eileen's case as we leave her on more of a cliff hanger and never find out whether she recovers from her mental illness, so all does not end positive for Eileen. The use of several obstacles for each character allows the audience to follow the characters journeys and become more involved with them on a personal level, this keeps the audience engaged throughout the film.
In our opening we conformed to Levi Strauss' binary opposition theory. Within our film opening the two main characters are represented as being completely opposite, Eileen is always presented on her own which suggests that she is lonely where as James is shown with several friends which shows that he is popular. James is dressed colorfully where as Eileen is dressed all in black which shows that James may be more happier with his life and himself where as Eileen is not. Also this could represent that James is celebrating whereas Eileen is grieving. The clear binary opposites between the two are that James is a male where as Eileen is a woman, and James is a teenager whereas Eileen is a middle aged woman.
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