Analyse one of your media productions in relation to representation
Stuart Hall states that representation is "how the media shows us things about society through careful mediation in which we share recognition of people and situations." When showing representations through my media production of the pop genre video "Its All About Tonight" we "selected specific footage to represent certain concepts" and show typical conventions within the pop genre.
As James Baker states we used "organized editing in order to represent key ideas and selected specific footage in order to show our representations." These included focusing on the artist and having her centrally focused within every shot to represent empowerment of women and the challenging of stereotypical gender references of a weak female. We also were able to represent youth and the fun partying atmosphere by having fast paced shots and a range of locations within the video which young people are associated with such as hot tub, convertible and fashionable clothes. There are certain props within our videos which also represent wealth such as jewellery and the sports car. All of these add together to represent certain aspects that we wanted to portray to the audience to appeal to them. As we were in control of our video and were able to send certain ideologies to the audience we followed Marxism theory by sending messages to
Tuesday 15 May 2012
Wednesday 9 May 2012
Analyse one of your media productions in relation to audience
Julian Mcdougall states in relation to media audience that "It's getting harder to conceive a media audience as a stable identifiable group" meaning they are continually changing and what may be our main target audience now may change in the future. We needed however to focus on our target audience for the meantime and once we decided that our genre was going to be Pop with a side genre of dance as we chosen the video "It's All About Tonight" by Pixie Lott we realized that our main target audience was a mainstream audience. Specifically our audience was young males and females within their late teens to late twenties as the video focuses on female empowerment to attract the female audience and is also seen within the male gaze by Laura Mulvey to attract the male audience.
As Hartley states its highly important for a producer of a music video to "know their audience so that they can target them effectively" this being said, we knew that our coursework project to produce a music video for the pop genre had to be centered around audience and what they wanted to see within the video. He follows that "institutions are obliged not only to speak about an audience but crucially talk to them aswell and enter relations with them." With this been said we began to look into our genre by looking through various websites involving Facebook and Twitter as well as the Capital website (notorious for its mainstream pop music theme) in order to identify the type of people who fit with my target audience and what they wanted to see. After I realized the mainstream theme of females and males aged late teens to late twenties fit with my genre and choice of song I created an audience profile for each gender discussing the types of things they enjoy and the characteristics they have. These included going out, parties, make up and nice clothing for the females and going out, parties and having an attractive female present in videos for the males. We then furthered our audience research by creating a video where we interviewed each gender who fit within the right age bracket to tell us the kind of things they would expect and what to see within a pop genre video. Here we were able to ask specific questions in order to gain an audience members opinion to give our audience exactly what they want within our video and found that often within the pop genre the video contents are exciting yet easy to understand, involve a central character and are fun to watch. This began our journey in order to plan our music video which we molded an appropriate storyline for after receiving this feedback.
Dick Hebdige states that "music videos should show sub cultures for the genre" in which we understood that we needed to show relevant props and locations which our mainstream audience where familiar with in order to like and enjoy it. The theme we decided to have for our video was the main artist going out to a party in which she is shown in various locations wearing going out sophisticated outfits and heels as well as make up and fashionable hairstyles. All of these subcultures are ones which target our audience as they are enjoyable things they relate to within their lives and are what young people associate with making the video appeal to them. In order to target what are audience wanted within the pop genre we knew we had to look at audience feedback and so searched for the most popular mainstream videos with the largest amount of hits on Youtube such as Beyonce, Katy Perry and Rihanna's videos. All of which we realized had these characteristics involved in which the main artist was an attractive confident female showing empowerment and going out for a night out or a party within the video. We then knew that a main stream audience are big fans of this narrative within a music video with the artist always being centrally focused and wearing nice clothing within meat shots to make female viewers feel empowered and attract the male gaze. Having these key characteristics are what attract our audience to the video and previous videos within the pop genre.
