Friday, 20 April 2018
Friday, 23 February 2018
1B - Representation Essay Question UPDATED
Apply the concept of representation to one of your media productions
Representation refers to the description or portrayal of someone or something in a particular way. Within our coursework we product a film opening for a film called ‘traffic light’ and it is what I will be analysing throughout this essay. We included themes such as rich and poor, damaged youth and poor neighbourhoods. Our film opening was set in Melbourne, Essex, a dodgy area where lots of petty crime and drug dealing takes place. The story line follows a young boy who has taken the wrong path, the path of drugs. The film then follows on to show how he tries to turn his life around and shows the struggles he faces along the way.
We learnt from theorist such as Levi Strauss and Propp, who both has useful ideas that we could include in our film opening. Strauss focused on including binary opposites to heighten the difference between two characters, we showed Antonio to be poor and struggling with life as well as including well respected police officers who have worked hard to be where they are. Propp then added to this and stated that there will always be stock characters in every film; the damsel, the hero, the evil one etc. again we added Ale, the evil one, to bring Antonio to the dark side of dealing drugs. This then helped add to the narrative and also helped represent to the audience the purpose of each character.
‘Traffic light’ included both of these ideas, especially around the concept of age. Our main character ‘Antonio’ was a young man, around the age of 18, who had followed the life style of an older leader of a drug cartel. The comparison between the two, young and old, allows the audience to see where the older character started off. In addition to this, the young character struggling represents how hard it is for the younger generation to become successful. Society has made it so hard for the younger generation to find jobs, stay healthy, socialise whilst also achieving a high standard when it comes to their education: there are too many pressures it’s not surprising that young men like Antonio take the wrong path. We intensified the age gap by showing Antonio riding a bike – like a child riding in the street, his only way of transport – and the older drug leader dressed in a suit – professional and successful like most adults appear. This also incorporated Propps idea of a stock character as Antonio conformed to the idea that teenagers are a waste of space and a burden on society, a stereotypical stock representation. We used this stereotype to show to the audience that teenagers can change and become better people due to him being a completely different person at the end of the film, it makes the audience want to find out his story.
Class what’s another factor we chose to represent as it assimilated how the lower-class struggles do effect the next generation and it influences their future life decisions. We showed his rough up bringing by showing his house as run down (alcohol everywhere, cigarette butts) so that it was clear that his parents didn’t care about his actions or whereabouts. The lack of male role models in his life have lead him to be unstable and unclear of his future plans and aspirations, hence he is wasting his life away. We even included a sped-up head camera shot so that the audience could see how his mind worked. The fast pace hinted how he was used to making quick rational decisions which usually got him in trouble – i.e. he had no help or guidance in his troubled life, he was all alone. The use of his bike also expresses how he is unable to afford a car, he is not part of the middle-class stereotype who drive cars, he has to take less economical uses of transport. This representation of lower class emphasises the help that all of the troubled youths in society need in their upbringing and to express to people that should take more care into these kids. If Antonio’s family had given him more moral guidance would he be down this road? It is important that people with influences in a child’s life make sure they are making that influence positive. Making parents and other people with an influence over a child think about who they can help that child grow into a good person, helping future generations to come.
Simply the use of harsh drugs within the film opening again divides the gap between law abiding citizens as the typical family home wouldn’t have drugs and alcohol spread all over their living room table. Although Antonio comes across as a strong confident teen, his confidence is portrayed in all the wrong areas – crime. Sadly, this stereotype is becoming more and more of a reality therefore publicising the problem now will hopefully help children in the same situation as Antonio be able to escape. The urban environment Antonio is surrounded by presents to the audience how he is used to living in such raw situations and trouble will always be around the corner. He is brought up seeing crime in his everyday life therefore he notoriously is going to become a part of it in his teenage years.
As it was just the opening of the film that we produced we chose not to subvert stereotypes as it ensured the audience had a clear understanding of the roles each character played and what they represented. Overall, we have represented our characters and other factors very well as it is clear to the audience the troubles these characters are going to have, indicating specific enigma codes which makes them want to continue watching the film.
Representation refers to the description or portrayal of someone or something in a particular way. Within our coursework we product a film opening for a film called ‘traffic light’ and it is what I will be analysing throughout this essay. We included themes such as rich and poor, damaged youth and poor neighbourhoods. Our film opening was set in Melbourne, Essex, a dodgy area where lots of petty crime and drug dealing takes place. The story line follows a young boy who has taken the wrong path, the path of drugs. The film then follows on to show how he tries to turn his life around and shows the struggles he faces along the way.
We learnt from theorist such as Levi Strauss and Propp, who both has useful ideas that we could include in our film opening. Strauss focused on including binary opposites to heighten the difference between two characters, we showed Antonio to be poor and struggling with life as well as including well respected police officers who have worked hard to be where they are. Propp then added to this and stated that there will always be stock characters in every film; the damsel, the hero, the evil one etc. again we added Ale, the evil one, to bring Antonio to the dark side of dealing drugs. This then helped add to the narrative and also helped represent to the audience the purpose of each character.
