Preliminary Excercise

Current Favourite Song

This is a song my amateur singer Charlee Drew who broadcasts all of his music through video sharing website 'Youtube'

The song i have chosen was writen by Charlee and is my favourite song at the moment for many reasons but mainly for the unique voice that charlee has, the uplifting melody and the heartfelt lyrics. I eally like this song because its real feel-good music which one of the main reasons that i enjoy listening to the song so much.

Richard Dyer- The Matter of Images

Dyer said: 'How we are seen determines how we are treated, how we see them.' How we see them comes from representation.

I used this theory to help my analyse a programme.

The programme that I have chosen to analyse is 'Skins' which is an energetic drama based on the lives of a group pf 6 rowdy teenagers and is shown on channel 4. Stereotypes are very prominent throughout the series and teenagers are shown mainly in a bad light and scenes of unprotected sex, drug taking and a bad attitude towards education are shown frequently. After studying Rayner's theory of representation I have been able to further discover the decisions that the director/producer has made to display the way in which the 17 years olds have been represented.

All of the scenes shown at the school feature, truancy, complete disregard or utter lack of interest in learning, disrespect to the teachers and an overall bad attitude, the view of the teenagers that is represented within the programme is farcely stereotypical and shows a very narrow minded and one sided point of view.

Another theorist, Richard Dyer argues the importance of images and the way in which people treat people because of the way they look, what they are wearing and there overall appearance, in the programme I analysed.

The Constructionist Approach

-the representation is constructed with a set of ideas and values (producers intent/ intended meaning)

-the context of the representaion is part of the representation (media language choices, anchorage, media form, placement/location, genre expectations)

-the audience reacts to this representation and this depends on their own personal interpretational context: age, gender, political/religous beliefs, nationality etc. (negotiated meaning).

Gatekeeping

A theorist called White (1961) spoke to the (gatekeepers)- that is the people who are part of the decision making process in the construction of the media texts.

Who are gatekeepers?
-BBC commisioners
-Law makers
-Director
-Producer
-Editor
-Audience (recent phenomenom, test screening)

Representation

Rayner, a theorist came up with the theory of representation in the media. He explained representation as 'the process my which the media represent the 'real world'

He believed that this was done using a selection process, he though that the selection process was as follows:
-the decision over what is chosen to be represented and what is rejected.
-the choices made when organising the representation.
-the options taken the focus the audience in a certain way.

When thinking about representation within the media you have to consider the following:
-Who or what is being represented?
-How is the representation created? This could be through Mise en Scene.
-Why is the representation created in that way? What is the intention?
-What is the effect of the representation?

Binary Opposites

Levi Straus believed that the world was split into a series of 'binary opposites.' Essentially one thing can only be defined in relation to something it isn't, for example, there's only fat because there's thin.

Bianary opposites are also used to help to define the symbolic code.

Narrative Theory- Roland Barthes.

Action code- Applies to any action that implies a furthur narrative action, for example, non-diegetic music in the film 'Jaws' suggests an attack.

Enigma code- refers to any element in a story that is not explained, for example, who is the murderer. (Adverts only ever have one enigma code)

The Semantic code- any element in a text that suggests a particular, often additonal meaning by way of connotation.

Denotation- word with one meaning.

The cultural code- any element in a narrative that refers to 'a science or body of knowledge,' in other words the cultural codes tend to point out our shared knowledge about the world works.

The symbolic- Something that is used to symbolise something within a piece of media, a form of forshadowing. Can be noticed by looking at a series of binary opposite.

Editing

Continually- The viewer should not notice the cuts, and shots should flow together naturally. The shots should appear to be continuous.

Montage- This style of editing has two functions. The highly political soviet style of the 1920's which sought to create a new meaning out of seemingly unconnected shots. The audience is very aware of the 'cuts'.

Hollywood Montage- In classical Hollywood cinema, a 'montage sequence' is a short segment in a film in which narrative information is presented in a condensed fashion. Editing that alternates shots of two or more lines of actions occurring in different places, usually simultaneously.

Dissolve- creates soft or dream like effect.

Camera Angles

A medium shot- the most commonly used shot in cinema. It is used to show any character interaction.
Close up- used to show the audience something important

Shot reverse shot- used for dialogue, makes the audience feel they are part of the conversation

High angle shot- Camera pointing downwards towards character, connotes power over the object you are viewing. Makes the character appear inferior.

Low angle shot- camera points upwards towards character, makes character appear powerful, superior and stronger.

Tracking shot- camera is parallel to the action and follows the 'subject' or action.

Pan- camera sweeps from left to right.

Tilt- camera tilts to go up and down. Usually to show attractive women.

Magazine Cover- Photo on Cover

Short Film- Preliminary Excercise

The first task we did when starting media in september was to create a short film in groups of three, the film had to include 12 to 15 shots and a few pieces of dialogue. We strted by creating a storyboard so taht we knew what we were going to do. It was the first time taht any of us had used a camera for filming so before we started we had a quick playa round with the camera to get used to how it works and how we would go about creating the correct shots, i found that a panning shot was the hardest to achieve because you had to have a very steady hand and move at a constant speed. After filming we plugged the camera into a Mac PC to begin editing, we had alot of difficulties with this as we had erased some key shots because of rewinding the tape and watching some clips, although this did take alot away from our work i am glad we found this earlier on so that we can learn from our mistakes and progress furthur next time we are doing any sort of filming. I will post the video onto my blog as soon as it has been converted into the correct format by the ICT department.

Magazine Cover- Preliminary

As a preliminary task I was to design an A4 page to be used as the cover on a school magazine. The magazine cover had to include a mid-shot, masthead and three or four pieces of suitable text. I worked with one other person and we started off by by choosing the person that we wanted to feature in the mid-shot that would used in the centre of our cover, we chose fellow classmate Hannah Scoular because of her quirky style that would make the magazine seem fresh and young and really help connect with the target audience. Hannah wore brightly coloured clothing when we photographed her, this eventually helped to make the cover eye-catching, this is very important when selling magazines. We decided that the title of the magazine would we 'Survive' and that the magazine would be a guide to students on how to reduce stress and achieve to the best of there potential when in sixth form education. We started off by taking eight photos of Hannah sitting on the floor looking towards the camera, the use of a high angle made her seem slightly vulnerable and inferior which are emotions that readers struggling with the stress of sixth form will be able to relate to. We were very pleased with the photos and after uploading them onto the computer we opened it with Photoshop we then began to cut out the picture to remove the background and apply our own themed coloured to better complement the masthead. Hannah's dark coloured hair merged with a shadow in the background and therefore made the picture very hard to cut out, to solve this problem I zoomed in to be far more precise. After cutting out the picture we added a light purple background so that the magazine will appeal to both boys and girls
The title of our magazine is 'Survival- How to survive sixth form', we used lower case lettering and a rounded font to make the magazine appear informal and inviting to potential buyers.