Jonathan Kramer: postmodern music theory.

Media Theorist Jonathan Kramer says "the idea that postmodernism is less a surface style or historical period than an attitude. Kramer goes on to say 16 "characteristics of postmodern music, by which I mean music that is understood in a postmodern manner, or that calls forth postmodern listening strategies, or that provides postmodern listening experiences, or that exhibits postmodern compositional practices."

According to Kramer (Kramer 2002, 16–17), postmodern music":

1. is not simply a repudiation of modernism or its continuation, but has aspects of both a break and an extension
2. is, on some level and in some way, ironic
3. does not respect boundaries between sonorities and procedures of the past and of the present
4. challenges barriers between 'high' and 'low' styles
5. shows disdain for the often unquestioned value of structural unity
6. questions the mutual exclusivity of elitist and populist values
7. avoids totalizing forms (e.g., does not want entire pieces to be tonal or serial or cast in a prescribed formal mold)
8. considers music not as autonomous but as relevant to cultural, social, and political contexts
9. includes quotations of or references to music of many traditions and cultures
10. considers technology not only as a way to preserve and transmit music but also as deeply implicated in the production and essence of music
11. embraces contradictions
12. distrusts binary oppositions
13. includes fragmentations and discontinuities
14. encompasses pluralism and eclecticism
15. presents multiple meanings and multiple temporalities
16. locates meaning and even structure in listeners, more than in scores, performances, or composers


Jonathan Donald Kramer (December 7, 1942, Hartford, Connecticut – June 3, 2004, New York City), was a U.S. composer and music theorist.

Active as a music theorist, Kramer published primarily on theories of musical time and postmodernism. At the time of his death he had just completed a book on postmodern music and a cello composition for the American Holocaust Museum.

Final draft of coursework

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVcMVKBqf4M

POSSESSEDTHEMOVIE.WEEBLY.COM

HOME

ABOUT THE FILM

CAST & CREW

TRAILER

GALLERY

DOWNLOADS

what were doing to the film, date filming, music, voice over, change in story etc

When you love someone,
You want to keep them safe,
And never let them go,
But life doesn't always work out the way you want.

She couldn't keep him safe,
And she had to let him go,
For Katie, that summer was a nightmare.

But time goes by and life moves on,
Friends are there for you,
And slowly the nightmare fades away.

But do you really know your friends?

For Katie the nightmare is not over,
It's only just begun.
[Scream]


Origen Music Artists - Dance of the clouds.
http://www.jamendo.com/en/search/all/background%20music

Website research

One of the feedback points for our website was to research more into other film websites to get the right idea of what we need to do to make it look more proffessional.
We decided to do more detailed research into our first inspiration for the website, 'Prom Night'. Because the film is distributed by Sony Pictures the website is based within their URL of sonypictures.co.uk/movies/promnight/

The above screen shot is of the first page of the films website. It has links to the homepage, to watch the trailer, register for email updates, and the films Bebo page. The main image is from the poster with just the film title, the tagline and release date. We are thinking of making an opening page for our film leading to the main website but aren't sure whether we have enough time. Another way of incorpreting the style of this website is to have a similar layout for our homepage, using the poster image with the title, tagline and release date and having a few links maybe to a facebook page etc.We will also have to put the institutions and rating, which we already have anyway on our website at the moment.

This is the homepage of the website: sonypictures.co.uk/movies/promnight/site/

After clicking on the 'ENTER THE SITE' link on the opening page the official site opens in a new tab. They've used the same image but enlarged to fill the page with the text in a different layout with the release date above the title. The background is moving, although it is difficult to see what the image is of, it looks like hands with light flares and is obviousley quite dark so not to draw attention away from the main image of the girl. The sites navigation is at the bottom of the image with pages such as 'About the Film', 'Cast & Crew', 'Trailer', 'Gallery', 'Downloads' and 'Soundtrack'.
The ideas we have interpreted from this page are using the poster image as the main focal point, and we've also chosen similar pages, as in other research we found most websites use these headings. Our navigation is at the top of the page however using a consistent font to the rest of the website.

