Exemplar Essay- 1a

Explanation, Analysis, Argument
Example
Terminology

Over the two year media course we had to produce both a foundation portfolio of a school magazine and music magazine as well as an advance portfolio of a horror teaser trailer, film magazine – developing foundation skills further and a poster to advertise our trailer.


In the first year we researched existing music magazines and analysed each one so that we could gain knowledge of particular layouts, fonts and key elements that need to be contained in our production to make it successful. Research and planning allowed us to recognise ‘mastheads’ on magazines as being the most important and therefore the need to focus on a font more detailed to keep continuity with the contents page and double page spread which we also had to create.


Personally I researched ‘Rock’ magazines such as Kerrang, NME and others because I had chosen after carrying out a questionnaire to use Rock music as my theme. The real life media texts allowed me to visualise my favourite parts from each magazine – ripped sticker graphics and broken font on my own work which I then attempted to recreate within Photoshop CS4. In year 1 we were limited to what we could research because magazines were the only theme however, in the second year I was able to develop my ability to research real life media texts much further because we had a range of products we needed to create all under the ‘horror’ genre this time. I was able to research teaser trailers analysing my favourite and least favourite parts allowing me to plan with a mood board which I produced from a range of stills from previous horror films my ideas for my own trailer which helped me to develop my production of my products in relation to real life media texts and techniques such as restricted narration and handheld camera found in the ‘Blair Witch Project’ trailer which inspired my trailer ‘Laquem’ which is also set in the woods. Research into film documentaries like the ‘American Nightmare’ inspired me to create a product which reinforced fear and went against usual horror conventions to make it more interesting. Over the second year research became so important to achieving a product which was realistic and is now like my own distributed on YouTube as a real life media text of its own.


Real life media texts like advertising film posters were able to help me develop my Photoshop skills further because I was able to push myself with the ‘colour burn’ filters and want to create the scary atmosphere of my trailer from just an image and text which I found really fun.


Research into film magazines allowed me to develop my work from AS level so much further because I was able to produce a high standard piece of work in two weeks this year when the magazines took over 3 months last year which shows how much my skills have improves just by being able to constantly refer back to real life media texts for inspiration and even colour schemes that work well together such as black and red which in the first year I just found experimenting with. Research into horror trailers allowed me to recognise different styles of film and how we like Alfred Hitchcock could be an auteur creating new angles and ideas using generic conventions as well as unconventional representations that I have picked upon when watching films and analysing certain techniques which I have then attempted to do in Final Cut Pro when editing certain shots together to create collision cutting and changes in pace which my trailer does extremely well. I was inspired initially by the hand held camera in the trailer REC and the fact I want as an auteur to change the stereotyped representations to be able use a female psycho killer.




Research also allowed me to produce text and inter-titles that shook in order to capture my audience but narrating the story slightly so the shots when together made sense. Research into types of camera movements needed were really helpful and allowed me to completely change the pace with tracking shots and handheld camera which I noticed was used in Silent Hill and American Werewolf in London which I analysed and placed on my blog for reference as some pieces of footage I wanted to recreate including the final girl representations.

Question 1b

Macro elements

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Genre Essay (Draft)

In relation to genre I have chosen my A2 coursework which my short film named ‘Jeté’. The genre for our media production is drama which enabled us to create a realistic narrative within the conventions of a drama so that it reaches the expectations of our target audience. However over time sub genres have been created because people want to expand on genres and challenge conventions. Drama is a very wide genre which makes it very hard to apply specific elements which is why many sub genres have been applied within the drama genre. Therefore we also believe that ‘Jeté’ is also a sub genre of a dance film which has become increasingly popular to due to the number of dance films released over the past few years. Steve Neal says “All genres are instances of repetition and difference.” This suggests that all genres copy each other through iconography and conventions so that the genre is also categorised and this applies to my piece through the realistic issues and montage shots of Faye dancing as this is fast paced and makes the audience feel a part of the dance.

One of the main conventions of a drama is the audience being able to identify with the characters on a more personal level. During a TV a drama, they are usually shown over a number of episodes which enables to audience to understand each character fully over a longer period of time. As my media production was a short film, we had to find a way of allowing the audience to identify with the characters over a shorter amount of time which was challenging the conventions. We decided that having one main character allowed the audience to focus on her only and the issues that she suffers from on a personal level. This is shown in the opening sequence where we have a montage of shots showing her possessions in her room. This is personal to the character and by allowing the audience to see her possessions at the beginning of the film; they are already able to understand what kind of person she is and how they expect her to be represented in the rest of the film.