‘Traffic light’ included both of these ideas, especially around the concept of age. Our main character ‘Antonio’ was a young man, around the age of 18, who had followed the life style of an older leader of a drug cartel. The comparison between the two, young and old, allows the audience to see where the older character started off. In addition to this, the young character struggling represents how hard it is for the younger generation to become successful. Society has made it so hard for the younger generation to find jobs, stay healthy, socialise whilst also achieving a high standard when it comes to their education: there are too many pressures it’s not surprising that young men like Antonio take the wrong path. We intensified the age gap by showing Antonio riding a bike – like a child riding in the street, his only way of transport – and the older drug leader dressed in a suit – professional and successful like most adults appear. This also incorporated Propps idea of a stock character as Antonio conformed to the idea that teenagers are a waste of space and a burden on society, a stereotypical stock representation. We used this stereotype to show to the audience that teenagers can change and become better people due to him being a completely different person at the end of the film, it makes the audience want to find out his story.
Class what’s another factor we chose to represent as it assimilated how the lower-class struggles do effect the next generation and it influences their future life decisions. We showed his rough up bringing by showing his house as run down (alcohol everywhere, cigarette butts) so that it was clear that his parents didn’t care about his actions or whereabouts. The lack of male role models in his life have lead him to be unstable and unclear of his future plans and aspirations, hence he is wasting his life away. We even included a sped-up head camera shot so that the audience could see how his mind worked. The fast pace hinted how he was used to making quick rational decisions which usually got him in trouble – i.e. he had no help or guidance in his troubled life, he was all alone. The use of his bike also expresses how he is unable to afford a car, he is not part of the middle-class stereotype who drive cars, he has to take less economical uses of transport. This representation of lower class emphasises the help that all of the troubled youths in society need in their upbringing and to express to people that should take more care into these kids. If Antonio’s family had given him more moral guidance would he be down this road? It is important that people with influences in a child’s life make sure they are making that influence positive. Making parents and other people with an influence over a child think about who they can help that child grow into a good person, helping future generations to come.
Simply the use of harsh drugs within the film opening again divides the gap between law abiding citizens as the typical family home wouldn’t have drugs and alcohol spread all over their living room table. Although Antonio comes across as a strong confident teen, his confidence is portrayed in all the wrong areas – crime. Sadly, this stereotype is becoming more and more of a reality therefore publicising the problem now will hopefully help children in the same situation as Antonio be able to escape. The urban environment Antonio is surrounded by presents to the audience how he is used to living in such raw situations and trouble will always be around the corner. He is brought up seeing crime in his everyday life therefore he notoriously is going to become a part of it in his teenage years.
As it was just the opening of the film that we produced we chose not to subvert stereotypes as it ensured the audience had a clear understanding of the roles each character played and what they represented. Overall, we have represented our characters and other factors very well as it is clear to the audience the troubles these characters are going to have, indicating specific enigma codes which makes them want to continue watching the film.
Monday, 19 February 2018
1B - Audience Essay Question UPDATED
Apply the use of audience to your media production
The audience refers to the people we researched, targeted and marketed our product towards. In our case, our audience was fun loving teenage girls who are independent and happy teenage girls. Our music was going to be very pop styled and therefore our target audience was going to be middle class girls, preppy and happy. Our band was going to produce feel good music so we knew our audience had to be people that really wanted to be free and joyous. Straight away we knew we wanted to produce a music video that appealed to a younger audience as we wanted to be role models for the younger people in society. We noticed that there weren’t any current role models within the music industry, who don’t bare skin to gain views in their music videos or who promote friendship and fun.
Whilst researching into theorists we came across Andrew Goodwin and chose to include a lot of his influences. We include multiple close ups with a plain wooden back ground to that our faces really stood out the camera, as well as shots including all three of us (like on the log pile right at the start of the video) so that it was clear that we were a band. For this idea, we conformed completely yet we also subverted his ideas of voyeurism as we felt it wasn’t the image that we wanted to bring across. As a group, we decided that wanted to challenge the idea that women have to bare skin to produce a successful music video. This makes younger generations feel it is normal to women to succeed that way and makes them feel as though talent is all about looks, which is completely wrong. Therefore, we made sure we wore normal clothes that looked edgy yet covered up our assets in addition to focusing more on our fun laughing faces to that we brought up the mood of our audience. Subverting Goodwin’s theory by proving the audience do not need to feel lust towards the video for it to be successful.