The 'About the Film' page has information on the story, production notes, the making of, and the cast and crews prom stories. For our 'About the Film' page we will just have an outline of the story with some images.
On the 'Cast & Crew' page, detailed info about most of the cast and 'The Filmakers' is given. We will just write general info about the main characters/cast and about us the 'filmakers' perhaps with profile pictures also.
The trailer page obviousley just shows the trailer in the centre of the page. The theme throughout all the pages is the same, background, and text of the title and release date stay in the same place, the centre picture changes to various stills from the film with text boxes overlayed.

The 'Gallery' ^^ shows important images/stills from the film of characters and crucial scenes. The images come up as thunmbnails at the top of the page, when you click on one it shows up underneath but larger for example like in the screen shot above. Our gallery page will have the pictures from the photo album and important stills from the film.

'Downloads' has downloadable backgrounds and buddy icons. Our site will have the poster and backgrounds as downloads.

The 'Soundtrack' page links to a Myspace page with the soundtrack available to listen to and other information available. We've decided not to make our soundtrack a page as we feel it isn't necessary, because the 'Prom Night' soundtrack is a well known song and ours isn't.


We also researched 'The Crazies' website: thecrazies-movie.com
HOMEPAGE HERE!
The homepage has the film title in the top left corner with the release date underneath and also in the centre of the page above the trailer. The background is obviousley a setting from the movie with a sign to the right saying 'HELP US'. The navigation is at the top of the page with pages such as; 'ABOUT', 'VIDEOS', 'GALLERY', 'DOWNLOADS', 'CAST & CREW', and 'BATTLEMAIL'. Below the trailer is the institutions, release date, a phone app link, 'register' (email updates, promos etc), Facebook and Twitter links, and 'find show times' for local cinemas.

The 'ABOUT' page just includes the storyline with the same background as the homepage. (Similar to our idea)
'VIDEOS' has a few different versions of the the films trailer,our trailer page will obviousley just have the one trailer.
The 'GALLERY' has scattered polaroids on the page and when you click on one, similar to the 'Prom Night' website, it comes up larger.
'DOWNLOADS' includes wallpapers, screensavers and buddy icons.
'CAST & CREW'
'BATTLE MAIL' is an interesting idea, at first you have no idea what it is. It is an interactive game. You type in your email and a friends email and start an email battle, obviousley linking to the idea of the films story. Your friend can email you back and so on, continuing the battle. This is a good device to interest the audience and make them more involved and attracted to the film.

Feedback

Feedback from the class

Trailer

• Music works well
• Writing is good
• Music is good
• The flashlight looks effective
• Good begining, good end
• Just need a faster, clearer middle
• Some more shorter shots from different angles while their in the house
• Maybe a scene where they take her hostage
• Needs a bit of the male at the begining
• 1.02 does not flow with continuity, cuts from light on to a different
• Voice over maybe to make it look more like a trailer
• Male laughing maybe?
• The bedroom scene could maybe be cut out altogether
• Start and end is brilliant, middle is a little bit of a let down for the piece-perhaps leave the 3 girls out an have the bits of main girl being watched as they are good aswell

Poster

• Overall really good
• At the top in the blank space maybe put the stalker pictures across the top all jizjazzed? or a quote. Space needs filling
• Originality?