 Another iconic feature which I have applied to ‘Jeté’ is the cliff hanger at the end of the film. We filmed this by having a medium shot of Faye opening a letter, having little to know reaction and ending the film with the audience asking whether she got into the dance school or not. This iconic element that has been used repeatedly by TV drama’s such as ‘Eastenders’ which makes the audience what to watch the next show. We decided to apply this iconography to Jeté because it enables the audience to draw their own conclusion from the ending therefore feeling closer to the narrative and the character because they are actively deciding how they want the piece to end. We made this apply to our sub genre of dance due the fact the majority of dance films show a big change taking place for the protagonist and by having an opening ending succeeds in making the audience want to know more.

Realism is key throughout the drama genre because it enables the audience to feel that the issues and character representation are as close to reality as possible. Our main issue of Faye trying to get into dance school with the pressure of her mum wanting her to go to university is something that our target audience can relate to as they are experiences the same pressures in their life. This links to Douglas Pye’s theory saying that films have to conform to audience expectations about narrative. From this films must follow what audience expect to see from that genre. For example the audience expect the genre of Drama to have the narratives that the audience can relate because they are current issues. By understanding our target audience we knew that Faye would be a character that they could understand to and relate to on a personal level. This is shown when Faye meets up with her friends and has to turn them down because she has dance rehearsals. We kept the camera at neutral level with the girls so that the audience feel that they can relate to them all whether it is Faye or her friends. We also achieved this by dressing them in casual clothes and having them discussing a party as this is the stereotype of teenagers as Tom Ryall suggests.

In conclusion I felt we were successful in portraying the Drama genre and dance sub genre through genre conventions such as montage shots of her dancing as it is fast paced with quick cuts. We also wanted to represent Faye as your average teenager as the target audience would be able to associate with her on a personal level.

Exemplar Sentences

• The media production I am going to write about in relation to genre is my favourite piece from the whole course which is my horror teaser trailer.
• The genre of the trailer is obviously ‘horror’ and this in itself allowed us to be creative with narrative etc but limited us because we had to stick to a certain amount of generic conventions in order for it to be recognised by it’s existing target audience.
• Levi Strauss and Roland Barthes argued that the horror genre like many others used ‘binary oppositions’ in order to show the contrast between good and evil in order to force the audience to be constantly questioning the trailer for example; in my trailer I used light and dark to connote their happiness and carefree attitude in the daytime and the darkness to emphasise their fear and reliance on their senses.
• The horror trailer was made much darker in Final Cut Pro using the brightness and contrast menu and also dragged the saturated colours towards the blue in order to create a dark, dusky night time atmosphere a generic convention of horror trailers. 
• Genre places a media text into a grouping giving it an identity which can be recognised by the mainstream society and I believe my product is successfully fitted to the horror genre using the narrative that todorov argued was important to the horror genre by following an equilibrium at the beginning then a problem which in our case was the male anti hero playing a joke on the soon to be female victim making jump running after him causing their separation then a pathway to resolution – as they attempt to find each other and then a new equilibrium at the end which we deliberately left as an open ending to capture our audience effectively.
   