Once we figured out that our audience was going to be 12-20-year-old girls we looked more into their demographics and what interests them, also known as psychographic profiling. This brought up that 71% of teens use more than one social media. As well as the widespread and improved mobile technology means teens can access social media more easily. We noticed that teens now use social media to escape which is a concept we wanted to include with our music. As though they could listen to our song and it would completely bring up their mood. According to a Pew survey conducted during 2014 and 2015, 94 percent of teens who go online using a mobile device do so daily. This information clearly told us that to truly reach our audience, our main source of publicising would be through social media. We created a snapchat and Instagram account to appeal to the younger teen girls as this makes it easier for them to follow us. Similarly, we created a fun and professional twitter account and Facebook page, to inform the older teen girls about what our band was doing and would be releasing in the coming months. Our research also gave us indications to show girls are very cautious about image and fitting in with clicks. Therefore, to appeal to their interests we made our social media slick, so that the teen girls wanted to be our friend whilst subconsciously making them want to be a happy fun loving just like the pictures and posts made us appear. The profiling also leads to us following the stereotypical pastel pink girly colours for our logo, digipak and website as we knew it would subconsciously attract in the young girly girl teens we wanted in our target audience as we were someone they wanted to be.
We have published our video on Vimeo and YouTube as well as on all of our social medias and our website. 12-20- year old girls are very focused on the internet and this is how they find their entertainment, news, gossip and communicate. Because of this we knew producing an interview would mean that our fans could really get to know us and inevitably then connect without music video. It meant that our audience could relate to our interests and find out facts about our day to day life’s, as if they were our friends. We allowed fans to ask questions and it meant we could bring more of our personalities across. This interview was then posted on our website and a like was posted on all of our social medias so that we had the highest exposure possible.
When creating our overall band image, we used Stuart Halls encoding theories. We tool all of the positive attributes of a teenage girl, fun, polite, enjoyable, excited, and maximised them to replace the bad mainstream views and attempt to replace them with a new ‘dominant message’. We also enforced this by having numerous shots with one of the girls in the centre, to promote independence and uniqueness. Telling our young teenage girls watching that they too need to aspire to be independent and proud of themselves.
the themes used such as the pink colours and the pastel balloons we also linked in to our digipak and website. We chose to use pictures from the sets of our shots. This made it clear to the audience that each of our products related to the other and promoted us as a whole brand image. It also incorporated Goodwin’s idea of promoting the artists faces as it meant that we were seen in all of our products. Much like the music video we knew we had to plaster these all over social media so that they would be seen by our audience and therefore added links to our website in all of or bios on our pages as well as having the digipak as our header on twitter and Facebook, promoting all of our products as well as our brand. We didn’t want to simple promote just ‘a band’ so therefore produced tour dates which we included in the website. As we were a band just starting off we also wanted to start a great founding for our fan base, so included contact information so that they could email us questions and we were really able to connect with each other.
We felt that all of our research helped us to produce a great country pop music video that is recognisable to its ancillary products as well as making our audience feel happy motivated and unique. Focusing on being yourself really allowed teenage girls to embrace the video and aspire to find their happiness. Proving that being a nice person with a talent is more worthwhile than using your body to get you places in the world. Overall showing we used our knowledge of our audience to our advantage to make sure our video would be successful and liked by the public.
The audience refers to the people we researched, targeted and marketed our product towards. In our case, our audience was fun loving teenage girls who are independent and happy teenage girls. Our music was going to be very pop styled and therefore our target audience was going to be middle class girls, preppy and happy. Our band was going to produce feel good music so we knew our audience had to be people that really wanted to be free and joyous. Straight away we knew we wanted to produce a music video that appealed to a younger audience as we wanted to be role models for the younger people in society. We noticed that there weren’t any current role models within the music industry, who don’t bare skin to gain views in their music videos or who promote friendship and fun.
Whilst researching into theorists we came across Andrew Goodwin and chose to include a lot of his influences. We include multiple close ups with a plain wooden back ground to that our faces really stood out the camera, as well as shots including all three of us (like on the log pile right at the start of the video) so that it was clear that we were a band. For this idea, we conformed completely yet we also subverted his ideas of voyeurism as we felt it wasn’t the image that we wanted to bring across. As a group, we decided that wanted to challenge the idea that women have to bare skin to produce a successful music video. This makes younger generations feel it is normal to women to succeed that way and makes them feel as though talent is all about looks, which is completely wrong. Therefore, we made sure we wore normal clothes that looked edgy yet covered up our assets in addition to focusing more on our fun laughing faces to that we brought up the mood of our audience. Subverting Goodwin’s theory by proving the audience do not need to feel lust towards the video for it to be successful.
