Good Points:
- Yasmin uses all the main and relevant theorists with examples relating to her final product.
- Her research and planning section has been explained in a detailed format making it easy to understand.
- All of her points have been mentioned in depth and also explained too.
- Good use of terminology - referred to theorists' main ideas and explained them too.
- Identified her problems that she faced during the process.
- Used a numerous amount of examples, referring to other music videos and where their inspiration came from.
- Explained how they went against stereotypes.
Improvements:
- There is a lot of information and it may be unrealistic to write this much in the real exam due to time constraints (I don't know if Yasmin completed this essay in timed conditions or not!)
- Maybe you could be more critical of your own work instead of praising it all the time!
Pretty amazing to be honest. Level 4.
Wednesday 28 March 2012
Thursday 22 March 2012
Discuss how you used genre in one of your products.
The media production I am going to write about in relation to genre is my Foundation portfolio where we had to create a two minute thriller film opening.
The genre of our opening was obviously 'thriller' and this allowed us to be creative with our narrative as there are a variety of sub-genres for thrillers, varying from mystery to psychological. Our thriller was a combination of a revenge and psychological.
For our research we decided to watch a numerous amount of thriller openings which had an apparent theme of revenge and psychology. We thought this was important as genre is a contract between producers and audience which 'disciplines' choices and 'reduces desires'. We thought that this was an important part of our research as our target audience preferred sub genres to contain the common clichés we see in modern film.
Steve Neale said that genre is to do with a circulation of expectations between industries, media texts and audiences. According to his theory, our thriller would have to feature generic or stereotypical characters and settings for our thriller opening to succeed. This is shown in our dark shots where the torture scene is happening. We found that from the existing thriller openings we had researched, we found that they were shot in the dark with minimal lighting. We replicated this by having our torture scene shot in the dark with minimal lighting in to make it look slightly frightening and mysterious.
We decided to use parallel editing to make our opening look fast paced by switching between the two story lines taking place. Although this concept was already common in some movies, we hadn't come across it in our research and our idea arised from watching thriller openings which featured 'flashback' editing.
However our thriller opening didn't feature the full conventions of a thriller opening as in one of our storylines from our parallel editing a man is walking in daylight. This may not be a generic convention of a psychological thriller as you'd most likely expect a man walking in the rain, in New York. However, because our character is walking in the daylight with apparently no danger around him, it creates an enigma code. Roland Barthes' enigma code generates and controls what and how much we know in a narrative and holds our interest. It's a puzzle waiting to be solved. In accordance to our opening, a certain element of mystery was raised, why was he captured? What did he do? Will he survive? We feel that we created an enigma code in our opening successfully as the feedback we got was generally good and a lot of questions were asked along the lines of 'what is going to happen next?'.
Genre is a contract between the producers and audiences which 'disciplines' choices and reduces desires. We felt that our opening displays and portrays our genre clearly as we have used generic conventions from our research. However, if we were to do this task again, we would spend more time in finding a more dark and gloomy location to make our thriller even more frightening.
The genre of our opening was obviously 'thriller' and this allowed us to be creative with our narrative as there are a variety of sub-genres for thrillers, varying from mystery to psychological. Our thriller was a combination of a revenge and psychological.
For our research we decided to watch a numerous amount of thriller openings which had an apparent theme of revenge and psychology. We thought this was important as genre is a contract between producers and audience which 'disciplines' choices and 'reduces desires'. We thought that this was an important part of our research as our target audience preferred sub genres to contain the common clichés we see in modern film.
Steve Neale said that genre is to do with a circulation of expectations between industries, media texts and audiences. According to his theory, our thriller would have to feature generic or stereotypical characters and settings for our thriller opening to succeed. This is shown in our dark shots where the torture scene is happening. We found that from the existing thriller openings we had researched, we found that they were shot in the dark with minimal lighting. We replicated this by having our torture scene shot in the dark with minimal lighting in to make it look slightly frightening and mysterious.
We decided to use parallel editing to make our opening look fast paced by switching between the two story lines taking place. Although this concept was already common in some movies, we hadn't come across it in our research and our idea arised from watching thriller openings which featured 'flashback' editing.