Exemplar answer- 1B Genre

Explanation, Analysis, Argument
Example
Terminology


The media production I am going to write about in relation to genre is my favourite piece from the whole course which is my horror teaser trailer.
The genre of the trailer is obviously ‘horror’ and this in itself allowed us to be creative with narrative etc but limited us because we had to stick to a certain amount of generic conventions in order for it to be recognised by it’s existing target audience. Steve Neal said that ‘genre is a repetition with an underlying pattern of variations’ which meant certain generic features had to be included and repeated which in my case was the use of a creepy location of the woods as well as hand held camera and restricted narration to cause disorientation and suspense within our trailer. However, the pattern of variation Neal describes also links to my horror teaser trailer because we were able to creatively push the boundaries by twisting some generic features in order to make the trailer interesting and therefore cause the audience to want to watch the full movie. For this my group chose use a female psycho killer I order to subvert the stereotypical male dominated role. This female identification through point of view shots etc captured our female audience because were providing them with power and this is unusual for the horror genre although it is known for its forward thinking approach as it often attempts to focus on subcultural views instead of targeting the mainstream. Genre encompasses many parts and the trailer links to it in more ways than one. Its use of enclosed location and the fact the woods attempts to reinforce our society’s fear of loneliness and isolation which the woods creates when the three friends get lost. In these sections of the trailer we used a lot of heavy cross cutting between the female victim who is running anxiously through the woods in order to find her friends and get home safely. We also used the Kuleshove and collision cutting methods as the pace began slow as the friends head our in the car unaware of the danger before them and once they are in the woods we deliberately quickened the pace of editing to cause tension and to show that something is not right, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats.
Editing and mise-en-scene is really important to genre and reflects very quickly certain moods and atmospheres. Levi Strauss and Roland Barthes argued that the horror genre like many others used ‘binary oppositions’ in order to show the contrast between good and evil in order to force the audience to be constantly questioning the trailer for example; in my trailer I used light and dark to connote their happiness and carefree attitude in the daytime and the darkness to emphasise their fear and reliance on their senses. This is particularly important to the horror genre as characters are often shown in high angle shots to appear vulnerable and therefore under threat.
Gore or ‘body horror’ is also a common generic convention used by most horror films that we studied including Dawn of the Dead by George A. Romero who used it to make the audience feel sick by forcing them to see extreme violence. In my own trailer we were inspired to use gore differently by showing a hanging scene in slow motion to create tension and the centoring in on the face and neck which had been broken and this was shown by the rope burn we had made from latex and the blood pouring down her chest. This shot moves clockwise and slowly zooms in to force the audience to see what the hang (woman) has done. In our final two shots we finish the trailer with the male anti hero being lifted off the ground with blood pouring out of his mouth which causes the audience to assume no one survives because the final girl is stabbed by her friend accidentally which quickens the pace and adds tension but she is the survivor who as Carol Clover suggests will be terrorised throughout the film and finally overcome the monster. This plays with the audiences emotions and links back to the horror genre well by creating our own style of horror. Andrew Sarris argues because it encompasses so much and is key to explaining a film. Genre is the ideas that collectively make a particular recognisable style that draws in its existing target audience. My horror trailer had expressionist camera angles as the female victim desperately trips over the camera and we see her running above it as well as close ups of her facial expression that causes us to identify with her fear and therefore makes us scared. This meant the audience also were forced to objectify the female victim from the high angle camera shot down her top in which we can see her breasts slightly after watching other Hitchcock movies which use the male gaze theory by Laura Mulvey to force us to take a male’s viewpoint.
In my trailer we also used an iconic symbol of the noose because obviously as a hangwoman she needed the prop but also as a female the circular shape suggested female power and this is something the horror genre often does but for male characters using guns etc as phallic symbols which we also used as the male anti hero takes out a knife and stabs his friend frantically when she walks up behind him. The horror trailer was made much darker in Final Cut Pro using the brightness and contrast menu and also dragged the saturated colours towards the blue in order to create a dark, dusky night time atmosphere a generic convention of horror trailers.
The generic conventions we chose to use were all important to the success of our product and since distributing it on YouTube we have over 4000 which I am really pleased with and gives me the confidence that we obviously stuck to the genre enough to capture our intended target audience but were creative enough to make people want to keep watching the trailer and virally sharing it with others.
Genre places a media text into a grouping giving it an identity which can be recognised by the mainstream society and I believe my product is successfully fitted to the horror genre using the narrative that todorov argued was important to the horror genre by following an equilibrium at the beginning then a problem which in our case was the male anti hero playing a joke on the soon to be female victim making jump running after him causing their separation then a pathway to resolution – as they attempt to find each other and then a new equilibrium at the end which we deliberately left as an open ending to capture our audience effectively.

Judith Butler

Judith butler

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An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube

NOTES


• There is a total of 9232 hours of videos on YouTube today.
• 88% of that is new and original.
• Video’s from YouTube have been noted in other media included TV for example Rude Tube.
• YouTube only started in 2005 and from that it has already become one of the most popular sites in the world.
• It is used to link people together through music videos, home videos and blogs.
• It also enables people to connect to other people over the world which spreads and shares knowledge and information.
• People are able to produce amateur films which they can make with low cost equipment but can be seen by lots of viewers.
• The age range of people who use YouTube the most is 18 to 24 year olds.
• People see one clip on YouTube and are able to remix and remake the clip in different ways, this shows how quick the clips can connect people.
• Some create blogs on YouTube which enables them to show their identity in a safe environment. This therefore highlights that even though there are many different Identities shown, they are still a strong community.
• You feel like everyone is watching, but nobody is there.
• People can play around with identity but people don’t accept fakers.


Presented at the Library of Congress, June 23rd 2008 by Michael Wesch

Definition of Ideology

An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things, as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies, or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to all members of this society. The main purpose behind an ideology is to offer either change in society, or adherence to a set of ideals where conformity already exists, through a normative thought process. Ideologies are systems of abstract thought applied to public matters and thus make this concept central to politics. Implicitly every political tendency entails an ideology whether or not it is propounded as an explicit system of thought. It is how society sees things.

Youth Groups Through The Ages

Youth groups

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Poster Analysis

Both of these posters have very similar layout out and character representation.