Once we figured out that our audience was going to be 12-20-year-old girls we looked more into their demographics and what interests them, also known as psychographic profiling. This brought up that 71% of teens use more than one social media. As well as the widespread and improved mobile technology means teens can access social media more easily. We noticed that teens now use social media to escape which is a concept we wanted to include with our music. As though they could listen to our song and it would completely bring up their mood. According to a Pew survey conducted during 2014 and 2015, 94 percent of teens who go online using a mobile device do so daily. This information clearly told us that to truly reach our audience, our main source of publicising would be through social media. We created a snapchat and Instagram account to appeal to the younger teen girls as this makes it easier for them to follow us. Similarly, we created a fun and professional twitter account and Facebook page, to inform the older teen girls about what our band was doing and would be releasing in the coming months. Our research also gave us indications to show girls are very cautious about image and fitting in with clicks. Therefore, to appeal to their interests we made our social media slick, so that the teen girls wanted to be our friend whilst subconsciously making them want to be a happy fun loving just like the pictures and posts made us appear. The profiling also leads to us following the stereotypical pastel pink girly colours for our logo, digipak and website as we knew it would subconsciously attract in the young girly girl teens we wanted in our target audience as we were someone they wanted to be.
We have published our video on Vimeo and YouTube as well as on all of our social medias and our website. 12-20- year old girls are very focused on the internet and this is how they find their entertainment, news, gossip and communicate. Because of this we knew producing an interview would mean that our fans could really get to know us and inevitably then connect without music video. It meant that our audience could relate to our interests and find out facts about our day to day life’s, as if they were our friends. We allowed fans to ask questions and it meant we could bring more of our personalities across. This interview was then posted on our website and a like was posted on all of our social medias so that we had the highest exposure possible.
When creating our overall band image, we used Stuart Halls encoding theories. We tool all of the positive attributes of a teenage girl, fun, polite, enjoyable, excited, and maximised them to replace the bad mainstream views and attempt to replace them with a new ‘dominant message’. We also enforced this by having numerous shots with one of the girls in the centre, to promote independence and uniqueness. Telling our young teenage girls watching that they too need to aspire to be independent and proud of themselves.
the themes used such as the pink colours and the pastel balloons we also linked in to our digipak and website. We chose to use pictures from the sets of our shots. This made it clear to the audience that each of our products related to the other and promoted us as a whole brand image. It also incorporated Goodwin’s idea of promoting the artists faces as it meant that we were seen in all of our products. Much like the music video we knew we had to plaster these all over social media so that they would be seen by our audience and therefore added links to our website in all of or bios on our pages as well as having the digipak as our header on twitter and Facebook, promoting all of our products as well as our brand. We didn’t want to simple promote just ‘a band’ so therefore produced tour dates which we included in the website. As we were a band just starting off we also wanted to start a great founding for our fan base, so included contact information so that they could email us questions and we were really able to connect with each other.
We felt that all of our research helped us to produce a great country pop music video that is recognisable to its ancillary products as well as making our audience feel happy motivated and unique. Focusing on being yourself really allowed teenage girls to embrace the video and aspire to find their happiness. Proving that being a nice person with a talent is more worthwhile than using your body to get you places in the world. Overall showing we used our knowledge of our audience to our advantage to make sure our video would be successful and liked by the public.
1B - Media Languages Essay Question UPDATED
Discuss how you used media languages in one of your coursework productions to create meaning for the audience...
Within our course work we produced a music video called ‘Vanilla’. To ensure our product was successful and effective we knew we had to use specific media languages, and combine them within the digipak and website.
Bartes taught us that to keep the audience interested we needed to include enigma codes – the questions people ask that keep them watching. In our video ‘vanilla’, we chose to include the questions; how are these girls happy? How can I make myself as happy as them? These questions made people try to seek happiness in their own lives as well as in our video. Then promoting their love for our band as we make them happy and confident.
Throughout the music video, the girls are all equally shown to represent equality and unity. This can be shown in the first shot which is a mid-shot head shot, of the three girls popping balloons to reveal their faces. The mid shot of all of the girls at equal high represents the same level of talent that they all have. We did this to allow the audience to understand right from the start they are a band straight away getting their media product out there. Instantly making the audience like our fun and friendly vibe. We also added a mid-shot, panning shot of one of the singers dancing on the logs. This added movement to the music video and broke up all of our static shots. This movement kept the audience intrigued into the music video as their eyes followed the artist.
The country pop theme is enhanced by the costumes that we chose to wear. The denim jeans gave connotations to the country side and subconsciously informs the audience what type of video they are about to view. The setting also helped us to project a different type of country music video as we used the English countryside as opposed to the stereotypical Nashville barn setting. It allowed us to subvert conventions and make sure our band was different to others in the industry, and that we stood out. This intensified our aim to promote difference between young teens and the idea that we should love everyone as they are. Empowering the audience to do and be better, and appreciating their strengths and differences.
To give us the professional finished look editing also played a crucial part in our production. We edited shots to produce a clone shot mid shot of us sliding down the slide into the video of the camera. Having each girl side by side again shows their equality but also introduces their full body to the audience. It shows their fun childish side, explaining why they all get on so well. Embracing life should be the main aim for all and the split screen allowed us to show all three girls doing so. In addition, we used ump cuts to increase the pace of the music video. The song had definite harsh beats and to make sure the video matched the music video we cut each shot on the beat so that the artist moved position in the shot. Doing so meant that the audience didn’t get bored of watching similar shots continuously and it gave us great transitions between each artist.
