Plan

1a) Plan 

• Google = Research, to find real media texts, 
• Genre= Looking at different genres, compare, result in regards to final product
• explain Y2k films - Kidulthood, Adulthood fish tank, wanted more aspect, in regards to representation 
• editing, mis en scene, setting 
• Special effects in films, 
• A2 - real media texts compared and contrast to what we used last year real media texts 
• Special effects, lighting mis en scene 
• representation contrast 
• mainstream compared to more independent
• conform and subvert to codes and conventions 
• target audience 

1b)

• Maslow heirachy theory 
• audience gratification
• hyperdermic needle model 
• dominant ideology
• stuart hall 

Online MInd Map

Online Mind Map on Prezi

Explain how far understanding of the conventions of existing media influenced the way you created your own media products. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how this understanding developed over time.

For my As production I decided to create a Y2k opening for a film, which was to portray youths in a stereotypical manner which will conform to the conventions of real media texts. Within my A2 production I worked within a group to create a retro/vintage music video with ancillary products which will portray youth culture in a more positive light, this appeal remained consistent throughout production. I found this a great way to develop my skills further because in comparison to As the codes and convention I followed were different to the ones in A2. Therefore in both years looking and analysing real media texts provided to be really helpful.

For my As coursework I concentrated on determining who the target audience would be by  conducting various research on the internet , creating a questionnaire on survey monkey and placing it on a web 2.0 like Facebook for people to give their opinions on what they would like to watch. Also by examining many different TV shows so that I could deconstruct the product to a certain key convention e.g. sticking to the codes developed by Prop 31 conventions  and Todorov narrative and equilibrium. From this I determined that the opening scene need to be youth related so we decided to create a gang culture opening for the basis of the TV show. Because from the internet research it was clear that successful production work centred on creating moral panic among society concerning teenagers, the most popular was gang culture. This allowed me to experiment with stereotypes and compare with existing products on the market.

Google proved to be helpful in finding Y2k synopsis for us to follow one in particular is the Kidulthood one “a day in the lives of four poor youths living in an impoverished neighbourhood in West London, where the pressure and desperation of poverty propels each of them towards the choice between a life of bleakness, violence, and crime, and the terrifying prospect of striving for a better life”. The opening which I viewed on YouTube, demonstrated this effectively, through the codes and codes and conventions presented, there was evidence from the Mis-en-scene of bleak, dark environments, urban flats etc. 

Through my group and I endeavoured to use the same effects and have similar codes and conventions into our film opening. Therefore in our filming for opening we shot in the setting of an urban landscape among council flats. The main character dressing was due to the influence we saw in shank, Kidulthood and fish tank, so in the opening you see him living the estates in a hoodie. 

For the A2 production I again used Google to conduct research of songs and the codes the music videos follow we gathered the idea for the concept of our music video by looking at Diggy Simmons music video called 'Do it like you', as the rap video was rather similar to the type of music video we wanted to create in order to appeal to the demographics of 18-49 year old more in particular towards young niche audience, using a range of camera angles.

For our music video I think it's clear to see that we decided to stick to the most obvious codes and conventions of presenting a narrative and cameo. The reason why a cameo is presented is because during certain parts of the video the narrative is actually not part of the story line that the music video presents at particular times. A specific area that this is seen in our music video is when the song starts to sing the chorus and a skateboarding scene is presented for the audience to watch.

We gathered the idea for the concept by looking at different examples of music videos, for example Diggy Simmons music video called 'Do it like you', as the rap video was rather similar to the type of music video we wanted to create in order to appeal to the demographics of 18-49 year olds more in particular towards young niche audience, using a range of camera angles.

For our music video I think it's clear to see that we decided to stick to the most obvious codes and conventions of presenting a narrative and cameo. The reason why a cameo is presented is because during certain parts of the video the narrative is actually not part of the story line that the music video presents at particular times. A specific area that this is seen in our music video is when the song starts to sing the chorus and a skateboarding scene is presented for the audience to watch.

But our music video allows us to develop and conform to the conventions of narratives, because the chosen song for the music video is describing the infatuation a man has for a woman. Our music video shows that, through the use of Alex and Aimee relationship that develops from just strangers to what we would presume a couple. This links back to the Diggy Simmons video because he was able to convey his charms openly to win over the girl, portrayed more obviously through the use of different camera angles, which we were able to copy.

The codes and conventions in a website is very brand oriented in that, it portrays a creative way of giving you an impression of the band or artist genre and identity. They have tabs on websites to allow people to browse through further information about the artist, tour dates, pictures and music video.