McQuail makes a point of the use of gratifications as videos can be used "for a diversion or escapism for the audience in which they can build a personal relationship with the artist and narrative." I believe the video gives a personal identification with the representations on display to the viewer in order for them to relate to the video but emphasizes certain points in order to give an escapism for the viewer. For example the bar, clothing, makeup and heels shown within the video are things the audience are familiar with in every day life but the convertible and hottub are used as an escapism for the audience to feel like they are involved within a wealthy lifestyle with things they make not be as familiar with in every day life but that are used to promote the star image. Stuart Hall states that "depending on the audience depends on what reading is found, our dominant reading was for women to feel empowered and confident, excited for a night out and forgetting about all past relationships which had ended. This is shown through the narrative of the artist always centrally focused looking happy and empowered at certain locations as if at a party/ down town. Though this is our dominant reading for our main target audience which is young females some minorities of our audience may get different readings such as males who may just pay attention to the female persona and her attraction rather than a concept.
Julian Mcdougall states in relation to media audience that "It's getting harder to conceive a media audience as a stable identifiable group" meaning they are continually changing and what may be our main target audience now may change in the future. We needed however to focus on our target audience for the meantime and once we decided that our genre was going to be Pop with a side genre of dance as we chosen the video "It's All About Tonight" by Pixie Lott we realized that our main target audience was a mainstream audience. Specifically our audience was young males and females within their late teens to late twenties as the video focuses on female empowerment to attract the female audience and is also seen within the male gaze by Laura Mulvey to attract the male audience.
As Hartley states its highly important for a producer of a music video to "know their audience so that they can target them effectively" this being said, we knew that our coursework project to produce a music video for the pop genre had to be centered around audience and what they wanted to see within the video. He follows that "institutions are obliged not only to speak about an audience but crucially talk to them aswell and enter relations with them." With this been said we began to look into our genre by looking through various websites involving Facebook and Twitter as well as the Capital website (notorious for its mainstream pop music theme) in order to identify the type of people who fit with my target audience and what they wanted to see. After I realized the mainstream theme of females and males aged late teens to late twenties fit with my genre and choice of song I created an audience profile for each gender discussing the types of things they enjoy and the characteristics they have. These included going out, parties, make up and nice clothing for the females and going out, parties and having an attractive female present in videos for the males. We then furthered our audience research by creating a video where we interviewed each gender who fit within the right age bracket to tell us the kind of things they would expect and what to see within a pop genre video. Here we were able to ask specific questions in order to gain an audience members opinion to give our audience exactly what they want within our video and found that often within the pop genre the video contents are exciting yet easy to understand, involve a central character and are fun to watch. This began our journey in order to plan our music video which we molded an appropriate storyline for after receiving this feedback.
Dick Hebdige states that "music videos should show sub cultures for the genre" in which we understood that we needed to show relevant props and locations which our mainstream audience where familiar with in order to like and enjoy it. The theme we decided to have for our video was the main artist going out to a party in which she is shown in various locations wearing going out sophisticated outfits and heels as well as make up and fashionable hairstyles. All of these subcultures are ones which target our audience as they are enjoyable things they relate to within their lives and are what young people associate with making the video appeal to them. In order to target what are audience wanted within the pop genre we knew we had to look at audience feedback and so searched for the most popular mainstream videos with the largest amount of hits on Youtube such as Beyonce, Katy Perry and Rihanna's videos. All of which we realized had these characteristics involved in which the main artist was an attractive confident female showing empowerment and going out for a night out or a party within the video. We then knew that a main stream audience are big fans of this narrative within a music video with the artist always being centrally focused and wearing nice clothing within meat shots to make female viewers feel empowered and attract the male gaze. Having these key characteristics are what attract our audience to the video and previous videos within the pop genre.
McQuail makes a point of the use of gratifications as videos can be used "for a diversion or escapism for the audience in which they can build a personal relationship with the artist and narrative." I believe the video gives a personal identification with the representations on display to the viewer in order for them to relate to the video but emphasizes certain points in order to give an escapism for the viewer. For example the bar, clothing, makeup and heels shown within the video are things the audience are familiar with in every day life but the convertible and hottub are used as an escapism for the audience to feel like they are involved within a wealthy lifestyle with things they make not be as familiar with in every day life but that are used to promote the star image. Stuart Hall states that "depending on the audience depends on what reading is found, our dominant reading was for women to feel empowered and confident, excited for a night out and forgetting about all past relationships which had ended. This is shown through the narrative of the artist always centrally focused looking happy and empowered at certain locations as if at a party/ down town. Though this is our dominant reading for our main target audience which is young females some minorities of our audience may get different readings such as males who may just pay attention to the female persona and her attraction rather than a concept.
