Precious is based on a Based on the Novel "Push": this is about a girl
that faces problems throughout her life and people help her overcome them. I chose
this movie because I like drama’s and true stories. And I think the poster and trailer
is eye catching because with the poster it looks like a had reaching up inside
her body and breaking the shape of the body into pieces. Also with the trailer there are moments when
it makes the audience want to watch the movie to see what happens after.
Precious was produces in 2009 and features a range of well-known people Mariah
Carey, Gabourey Sidibe (Precious) and Paula Hatton. It was written by Sapphire
and directed by Lee Daniels. The movie had a budget of $10,000,000 but
generated $1,872,458 in the box office alone. It was distributed by Lions Gate
Entertainment. The central image of the poster is of a large, black figure of a
girl, the only human feature is the body so that’s how we can tell it’s a girl.
The black figure looks like shattered glass and within that glass there is a
hand made out of the cracks. The hand is reaching up inside the body. The iconography
of this poster is violence, and instability. The fact that the body is broken
shows that the main character is going to be facing issues and problems.
The trailer for Precious uses many narrative techniques but
it’s not your typical Hollywood drama. Applying propp’s characters you have an
antagonist that is Claireece's mother as she is abusing her and not allowing
her to live in a stable home. The heroine in the movie is her child as he
brings Claireece happiness and someone to love and receive love from. The
helper, mentor, and father are the teachers and social workers as they help her
get through the abuse and get her to love herself by showing her love and
respect. The film's narrative is clearly introduced in the trailer and follows
Todorov's theory of disequilibrium. The trailer starts off as her dreaming so
we already know that her life isn’t stable. Then when her mum wakes her up by
splashing water over her then we know that. The introduction of the school
shows us equilibrium as it shows a teacher asking her what she’s good and
telling her that everyone’s good a something. The trailer is full of Barthes'
enigma and action codes. When she is dreaming and explaining how she would like
life to be you can see that her life is going to be very unstable. When
Claireece is dreaming then all of a sudden water gets splashed on her it
intrigues the audience because they want to see what happens after. Same with
the scene where Claireece is on the stairs and her mums threatening her and
then throws something back at her then Claireece throws it back down the stairs
then her mum chases after her. This suggests there will be moments of drama and
tension in the film and the only way to see these resolved is to watch the
whole movie.
The mum fits an unfair stereotype of black single mothers in
Harlem. She is presented in the trailer as a character that is abusive,
violent, and short tempered and unsympathetic. I think the reason she is like this is because she has a boyfriend, the father of precious (Claireece Precious Jones) and the dad is only interested in Precious and raping her. The mum in a way feels neglected as she's not getting love or attention from her own boyfriend. We can see she still has love for Precious but it is not shown as the only thing shown is she anger as a result of what the father did to Claireece.