By using these real media texts we were able to incorporate the same elements into our website. Our website has a bio, picture gallery and contact information for booking enquires. The website matches the retro/vintage colour scheme and has a dominant image the artist.

Looking at two types of Media, describe the ways in which a particular group of people are collectively represented or provided for, using specific examples to support your response.

Caroline Howarth believed that people develop collective identities through representations that they are bombarded with. Take for example her study on Brixton youths, she created focus groups of local children in Brixton and asked them a series of question, for them to basically describe the life style of Brixton for them and how they think people outside views Brixton. The participants of the focus group all came to same conclusion that Brixton was a very dangerous and relatively a stereotypical place to live. Making the media texts to portray an accurate account however is this only evidence of how media influences us? Caroline Howarth said that “identity is co-constructed through dialectic of self-other relations. Child has to take on the social representations of her communities and learn to see herself as others do.”

Therefore if the community is stigmatised then the person identity is also stigmatised.  Danielle said: “Yeah, it is actually, cos when you say ‘I’m from Brixton’, and then they all start saying ‘Is it?’ ‘Gosh, she’s from Brixton!’ ‘She’s got a knife, she is carrying a gun, she got drugs, and she got everything!’”

Althusser’s interpellation theory says, “We become bombarded with messages and become a subject rather than an individual as soon as we engage them, they control us (Post modernism).”These messages can con come in two ways, texts and visual. Take for example the messages portrayed in Noel Clarke kidlthood, where youths were given the collectively identity of something to be feared and bad. Noel Clarke himself says he was trying to give an accurate representation of youths in London; given to the recent events of the London riots it hard to dispute that such a representation is wrong.

When even considering the historical evidence of youths like rebel without a cause, you still can see youths being stigmatised as being rebellious. Today though youths try to build their own collective identities through the use of web 2.0, social networks such as Facebook and twitter, with the ability to update statuses, upload pictures and share information, youths tend to use this to begin developing their collective identities, which was alluded to by henry Jenkins. All of this results in youths having a sense of belonging, however due to the riots in particular adults have tried to enforce regulation and censorship on web 2.0 in order it might restrict what youths can do on it.

During the riots it’s argued that some riots were actually planned through social networks like twitter and blackberry messenger. Rioters used this as a way to communicate and even post pictures of their stolen goods as trophies.  Due to this faced access to communication it made it increasingly difficult to put regulation on it. Twitter and blackberry was even asked to be shut down.

The press also has a huge influence in how society views youth, in particular tabloids. When they input their messages for the audience to decode and deconstruct it for their own lives and situations. Stuart hall decoding/encoding theory talks about this, for example the sun would deliberately show youths in a negative light and exaggerate it to create a moral panic among their readers.

By using buzz words like yobs, hoddies it contributes to hegemonic view of controlling youths in general.  By grouping them together as bad collective identity this makes it hard for some youths to be recognised as individuals who achieve a good standing among society, because to media bad news is good news. This overshadowing can often lead them to be frustrated and because they have no way having their opinions being put into the press they have another means to vent out their emotions, sometimes this can be through violence.

The future representations of youths doesn’t seem to be any better, in fact worse,  a film directed by Mo Ali shank, portrayed youths to be left by society as a whole to defend for themselves. Maybe this is a bleak outlook into the future for them.

In conclusion youths can use web 2.0 to create their own collective identities but at the end due to mass media influence on society through text and visual, they will continually be negatively labelled and due to this youths will just continue to be rebels.

Describe how you developed your skills in the use of digital technology for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to your creative decision making.

In year 12 my As brief was to create an opening scene for an upcoming film or TV show. In year 13 for my advanced portfolio the brief was to design and create a professional music video with ancillary products to support it. The ancillary products were two things; a website and digipack. For all sections of my coursework both As and A2 research was most prominent in determining the conventions of each product and who the potential target audience would be in order that the production might be successful.

Therefore for my As coursework I concentrated on determining who the target audience would be by  conducting various research on the internet , creating a questionnaire on survey monkey and placing it on a web 2.0 like Facebook for people to give their opinions on what they would like to watch. Also by examining many different TV shows so that I could deconstruct the product to a certain key convention e.g. sticking to the codes developed by Prop 31 conventions  and Todorov narrative and equilibrium. From this I determined that the opening scene need to be youth related so we decided to create a gang culture opening for the basis of the TV show. Because from the internet research it was clear that successful production work centred on creating moral panic among society concerning teenagers, the most popular was gang culture. This allowed me to experiment with stereotypes and compare with existing products on the market.

For my A2 portfolio I had to create a music video and ancillary products. Again I found the internet extensively useful in finding current examples of these with conventions to follow, allowing me also to create a questionnaire again for the chosen target audience and putting it on a social media website Facebook.  However I was able to find different kinds of music videos which centred on different things for a different audience. In particular the genre of rock or indie focused on demonstrating an artistic and postmodern video for their target audience whereas hip-hop and R&B focused on establishing the artist and making him prominent.  After this research was done I came up with the idea of following the conventions found in “Diggy Simmons video do it like you” which focused on the protagonist wooing his love interest which can expand the target audience to demographic of 16-49 year olds. This is inspired my final product as I used a protagonist to woo his love interest. Without the initial research I may not have been able to come up with such a strong final piece.

So for my As production ways in which I used digital technology was not only present in the research task and bettering my skills in using a questionnaire based website, but also in understanding software. The first software that I came across was adobe after effects in creating visual effects, lighting and composition to a scene; I learnt most of my beginner skills by initially checking the research I made previously, also looking up tutorials on YouTube as a step by step guide. The immediate con of doing this is that didn’t fully understand the many functions I was using in both Adobes after effects and Photoshop. Therefore I couldn’t use it as effectively as I hoped to, due to this my creative decision making was scrutinized I had to evaluate what I could and couldn’t do, therefore if wanted to do something for the final product yet had no way of going about it I wouldn’t do it all. For example there was the opening scene of an orb in the short clip that need to have sound yet I had no way of putting it in. Despite not being able to do it, it did not at all discourage my creativity but urged me in  to push on in my spare time to better my skills in using adobe based programmes so that limitations like that wouldn’t occur in A2.

Software used in the production for my As coursework was final cut pro to compile the shots we took into one. Again I used the initial research and tutorials to teach me on a beginner level on how to use the programme. As previously I ran into the con of not fully understanding what I was doing to my production work, it was more of a guess game, hoping for the best result. This however encouraged my creativity to explore so many different avenues of how to make the shots we took into a professional piece of work. One example is adding the credits into the scenes in order that the clip might be taking more seriously as a short film. This allowed the video to stick to the conventions of many other existing products.

But when it came to the A2 production my skills had developed beyond a beginner to what some would consider to be advanced. One reason in particular to why this was, is because I knew exactly what I was doing when it came to using programmes such as final cut and photoshop.  I had improved so much in both software’s that have even remembered the short keys in accomplishing certain task like feathering and masking scenes and images.

My A2 production had less limitations than As , for example when it came to filters and lighting for my As i wouldn’t be able to do it, and if I were able I wouldn’t be 100% sure if I could repeat it. But for my A2 production such a problem did not rise at all because after As I had revised and learnt the software used in media in order to be proficient.

The ancillary products was where I best utilized my new skills especially in photoshop for the digipack, being that the music video was more dependent on actual footage. In photoshop i was able to extensively edit the photos we took for the digipack, by removing any blemishes & spots, giving our protagonist clean skin and then adding filters to enhance the aesthetic appeal in order that it might revolve around the codes and conventions we had gotten from existing products.

In comparison to As production where the best I could do is crop and resize images in photoshop.

In A2 I was able to make considerable progress and build on some of my own perceived post production weaknesses , for example in As I had  never made a website to promote an artist so making a website for this purpose was quite new to me. I had to use the internet to find official artist websites. Tinie tempah official website had a variety of different components and elements on his webpage but could be confusing for some people, It did have links to Twitter and FB and other social networking pages to keep his fans keep up-to-date with him. The colour scheme was quite plain which I noticed with other websites of artists in the same genre. I wanted to keep my website plain and simple also and to make it link in with the music video and album cover so the homepage had a small introduction.

To conclude, the two years of working on these individual production pieces I feel that my editing and ablitiy to use digital technologies such as Adobe Photoshop, After Effects and final cut pro has improved massively.

Essay Structures

• Immediately start with a statement to adress the issue presented. for example "Adults do not know how youth behave or who they are." after starting with a statement back it up with an example that would be applicable to the subject.
• To illustrate: "Adults  do not know how youth behave or who they are, for example is 'rock around the clock' which caused a lot of controversy and created a moral panic."
• References to key terms and using them not necessary to define them.
• Use data and events to construct basis of an arguement, also endevor for each paragrapgh to follow PEA.
• Example: Point- "Adults have social predominance"
•                  Evidence- "This is England film"
•                Analysis - Young adults seen as yobs etc this results in society being influenced and youth start to misbehave.
• Using data from news stories, then relate how bad news is good news. This means the worse the news story, the better news coverage and increased audience reception.
• Able to link relevant theories to the question, not just repeating a specific one.
• Better to keep structure simple and straightforward.
• When referring to collective identity talk about the past, present and future.
• Rebel without a cause= Past
• Kidulthood= Present
• Shank= Future
• Then discuss how the impact of media effects collective identity this in turns can link to the conclusion of the essay.
• Continually throughout  compare and contrast broadsheets to tabloids, when referring to collective identity.
• Good starting points for paragrapghs would be like:
• Media 
•  A jouralist etc
• By doing this furthers enable you to bulid upon a subject for that paragraph.
• Overall make the objective clear when writing.  

Representations of narratives

For our music video, the story revolves around Alex (Main character), who's who's hopeless falling for the girl of his dreams, Aimeé; where he tries to woo her with his charm and charismatic lifestyle. So as the course of video continues we get to peer into Alex's interests and passion in skating, which he likens to his his love for Aimeé.

Therefore the music video conforms to five stages :

• Eposition- So it set's the scene by immediately introducing us to our main character Alex in the city of London, preparing to go skating .
• Development- Sitiuation develops more characters introduced. The constant looking over in Aimeé's direction to highlight that she is the love interest.
• Complication - Something happens to complicate lives of characters. for this instance it will be the fact Aimeé cannot really skate.
• Climax- Decisive moment reached, matters come to a suspense. this occurs when Alex decides to ask Aimeé whether she would like him to teach her how to skate.
• Resolution- Matter are resolved and satisfactory end is reached. The resolution is that she agrees to the  idea and there are seen in the music video to be skating together. 

There is also evident Todorov's theory,  there is an equilibruim at the beginning of the opening scene, where things are quite normal at the beginning until a certain situation where a character and an action disrupts the equilibrium, and in this case it is when Alex notices Aimeé and decides to go forth and approach her.

We also have a very archetypal music video where main character (Alex) wins over the girl by his burst into song  and his irresistible charm. A modern day example would be Michael Jackson the way you make me feel.

Representation 1st try !!

• Youth violence. Character damien is in a conflicting stituation where his past comes up on him. While on barking a journey to leave his past behind, he is a confronted with a dilemma of being a witness of youth crime and it comes down to him to watch this person become a victim to the society in which he lives.The setting, urban grey and cold environment, demonstrating the hegemonic view of the ruling class where it see's working class environments in which children live in to be of " lack of life", lacking vibrant and happy culture.The short clip consist of non digetic sound of an grime instrumental, keeping to the codes and conventions of the typical urban culture. take for example the film kidulthood , from the outset of the film it followed a specific stereotype, that would have to be appearence. This results immediately for the audience to identify with the characters and behaviour as it were as active hetrogenous audiences that choose to accept the messages put across because it portrayed as normal.This could be called a cutural model. where an idea or media message is put across to the audience yet immediate change in peoples values and opinions don't change but rather over time changes, leaving behind a long time effect. A brilliant example of this would be the 1979 sun newspaper where it decided to vote for conservatives. The readers did not change there values and opinions immediately yet as time progressed the values and opinions changed  leaving behind a lasting stereotype.A good example of this would be the film kidulthood where the many stereotypes of immoral and irresponsible teenagers are developed throughout the film and this in return becomes the dominant view of teenagers, so continuos films are portraying the same view in general . 

Analysis of Narrative our Media Production

Roland Barthes enigma code links at the end of the film when our character see's someone getting beaten up.therefore the mystery of the film starts in regards to why is someone getting beaten up and what is his connection towards our hero.

 Propps theory further comes into play when our, our main character falls into the 31 functions films put out.

Our character Damien becomes the 27th function where he is recognised as the hero, because as you can see in the opening he decides to go back into the alleyway and help out our victim.
Who conforms to number 8 of Propp theory where the villain, I.E. being the two thugs trying to steal from our victim , is trying to cause harm.

It could be argued that our film could very well fall into the levi Strauss theory of binary opposition where in our character opening, Damien is just trying live a reasonable normal life, where he escapes gang culture however as the conflict becomes aware to him in the opening ,we see, that he takes a brief moment to consider what action he should take, as we see he clearly chooses to accept the opposite of living a reasonable life and decides to enter the world of gang culture by helping the victim from the villain. And therefore conforms to propp theory of hero and villain joining in direct combat.

Todorov's theory links in with our opening scene as the equilibrium was when out main character was walking and then the disequilibrium occurred towards the end when the main character went back to help the victim in the alley way. The resolution would of occurred when the victim is saved.

Éssay Plan: Analyse a Product you created on representation

• Talk about the synopsis of film opening.
• Highlight the codes and conventions of the film opening in relation to stereotypes that may result from it.
• Compare to theories of dominant and hegemonic views

The Introduction

• Film synopsis- Youth vilence. Character damien is in a conflicting stituation where his past comes up on him. While on barking a journey to leave his past behind, he is a confronted with a dilemma of being a witness of youth crime and it comes down to him to watch this person become a victim to the society in which he lives.
• The setting, urban grey and cold environment, demonstrating the hegemionic view of the ruling class where it see's working class environments in which children live in to be of " lack of life", lacking vibrant and happy culture.
• The short clip consist of non digetic sound of an grime instrumental, keeping to the codes and conventions of the typical urban culture. take for example the film kidulthood , from the outset of the film it follewed a specific stereotype, that would have to be appearence. This results immediately for the audience to identify with the characters and behaviour as it were as active hetrogenous audiences that choose to accept the messages put across because it portrayed as normal.
• This could be called a cutural model. where an idea or media message is put across to the audience yet immediate change in peoples values and opinions don't change but rather over time changes, leaving behind a long time effect. A brilliant example of this would be the 1979 sun newspaper where it decided to vote for conservatives. The readers did not change there values and opinions immediately yet as time progressed the values and opinions changed  leaving behind a lasting stereotype.
• Therefore in conjuction to my product who is being represented ?
• etc

Media A2 Revision

Media A2 Revision- Contemporary, Historical and Now on Prezi

Media Essay

Analyse the way in which the media represents youths

Media appears to reflect reality but rather they construct it. - Stuart Hall, encoding and decoding is a example of how media does this in regards to youths. The media put across a message which is never transparent therefore leading to an ideology being infiltrated into the hearts of the passive audiences. For example the film kidult hood portrays youths negatively, therefore giving it a negative representation to society, as the film constructs a stereotypical view on youths, creating the ideological view for audiences. Kidult hood portrays youths to be violent, sexual, loud, “druggies”, angry and carefree; this creates the stereotypical subculture that youths have in society.

But historical representation of youths have not always been so radical for example rebel without a cause was more of a subtle representation of youth, where they have mixed feelings and uncertainty leading them to be less violent, so therefore contemporary and historical representations differ completely as they are dichotomous.

Therefore leading the media to supposedly put across “common sense” to their audiences, David Buckingham researched how media and technologies are used in everyday life and the consequences that occur, take for example the recent London riots; a newspaper article said “This brazen Facebook user posted a picture of himself with suspected goods”.  This created a moral panic to occur and due to the involvement of web 2.0 which is usually associated with youths. The online newspapers showed videos and pictures of youths only stealing and pictures of youths taking photos with what they stole, during the London riots the police tried to stop the use of web 2.0 in order to stop youths interacting and communicating with each other. “Teens are constantly updating and customizing their profiles “(Richard Jenkins).Through web2.0 youths were able to communicate with each other about the riots and as web2.0 has no regulations they had no limitations on what they said.

 it resulted in negative stereotypes being formed even the way youths are described are always in reference to the media for example the daily mail newspaper; mentioned that a group of youths had “A sense of glee pervaded these accounts – youths were often grinning while describing their experience – a delight that the normal order of things was turned upside down.” This statement from a tabloid clearly exaggerated forces new modes of regulation, meaning for us to pay closer attention to diverse ways in which media is represented , in comparison to broadsheets which present more of a factual and resourceful way presenting the media. Because the guardian a broadsheet in fact represents youths differently from that of a tabloid sheet, it mentioned “just imagine for a moment that you’re a British teenage boy. You’re struggling to grow up, to find out who you really are?” which is in fact true as youths today are trying to find their identity. Jacques Lacan argued that audiences are able to form and develop their identity and change the way in which they see or recognise themselves. The media sends out a huge number of messages about identity and acceptable forms of self-expression, gender, sexuality and lifestyle.

Due to us being bombarded by these messages we are positioned as a subject rather than an individual according to Althusser’s theory therefore these messages construct or define our identity in some part.

Therefore in conclusion the way media represent youths is negative and it will continually display a hegemonic and ideological status to society.