Tuesday 8 May 2012
Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to narrative
A music video usually has a fragmented narrative which shows a mixture of narrative and performance in order to relate to the song and reveal something to the viewers. As Tim O Sullivan states "media texts offer a way of telling stories as it allows us to read things in a particular way." For my coursework project I have chosen to discuss my music video in relation to narrative which is Pixie Lotts "Its all about tonight" and relate to various theorists such as Propp, Michael Shore, Andrew Goodwin and Sven Carlsson which we both challenged and adhered.
Propp states that there is generally a hegemony narrative during a media text in which typical characters are shown such as the protagonist, antagonist and damsel in distress. However, during our video a key concept which we went with was empowerment of women whilst getting rid of the past and getting over an ex boyfriend and focusing solely on having a good time with a night out. As of this we decided to challenge this convention and go against the stereotypical "princess" idea showing a strong confident women for the viewers to be able to relate to the narrative by feeling positive about themselves after a breakup. The narrative is a feeling felt by most women which are our target audience meaning the narrative of the video will appeal to them making them want to watch the video. The artist is shown centrally within every shot to show her importance and stength to go against Propps idealogy as she is shown to be very femine and fashionable yet a strong confident women with her mannerisms. Steriotypically a woman is seen as weak but we wanted to go against this convention specifically for women to feel empowered.
Michael Shore states that often narratives are "surface without substance" and don't go into alot of depth which we felt fit with our genre of video which was pop/dance as it needed to have an easy to understand narrative so that the viewers could understand it easily and be able to dance or get ready for a night out while watching it (its main purpose when to be enjoyed.) The storyline of the video is easy to follow and straight forward involving a girl (the main artist) having a party night out with her friends after a breakup. The narrative is extremely upbeat and fun to fit in key with the lyrics and music which is a recycled style as its a convention within a narrative which is often used as we as a western culture associate parties and going as very positive aspects of life. Which leads to Andrew Goodwins theory that videos "are post modern and have been done before" as the audience expect certain things within a music video because of our society within the western culture. These aspects include a female artist seen within the male gaze and provocatively throughout each video which we decided to portray within our video by using an attractive female in appropriate clothing such as a swimsuit as the main singer in order to be seen as an attraction towards the viewer and be something they are familiar with.
Sven Carlsson states that each media clip involves performance or narrative. Our video "It's All About Tonight" offers a mixture of both performance and narrative together within alot of fragmented shots put together to the beat of the music. We offer a performace by having a wide range of locations were the artist is always centrally focused such as in a bar, a sports car and hot tub in which she associates with the viewer through actions such as pointing to the camera and nodding her head at the appropriate times of the video. The artist offers song performance with lip syncing and facial expressions aswell as dance performance by dancing with her backing dancers within the various locations. The actress herself shows a modern mythic emboliment of a confident, strong and empowered persona who is getting over a breakup for the viewers to be able to relate too. The narrative is easy to follow and makes the video relate to society and the artist by being a common narrative of a party setting and the events happening throughout.
A music video usually has a fragmented narrative which shows a mixture of narrative and performance in order to relate to the song and reveal something to the viewers. As Tim O Sullivan states "media texts offer a way of telling stories as it allows us to read things in a particular way." For my coursework project I have chosen to discuss my music video in relation to narrative which is Pixie Lotts "Its all about tonight" and relate to various theorists such as Propp, Michael Shore, Andrew Goodwin and Sven Carlsson which we both challenged and adhered.
Propp states that there is generally a hegemony narrative during a media text in which typical characters are shown such as the protagonist, antagonist and damsel in distress. However, during our video a key concept which we went with was empowerment of women whilst getting rid of the past and getting over an ex boyfriend and focusing solely on having a good time with a night out. As of this we decided to challenge this convention and go against the stereotypical "princess" idea showing a strong confident women for the viewers to be able to relate to the narrative by feeling positive about themselves after a breakup. The narrative is a feeling felt by most women which are our target audience meaning the narrative of the video will appeal to them making them want to watch the video. The artist is shown centrally within every shot to show her importance and stength to go against Propps idealogy as she is shown to be very femine and fashionable yet a strong confident women with her mannerisms. Steriotypically a woman is seen as weak but we wanted to go against this convention specifically for women to feel empowered.
