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. 

Genre and narrative analysis of our media production.

Task
1. Analyse your thriller or music video for genre.


The audience can recognise various characteristics within our music video which represent the genre of the piece. Our narrative follows the love story- with a breakdown and resolution of the main character. There is also a tempo to the storyline that again reflects the genre. Our use of mise-en-scene was mainly reflected through our use of location and scenery. The opening shot of a lonely, breezy field instantly allows for interpretation of genre.

Recent music successes within the pre production of our music video focus mainly around the artists of Jack Johnson, James Blunt, Paolo Nutini, Jason Mraz- so the alternative acoustic genre was going through a popular phase within the music industry- reducing the extortionate financial risk we took with our video.

Genre functions as a language, and through using our music video we wanted to get a message across to the audience.

Vladimir Propp

Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp - (17 April 1895- 22 August 1970) was a Russian and Soviet formalist scholar who analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements.

Biography

Vladimir Propp was born on April 17, 1895 in St. Petersburg to a German family. He attended St. Petersburg University (1913–1918) majoring in Russian and German philosophy. Upon graduation he taught Russian and German at a secondary school and then became a college teacher of German.

His Morphology of the Folktale was published in Russian in 1928. Although it represented a breakthrough in both folkloristics and morphology and influenced Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes, it was generally unnoticed in the West until it was translated in the 1950s. His character types are used in media education and can be applied to almost any story, be it in literature, theatre, film, television series, games, etc.

In 1932, Propp became a member of Leningrad University faculty. After 1938, he shifted the focus of his research from linguistics to folklore. He chaired the Department of Folklore until it became part of the Department of Russian Literature. Propp remained a faculty member until his death in 1970.

Theory

Vladimir Propp extended the Russian Formalist approach to the study of narrative structure. In the Formalist approach, sentence structures were broken down into analyzable elements and Propp used this method by analogy to analyze Russian fairy tales. By breaking down a large number of Russian folk tales into their smallest narrative units, Propp was able to arrive at a typology of narrative structures. After the initial situation is depicted, the tale takes the following sequence of 31 functions.

He also concluded that all the characters could be resolved into 8 broad character types in the 100 tales he analyzed:

1. The villain — struggles against the hero.
2. The dispatcher —character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off.
3. The (magical) helper — helps the hero in the quest.
4. The princess or prize — the hero deserves her throughout the story but is unable to marry her because of an unfair evil, usually because of the villain. the hero's journey is often ended when he marries the princess, thereby beating the villain.
5. Her father — gives the task to the hero, identifies the false hero, marries the hero, often sought for during the narrative. Propp noted that functionally, the princess and the father can not be clearly distinguished.
6. The donor —prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object.
7. The hero or victim/seeker hero — reacts to the donor, weds the princess.
8. False hero — takes credit for the hero’s actions or tries to marry the princess.

Applying the theory to a contemporary blockbuster hit

Harry Potter character types-

1. The villain — Lord Voldemort 

2. The dispatcher — Rubeus Hagrid 

3. The (magical) helper — Ron Weasley

4. The princess or prize — Ginny Weasley

5. Her father — 

6. The donor — Dumbledore 

7. The hero or victim / seeker hero — Harry Potter

8. False hero — Draco Malfoy

Shrek character types- 

1. The villain — Lord Farquaad

2. The dispatcher —

3. The (magical) helper — Donkey

4. The princess or prize — Princess Fiona

5. Her father — King Harold

6. The Donor —

7. The hero or victim/ seeker hero — Shrek
8. False hero —