Plan for Question 1a i.

1a. 

i. To what extent have digital technologies helped develop your research and planning skills during your Media 'A' Level?

introduction: introduce how you used digital technology in research and planning eg using youtube for finding inspiration from similar genre videos

paragraph one: say how digital techonologies did help. The use of the internet helped majorly during the research stage of the A level. We used websites such as youtube to research videos which are of the same genre as ours. We also used the internet to find out about digipacks and magazine adverts. Cameras were used to film our products in HD. Editing programs on the computer were used to add better effects to our products.

paragraph two: say how they werent the only source that helped. We also used our own knowledge to find out about the genre of our product, we also used paper and other resources to plan our products, such as storyboards and filming scripts.

conclusion: say how over all digital technologies were very helpful. generally sum up.                                            

Section A 1a for our music video

After researching whose Beyonce's target audience is, we realised that our target audience should be extremely similar if not the same because the song is sung by Beyonce, there for meaning that the song it's self is already targeted at that audience. When listening to the lyrics of the song it is obvious that the song is about how women like to be "loved" and there for obviously targeted at women; taking this into acount we wanted to target our video at women. We want to do this by using some of the methods Beyonce uses to target women in her own videos such as showing her vulnerability and making her self not appear threatening to other women. We thought that we could do this by showing the female in the video to be very vulnerable to her feelings, using close up shots to show her emotion. We also thought that by using minimal makeup and natural looking hair the female used in the video would not appear threatening to any females but actually relatable.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our media product represents certain types of real media products as we conducted lots of information from other top video's from beyonce and other high profile artists such as nicole shwerzinger. For example we used the house as a the setting in which beyonce does to create a very normal feel to the video as like an everyday life situation. Doing this meant we could also reflect the genre as 'slow love' we emphasised this by using black and white as our background setting which is more a slow intimate colour just to focus on the meaning of the song. Also, we challenged the conventions of a real media product by introducing a few fading techniques to attract one shot to another which is most commonly used in the R&B genre industry. 

I believe that using genre and conventions has helped us with our final media product as we have been able to conform with a particular genre to match our music video with and also we have been able to fit our music video around different conventions, we were thus able to challenge conventions and conform to them. 

Our understanding of genre has developed greatly over the past two years as we are now able to understand why different products are totally different and fit into a seperate category to one another when they may seem similar to the normal eye.  

Post-production

For our music video, we wanted to edit our music video to make it more appealing and interesting to our audience.  We first decided to implement a black and white theme throughout the music video, where some of the scenes are in black and white. This added an effect which would keep the audience involved with the product and also give it a more intimate feel. We decided to conform to the genre conventions to have similar fading techniques such as other music videos e.g. Beyonce. 

Post-production is the function of editing the picture, adding visual special effects and to add sound effects to ultimately make the final product a lot better than just cramming all the filming together without any effects. 

Our post-production skills have developed greatly over the past 2 years, we have been unable to edit our products without even thinking and we are able to judge if a particular effect would suit our product or not.

(plan) how can the study of MEDIA LANGUAGE unlock meanings in your work?

(previous analysis of our media music video)


Our media product is fairly influenced by other real media products as the artist is portrayed in glamorous way and is the main focus of the video. lIke Beyonce, Cheryl Cole, Alexandra Burke e.t.c.


We were influenced by several similar artists and managed to use intertextuality with our video and Girls Aloud's 'Biology' music video, by using the same hand movement. - a clock hands or ferris wheel, alan key/rope pulling winding up device for water in unfortunate countries. 


By using one of Goodwins points we were able to create a more in depth video and it also relates the lyrics and visuals together, 
along with the "damsel in distress" written on the car 
and the "Mr Mechanic" calling on the phone. 


The lighting we have used is very typical of this genre of music.


 It emphasises the artist and looks very appealing and sophisticated. We originally found the idea on a Mcfly acoustic set from The Sun Biz Sessions and used the effect that appeared on this video of the bright light behind the artist performing. We then developed this idea and used the car headlights for extra lighting.

Thriller Media Language Analysis

1. Roland Barthes theory in our video:
Dark clothes of the antagonist suggest a meaning in our mise-en-scene of suspicious activity which is in fact true as in the triller he murders a protagonist.
The bright lights of the building standing out in the dark symbolise that there is a positive message during the dark story.



2. How camerawork, mise-en-scene, editing and sound create meaning:
Long shots are used in the bike chase which creates a meaning that the antagonist wants to escape his crimes and leave his past behind.
Through the use of transitions during editing a jump shot was created to create a meaning that the chase was prolonged therefore suggesting to the audience that the protagonist strongly believed in justice and identifying him as the protagonist.
The low angle shot of the antagonist once they've killed one of the protagonists shows them as powerful and dominant and superior to many characters.
At the beginning of the thriller video a dark and gloomy soundtrack is used to create a feeling of suspense, this is done as it meets the conventions of a typical thriller video.

Media Language

Roland Barthes Theory - Semiotics is the study of signification. Symbols have different meanings. Images in media can be interpreted in many different ways by various consumers. The creator may mean something but whoever watches it may see it as something else - Pluralism. E.g. A rose can be seen as romantic but are also used by mobs on dead bodies.

Applying Roland Barthes Theory to our Media Product- This image can be seen as vandalism, or a creative expression of emotion.















Essay Question- to what extent did you conform to or challenge narrative conventions in your product??
Typical Narrative Conventions:
- Meaning is constructed in order to promote audience understanding.
- Groups events into cause and effects

Essay plan

To what extent did you aim to meet target audiences expectations?




Plan:


Introduction


I aimed to meet target audience expectations by....
describe product and desired target audience


1st paragraph


how we tried to meet expectation (camerawork, mise en scene)


2nd paragraph


Did we accomplish what we tried to do?


3rd paragraph


make reference to a theory, and apply it to our work


4th paragraph/conclusion


decide on personal viewpoint, make own thesis and answer the initial question.

Essay plan - Section A 1B

Question: What meanings can be generated through studying genre elements in your work?

Introduction

Talk about the discussion of whether genre theory really exists
Say how you're going to discuss the different arguments associated with the genre

Point:
Micro elements such as mise-en-scene can create meaning by studying genre, as the characters can be recognised by audiences.

Point: Thriller genres have themes of identity - how have we created identity? - through mise-en-scene - forms meaning of the types of characters in our thriller


Theorist -

Robert stam believes that it could be argued that genres don't really exist and they are only a construction of analysts.
David Bordwell 

Conclusion

Genre has an influential impact on the audience and is needed to help audience choose their film.

Genre helps define audience choice and gives film makers a focus

Genres aren't as strict as they used to be, more modernly there are hybrid genres. 

Representation and Audience - Section A 1B

Representation

We have tried to represent freedom and ways of life in our music video. We displayed the contrast in different types of lifestyles through the use of jump cuts, which showed how different the types of people are. The mise-en-scene, such as costume also indicated the types of people, with lots of everyday, business-type people wearing suits and basic clothing, and out main character Porridge wearing jeans.

The use of colour in our music video also represents rebellion.

Our music video goes against Laura Mulvey's theory as we do not use objectification of women and we do not conform to the usual hip hop conventions of lots of girls on screen being shown purely for male's entertainment.

Audience

Our target audience is teenage males. It is also aimed at people interested in skateboarding, bmxing etc.

Our certificate would be 12 as there is no violence, strong language or sexual content. The only aspect of

our music video that would need some parental guidance or restriction is the lyrics.

We are attempting to generate a preferred response as are music video is purely for entertainment.

Our target group would expect to see a typical skating atmosphere, we have have embraced this stereotypical view of skating by the mise-en-scene and surrounding backgrounds. The audience we aimed the video at will be happy with our video because we followed the stereotype.

Representation and Audience - Section A 1B

Representation

We have tried to represent freedom and ways of life in our music video. We displayed the contrast in different types of lifestyles through the use of jump cuts, which showed how different the types of people are. The mise-en-scene, such as costume also indicated the types of people, with lots of everyday, business-type people wearing suits and basic clothing, and out main character Porridge wearing jeans.

The use of colour in our music video also represents rebellion.

Our music video goes against Laura Mulvey's theory as we do not use objectification of women and we do not conform to the usual hip hop conventions of lots of girls on screen being shown purely for male's entertainment.

Audience

Our target audience is teenage males. It is also aimed at people interested in skateboarding, bmxing etc.

Our certificate would be 12 as there is no violence, strong language or sexual content. The only aspect of

our music video that would need some parental guidance or restriction is the lyrics.

We are attempting to generate a preferred response as are music video is purely for entertainment.

Our target group would expect to see a typical skating atmosphere, we have have embraced this stereotypical view of skating by the mise-en-scene and surrounding backgrounds. The audience we aimed the video at will be happy with our video because we followed the stereotype.

Audience

Our audience is young males who are interested in similar music to the track in our music video. These youths would be in their teens as they can relate to the band featured in our video the most, this is due to similarities in age, background, props and clothing featured in our mise en scene. We meet the expectations of our audience through meeting the conventions of a music video with music similar to ours. We do this by featuring the band to the audience, by seeing them performing, intertextuality with other bands and music related companies such as the NME magazine we showed in our music video therefore making music fans relate to our video more therefore increasing the likability of our video.