Michael Shore states that often narratives are "surface without substance" and don't go into alot of depth which we felt fit with our genre of video which was pop/dance as it needed to have an easy to understand narrative so that the viewers could understand it easily and be able to dance or get ready for a night out while watching it (its main purpose when to be enjoyed.) The storyline of the video is easy to follow and straight forward involving a girl (the main artist) having a party night out with her friends after a breakup. The narrative is extremely upbeat and fun to fit in key with the lyrics and music which is a recycled style as its a convention within a narrative which is often used as we as a western culture associate parties and going as very positive aspects of life. Which leads to Andrew Goodwins theory that videos "are post modern and have been done before" as the audience expect certain things within a music video because of our society within the western culture. These aspects include a female artist seen within the male gaze and provocatively throughout each video which we decided to portray within our video by using an attractive female in appropriate clothing such as a swimsuit as the main singer in order to be seen as an attraction towards the viewer and be something they are familiar with.
Sven Carlsson states that each media clip involves performance or narrative. Our video "It's All About Tonight" offers a mixture of both performance and narrative together within alot of fragmented shots put together to the beat of the music. We offer a performace by having a wide range of locations were the artist is always centrally focused such as in a bar, a sports car and hot tub in which she associates with the viewer through actions such as pointing to the camera and nodding her head at the appropriate times of the video. The artist offers song performance with lip syncing and facial expressions aswell as dance performance by dancing with her backing dancers within the various locations. The actress herself shows a modern mythic emboliment of a confident, strong and empowered persona who is getting over a breakup for the viewers to be able to relate too. The narrative is easy to follow and makes the video relate to society and the artist by being a common narrative of a party setting and the events happening throughout.
Monday 7 May 2012
Describe how your understanding of the importance of good research and planning skills developed throughout the pre-production of your AS and A2 coursework
During my coursework productions my AS brief was to create a 2 minute opening sequence for a horror film including titles and my A2 brief was to create a promo package including video, digipak and advert for the pop genre. For both these projects research and planning were key concepts in order to develop into gaing my final products which were an opening horror sequence titled "Twisted" and a pop music video titled "It's All About Tonight" by Pixie Lott. Im going to discuss my progression from AS to A2 within my Research and Planning.
At AS I began my project with researching into conventions of the genre horror and what is involved in various horror films which would be a good concept for my own sequence. To do this I began to look at other horror films such as "Jeepers Creepers" and "Saw" which helped me discover various conventions I wanted to include within my video. The feeling of an antagonist after you within "Jeepers Creepers" is its key concept particularly showing shots from the antagonists perspective with the characters being unaware of his wareabouts or intentions. This was an idea we wanted to portray within our horror film as we felt it was a good way to scare the viewer to see points of view from the killer as if it was them themselves. We acheived this by using a handheld camera of the killer walking towards the couple within our video who are the main actors to show suspence and mystery as to who he is and why he's following them. Whilst looking at "Saw" we realised that an important factor was to keep key factors of the storyline hidden from the characters and viewers. This occurs within "Saws" opening sequence as a man awakes in a bath within a dark room unaware of where he is, how he got there or what is going on. The audience are also revealed a key go down the plug hole as he struggles which they are unaware of its significance. Within my video I took inspiration from this as the two main characters are unaware that the killer is behind them throughout the sequence until he attacks and the plot as to why the killer attacks is not made aparent throughout the sequence to leave mystery to the viewer. I also analysed 9 frames of existing horror films such as "Saw" and titles timelines such as "The Shining" and "A Nightmare On Elm Street" which I discovered that centrally framing is important in giving the viewers infomation yet having a hand held camera out of focus like of "The Blaire Witch Project" makes the viewers feel uneasy. The timelines shown me the order in which the titles should come in and how to show them in an effective way in order to fit with the genre for example both movies had the directors name last and dramatic music within the background, two traites which we decided to add to our film sequence to help it fit the genre and create suspence. These films both also revealed slight links of the narrative while showing the titles which we knew was an important part to our sequence, the titles being simple as the main focus would be towards the narrative so they are never centrally focused but generally to the side. Once we had researched many films within this genre we needed to plan our sequence with the various ideas we had chosen and so began writing a pitch entailing the storyline of what we planned to achieve, then we had to think of suitable locations creating a call sheet with the addresses and places such as the land behind a pond for the filming and contact numbers for our three actors and adresses. We also needed a risk assessment sheet of possible things that could go wrong such as actors becoming ill and how we would deal with the situation such as rescheduling or having stand by actors. A sketch of each shot was then drawn paying close attention to the framing and actions made and were then taken photos of with a stills camera and uploaded onto Imovie to be made into an anamatic so that we were aware of the shot order and how they would be filmed with the positioning of characters and the way in which the narrative was presented. This planning helped with our final product as it helped us work out how to involve the horror techniques we needed and make our sequence look professional.
