Micro Drama Group Analysis

Micro Drama group Analysis

Micro Drama started out with a mind map which included ideas in general over the the story line. What genre it would be and how we will present in to make it obvious for viewers recognize it.

Our drama is about 4 minutes long and we needed to make sure that the audience are able to understand and catch up very quickly. At the end we decided to use costumes to represent each character relying on Propp's theory. 
The hero (main charter) will wear super hero costume, a princess (the price for the hero, usually unable to get her because of villain) would wear a dress and make it as much as possible to look like a princess, the villain (a person who is going to cause the equilibrium break and stands against hero) would wear horns and pitchfork. 
We have decided that dispatcher (a person who sent the hero on to the way) and the donor (who gives the hero some magical objects) are going to be the same people as well as evil and false hero (a character who takes credits of the hero). 

We have also decided the place where we would film. We decided to start the scene by the fire and look like a group of friends who are just spending a great time together.
Another place is an abandoned house in the forest, this would highlight the fact that the drama's genre is horror as it is the connotation of the horror genre.

We have also thought of what kind of camera shots and angles we are going to use, sound effects and how we should plan our storyboard.

Storyboard:

This is the storyboard that we made and used to make all the scenes. There are the shots and angles of each scene as well as the sound whether it is diegetic or non-diegetic.  

There is a Hero played by: Kristian, 

Villain played by: Jonathan, Princess played by: Bronwen, False hero played by me(Adel), 

Donor/Dispatcher: Sophie and Helper played by Riona.

Overall our story line was following the Todorov's Narrative Formula there was the equilibrium when everything was great and the characters were just having a talk next to a fire, after there was the disruption of that equilibrium by dispatcher who suggests to go to the forest and see that abandoned house. 

After there was a recognition that there was a disruption when all the characters realise that the princess and the villain are gone, after there is an attempt of repairing the disruption when the hero goes off to save the princess and finally there is a reinstatement of the equilibrium as the hero saves the princess the villain loses and everyone is happy.

We also had a few Levi-Strauss Binary Opposites & Dramatic Conflict for example we had hero and a villain, dark and light, piece/calm and horror, balance and unbalance, the list could just go on.

Roland Barthes:

• The Hermeneutic Code: The villain used it to make drama more mysterious as he pretends to be a friends at first.
• The Enigma Code: This code was used in order to build up tension in the drama, this happened when we moved from fire place to the abandoned house.
• The Semantic Code: The costumes are the part of this as they represent each of the characters.
• The Symbolic Code: The lighting was higher than at the end as it suggested that there was no problem at the beginning and when the scene moved to the house the lighting was dark and the sound was suggesting that it is a house full of mystery and unknown as you would be able to hear a thunderstorm when the house appears in the scene. At the end the lighting on the hero goes bright and this shows that he is the main character and he is the light in the darkness which means that he is the hero and he finally achieved his goal.

The Script:

EXT.
Dusk, 6 students huddled around bonfire.

Sophie - So did you hear about the party ehh on this Friday Bronnie?

Bronnie - Yeah. Ehmm, what are you guys dressing up as?

Sophie - I don't really know... What about you Riona do you know?

Riona - Ehmm, I'm going to be an elf.

Sophie - Yeah? Nice!
(Laughter)

Riona - You guys?
(Riona looking at Bronnie and Kristian)

Bronnie- Ehh, I am going as a princess.

John – Suits you.

Sophie - I think I’m actually going to go as an ehh, as a fairy. Like with all fairy dust and everything
(Laughter)

John - Going to make someone disappear?

Sophie - Yeah, pretty much.

John – I was going to go as the devil.

Sophie - Yeah?

John - Yeah.

Sophie - With horns and everything?

John - With the horns and everything.

Sophie - Ohh Nice!
(Leaning to the left)

John - That was the idea.

Sophie - I am already looking forward to seeing that.
(John laughs)
2
John - What about you Kristian?

Kristian - Ehh, I think it's kind of obvious... Superman!

Sophie - He is going to take it to the next level. Definitely.
(Short pause everyone looking at the fire)


Sophie - What about you Adel?