Obviously, it being a music video that we produced sound was included. We wanted to make sure that the visuals were parallel to the lyrics to guarantee that the order of narrative was understandable to the audience. We did so by including fun upbeat shots so that it matched the fun fast lyrics. At the end of the video we chose to cross fade the music from the song to the diegetic noise of us laughing. This again brought across our fun-loving vibe and meant that the audience relate to the atmosphere.
Overall, it is clear to see that we used a variety of media techniques to produce our music video and they most definitely helped us achieve our successful, professional product.
Within our course work we produced a music video called ‘Vanilla’. To ensure our product was successful and effective we knew we had to use specific media languages, and combine them within the digipak and website.
Bartes taught us that to keep the audience interested we needed to include enigma codes – the questions people ask that keep them watching. In our video ‘vanilla’, we chose to include the questions; how are these girls happy? How can I make myself as happy as them? These questions made people try to seek happiness in their own lives as well as in our video. Then promoting their love for our band as we make them happy and confident.
Throughout the music video, the girls are all equally shown to represent equality and unity. This can be shown in the first shot which is a mid-shot head shot, of the three girls popping balloons to reveal their faces. The mid shot of all of the girls at equal high represents the same level of talent that they all have. We did this to allow the audience to understand right from the start they are a band straight away getting their media product out there. Instantly making the audience like our fun and friendly vibe. We also added a mid-shot, panning shot of one of the singers dancing on the logs. This added movement to the music video and broke up all of our static shots. This movement kept the audience intrigued into the music video as their eyes followed the artist.
The country pop theme is enhanced by the costumes that we chose to wear. The denim jeans gave connotations to the country side and subconsciously informs the audience what type of video they are about to view. The setting also helped us to project a different type of country music video as we used the English countryside as opposed to the stereotypical Nashville barn setting. It allowed us to subvert conventions and make sure our band was different to others in the industry, and that we stood out. This intensified our aim to promote difference between young teens and the idea that we should love everyone as they are. Empowering the audience to do and be better, and appreciating their strengths and differences.
To give us the professional finished look editing also played a crucial part in our production. We edited shots to produce a clone shot mid shot of us sliding down the slide into the video of the camera. Having each girl side by side again shows their equality but also introduces their full body to the audience. It shows their fun childish side, explaining why they all get on so well. Embracing life should be the main aim for all and the split screen allowed us to show all three girls doing so. In addition, we used ump cuts to increase the pace of the music video. The song had definite harsh beats and to make sure the video matched the music video we cut each shot on the beat so that the artist moved position in the shot. Doing so meant that the audience didn’t get bored of watching similar shots continuously and it gave us great transitions between each artist.
Obviously, it being a music video that we produced sound was included. We wanted to make sure that the visuals were parallel to the lyrics to guarantee that the order of narrative was understandable to the audience. We did so by including fun upbeat shots so that it matched the fun fast lyrics. At the end of the video we chose to cross fade the music from the song to the diegetic noise of us laughing. This again brought across our fun-loving vibe and meant that the audience relate to the atmosphere.
Overall, it is clear to see that we used a variety of media techniques to produce our music video and they most definitely helped us achieve our successful, professional product.
Monday, 12 February 2018
1B - Narrative Essay Question UPDATED
Apply the concept of narrative to one of your media productions
The concept of narrative refers to a spoken or written account of connected events; a story. We have created a narrative through producing the opening of a film called ‘Traffic Light’. It involves a young boy who has taken the wrong path and finds himself in a sticky situation he has to get himself out of.
There are many theories based on narrative including those of Levi Strauss, Propp, Todorov and Barthes. Strauss focused on binary opposites, having two completely different opposing forces to create a story, a plot line. Within our production we used this ideology to portray the difference between rich and poor. It gave us the story line of how the poor struggle for opportunities and young people can then be lead astray as they have no other options available. We emphasised this by showing Antonio’s dodgy Melbourne neighbourhood, drugs and alcohol covering the lounge coffee table, his ragged unwashed clothes. Then pinned him against the rich London workers walking around the train station in their suit and ties. The large gap between the two characters shows how big a gab society has between the working class and the lower class, emphasising the problems it creates for the youths of our society. It shows to what extent capitalism has when it comes to dividing our community. The hard-hitting truth within society. This was as well as incorporating day and night, to show the dark side of Antonio (being the night) and his good side (being the day). In the dark scenes, it portrays him cycling around his dodgy neighbourhood, handling drugs and simply behaving like a stereotypical drug dealer; shady and cocky. Yet the comparison of the day light shows Antonio regretting his replace decisions and realising that he has taken the wrong path, bringing out his moral side just like the sun brightens the darkness. To make sure this was all brought across we used close ups of his face so that you could see the change in his facial expressions, really enforcing his worries. These shots also gave a development of his character and created enigma codes: will he become and anti-hero? Or will he conform to the ‘chav’ stereotype?
