Media and Cultural Studies, Introduction to Digital Media - MD 1178.

Name of Tutor: Maria Mencia

Project Proposal

Nelroy Dias, Iman Segoana, Michael Kamara

The Scales (Consumer Culture)

February 2012

Kingston University.

Our project is called “The Scales”, roughly based on consumer culture and will be a silent movie with Stop Motion Animation.

“Consumer culture is defined as a culture in which the majority of consumers avidly desire (and some noticeable portion pursue, acquire and display) goods and services that are valued for non-utilitarian reasons, such as status seeking, envy provocation, and novelty seeking” (Belk, 1988, p105).

This quote inspired the personality behind our protagonist. Our film is also influenced by Fritz Lang’s silent movie Metropolis, a product of the German expressionist movement, renowned for technical and stylistic reasons. Our film will deal with issues of class and a mechanical society, but from a consumerism viewpoint. German expressionist cinema displayed characters inner state of mind through visuals, making use of obscure camera angles, shapes and shadows, rather than making it obvious for the viewer to draw any simple conclusions. The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari by Robert Wiene also influenced our film. Our film aims to mimic these expressionist techniques.

The ‘Stop motion’ animation in our film is influenced by a YouTube video we saw called “Deadline post-it stop motion”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpWM0FNPZSs. Fast editing is another technique we wish to use, to emphasis the fast paced consumer environment in our film.

We intend for it to be published on television; on internet, mainly Youtube, or even cinema. The main target audience are urban people, who live in busy city environments, where shopping and consumption are the norm, and part of everyday life.

The film focuses on one male protagonist, who is a self-absorbed, selfish kind of person, who loves to shop and horde things. He always wants everything to go his way and is never prepared to compromise. If he doesn’t get his way, he tends to take it out on other people. He is in debt and has letters from bailiffs hounding him for maxing out his credit cards, yet he chooses to spend instead of pay off his debts. One day while shopping he spends all his money and can’t afford to pay for his transport home, resulting in him having to walk miles to get home. While walking he passes a few people who do not give him money because they are either like him and only care about themselves or are too poor to afford to help. After some time he meets a guy who appears normal but is actually a billionaire that pays for him to get home, and gives him some valuable advice that changes his life.

We will be designing our film using various of software, such as iMovie 8.0.6, Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Adobe Photoshop Pro CS5.5, Macromedia Flash MX / Professional 8 and dropbox. These products will basically help shape the look, feel and texture of the film and it will eventually be viewable in HTML format or as a stand-alone application for the smart

phones or similar web browsing technology. As well as software we will need hardware. A computer with a fast processor, most likely a MAC will be required. Working Internet connection, preferably a broadband connection will be required. We will also need a digital camera so that we can take pictures for our stop motion, and a digital camcorder to record our actual film scenes.

There are three main stages we will work through. Pre -production, Production and Post -production. At the Pre-production stage we will come up with ideas for project. We will create a storyboard to understand step by step what we plan to shoot. Actors will also be cast, the locations where we will be filming will be identified and shortlisted and equipment and props needed for production will also be established. As this is the organizing stage of the project it will mainly be the responsibility of the producer. At the Production stage we will shoot the film, which is the responsibility of the director. With perfect planning this should only take a maximum of two days. At this stage the producer will be in control of organizing lunch and making sure that everyone and everything is on set as required and on time and within the set budget. The Post-production stage is the responsibility of the editor and sound technician to edit the film and create the final piece.

Producer- Iman Segoana

Director/ camera man- Nelroy Dias

Editor/ Sound Technician – Michael Kamara

References:

Belk, Russel W. (1988) ' Third World Consumer Culture'. In E Kumku and A.F. Firat (Eds.) Marketing and Development: Towards Broader Dimmensions (pp103-127). Greenwich CT JAI

Bunliu, 2009, Deadline post-it stop motion [Video Online] Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpWM0FNPZSs [Accessed 19 February 2012]

Initial images for storyboard: