Bitter Sweet: Martha Marcy May Marlene Website

Deconstruction

This film part of ‘Fox Searchlight’ which means that the website is actually a page on their website dedicated to the film.

Under the banners for the ‘Fox Searchlight’ site, the page is dedicated to the film. This shows the same image from the MMMM poster. This shows consistency and therefore something audiences can recognise.

As you roll the mouse over the image, the image inside the shape of the ‘M’ becomes a video. This immerses the audience because of the interactivity. This creates more enigma and is slightly uncomforting as no more of the girl is revealed and she is still staring into the camera.

When loading the webpage, the title appears on screen in an interesting way. ‘Martha appears first and then the ‘M’ initials appear below before the rest of the names. This is emphasising the alliteration and poses questions on what all the names mean.

This section of the page is simplistic much like the poster showing names of the actors’, a quote from ‘Rolling Stone’ and ‘now playing’. This allows the site to be user friendly.

There are links (clearly links as they have a background colour unlike the rest of the text) are easy to navigate and into a link to the synopsis, trailer and other interactive site. When selecting ‘Synopsis’ for example, the page dims and the text appears in capitals and a white bold font over the top. This page can then be closed to go back to the homepage.

The most interesting and innovative section to the site is a link to another interactive site for the film: ‘iamateacherandaleader.com’. Once this site is open, there is an opening screen which is the same as the poster with social networking links to share on Facebook and Twitter etc. There is then a link to ‘Enter Site’.

The loading screen is black with ‘I AM A TEACHER AND A LEADER’ in white and grey capitals. The loading numbers are in faded white and a jumbled manner in the top right-hand corner.

Once loaded a harsh profile image of the main character MMMM is shown and zooms out as the words ‘Martha Marcy May Marlene are displaced down the screen on the left.

Her face is then recreated in what looks like lots of pieces of paper moving. Words created in the same way appear next to the image, including phrases such as ‘family’, ‘lies’ and ‘death’.

Meanwhile clips of dialogue from the film can be heard including ‘Marcy May, where you going?’ and ‘death is beautiful’.

This image then becomes interactive: as you scroll over sections of the image, a thumbnail of a watchable video appears to the side and a related phrase is created next to the image e.g. ‘escape’. All of these design features appeal to the target audience as they create enigma and pose a lot of questions through clues. This is also appropriate for the genre of thriller.

Ominous piano and string music can be heard immersing the audience is the world of the film. This is appropriate for thriller.

The background image is a greyscale picture of a farm/yard giving a few more clues to the plot of the film but not too much therefore it’s still creating enigma.

Back on the main page, the rest of the page belongs to the Fox Searchlight template but dedicated to the film. This includes: ‘own this film’, ‘like this film on Facebook’, ‘related tags’, photos, awards and nomination, releases, email updates, ‘MMMM on YouTube’, ‘meet the cast and crew’, ‘in the news’ and ‘on Twitter’. This is a really in-depth list of features to really attract audiences to getting more involved with the film. However, this section of the site is less user-friendly.