However our thriller opening didn't feature the full conventions of a thriller opening as in one of our storylines from our parallel editing a man is walking in daylight. This may not be a generic convention of a psychological thriller as you'd most likely expect a man walking in the rain, in New York. However, because our character is walking in the daylight with apparently no danger around him, it creates an enigma code. Roland Barthes' enigma code generates and controls what and how much we know in a narrative and holds our interest. It's a puzzle waiting to be solved. In accordance to our opening, a certain element of mystery was raised, why was he captured? What did he do? Will he survive? We feel that we created an enigma code in our opening successfully as the feedback we got was generally good and a lot of questions were asked along the lines of 'what is going to happen next?'.
Genre is a contract between the producers and audiences which 'disciplines' choices and reduces desires. We felt that our opening displays and portrays our genre clearly as we have used generic conventions from our research. However, if we were to do this task again, we would spend more time in finding a more dark and gloomy location to make our thriller even more frightening.
Wednesday 21 March 2012
‘Media text rely on cultural experiences in order for audiences to easily make sense of narratives’ Explain how you used conventional or experimental narrative approaches in one of your production pieces.
I am going to discuss how my advanced portfolio portrayed our use of conventional and experimental devices. Our advanced portfolio was the music video cover of Rizzle Kicks - I'm 17.
Myself, Matthew and Josh began our research process by watching a variety of videos from the song's genre. As the song itself didn't have an original video, we decided to research into songs which was aimed at similar audiences to ours. As our chosen song's genre was a mixture of Indie mixed with Rap and Pop we found it challenging to find a huge amount of similar media as this genre mixed into one was fairly recent. We searched artists that were signed to Rizzle Kicks' record label in an attempt to find similar artists and were successful in doing so. This gave us an idea of how to film our music video and which conventions we needed to use. Ed Sheeran and Wretch 32 were a select few of the artists that we found who could be related to our artist. We also did various analysis of videos according to Andrew Goodwin's theory. From this we found that nearly all of modern videos now have a connection with the visuals and lyrics, which is a concept that Andrew Goodwin explains.
From this Matthew and myself decided to go through the lyrics in an attempt to come up with possible shots and ideas of a possible narrative to go with the lyrics of our song. The lyrics of our song were based around the lifestyle of a mature teenager varying from the ages of 15-21. Our song was about partying, under age drinking, having fun, and college life. As a result of this we decided to film scenes which featured the following, college life, partying, under age drinking and being mischievous to satisfy the typical stereotype of a 17 year old. This is evident in our final video as when Josh is performing the lyric 'when I walk into college with my headphones on..' we see our artist Josh wearing his headphones and walking into college. This bodes well with Andrew Goodwin's theory and how a key factor of a music video should have the lyrics match up to the visuals.
Our narrative in our video pleases the audience as our audience can relate to some of the scenes that are featured in our film. We piled out research into our target audience and into what they would like to see in a music video, and as we and our peers our in the perfect age range for our target audience this piece of research was invaluable. Many of our peers claimed that they would like to see a music video with quick editing as opposed to a slowly building one. Our scenes were cut to give our narrative that extra edge by being cut sooner, quicker and on the beat.
Our main character in the music video played by Josh or 'Iceburg' is used in our narrative to portray the teenage lifestyle that the average 17 year old goes through. Our narrative shows our artist drinking at a party partaking in a various amount of humorous shots ranging from a beer box over his head to him lying drunk. This shows our character being able to relate to some of our target audience as we found that people in our target audience's age range like to go out to drink and to come back drunk. Although this doesn't portray the most positive image to our artist, it does however give a sense of his character to us. We can infer that he likes to party and have fun according to our narrative shown in our music video.
From our advanced portfolio project it is evident how we used conventional forms of narrative in our music video as we followed some of Andrew Goodwin's points from his theory in the forms of matching the visuals to the lyrics. We also experimented in our narrative by portraying our character in a negative way by showing him drinking and being drunk, however, this view is challenged by the amount of 'fun' our character is having and our target audience as our research found that people in that age range can relate to these things.
