Describe The Elements Of Style And Narrative Applied To The Films "Hard Candy" And "Silence Of The Lambs" And How They Cause Emotional Response

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JOE MOORCROFT 13G

Two elements of two chosen texts and how they cause emotional response

My two chosen texts are Hard Candy and Silence of the Lambs. In these films many film techniques and elements are relevant and vital to the construction of emotionally captivating and encouraging sequences. The two main and most important elements are style and narrative. A film element is something used by a media producer or a film company to create a desired emotional response and a desired positioning from the spectator. This process is called mediation and it is the most vital thing to cause emotional responses in films, as it has the ability to portray an ideology onto the audience and captivate those who wish to be targeted, and also expose emotionally, those that are in the line of fire.

Film narrative is the depiction in the medium of film of a series of events in cause and effect relationship occurring in time. Loosely speaking film narrative is a story constructed from production and story elements. Story telling in film is dependent on production processes. Production elements of camera, sound, editing, lighting, acting, visual composition (or mis-en-scene: sets, props, costume, make-up), and special effects (such as CGI) combine with story elements of character, setting, plot, cause and effect and create the power behind enforcing an emotional response from audiences and spectators.

Every film and media text is a result of many elements coming together in a harmonious and meaningful way. A good film production should be a combination of style, plot, and narration. When these three aspects are taken care of sufficiently, the film produced and the creation after this combination is genuine and classy and easily will evoke a desired emotional response from spectators and audiences.

Though style, plot, and narration need to collectively culminate into a striking and emotionally evoking film all the elements are important. The plot deals with the sequence of events in the story. The style is the usage of language, and film codes and presentation by the filmmaker. Narration can be explained as the way in which the director makes the spectator understand the story. The fact that for a story to be interesting, the plot should be good and the style perfect is a widely known feature of a successful film. Though narratives are important, style has the ability to make even a story with mediocre plot go from being nothing to successful.

When you look at Silence of the Lambs, the narrative is very enticing. Young FBI agent Clarice Starling is assigned to help find a missing woman to save her from a psychopathic serial killer who skins his victims. Clarice attempts to gain a better insight into the twisted mind of the killer by talking to another psychopath Hannibal Lecter, who used to be a respected psychiatrist. FBI agent Jack Crawford believes that Lecter, who is also a very powerful and clever mind manipulator, has the answers to their questions and can help locate the killer. However, Clarice must first gain Lecter's confidence before the inmate will give away any information.

Many different people will have varied emotional responses to The Silence of the Lambs, as a spectator I was shocked to see how brutal and sadistic the elements in the film were, but it was also interesting to see the element of voyeurism we as humans get from watching such subject matter.

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The overall issue in the film revolve around members of society that cannot feel secure with serial killers on the loose, and expect the FBI to remove that threat. No amount of security, even steel bars and plexiglass walls seems to protect society, and especially Dr. Chilton, from Hannibal Lecter. The overall message could be conjured up to - you are never safe in the harsh realities of society. Most people with a mainly realists ideology will have a preferred and dominant reading (Stuart Hall) of this text as they will realise what life really consists of, and that nothing ...

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