These differences allowed us to create stick characters, something Propp said to be always necessary. At the opening of our film we made it is clear that Antonio had been through struggles by showing his run down home and his shifty community. By doing so it instantly makes the audience empathise with him and they subconsciously see him as a hidden hero. Thus, making the audience want to help him, to make sure he turns it around and becomes a good man It lays out who is going to succeed in the film as well as providing hurdles for them to overcome. Again, this is why we payed large attention to Barthes enigma codes. Throughout the whole opening we made sure to point these out by using less dialogue and more close ups and tracking shots, allowing the audience to follow the actor, as though they are involved with him.
Our evil drug dealing character, Ale, acted as a future reflection of what Antonio is destined to become if he follows this path, he has no male influences in his life his drug dealer is his only source of fatherhood. Ale’s entering shot the camera is looking up at his face to show his superiority over Antonio, the power he has in the side-lines of society. These situations are becoming more and more common within society due do an increase in divorce and the increase in council houses. What better way to show people the problems than through a film.
We used Toddorvs theory to create an equilibrium at the start of the opening and we began to introduce the factors in the film which were going to go wrong for our main character Antonio, getting caught by the police. Our opening created a framework for the rest of the film by giving it a clear story line to follow, whilst also keeping the audience interested in our characters’ ruthless lives.
Overall all of these factors helped us to combine a story line that made sense, where the audience were intrigued to watch more and also that came across as a successful film opening. A narrative is very important in making sure your audience understand the story and we felt we achieved this very successfully.
The concept of narrative refers to a spoken or written account of connected events; a story. We have created a narrative through producing the opening of a film called ‘Traffic Light’. It involves a young boy who has taken the wrong path and finds himself in a sticky situation he has to get himself out of.
There are many theories based on narrative including those of Levi Strauss, Propp, Todorov and Barthes. Strauss focused on binary opposites, having two completely different opposing forces to create a story, a plot line. Within our production we used this ideology to portray the difference between rich and poor. It gave us the story line of how the poor struggle for opportunities and young people can then be lead astray as they have no other options available. We emphasised this by showing Antonio’s dodgy Melbourne neighbourhood, drugs and alcohol covering the lounge coffee table, his ragged unwashed clothes. Then pinned him against the rich London workers walking around the train station in their suit and ties. The large gap between the two characters shows how big a gab society has between the working class and the lower class, emphasising the problems it creates for the youths of our society. It shows to what extent capitalism has when it comes to dividing our community. The hard-hitting truth within society. This was as well as incorporating day and night, to show the dark side of Antonio (being the night) and his good side (being the day). In the dark scenes, it portrays him cycling around his dodgy neighbourhood, handling drugs and simply behaving like a stereotypical drug dealer; shady and cocky. Yet the comparison of the day light shows Antonio regretting his replace decisions and realising that he has taken the wrong path, bringing out his moral side just like the sun brightens the darkness. To make sure this was all brought across we used close ups of his face so that you could see the change in his facial expressions, really enforcing his worries. These shots also gave a development of his character and created enigma codes: will he become and anti-hero? Or will he conform to the ‘chav’ stereotype?
These differences allowed us to create stick characters, something Propp said to be always necessary. At the opening of our film we made it is clear that Antonio had been through struggles by showing his run down home and his shifty community. By doing so it instantly makes the audience empathise with him and they subconsciously see him as a hidden hero. Thus, making the audience want to help him, to make sure he turns it around and becomes a good man It lays out who is going to succeed in the film as well as providing hurdles for them to overcome. Again, this is why we payed large attention to Barthes enigma codes. Throughout the whole opening we made sure to point these out by using less dialogue and more close ups and tracking shots, allowing the audience to follow the actor, as though they are involved with him.
Our evil drug dealing character, Ale, acted as a future reflection of what Antonio is destined to become if he follows this path, he has no male influences in his life his drug dealer is his only source of fatherhood. Ale’s entering shot the camera is looking up at his face to show his superiority over Antonio, the power he has in the side-lines of society. These situations are becoming more and more common within society due do an increase in divorce and the increase in council houses. What better way to show people the problems than through a film.
We used Toddorvs theory to create an equilibrium at the start of the opening and we began to introduce the factors in the film which were going to go wrong for our main character Antonio, getting caught by the police. Our opening created a framework for the rest of the film by giving it a clear story line to follow, whilst also keeping the audience interested in our characters’ ruthless lives.
Overall all of these factors helped us to combine a story line that made sense, where the audience were intrigued to watch more and also that came across as a successful film opening. A narrative is very important in making sure your audience understand the story and we felt we achieved this very successfully.