Myself, Matthew and Josh began our research process by watching a variety of videos from the song's genre. As the song itself didn't have an original video, we decided to research into songs which was aimed at similar audiences to ours. As our chosen song's genre was a mixture of Indie mixed with Rap and Pop we found it challenging to find a huge amount of similar media as this genre mixed into one was fairly recent. We searched artists that were signed to Rizzle Kicks' record label in an attempt to find similar artists and were successful in doing so. This gave us an idea of how to film our music video and which conventions we needed to use. Ed Sheeran and Wretch 32 were a select few of the artists that we found who could be related to our artist. We also did various analysis of videos according to Andrew Goodwin's theory. From this we found that nearly all of modern videos now have a connection with the visuals and lyrics, which is a concept that Andrew Goodwin explains.
From this Matthew and myself decided to go through the lyrics in an attempt to come up with possible shots and ideas of a possible narrative to go with the lyrics of our song. The lyrics of our song were based around the lifestyle of a mature teenager varying from the ages of 15-21. Our song was about partying, under age drinking, having fun, and college life. As a result of this we decided to film scenes which featured the following, college life, partying, under age drinking and being mischievous to satisfy the typical stereotype of a 17 year old. This is evident in our final video as when Josh is performing the lyric 'when I walk into college with my headphones on..' we see our artist Josh wearing his headphones and walking into college. This bodes well with Andrew Goodwin's theory and how a key factor of a music video should have the lyrics match up to the visuals.
Our narrative in our video pleases the audience as our audience can relate to some of the scenes that are featured in our film. We piled out research into our target audience and into what they would like to see in a music video, and as we and our peers our in the perfect age range for our target audience this piece of research was invaluable. Many of our peers claimed that they would like to see a music video with quick editing as opposed to a slowly building one. Our scenes were cut to give our narrative that extra edge by being cut sooner, quicker and on the beat.
Our main character in the music video played by Josh or 'Iceburg' is used in our narrative to portray the teenage lifestyle that the average 17 year old goes through. Our narrative shows our artist drinking at a party partaking in a various amount of humorous shots ranging from a beer box over his head to him lying drunk. This shows our character being able to relate to some of our target audience as we found that people in our target audience's age range like to go out to drink and to come back drunk. Although this doesn't portray the most positive image to our artist, it does however give a sense of his character to us. We can infer that he likes to party and have fun according to our narrative shown in our music video.
From our advanced portfolio project it is evident how we used conventional forms of narrative in our music video as we followed some of Andrew Goodwin's points from his theory in the forms of matching the visuals to the lyrics. We also experimented in our narrative by portraying our character in a negative way by showing him drinking and being drunk, however, this view is challenged by the amount of 'fun' our character is having and our target audience as our research found that people in that age range can relate to these things.
Wednesday 14 March 2012
Presentation notes: "Web 2.0 - Participation or Hegemony?"
- Intro and Basic Notes:
--> Web 2.0. has been described as a medium which allows audiences to become producers of media texts. It requires web-based software, such as blogs, which audiences can use to produce and share their own work.
--> Yet, it can be argued that 'Web 2.0.' often referred to as 'We Media' democratises the media as anyone with a web connection can create and publish texts, (user generated content); we no longer have to rely upon professional or traditional 'old' media.
--> Some critics believe this had led to 'dumbing down' and 'culture of amateur' because anyone - regardless of ability can create texts.
--> With research into 'YouTube' people found that nowadays most clips were uploaded by fans rather than the traditional media companies themselves. In addition, YouTube allows users to create their own channels and is currently plugging channels by Rihanna, Beyonce and Katy Perry. Clearly, these artists are using the site as a promotional vehicle.
--> Additionally, Jean Burgess and Joshua Green concluded that there are 2 'YouTube's', they say it's a space where these 2 categories (traditional media and home video) co-exist and collide, but do not fully converge.
--> What they suggest appears to be happening is that 'YouTube' is now used more frequently as a commercial network for promotional and catch-up purposes that runs alongside and often dominates original, trivial 'user generated content.'
--> They also explain that even though we become used to watching television programmes on computers, mobile phones or music players, we still experience it as television.
- Co-opting the amateur:
--> Graeme Turner argues, "Even when ordinary people become celebrities through their own creative efforts, there is no neccessary transfer of media power: they remain within the system of celebrity native to, and controlled by, the mass media."
--> Some say that without the help of traditional media Charlie McDonnell (Charlie is so cool like) cannot excercise 'celebrity power'; he is defined as a celebrity in the terms of traditional media only.