During my coursework productions my AS brief was to create a 2 minute opening sequence for a horror film including titles and my A2 brief was to create a promo package including video, digipak and advert for the pop genre. For both these projects research and planning were key concepts in order to develop into gaing my final products which were an opening horror sequence titled "Twisted" and a pop music video titled "It's All About Tonight" by Pixie Lott. Im going to discuss my progression from AS to A2 within my Research and Planning.
At AS I began my project with researching into conventions of the genre horror and what is involved in various horror films which would be a good concept for my own sequence. To do this I began to look at other horror films such as "Jeepers Creepers" and "Saw" which helped me discover various conventions I wanted to include within my video. The feeling of an antagonist after you within "Jeepers Creepers" is its key concept particularly showing shots from the antagonists perspective with the characters being unaware of his wareabouts or intentions. This was an idea we wanted to portray within our horror film as we felt it was a good way to scare the viewer to see points of view from the killer as if it was them themselves. We acheived this by using a handheld camera of the killer walking towards the couple within our video who are the main actors to show suspence and mystery as to who he is and why he's following them. Whilst looking at "Saw" we realised that an important factor was to keep key factors of the storyline hidden from the characters and viewers. This occurs within "Saws" opening sequence as a man awakes in a bath within a dark room unaware of where he is, how he got there or what is going on. The audience are also revealed a key go down the plug hole as he struggles which they are unaware of its significance. Within my video I took inspiration from this as the two main characters are unaware that the killer is behind them throughout the sequence until he attacks and the plot as to why the killer attacks is not made aparent throughout the sequence to leave mystery to the viewer. I also analysed 9 frames of existing horror films such as "Saw" and titles timelines such as "The Shining" and "A Nightmare On Elm Street" which I discovered that centrally framing is important in giving the viewers infomation yet having a hand held camera out of focus like of "The Blaire Witch Project" makes the viewers feel uneasy. The timelines shown me the order in which the titles should come in and how to show them in an effective way in order to fit with the genre for example both movies had the directors name last and dramatic music within the background, two traites which we decided to add to our film sequence to help it fit the genre and create suspence. These films both also revealed slight links of the narrative while showing the titles which we knew was an important part to our sequence, the titles being simple as the main focus would be towards the narrative so they are never centrally focused but generally to the side. Once we had researched many films within this genre we needed to plan our sequence with the various ideas we had chosen and so began writing a pitch entailing the storyline of what we planned to achieve, then we had to think of suitable locations creating a call sheet with the addresses and places such as the land behind a pond for the filming and contact numbers for our three actors and adresses. We also needed a risk assessment sheet of possible things that could go wrong such as actors becoming ill and how we would deal with the situation such as rescheduling or having stand by actors. A sketch of each shot was then drawn paying close attention to the framing and actions made and were then taken photos of with a stills camera and uploaded onto Imovie to be made into an anamatic so that we were aware of the shot order and how they would be filmed with the positioning of characters and the way in which the narrative was presented. This planning helped with our final product as it helped us work out how to involve the horror techniques we needed and make our sequence look professional.
Wednesday 2 May 2012
Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to genre
Daniel Chandler states that "Genre is a distinctive type of class/text" used to identify or establish something to its audience. Barry Keith Grant continues that "genre allows audience to identify them specifically by what they are familiar with and what becomes recognizable to them." The genre I have chosen was pop with a sub-genre of dance in which I both challenged and adhere various conventions of pop during our take on Pixie Lott's video "Its all about tonight."
