Blue is for Tuesday

"Mr Benn for a modern world"
For the project within Virtools (bastard programme...) we have decided to make a learning and creative tool for anyone in the field of cinematography eg A-Level students. Its purpose is to help the user explore the elements of genre and style within the main frame of cinema. The process will take the shape of an associative narrative to begin and as the user progresses he will develop a more linear approach.

At ‘start up’ the user will have gender control of a character and given a brief introduction to the shape of their proposed journey in the form of an interview or something.
At the end of the interview (or whatever) the user’s character will be teleported via a Mr. Benn type door into a Virtools generated environment that relates specifically to a certain movie genre (e.g. Film Noir, Western, Love Story etc.). The environment will be location specific, lighting specific, prop specific etc. and as the user journeys around the space he will find information about that type of genre i.e. important films, directors and future influences on film etc. The character might travel through a bank of mirrors.

As an example we will say that the user arrives first in a film noir environment. As the user scrolls around he will attain various physical, emotional attributes required by characters in film noir of which he will be able to keep say three, before he steps through another door into another genre. With this choice of characteristics he will also be able to retain (if he chooses) other aspects of the genre e.g. music, lighting style, character clothes, characteristics to take into the next world/environment randomly chosen by the program. So, for example, the user might choose to retain the lighting set up and the characteristic of ruthless and if the next genre environment was Martial Arts the user would have the initial imagery for a mixed genre movie.
As the user becomes more aware of the parameters of the product/game he will begin to learn ways of controlling the character through the hyperspace between worlds and therefore enhance his understanding of genre and the mixing of genres i.e. ZomCom, RomCom, Love Story/Road Trip, Sci Fi/Fantasy/Horror. Also the product will help define for the user each genre so that he will have more confidence breaking the established rules of genre.

The more advanced user will be able to save environments and cross match at their leisure knowing the fundamentals of each genre (according to me) before developing their new world for their new protagonist.

Since we've written this, things have changed. The mise-en-scene is too big a "thing" to look at, as well as including films use of, sound, lighting and camera angles. We might just look at the use of sound and lighting so for example Diegetic and none Diegetic sound, the way horror films and film Noir exploit lighting to convey mood and set the scene. We have yet to fully think everything through yet! Never mind making the bloody thing!