- Conclusions:
--> Instead, today we can easily produce texts ourselves even if we seem to be more interested in mimicking traditional media by becoming YouTube celebrities, or watching music videos and/or television programmes by our favourite artists.
(Me and Yasmin did our notes together in class)
Monday 12 March 2012
Online TV
Eastenders E20
Online spin off show E20 is a modern take on Eastenders. It features characters who are of a considerably younger age than the usual characters that feature on the original Eastenders. There's been a lot of popularity on it which has now reached its third series. The show is set in Albert Square just like Eastenders but it follows the lives of teenagers. It first aired on the 8th January 2010 in the motive to develop and nurture new talent, including actors, writers, composers, to target a younger audience and to drive people onto the internet.
Each episode lasts between 3-16 minutes and is available now as an omnibus through the iPlayer, BBC3 and via the red button.
Santer conceived the idea of a "parallel universe show" with new characters, where the regular characters are in the background. Yorke sought to improve the portrayal of teenagers in EastEnders and to get younger people writing for it. The ideas came together and EastEnders: E20 was created in what Yorke described as "one of the quickest periods from idea to screen I've ever known." Regarding the decision to create an online drama, Yorke said, "People don't watch television at fixed times anymore, they use iPlayer [to] get it at their convenience and so it made sense to make a programme that [viewers] can specifically get at their convenience." The show's producer, Deborah Sathe, added, "Technology is changing and it's changing really quickly and I think it's really appropriate that the BBC is leading the way in offering online content." The first series was commissioned by multi-platform commissioning executive Rosie Allimonos.
Another incentive for the show was to get more people to use the Internet. Sathe stated that it was an opportunity for younger people to bring the older members of their families onto the internet, and Yorke hoped that it would bring people onto the internet who had not used it before. Simon Nelson, BBC Vision controller of multiplatform and portfolio, said that this was an opportunity for the BBC to develop its expertise in drama production by exploiting the creative potential of the Internet to create a new online drama where few have succeeded. EastEnders: E20 primarily operates as a standalone series but also cross-references storylines of the main soap. According to Santer, the series also explores the stories of the soap's anonymous bystanders. He said, "There are always other people [in EastEnders] milling round the market and houses that we never go into. There are four or five parallels you could do. It will be nice to see well-known characters through strangers' eyes. Ian Beale may show up and he is just a strange, irritating man. Or they might ask: 'Who is that moody girl in the market?' And it will be Stacey Slater."
The show started off with 1.7 million viewers, but by 19 February the episodes had 2.8 million with additional content pushing the total to 3.3 million views.
Online spin off show E20 is a modern take on Eastenders. It features characters who are of a considerably younger age than the usual characters that feature on the original Eastenders. There's been a lot of popularity on it which has now reached its third series. The show is set in Albert Square just like Eastenders but it follows the lives of teenagers. It first aired on the 8th January 2010 in the motive to develop and nurture new talent, including actors, writers, composers, to target a younger audience and to drive people onto the internet.
Each episode lasts between 3-16 minutes and is available now as an omnibus through the iPlayer, BBC3 and via the red button.
Santer conceived the idea of a "parallel universe show" with new characters, where the regular characters are in the background. Yorke sought to improve the portrayal of teenagers in EastEnders and to get younger people writing for it. The ideas came together and EastEnders: E20 was created in what Yorke described as "one of the quickest periods from idea to screen I've ever known." Regarding the decision to create an online drama, Yorke said, "People don't watch television at fixed times anymore, they use iPlayer [to] get it at their convenience and so it made sense to make a programme that [viewers] can specifically get at their convenience." The show's producer, Deborah Sathe, added, "Technology is changing and it's changing really quickly and I think it's really appropriate that the BBC is leading the way in offering online content." The first series was commissioned by multi-platform commissioning executive Rosie Allimonos.