Website

• Gallery isn't relevant-wouldn't see them sort of photos on a professional website
• Gallery is good, a very original idea

Teacher feedback

Trailer

• Less shots of girl tied up at begining and end
• Cut out shot where males identity is obvious
• Speak when tied up-'Why are you doing this?', 'I know who you are'
• See the film the girls are watching
• Leave at night
• Could be another character doing the kidnapping
• Better acting-more shots in the bedroom/angles
• More scenes-different locations
• Last scream needs to be longer
• Focus on main character when she screams at film so we know shes the main character
• We see her actually being kidnapped-quick shot

Poster

• Tagline
• Make the photo stand out more

Website

• About the film-actors, location, detail
• Pictures-main character-stills from film, scary, more/better stalker phots (leaf photo-more zoom, rearview-see eyes)
• Pictures-male and other characters
• Do more research

FIRST DRAFT COURSEWORK

Main Task: Teaser Trailer

click link to see bigger screen - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DizvggAD5Pw

Anciliary Task: Poster

For our final design we made the image a lot darker than the original to make it look more effective, to give it this mysterious look we can only see a section of the characters face, so it doesn't reveal their identity I think it makes more of an imapact to the viewer.

Anciliary Task: Website

WWW.POSSESSEDTHEMOVIE.WEEBLY.COM

Music

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FINALLY THE NEW AND IMPROVED STORYBOARD!!

Titles research

Looked at titles of 'the strangers', 'the grudge' and 'prom night'. All have institution at begining and title of film at the end with a quick film clip after and then 'coming soon' website and institutions. Then sometimes after that the institution again, actors and directors etc.

Found the music

http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/181830

Filming DONE! Poster photo DONE!

We filmed the middle scene of the trailer on Saturday, and the end clips on Monday and todays media lesson! So everything is done hopefully. We have booked out an emergency camera for wednesday just incase we feel some bits need improving or more needs adding in. We also took the photo for our ancilliary task of the poster and edited it in todays media lesson on photoshop... Here is what we did...

^^ Original photo ^^

For this one ^^ we changed it to black and white, flipped it horizontally and changed the contrast and brightness

^^ Original photo ^^

^^Black and white, contrast and brightness changed and coloured the eye in black

This one isn't completely finished but we basically wanted it to be black and white with just the eye still in colour.Sowe had to cut the eye bit out to keep the colour then change the image to black and white and copy the eye back on. We also enhanced the colour of the eye to make it a brighter blue.

Most of these photos will also go on the website.

Stalker photos

These are the photos we took in the style of the stalker. They aren't great but because of how little time we had, it's better to have something  rather than nothing. I think most of them look legitimate but they won't be seen for a long period of time so they're just for effect really. We are also going to put them on the films website.

Old test shots

These were some shot idea/tests we did before changing the storyboard.We tried it in two different rooms to compare lighting and space. When we did film these shots, the characters were slightly different and we chose to film in the pink/white room. This test also helped us decide how to place the camera as the quality of these test shots arn't very good, for example the first two.We used the same shots we tested in the blue room when we filmed for real in the other room.

Peeps

The Cast

Charlie plays the main character in our film - Abbey

Jack plays the stalker                                                               

Hannah plays one of Abbey's friends

And Jasmine also plays one of Abbey's friends.

To Do List...

Ancilliary Tasks. - Website & Poster.

Pre Production;

• Research into existing horror posters, looking at conventions, aspects we thought looked good etc. 
• Research that went in for the website was looking at websites such as the tormented, prom night to look at typical thermes.

Post Production;

• We need to edit the website and make sure it looks proffessional and real.
• For the poster will need to make sure it has all the relevant and promotional information on it.  Overall does it look like a real horror poster.

Distribution;

• The website is going to be on weebly so, anyone will be able to view the website.

To Do List...

Main Task.- Trailer.
Pre Production -

• Research;  We looked at different horror movies to get inspiration and ideas. 

Post Production -

• We need to edit the filming to make it trailer. -9th Dec. 09

Distribution -

• For distribuion we are going to put our trailer on youtube for viewing and of course our blog. -11th Dec. 09

Filming.

On saturday we completed 1/4 of our filming! We followed our new improved storyboard that will be uploaded onto the blog shortly.  We tried to do a variety of shots so we have enough.  We did the filming in my garage, the 'kidnapped scene.'  This was our main character tied to a chair in distress, frightened and scared this hopefully comes across in our filming with the types of shots we have done.  We got our actor looking scared, doing close up shots of the face and eyes to capture the fear.  For lighting we used a torch as the room was in darkness.  We flashed the torch and experimented with the lighting for dramatic effect.

