Sound and Lighting and the use of Black and White

Sound and Lighting and Black and White

Sound and lighting is an essential part of what makes a piece of media text flow smoothly and work well in relation to its chosen genre. Throughout the world of media sound is used in almost every situation. However there are two types of sound, those being: diegetic and non-diegetic. Diegetic sound is sound that is communicated through the actual sounds of the actions on screen. For example, the creaking of a door in a horror film, the smashing of a glass on the floor, and also even dialogue between two characters. It is important to know the different types of diegetic sounds as these are the sounds that are used throughout media texts the most. 

Dietetic sound will play a key role in our opening sequence due to the fact that it will be vital that the characters engage in some form of dialogue so that the opening sequence makes sense unless there is a continuous stream of narration over the top of the clips. The dietetic sounds are used predominantly in every style of genre but are especially used within the action genre on the basis that this includes a variety of explosions and shots being fired. 

The Dark Knight is a great example of our they use a mix of diegetic and non-diegetic sound in one sequence. 

Non-diegetic sound is arguably even more important when it comes to an opening scene due to the fact that this is an opportunity for the director to showcase the talent that he has cast through displaying their names on screen as a flurry of images of videos flow on screen with a soundtrack playing in the background. This is a great opportunity for conglomerates and institutions to become hooked to the feature before it has even started due to the world renowned names the are shown on screen. The soundtrack that we anticipate to use over the dialogue/ narrative of our opening sequence is taken directly from a war film which has also been converted into a video game which shows cross media - convergence. The soundtrack will therefore be recognisable to the audience as they will psychographically have an interest into that genre. James Bond for example always continues to display non-diegetic sound through a soundtrack over the opening credits that are displayed on screen.

Not only is the sound important for the opening scene to make sense and belong to the specific decided genre but the visuals and visual effects are key to ensuring that the feature reaps as much success as it possibly can. Black and White is a visual effect that stereotypically was used during an older era where technicolour displays were very expensive and therefore only available and accessible to the wealthy people of society and therefore black and white became the 'norm' for many people. 

The use of black and white is commonly associated with older more historical type media texts due to the fact that colour is used for almost any modern day media texts with a few exceptions.

For example Sin City is a modern day example of a film that utilises black and white however they still use the strong accented colour of red so that certain objects or features of a woman for example stand out to the audience. 

This has inspired us to use as much black and white (greyscale) as possible due to the fact that it is set within a war time era where they wouldn't have had any access to technicolour or any form of colour altering software. Also during the editing stages of the preliminary task I experimented with the black and white feature to try and add a horror like effect to the section of the sequence where a skeleton like monster appears. However due to the poor quality camera that we had used to film the preliminary task we were unable to use the black and white as this dramatically decreased out level of quality.