1B - Genre Essay Question
Apply the concept of
genre to one of your coursework productions
Within our course work we produced a music video, ‘Vanilla’
by the band Vanilla. It is a fun outdoorsy music video that promotes friendship
and happiness, appealing to many people of all ages.
To make the music video understandable, we focused on
including a clear recognisable genre of country pop. To bring the genre across
we used a variety of country locations as well as wearing stereotypical country
attires so that our brand image was clear to the audience. We also produced
ancillary products such as a digipak and a website, to ensure or image was successful
and professional and to guarantee all our products were synergised to create an
overall brand image.
We looked at two media theorists Carol Vernallis and Andrew Goodwin.
Vernallis looks at four key concepts: narrative, editing, camera movement/
tracking and diegesis. All of these points highlighting what makes a successful
music video. Andrew Goodwin looked at the recognisable features of a music
video therefore we knew we had to include his points to make our product
identifiable as a music video. Some of his ideas included thought beats,
iconography, voyeurism and having a recognisable brand image.
Within our production of ‘Vanilla’ we applied these ideas to
amplify the genre and its forms and conventions. We conformed to carol Vernallis’
and Goodwin’s theory of editing to match the music, thought beats. We cut a lot
of our close ups in time with the music to amplify the upbeat pop song. We showcased
the stars and this then drew attention to our outfits and locations. Subconsciously
informing the audience that the music video had a country theme. This was as
well as making each shot and camera movement aesthetically pleasing to that we
appeared as fun and friendly girls. We used Andrew Goodwin’s idea of close ups
to make sure our faces were recognisable to our band, linking our digipak and
website together.
However, we subverted Andrew Goodwin’s view of iconography
and voyeurism as we felt this concept was so overused within the music industry
we wanted to challenge the idea that sex sells. We wanted to be role models for
the young women in society therefore went for the English countryside and
natural beauty to promote happiness over looks. We did this by wearing flattering
clothes and being friendly.
When it came to getting our image out there and promoting
our brand we made great use of our website and digipak. We knew from Goodwin that
we had to sell our image as a whole and therefore echoes to use the same
clothing used in our video within the pictures used for our digipak and
website. This again then enforced the country look and meant our faces were
relatable to the band. We included pastel colours to synergise all of the
products and make sure all of our products stood out from the crowd. The country
side also played a big part in informing our audience the type of band that we
were, we made sure we included outside shots in our digipak to make sure the audience
were aware of this. Dolly Parton had a great example of a country digipak for
her album hungry again and we took inspiration from all of the shots she had on
a simple bench as we felt it was effective and successful.
Conclusively, it is clear to see there are numerous forms
and conventions that are used to create an overall image and portray a specific
genre. Each review and survey that we performed we received information that
expressed we had covered this area very well and it was clear to see how our
products linked together with the country pop genre. We have produced a
successful music video as well as useful amazing ancillary products giving a
final brand image we are very proud of.
Friday, 2 February 2018
Conventions Essay Question
In your experience, how has your understanding of conventions developed through creating your productions
Throughout my two years of study I have produced a film opening as well as music video. While producing these product, I have learnt all about how to use and develop forms and conventions and it is what I will be discussing throughout this essay.
Firstly, in year 12 we produced a film opening and chose to produce it with a crime drama genre. We knew it was important to identify a genre as this made sure the film opening would be easy to understand and have a clear narrative. With it being a crime genre, we knew we had to include some of its stereotypical conventions so that the genre would be portrayed. Some including; secretive characters, criminal activity, a hidden, deeper story lines, as well as an element of risk within that story line. We know this because we researched into the genre and what forms where included in similar films. The midnight express was one of these examples as it had the similar drug smuggling story line. They had drugs in shot so we chose to replicate this by using brownies brought from the shop. Obviously as these were not real drugs it meant we lost the realistic element to our video and this was something we could have defiantly improved on.
We also made sure to include enigma codes so that it kept the audience guessing and interested in the film. These were questions like why is he dealing the drugs? What is going to happen to him later on in the film? Why has he gone down this route? All of these were used so that our target audience found our film opening intriguing and it gave them an interesting drama to watch. Although we chose to include the regular conventions like the titles and exponential shots, we also chose to challenge conventions by changing the stereotype of the drug dealer. We wanted the film to be modern yet have elements of old fashioned gangs. Therefore, we chose to have an Italian drug dealer as the supplier of the drugs show him to be in power. This gave the image that the old mafia leaders were still in power today. This worked well yet when filming the shots, this idea didn’t come across very well and it meant that it was very confusing to the audience. Which gave us something to work on in year 13, making the narrative clear.