Research for new storyboard

After realising we would have to scrap all the filming we had already done (although it wasn't that much) I decided I was unsattisfied with the opening scene we have for our trailer. I spoke to a few people, some who also do media, and they said maybe we should start it with scary shots, not the calm atmosphere we had before. I think this is a great idea and will really improve our trailer. I did some more research into trailers to get ideas of how to do this new idea.

Paranormal Activity
This trailer is really effective, it shows the first audience who ever watched the film in the trailer. Seeing their reactions is quite shocking and I think these shots scare you more than the film itself. However in the film a good technique they used was infrared. Most of the film was recorded at night so obviously a night vision camera was used. We originally wanted to use this technique in our film but decided it would be too tricky, but now I think it would be worth giving it a go. Another film we watched at the begining of our research also used infrared, it was called Quarentine.


Skin Walkers
The start of this trailer uses taglines to introduce the story. It also shows quite graphic shots which makes you keep watching. I found this was quite an action film and not exactly horror but they did use intersting techniques to attract the audience and tell the story. Flashing/quick editing of shots is used which creates the action feel and also throughout I noticed a copper theme in most of the shots like a tint, maybe to link in with the characters eyes which were copper coloured.


Thir13en Ghosts
The begining scene of the Thir13en Ghosts trailer has a spooky atmosphere, a blue tint to the shots make this. It also shows that it is dark and looks cold. A white flash is used to skip to a more coloured scene and then as the action comes back into play more white flashes skip between different shots. I think the first flash makes it seem like theres a flashback.


The Strangers
This trailer starts with a calm atmosphere and uses taglines to introduce the story. MUSIC. It also shows the views of the characters having double takes, in the first shot you see a person and in the second you don't. When I watched this it was really creepy and definately worked at scaring the audience. Also the use of masks for the other characters really adds to the atmosphere, not being able to see their face, and you can imagine how scared you would be in that situation.


The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
2-4 second clips are used for the first part of the trailer to set the scene. Then 1 second clips which fade to black are seen, these start to set the pace and atmosphere. I liked the use of freeze frames to show the panic on the characters faces and then faded quickly to white. The last sequence of shots at the end of the trailer are short with quick editing, the clips are also quite dark and the speed of the editing creates an action feel and makes the audience interested.


The Grudge
This trailer really creeped me out. The main element I like about it was how they used a wave of hair to bring the text/titles in and out of the frame.


The Unborn
This trailer also starts off slow and uses white flashes inbetween the scary shots. I really like the titles for this trailer and the background they used. I think the characters really show the genre of this film and just looking at them scares you.


Shaun Of The Dead
I love the trailer for this film, I really like how they've managed to mix together funny and scary and be able to laugh and be scared at the same time.


Looking at all these trailers gave me a great idea for the storyboard. The trailer is going to start with quick editing so you see very short clips, almost flashes, of whats going on like in some of the trailers above. The shots will be of our main character, already been kidnapped, tied to a chair in a room, it will be dark with just a light on her. There will also be shots of the stalker/kidnapper but you won't be able to see all of their face and there will also be pictures he has taken of the girl when she didn't know. All these shots will be interspersed with each other creating a mix up of the shots and hopefully creating a scary/anitcipating atmosphere

Major problemoosss

Our actress who is the main character in the trailer has dropped out, so obviousley we can't use the shots we have already done with her in as the main character. We have found someone else to use and plan to film on saturday hopefully getting at least half of the clips we need for the whole trailer as time is running out. Also on saturday we will take the photos for the poster and website. Obviousley the blog I posted yesterday is now irrelevant. We have also come up with a new storyboard to make the trailer more scary as I feel it wasn't good enough before.