Firstly, we knew it was important to look at existing media texts to understand the conventions of pop and found that typically the genre gives the audience a set of pleasures and realized that we could give our audience emotional pleasure by relating to the narrative and artist by feeling happy that she's getting over her ex boyfriend and is off for a night out (a common emotion felt by most women at some point). We looked at videos within the pop genre such as Rihanna's "Take a bow" in which the videos focused on female empowerment aswell as having the "male gaze" from Laura Mulveys theory and wanted to represent this feeling during our video. We also wanted to relate our video to its audience using familiar codes and conventions that make references to the audience and their society by having familiar cloths, makeup and shoes shown throughout the video to appeal to its main target audience of young women. We also wanted to follow the genres typical conventions by having over exaggerated features to give an escapism towards the viewers by having the hottub and sports car involved in the music video which are things which are possibly not things which the audience are familiar with but are shown for entertainment purposes. The video has a star persona of the main artist who is shown centrally in every shot through thought beats to show her importance. The main purpose of a promo package within the pop genre is to "promote the star" as Richard Dyer states so it was important to use lots of meat shots of the star and make her the centre of focus within every shot at each location.
A mixture of narrative and performance is also a key convention of the pop genre which we wanted to show within our video having lots of fast paced shots and thought beats to keep in pace with the music and flip from both narrativeand performance. Fragmented shots throughout which reveal the narrative involve shots within a bar, a sports car, at work and at a house party which allow a clear party narrative for the viewers but also allows the star to show performance with dancing to the beat of the music and lip syncing. We did lack various conventions of pop however by not including a choreagraphed dance routine with the artist and backing dancers as we just had them dancing and not in a fixed designed way. We let them dance freely as a new convention in order to represent a free and fun night as part of the genre of being a happy, upbeat empowering video for women. The range of costumes and hair styles fit the genre by being popular but also are used to keep the audience entertained. Each location has a different outfit which fit with the location in order for the audience to differentiate between them. With the main star being shown alot and the storyline being easy to follow the video fits the genre of being something that can be watched by viewers while getting ready for a night out or with friends.
Daniel Chandler states that "Genre is a distinctive type of class/text" used to identify or establish something to its audience. Barry Keith Grant continues that "genre allows audience to identify them specifically by what they are familiar with and what becomes recognizable to them." The genre I have chosen was pop with a sub-genre of dance in which I both challenged and adhere various conventions of pop during our take on Pixie Lott's video "Its all about tonight."
Firstly, we knew it was important to look at existing media texts to understand the conventions of pop and found that typically the genre gives the audience a set of pleasures and realized that we could give our audience emotional pleasure by relating to the narrative and artist by feeling happy that she's getting over her ex boyfriend and is off for a night out (a common emotion felt by most women at some point). We looked at videos within the pop genre such as Rihanna's "Take a bow" in which the videos focused on female empowerment aswell as having the "male gaze" from Laura Mulveys theory and wanted to represent this feeling during our video. We also wanted to relate our video to its audience using familiar codes and conventions that make references to the audience and their society by having familiar cloths, makeup and shoes shown throughout the video to appeal to its main target audience of young women. We also wanted to follow the genres typical conventions by having over exaggerated features to give an escapism towards the viewers by having the hottub and sports car involved in the music video which are things which are possibly not things which the audience are familiar with but are shown for entertainment purposes. The video has a star persona of the main artist who is shown centrally in every shot through thought beats to show her importance. The main purpose of a promo package within the pop genre is to "promote the star" as Richard Dyer states so it was important to use lots of meat shots of the star and make her the centre of focus within every shot at each location.
A mixture of narrative and performance is also a key convention of the pop genre which we wanted to show within our video having lots of fast paced shots and thought beats to keep in pace with the music and flip from both narrativeand performance. Fragmented shots throughout which reveal the narrative involve shots within a bar, a sports car, at work and at a house party which allow a clear party narrative for the viewers but also allows the star to show performance with dancing to the beat of the music and lip syncing. We did lack various conventions of pop however by not including a choreagraphed dance routine with the artist and backing dancers as we just had them dancing and not in a fixed designed way. We let them dance freely as a new convention in order to represent a free and fun night as part of the genre of being a happy, upbeat empowering video for women. The range of costumes and hair styles fit the genre by being popular but also are used to keep the audience entertained. Each location has a different outfit which fit with the location in order for the audience to differentiate between them. With the main star being shown alot and the storyline being easy to follow the video fits the genre of being something that can be watched by viewers while getting ready for a night out or with friends.
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