Adel - Ohh, I am not going

Sophie - No? Shame... You'll join in the next time then!
(Adel chuckles)
(Everyone stays silent for a moment and eats their marshmallows)

Sophie - Did you guys ever hear the story about the scary Haunted House? In the woods?

Riona and Adel - No

John - Where is it?

Sophie - It's ehmm... argh. I can't remember what the town is called but it's in the woods and I think, like, we should go there once because it is so scary.

John - Yeah, we should!

Sophie - It's ehmm it's this huge mansion.

John - Yeah, but what's the story though?

Sophie - Well I was first going to tell you.
(Everyone laughing, laughing even more, when Sophie drops her marshmallow on the floor)


Sophie - Ok anyway back to the story.

So it is actually this really, really old mansion and ehmm, there used to live these two old people there and ehmm it was really scare cause then this one night in the winter, they ehh, they were at their house and it was so cold that they had to get firewood from the woods. So they just went outside, and they took their car to drive a bit further inside the wood. Basically what happened was that eh, the husband he left his wife in the car and said "I'll be right back" and then he actually never came back and she froze to death in the car. So now the house it's still standing there all by itself and it's all old and it's really...
I don't know it's kind of scary. I went around it last time and it was just so creepy, just the feeling of it and thinking of that story...
(Sophie shivers)

Sophie - Uhh, it actually does give me shivers quite a bit.
(Riona chuckles in the background)

John - We should go!

Sophie - We should definitely go to this haunted house!


EXT.

NIGHT, 5 students standing in front of an ominous house.

(Diegetic sound of owl and wind in the trees)

Sophie - Oh my god, this house looks so abandoned

Kristian - It's creepy

Riona - Yeah...

Sophie - It is right? I told you guys it would be. 
(Diegetic sound of Bronnie screaming)

Sophie - What happened?

Kristian - The princess is gone!
(John evil laugh)

John - Hahahahah! You’ll never get your princess back!

Sophie - Here! Take this leaf! It will help you save the princess!

Bronnie - Help me!

Hero - I'll save you!
(Christian punches John)

John - Arghh!
(Kristian helps Bronnie down)

Bronnie - Thank you so much!
(Non-diegetic sound of heroic music in the background) 

We used Pinnacle Studio 17 for the editing our video and I think it turned up to be great even thought we had a little problem of using it at fist and we watched a few videos on how to use it, some of us knew how to use it as they used it last year. However, most of us were not quite sure how to use it. we also used Adobe to set everything in place as the sound in first place wasn't that good.

Overall, I think that our micro drama went very well and it was easily recognised in a horror genre because of all that mystery, people disappearing and getting the frightening stories as we wanted it to be on the first place. The drama was short and included all 4 of the Narrative aspects. The sound effects were great and matched the scene as well as the shots were continues. We have used two cameras to alternate between each other and to make it more balanced.The angles were made in a right way so the audience feel like they are at that place. 

When the low angle was used to show Sophie's face when she was telling the story of a house the angle made the scene really powerful and the lighting was used to make the scene look like a connotation of a narrator which are usually used in a horror movie to describe the scene and atmosphere. The way she was telling the story was mysterious as the audience would not expect what would happen after. 

However, there were some drawbacks in the drama as the cameras were not ables to catch the voices of every character and that made it very hard for us to edit as the voice was blend with the noises surrounding the camera, so to get the part with a character talking was a difficulty. 

 Also the lighting for the scene in the woods was dull as the camera could not focus properly and couldn't take in the light. It was dark so we had to use our touches on out phones to make some sort of lighting. Because of that some scenes may be too dark to see any characters. 

I think for the next time we should check the lighting and bring some lights in case we will face that sort of problem again. Another thing we should do i think is to make sure that we could hear the voices in the camera and incase bring a microphone to make the voice more stable. I think we should also use more angles and  shots as they make the scene more interesting, for example at the begging we should've made an establishing shot to show where the characters were in that way the scene would've been less confusing, where as on the second part with a house we used establishing shot which made it all clear from the start to the audience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=207&v=KgT7cLrB_kc