We believe our music video would receive a PG because our music video meets the criteria for tis certificate. In our disequilibriam we feature horror scenes which are not prolonged, these are fantasy scenes which are also accepted in a PG film. Also we feature no drug, sex, foul language or disrimination therefore making our music video suitable for all children above 8 years old.

We are trying to acieve a active reponse from our viewers, we would like them to discuss how we challenged traditional conventions of indierock videos such as how we placed our band in a daytime setting rather than a dark and gloomy one. This would result in our viewers discussing the music video and challenging it resulting in more people watching it through word of mouth advertisment. This would therefore sell our artist meeting our music video convnetions to a better degree. We also challenged Laura Mulveys theory of voyerusiem, we did not feature women in our video to provide visual pleasure to our male audience. Our reasons for this links with how we wanted an active response from viewers, viewers of the video would have a passive response if they were provided with female voyerism.

Representation & Audience analysis

Representation:
In the thriller product we made, the antagonist had a mask on which could be seen as a stereotype of criminals. Also, the clothing that the antagonist is wearing may also be a stereotype of a criminal as he is wearing a 'hoodie' and baggy clothes. Race is not really shown in this product as the antagonist is masked and therefore you don't know his race and the protagonist is white. Laura Mulvey may look at this product in a way that the characters are all male which she would argue shows some conforming to stereotypes of males for example violence. There are no women in this product which means that Mulvey wouldn't be able to show any stereotypes of women which is a positive. The stereotypical violence shown by the characters also conforms to the genre of the product (thriller).

Audience:
The target audience of Jainy would probably be a female audience in early teen years. It would be female more than male because of the story line as it is a little bit like a fairytale. The product probably wouldn't have any age restriction certificates either as there is no violence or swearing. There should be a positive response from this product as there is no violence and it is quite a gentle sounding song and video. My target audience would like to see a lot of colour and brightness/happiness and the product delivers this. I think that this product conforms to the conventions that the target audience expects. Laura Mulvey may ague that the song is aimed at Jainy, however, she is not objectified in the product which means she isn't included in the 'Male Gaze' argument.

representation and audience

Representation 


In our music video we used an unfortunate negative stereotype to our music video about the objectification of women in RnB music videos. Laura mulvey has a theory called Male Gaze, and this strongly applies to the stereotype of women in RnB videos being voyeuristically exploited for the male populations pleasure. our clothing was a feature in making us appealing to men- showing more skin than necessary and high heels. this is very stereotypical to RnB artists music videos such as Beyonce, Shontelle and Rhianna. we used long shots during the performance section to show the entire body including legs made longer by heels. this helps people to appreciate the ''talent'' if you will.

Audience 

our characters to the (not the performance the other sections) didnt appear to have specific identities for a specific audience to relate to. looking at david gauntletts identity theory this media may prompt young adults to not identify themselves in a specific way to be open to interpretation/ or to be just as many people as they feel like being and express themselves in whatever way.

For our music video our target audience was aimed at teenage males and older. 14+. the expectations of our audience i'd expect would to see objectified women dancing maybe even singing if it were a real life music production. our video wasn't especially explicit no raunchy dance moves so we'd only rate this at a 15. 

How our Media Products use the technique of representation

Representations within our Music Video:

- Youth & Relationships 

- Gender 

Youth and Relationships:

The storyline within our music video centres around the topic of youthful relationships and methods of expressing emotions. We represented youth by using different aspects such as mise en scene and location. The costumes that the characters wore and the props that they used represented them as youthful. For example, both the actors in our video used spray paint, this would be something typically used by youths. However, it is normally known as a way of vandalism, we didn't want to represent our characters in this way, but instead show that they were trying to express themselves. With our storyline focusing around a love story, we were showing that relationships take a large part in the lives of youths. So our video gives the viewers an insight into the lives of teenagers today, as well as relating to the youths of today. Our video is opposition to the views of the theorist Laura Mulvey- as she goes against the stereotypical hollywood technique of objectifying women, however- we are not trying to identify women as objects- but wanting to show the female character within our video as the character of desire, as we express the story of love between two teens. 

Audience:

As previously discussed, we selected to represent youth within our music video. Because of this, our video mainly appeals to the target audience of teens and young adults, as our video relates to them, and they feel more involved in the video. 

The audience and our music video

The audience and our music video

Our target audience for our music video is late teens to early 30s and is aimed at both males and females as they can both idealise themselves in this video. The expectations of the target audience is to see the characters in a normal situation yet they can still achieve the same situation themselves.
We would have a 15 certificate for our music video as we don't believe that some of the scenes are appropriate for a younger audience. We also hope to have an active response from our audience as we believe that many will try and conform with the ideologies in our music video.