This is England uses the colours red, white and blue in the title which links to it as they are the colours of the union jack. This gives the audience a strong sense of what the film is about just by seeing the colour of the title and the title itself. The layout of the poster has the characters at the bottom half of the poster which suggests that as important as the characters are throughout the film, there are other factors that are also important. This is shown through the metal fencing they are stood in front of that is separating them from the houses that we see in the background. The title is placed above their heads in very large printed letters. The font is also done so that it has the effect that it is printed onto the metal fence which suggests that it is permanent and also that they are possible the gates to England and the gang are the guards of it. The characters are stood in a long line, showing they are a united gang. Even though the characters do have similarities in clothes for example the boys are skin heads, they wear the same boots and jeans and shirts, and they are all stood in their own individual position which shows that even though they are part of a gang, they each have an individual identity. The colours they are wearing consist of blues, blacks, whites and red where this shows that even the colours of the title are leaking into what they wear. The tag line reads “Summer 1983. A time to stand out from the crowd.” This gives the audience a greater understanding of what to expect from the film, such as the idea that they are a group that are trying to form their own identity with new values and appearance that will be new to this time period.

The Quadrophenia poster also includes the colours red white and blue which makes the audience aware that it is a British film. It has the target in the middle of the ‘Q’ which is the same symbol of the band ‘The Who’ which were also popular during this time which makes us understand what they are representing. The title is in colour which makes it stand out from the background image. The tagline “ A way of life” font is almost as if someone has written it on the poster which represents the rebellious side of the gang. The image is in Black and white which maybe trying to suggest that their gang is simple and straight forward. The audience may also think the film is black and white. The group are stood in front of a wooden fence which again suggests separation from something or they are like guards trying to keep the audience out. Again the characters are stood in a line to show they are a united force but each have their individual personality which is shown their clothes. Some dressed in long rain coats and others in full suits, which suggests that they are professionals. The clothes can also be a sign of their gang and also link to fashion during that time. There are only two girls in the poster which shows that it is a male dominated film, and as neither of them are stood at the end of the line, the men protect them from harm.

This is England- Notes

Sean- Young, outcasts from other kids his age. He mainly stands out with his flared trousers which were out of fashion which causes people to bully him. He swears, is violent but is also represented as sad and venerable which causes the audience to empathise with him. To join the gang he changes his look by shaving his head, wearing jeans, shirt, braces and boots as this is there ‘signature’. The group are a lot older than him who causes him to do things to fit in with them, but they are more than welcoming for him to join and to protect him.

Woody- He is the leader of the gang at first who befriends Sean from the beginning. He wears the stereotypical clothes of the gang and wants to have fun by drinking and causing trouble. He is really nice to Sean and stops the others from saying a bad word against him.

Combo- He is the stereotypical ‘skinhead’, who has been to prison, is racist and stands up for himself. He wants only the English around and believe’s they are the best. He has a cross on his forehead which shows his faith but this also contradicts the actions he takes.

Mise en scene- The streets are empty; they all clearly suffer with not having money. When in the shoe shop they shop assistant says “from London” which shows how anything out of their town is new and exciting.

Trainspotting VS Skins

Trainspotting is a Danny Boyle film made in 1996 about a group of drug addicts living in Edinburgh in the 1980s. The film shows the gang going through life, trying to beat their addiction and moving on. Renton (McGregor) is the main character throughout who is represented at first as a young drugged up adult who is unable to change his ways and beat his addiction. We see him try countless times to quit, but always returns to heroin. His parents are first shown as relaxed parents not really taken an interest in what Renton does which is highlighted in the pub scene where they celebrate him not being sent to jail, this shows that they are glad he has got away with it, however do not show any punishment for him getting into trouble in the first place. However when he needs to quit the drugs his parents are the only ones who lock him in his room so that he successfully goes ‘cold turkey’ which shows that they love him and will do what they can to help him, showing that he is an independent young adult but his parents are always there when he needs them. This is also identified with Diane’s parents who allow their underage daughter to smoke, sleep with older men and go out clubbing. Skins is a popular teenage drama which started in 2007. The show follows the lives of a group of teenagers at college as they cope with school work, social pressures and self identity.  Through all 5 series, the show as touched on many different issues and character such as drugs, sex, homosexuality and illnesses.  They also introduce character by letting them have an episode each which allowed the audience to get closer to the characters. The differences between Trainspotting and skins are mainly the fashion and attitudes. Throughout Trainspotting, they mainly where plan t-shirts and skinny jeans which represent the fashion during that time and also the stereotype of drug addicts who don’t particularly care about how they look. This contrasts with Skins where the fashion does tell the audience a lot about the character they are for example Maxxie from the first series wears bright colours, low cut tops etc which shows that he is comfortable and confident and also likes to make himself look nice. The attitudes have changed because Skins does cover more ground because it is an ongoing show, whereas Trainspotting only focus on drugs and how they affect the male’s lives. The similarities are the issues of drugs, sex and friendship which are represented through situations the characters are put in. They both revolve around a group of friends who each how their own personality to contribute which is something that easy to relate to in any time period whether it is 1990s or 2011.