In year 13 we adapted on the generic pop genre and added an element of country, to make it a new and unique production that no one had seen before. We made sure it did so by including country outfits such as the hats, boots and denim. With also the use of the outdoor countryside locations. We made sure it was also a pop music video due to the upbeat music and our fashionable stylistic photo shoots and outfits used in the music video. We researched into these conventions and how other media products brought them across in their music videos and other ancillary products. Maddie and Tay were a main influence down to their fun-loving country vibes, as well as fifth harmony and little mix as they both had a similar target audience to our band and had also produced very successful work. These helped us massively as it meant we had certain guidelines we knew we needed to follow to be successful. We then lead on to focus on the works of carol vernalise and Andrew Goodwin. Their work showed us the conventions of music video, what makes it successful and professional. These included, the relationship between the lyrics and visuals, including multiple close ups and messing around with the narrative of the music video.
In addition to the music video we also produced a digipak and a website. We took influenced from Dolly Parton’s album cover for hungry again as we liked the shot of her on the bench and chose to replicate this. We also made all of the titles with a pastel pink effect to incorporate our sweet and innocent theme. These ideas were also used in the website where we used them as our text colours and the back-ground colours. We included more photos from our photo shoot of the wooden background as well so that it brought all of our products together. We chose to challenge forms and conventions of a typical country music video by not setting it in a dusty barn or pub, but to include the English country side. This then changed the stereotypical setting and proved that English country music videos can be made successfully and whilst still portraying the country theme.
Within year 13 we all pushed at producing our best work and then some and I feel it has really showed how we have developed our knowledge in the music industry. This knowledge and added background research has helped us to produce a product that is recognisable to our audience and create a brand image that is unique yet popular at the same time.
Throughout my two years of study I have produced a film opening as well as music video. While producing these product, I have learnt all about how to use and develop forms and conventions and it is what I will be discussing throughout this essay.
Firstly, in year 12 we produced a film opening and chose to produce it with a crime drama genre. We knew it was important to identify a genre as this made sure the film opening would be easy to understand and have a clear narrative. With it being a crime genre, we knew we had to include some of its stereotypical conventions so that the genre would be portrayed. Some including; secretive characters, criminal activity, a hidden, deeper story lines, as well as an element of risk within that story line. We know this because we researched into the genre and what forms where included in similar films. The midnight express was one of these examples as it had the similar drug smuggling story line. They had drugs in shot so we chose to replicate this by using brownies brought from the shop. Obviously as these were not real drugs it meant we lost the realistic element to our video and this was something we could have defiantly improved on.
We also made sure to include enigma codes so that it kept the audience guessing and interested in the film. These were questions like why is he dealing the drugs? What is going to happen to him later on in the film? Why has he gone down this route? All of these were used so that our target audience found our film opening intriguing and it gave them an interesting drama to watch. Although we chose to include the regular conventions like the titles and exponential shots, we also chose to challenge conventions by changing the stereotype of the drug dealer. We wanted the film to be modern yet have elements of old fashioned gangs. Therefore, we chose to have an Italian drug dealer as the supplier of the drugs show him to be in power. This gave the image that the old mafia leaders were still in power today. This worked well yet when filming the shots, this idea didn’t come across very well and it meant that it was very confusing to the audience. Which gave us something to work on in year 13, making the narrative clear.
In year 13 we adapted on the generic pop genre and added an element of country, to make it a new and unique production that no one had seen before. We made sure it did so by including country outfits such as the hats, boots and denim. With also the use of the outdoor countryside locations. We made sure it was also a pop music video due to the upbeat music and our fashionable stylistic photo shoots and outfits used in the music video. We researched into these conventions and how other media products brought them across in their music videos and other ancillary products. Maddie and Tay were a main influence down to their fun-loving country vibes, as well as fifth harmony and little mix as they both had a similar target audience to our band and had also produced very successful work. These helped us massively as it meant we had certain guidelines we knew we needed to follow to be successful. We then lead on to focus on the works of carol vernalise and Andrew Goodwin. Their work showed us the conventions of music video, what makes it successful and professional. These included, the relationship between the lyrics and visuals, including multiple close ups and messing around with the narrative of the music video.
In addition to the music video we also produced a digipak and a website. We took influenced from Dolly Parton’s album cover for hungry again as we liked the shot of her on the bench and chose to replicate this. We also made all of the titles with a pastel pink effect to incorporate our sweet and innocent theme. These ideas were also used in the website where we used them as our text colours and the back-ground colours. We included more photos from our photo shoot of the wooden background as well so that it brought all of our products together. We chose to challenge forms and conventions of a typical country music video by not setting it in a dusty barn or pub, but to include the English country side. This then changed the stereotypical setting and proved that English country music videos can be made successfully and whilst still portraying the country theme.
Within year 13 we all pushed at producing our best work and then some and I feel it has really showed how we have developed our knowledge in the music industry. This knowledge and added background research has helped us to produce a product that is recognisable to our audience and create a brand image that is unique yet popular at the same time.
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