Another incentive for the show was to get more people to use the Internet. Sathe stated that it was an opportunity for younger people to bring the older members of their families onto the internet, and Yorke hoped that it would bring people onto the internet who had not used it before. Simon Nelson, BBC Vision controller of multiplatform and portfolio, said that this was an opportunity for the BBC to develop its expertise in drama production by exploiting the creative potential of the Internet to create a new online drama where few have succeeded. EastEnders: E20 primarily operates as a standalone series but also cross-references storylines of the main soap. According to Santer, the series also explores the stories of the soap's anonymous bystanders. He said, "There are always other people [in EastEnders] milling round the market and houses that we never go into. There are four or five parallels you could do. It will be nice to see well-known characters through strangers' eyes. Ian Beale may show up and he is just a strange, irritating man. Or they might ask: 'Who is that moody girl in the market?' And it will be Stacey Slater."
The show started off with 1.7 million viewers, but by 19 February the episodes had 2.8 million with additional content pushing the total to 3.3 million views.
BBC iPlayer
BBC iPlayer was launched on the 25th December 2007 after it had been on beta since October 2005. It offers all eight of BBC's channels to watch live from. You need to have a TV license to watch live from but you don't need to have a TV license to watch shows that have already been aired. As of May 2010 it was reaching up to 123 monthly and more recently of December 2011 it is reaching up to 187 million viewer requests. iPlayer has made their service available to a variety of platforms such as Xbox 360, PS3, Nintendo Wii, the iPhone, Blackberries, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson phones. The BBC also have deals to embed with sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Delicious and Diggit. BBC iPlayer has changed viewing habits as people can now watch their favourite tv shows according to their own schedule. Due to the increase in popularity of the iPlayer it has encouraged other big channels such as ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 to produce their own versions of the iPlayer respectively.
BBC iPlayer have made changes to their service over the years. They renewed it to iPlayer 2.0 and the changes that were made on it were from user feedback. They increased the screen size by 25%. iPlayer 3.0 changed as it made deals with Facebook, Twitter and Reddit.
BBC iPlayer have made changes to their service over the years. They renewed it to iPlayer 2.0 and the changes that were made on it were from user feedback. They increased the screen size by 25%. iPlayer 3.0 changed as it made deals with Facebook, Twitter and Reddit.
Saturday 10 March 2012
Theorist Quotes
Ev Williams - "Gives everyone a voice"
"Online world is part of the world. It has a role."
Jillian York - "Don't get all techno-utopian. Twitter's great for spreading news, but this revolution happened offline." (talking about the Tunisian Revolution)
"Would this revolution have happened if there were no facebook and twitter? I think this is a key question to ask. If the answer is 'yes', then the contribution that the internet has made was minor; there is no way around it."
Clay Shirky - "No one claims social media makes people angry enough to act (but) it helps angry people coordinate their actions."
Twitter provides a "ring side" seat for another major news event.
Jillian York - "Was it really social media sparkling the revolution?!"
"Somebody had to show the outside world what was happening"
Clay Shirky - "A revolution doesn't happen when society adopts new tools; it happens when it adopts new behaviours."
"Online world is part of the world. It has a role."
Jillian York - "Don't get all techno-utopian. Twitter's great for spreading news, but this revolution happened offline." (talking about the Tunisian Revolution)
"Would this revolution have happened if there were no facebook and twitter? I think this is a key question to ask. If the answer is 'yes', then the contribution that the internet has made was minor; there is no way around it."
Clay Shirky - "No one claims social media makes people angry enough to act (but) it helps angry people coordinate their actions."
Twitter provides a "ring side" seat for another major news event.
Jillian York - "Was it really social media sparkling the revolution?!"
"Somebody had to show the outside world what was happening"
Clay Shirky - "A revolution doesn't happen when society adopts new tools; it happens when it adopts new behaviours."
Friday 9 March 2012
Wednesday 7 March 2012
Twitter Now Available in Right-to-Left Languages
Thanks to the efforts of 13,000 volunteers worldwide, Twitter is now available in Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu, according to a company blog post. Twitter had been working on translating and localizing these right-to-left languages since January 25.
These languages posed unique challenges for Twitter. To overcome technical barriers, Twitter’s engineering team had to build a new set of special tools to ensure that these tweets, hashtags and numbers would behave as their counterparts in left-to-right languages.
Not only that, but some of these languages are spoken — and therefore will be tweeted — in locations where Twitter is officially blocked.
Twitter was a recognizable force in the Arab Spring — but given that there wasn’t yet an Arabic interface, most of the users who tweeted from those regions did so in non-native languages.
And Twitter’s numerous volunteer translators for these right-to-left languages —from Lebanese teenagers to Egyptian college students to IT professionals in Iran and Pakistan, among others — live in these areas as well. “Their efforts speak volumes about the lengths that people will go to make Twitter accessible and understandable for their communities,” the company said in its blog post.
Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu join Thai as the only right-to-left languages in Twitter’s translation center. Their incorporation means the service is now available in 28 languages.
Sunday 4 March 2012
Homework 5/3/12
1. Sum up Michael Wesch's main points about the web (or YouTube in particular) in one paragraph.
Michael Wesch believes that web 2.0 is about linking people in a way that they have never been linked before through videos and social networking sites. People can now interact through videos on YouTube and send video replies and make videos go viral. Wesch also believes that the media mediates human relationships. Also, the ease of the web is now evident as everyone can become a producer on YouTube and produce their own videos with amateur material.
2. Write down your understanding of the following terms used by Wesch: 'networked individualism', 'the invisible audience phenomenon', 'context collapse', and 'connection without constraint'.
Networked individualism is when the more the individual the more we long for a community and that now there are new forms of communities through the rise of web 2.0 which helps create a self understanding. For example when we talk to ourselves on a webcam, we are creating a community with views with people we don't know.
Context collapse - Is never knowing when you are going to be filmed as most people now have a phone with a camera that can shoot and record and upload instantly to the web.
Invisible Audience - Is when the phenomenon of not knowing who and when your video is being watched online.
Connection without constraint -
3. On the whole, do you agree with Wesch's ideas? Why?
I agree with Michael Wesch as everything around us is now based according to the internet. It is now easier for anyone to use and publish on the internet through sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia and the list goes on. This not only promotes democracy but it also helps communities come together. I can relate to this as an Arsenal fan as there are numerous amounts of fan blogs where us fans come together and post news and jokes related to our common interest. It is now easier to communicate with people across the world not only through written forms but through videos and music.
4. How might Wesch's ideas be applied to the music industry (at at least, the production of music)?
As YouTube is now so easy to access and to be able to upload our own footage through the most adequate of materials, it can enable music artists to promote their music online cheaply for those who can't afford professional microphones and recording studios. People now can be found and signed through YouTube just from a random search. Also due to the rise of social media, small artists can now promote their music via their twitter or facebooks to gain popularity. This is easy and free to do and many big artists use social networking sites to promote their music to their fans.
Michael Wesch believes that web 2.0 is about linking people in a way that they have never been linked before through videos and social networking sites. People can now interact through videos on YouTube and send video replies and make videos go viral. Wesch also believes that the media mediates human relationships. Also, the ease of the web is now evident as everyone can become a producer on YouTube and produce their own videos with amateur material.
2. Write down your understanding of the following terms used by Wesch: 'networked individualism', 'the invisible audience phenomenon', 'context collapse', and 'connection without constraint'.
Networked individualism is when the more the individual the more we long for a community and that now there are new forms of communities through the rise of web 2.0 which helps create a self understanding. For example when we talk to ourselves on a webcam, we are creating a community with views with people we don't know.
Context collapse - Is never knowing when you are going to be filmed as most people now have a phone with a camera that can shoot and record and upload instantly to the web.
Invisible Audience - Is when the phenomenon of not knowing who and when your video is being watched online.
Connection without constraint -
3. On the whole, do you agree with Wesch's ideas? Why?
I agree with Michael Wesch as everything around us is now based according to the internet. It is now easier for anyone to use and publish on the internet through sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia and the list goes on. This not only promotes democracy but it also helps communities come together. I can relate to this as an Arsenal fan as there are numerous amounts of fan blogs where us fans come together and post news and jokes related to our common interest. It is now easier to communicate with people across the world not only through written forms but through videos and music.
4. How might Wesch's ideas be applied to the music industry (at at least, the production of music)?
As YouTube is now so easy to access and to be able to upload our own footage through the most adequate of materials, it can enable music artists to promote their music online cheaply for those who can't afford professional microphones and recording studios. People now can be found and signed through YouTube just from a random search. Also due to the rise of social media, small artists can now promote their music via their twitter or facebooks to gain popularity. This is easy and free to do and many big artists use social networking sites to promote their music to their fans.
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