Section 1A

Thriller,

Representation, youth

In our thriller our representation is that there are 2 sides to youths, the side of the 'dangerous' and the side of the 'humble'. We have an antagonist who pushed the fella down the stairs, and he is a representation of all the horrible yobs out there, the idea you get is that 'he's just pushed him down the stairs' which in a way says he did it for no reason, which in modern society is generally how it seems to be. Usually not a motive for the incident,

Our Music Video Representation

Representations within our Music Video:

Youth comes into our music video through relashionships. For example when the couple argue, you are unable to hear what they are saying however this is shown through their actions. We made sure we made the pace of our shots faster at this point. We also represented their emotions through graphics, such as graffiti heart on the wall.

There is no significant representation of gender in this video, however the story of this relationship is told through the boy and girl separately. The song is sung by the boy and so this shows that the boy is showing emotion and giving a more emotional outpour. Laura Mulvey would argue that this makes the girl an object of desire but not in a sexist way and this is alright.-*

Music Video Representation

Youth representation:
The props and colours that make up our mise-en-scene represents youth quite strongly.
Making it more relatable to the audience and so easier to relate to the band, increasing the like ability factor of our video.
We use high angle shots and showing our character in peril to represent youth as weak and helpless whilst due to their lack of experience in life.
Theorist (David Gauntlett) his theory of how identity isn't fixed and change due to the environment around them supports our video, as we see our character as a stereotypical youth just relaxing and not expressing much emotion, but once the band appear he becomes scared and in panic which is not how youth are generally represented in films.

Gender (male) representation:
Males are represented in two different views, protagonist and antagonist in our video.
Protagonist is shown in peril through emotion shots and their panicked movement and emotions.
Antagonist represented as the dominant set of characters through editing techniques which show them as supernatural and uncontrollable, e.g. when they repeatedly appear and then disappear in front of the character.
This shows males are represented as good and evil and are not typically on one side.
We challenge Laura Mulveys theory that women are used as objects to help strengthen the male gaze and increase the appeal of our video to viewers, as we don't use any females at all during our video even though we are appealing to a male audience.

Representation of our music video

The Representation of youth and gender in our music video






Gender


Laura Mulvey believes that many films are based around the 'patriarchal' theme, however this is not the case in our music video. Jazz is represented more as the main character in our film instead of the male as she is the lead singer and the attention is focused more on her. However, one can argue that Jazz is being shown as an object as Laura Mulvey would see it, as she is on the bed wearing a shirt and underwear. Furthermore, during the pool scenes, Jazz is seen wearing a bikini which can also be understood as her being an object. The camera angles used throughout the music video are ones in which the audience would feel that they are actually there with the characters.

Youth


Youth is represented in a kind of perfectionist way, that the audience can idealise to. Yet they are so perfect that whoever watches it can not achieve it, thus making it an achievable perfection.

Music video narrative analysis

Meaning is constructed to promote audience understanding:
In our video the main message from the lyrics was shown across in our video, making it easier for the audience to understand the meaning of the song and the message the band is trying to promote.
Our narrative is also very continous with no break aways from the action for performances of the band, therefore making it easier for the audience to follow and understand.

Narrative groups events into cause and effect, action and effect:
In our video we intentionally show emotion shots of the character due to the appearance and then disappearances of the band in certain areas,  which is used to build up suspense and keep the audience interested so they can understand what effect the presence of the band can cause.
In our narrative the character actually does react in general way that most people would by trying to run away and escape from the band as ghosts, therefore making it easier for the audience to relate to the video and be more drawn into it.

Narrative organises time and space into compressed form:
Our video is not shot in real time however it does give the audience the audience that it is occuring over one small time period as we see the character running and being followed all within the same day without conditions changing, and so making it seem more realistic to the viewer and therefore making it look less like that space and time have been compressed.

Narrative story - refers to all events, explicitly presented or inferred:

Narrative plot - refers to everything audibly or visually present:

The voice of the narrative can vary. From whose perspective is the story being told? Whose story is being told?:
In our music video the narrative follows Tom the protagonist. We show this by featuring Tom as the only character in the equilibriam, in the disequilibriam the antagonists arrive and the narrative continues forward, however in this disequilibriam the narrative varies between each character in our music video, this relates to the music video conventions of selling the artist to the viewer. As it is Toms story being told once the new equilibriam arrives in the music video the band disappear leaving Tom once again on his own. This suggests to the audience that it was Toms story being told throughout the narrative. This is an example of how our music video met Tzvetan Todorovs narrative theory because we featured the three stages of his narrative theory.

Narrative is constructed through camerawork, lighting and mise-en-scene: