TV and postmodernity

Pastiche	Tongue-in-cheek rehashes and tributes to classic pop culture
Spectacle	In the ever competitive battle for viewers, television caters to the basest and shallowest impulses to get attention
Faux TV	Self-referential mockumentaries, shows about shows, and fake news
Mystery	Bizarre, eclectic searches for the unknown involving spirituality, philosophy and technology
The Anti-Hero	Postmodern realities blur the lines between good and evil, black and white, for both characters and viewers

Re take mock

1A ) – Digital technology and creativity

AS was based on creating a magazine, this involved research and planning to what created our final product. Similarly in A2 where we are in the process of creating a magazine based on the research and planning. Therefore the skills gained from AS have helped me in my product of A2 of making a music video. Something which has been a main factor of the planning has been digital technology and creativity, by this digital technology has enabled me to explore a range of wider ideas and create a professional video through the use of cameras, lighting and editing. 

When starting AS, I was unsure on what to expect from the course, however, once getting involved on the product I realized how important the factor of creativity was and the inspiration you can gain from other peoples work and through exploring your own ideas - I ended up creating a music magazine based on the genre of indie, my idea came from a day trip out in Camden where I spotted a underground park which was filled with artwork it gave me the idea of an urban theme by the use of colors and passers by who walked through. By this I was hoping to gain knowledge of what this type of audience liked, therefore, to do this I created an online survey which questions to the public about this area in Camden, digital technology helped me to gain a knowledge of my audience which really helped into creating my ideal model for my magazine as I believed this was an Important factor for a successful magazine. ​This was proved in the success of my model Ella and how well she fitted in to the process of my magazine making, the photo shoot was shot in school itself, I used a cannon 500 camera and lighting against a white screen to create my shoot. As much as the quality of images was important, the editing was also. I asked members of my class to watch in on my photoshtoot to check that the quality of my images was to a high standard as I respected the opinions of my fellow class mates as they would of also been respective judges of character and understand the concept of my audience.

The editing of my images was on Photoshop and Adobe Indesign CS5, this software allows you to crop pictures change the color gradient and remove backgrounds that you don't want which allowed me to create a professional realistic final product. It was important to me that I had a range of colors within my magazine, such as collages of black and white images and gradients of Valencia as seen on the social media app instagram.  As I was a beginner to this software I watched several tutorials and YouTube videos on how to use many of the tools within the program which helped me gain a wider knowledge of the system. From watching the tutorials I gained skills such as editing of pictures, as I wanted a vintage reflection in my work, this would enable me to have a unique bucolic feel. The tutorials also gave me a wider understanding of ‘text wrapping’ tool, a tool in which enables you to wrap the text around other writing and images on the page. By utilizing this feature I was able to create a experienced manor to my texting.

In the process of my A2 work, the use of digital technology was developed significantly, especially in the functions of the Canon 600D camera, in contrast to the lower tech camera in AS. Whilst filming in A2 I edited the settings in order to ensure high quality footage, this meant I could film in any location without having to worry about blurriness or lighting issues. The use of lenses played a big role in the success of filming, the use of the prime lens with an aperture of 1.8 allowed to capture high quality footage in low lighting areas. Although I am highlighting the work of digital technology this year to seem favorable, I have experienced technical issues within this process which has caused me time. For example, my first footage came out blurry and crackly due to the camera and I also lost a fair amount of my footage due to storage issues on the computer. However this as a producer showed me the problems which can occur and highlights how you need to deal with them and carry on, which something I didn't learn from my AS task.

1B ) Media Language

                                                                                            

Media language is the way in which producers communicate with their audience. All media texts contain meaning, whether this is structural, symbolic or ideological. This is down to the producer to make sure that they can construct the media text properly to convey the meaning well so that the audience reads the text correctly. These codes all obtain a broadly accepted interpretation, denotation. As well as a socially defined one, connotation.

The signs within my video are through oppositional forces through camera shots, mise en scene and the joining of the first scene in comparison to the last, this is explored the ideology of male v female, and the stereotypical power that men hold over women and their emotions.  The audience is exposed to feel a connection with the female character through the emotion of stages she goes through within the video, firstly through the evident female traits of applying make up, brushing her hair, rubbing her face, exemplified by the slow motion pace of the footage. Similarly to the ending of the scene where the actions and emotions change due to the heartbreak of her lover who breaks her heart, again, symbolized through a motion of slow placing shots. Together, these support the idea of women getting powered by men and the heartbreak which many women go through in today’s society. The idea of the artist looking directly into the camera at the beginning of the scene smiling in comparison to the end scene where she looks directly into the camera with a tear rolling down her face suggests the idea of it being over. Instantly, this creates upset and emotion from the reader to the girl through the symbolic meaning of ‘crying’ and the norms which are expressed with crying.

The second way in which my video explores media language is through the representation of women. Mulvey demonstrates the concept that females in the media are reduced to a passive, objectified state and can be used for the visual appearance, normally expressed for the pleasure of a male audience. My video supports this idea and the theory of ‘Madonna v whore’ complex and portrays a feminist suggestion of a flip of two different types of women through video progression. Beginning with the idea of a whore complex that stereotypically, wears a lot of make up, goes out drinking and has a good time away from her husband in contrast to a Madonna theory who stays at home crying over her loved one. This is suggested a norm in today’s society although I disagree that this should be allowed to describe women. The slow motion shots of the ‘whore’ getting ready focus on aspects of the females facial features such as her lips and eyes, while the longer shots are used to expose the female as a seductive character as interpreted through a ‘male gaze’ and a ‘whore’. Whilst in the end shots the female presents a very dead pan with an emotionless face on her own, conveying a suggestion of loneliness and upset, this is developed through the lack of smiling and enjoyment which is first established in the beginning scene.

Media language is a tool in which I have used throughout the making of my video which ideologies the topics of beauty and gender, this is displayed throughout the use of mise en scene and camera angles to express emotion and discussion within my video which is down for the audience to interpret themselves to their own conclusions.

Question 1a

Question 1a advice from Media Studies

Matrix film / Postmodern

Baudrilliard

Hyperreality
‘a condition in which "reality" has been replaced by simulacra’

Simulacra...
When a sign loses its relation to reality, it then begins to simulate a simulation
Simulation:
The process in which a representation of something comes to replace the thing which is actually being represented.
The representation then becomes more important than ‘the real thing’
Hyperreality:
Division between "real" and simulation has collapsed,
therefore an illusion of an object is no longer possible because the real object is no longer there.

Understanding Hyperreality
Celebrity culture:
Celebrities who reach a point at which every aspect of their lives is taken care of by someone else are said to live in a hyperreal world.
They lose the ability to interact with people on a normal level and are cocooned in Hyperreality.
Normal people often try to copy this, for example one man who is obsessed with Britney Spears and every aspect of his life relates to her, he genuinely believes that he lives in the same world as her.
This is a common case in which someone has become more engaged in the hyperreal world than the actual real world.

Understanding Hyperreality...
Video Games
Play station games which have a lot of violence in them often have a lot of bad press, the media believe that people will copy the actions which they see in the video game.
This actually happens very rarely, only a small percentage of the people who play the violent video games actually copy the actions which they see on them.
For example one prime example is of a man who believed he was in a game and would therefore gain points by carrying out illegal tasks, the worst crime which he committed was killing his best friend. His argument was that he had been told to do it, meaning that he genuinely thought he was taking part in the game when in fact it was real life.
Showing that he could no longer distinguish the difference between game play and real life.

Genre paragraph

Genre is a means of categorising different texts and being able to place them in a particular group based on codes and conventions as well as producer/audience relationships. My A2 production of a music video is generally associated with pop music. The sterotypical convetions with pop music are videos such as Beyonce, this is due to the style of videos which she creates - by this it is followed by the way which she displays herself through editing camera, mise en scene and sound.

 

Essentially, music video is a platform or genre in itself yet what I may classify as a subgenre could be considered as a super genre by others. Therefore genre has no boundaries and by breaking conventions, this can be seen as either raising the threshold of what’s considered generally acceptable or creating a new genre entirely.

Narrative paragraph - power of love

I am going to explore the narrative in the music video ‘the power of love’, the lyric of ‘dreams are like angels ‘shows suggestion that angles keep the bad away from the good, form of a metaphor as this evidently doesn’t happen. ‘I’m so in love with you’, the artist of Birdy is demonstrating her emotion, being in love with someone is a very deep and honourable feeling which moves on to her saying making ‘love your goal’ the idea of the word ‘goal’ is the idea of winning something, scoring and being extremely happy. The artist suggests that you should make love your goal discussing you should make love something worth winning, scoring. ‘Purging your soul’ could explain that the word ‘purge’ is associated with getting rid of someone, of an unwanted feeling and emotion, memory or condition. The song repeats the sentence about making love your goal in the chorus this suggests that she wants the idea of making love your dream to be the main storyline.