Post 8 - Media Language

My own understanding of the term 'Media Language'

Media language is the way in which a 'typical' short film is constructed. The film it self is a language and it uses a certain layout to design and illustrate a film such as the mise-en-scene, sound, visuals and editing and then considering the other elements such as genre, representation, narrative and audience.

A man called Hitchcock describes what the Kuleshov effect:

This is a very clever approach in media terms when talking about media language because as Hitchcock said that if there were a women sitting on the beach of a child and then you have a man staring at them, smiling it would straight a suggest that he is just a nice ordinary old man however if we change the shot with the women with a child and replace it with a women in a bikini but still have the same shot of his face of the exact same expression (smiling) it would therefore then straightaway suggest that he is a dirty old man.

How can I use media language when producing my film:

I will make sure that I have the right micro elements to produce the film and so that it makes sense together and suits the genre that I pick. After looking at Hitchcock's video about the Kuleshov effect, it helped me understand that when it comes to filming I will have the right feature of understanding when filming different scenes and so that viewers don't become confused and know why that certain person is making that facial expression.

Post 7 - Audeince Theory

Audience theory has the follwing four sectors within the media industry and these are as follows:

- Maslow's hiereachy of needs
- Dyer's Utopian Theory
- Uses of gratification theory
- Hyperdermic needle theory

Maslows hiereachy of needs in a theory in psychology, it is proposed by Abraham Maslow, he represented the needs that consists of; self actualisation, self esteem, love belonging, safety and phsychological, this is presented in a triangle where the physchological needs as they are 'more basic' are at the bottom and the self actualisation is at the top of the pyramid. This can be linked to the idea that consuming partical media texts fufils self esteem as does by certain products.

Dyer states that people will respond to a media text if it offers them compression for the inadequaces in their own lives through the media audiences can vicarously live their lives and fulfil their wants and needs leading them to strive to a Utopian life.

Uses and gratification theory suggests the understanding of why people actively seek out specific media outlets and content for gratification purposes. it also discusses how users proactively search for media text that will not only meet a given need but enhance knowledge, social interactions and diversion

The hyperdermic needle theory suggests that the mass media could influence a very large group of people directly and uniformly by 'shooting' or 'injecting' them with the appropriate messages designed to trigger a desired response.

Stewart Hall - Dominant-hegemonic Reading (also known as preferred reading)
The position of a viewer who can identify with the hegemonic position and receive the dominant messages of an image or text in an unquestioning manner.

Analysis of three short films



Pop Art

One of the short films we watched as a class was called 'Pop Art', this film was about a young boy who is struggling with life until one day a new 'blow-up' boy joins his class and so he starts to make friends with him as seen on the picture above. The plot of this film is about the blow-up who gets bullied by his class friends, he is unaccepted in this film and therefore the audience can relate to him as at least one time in a person's life, someone has been bullied or they have seen someone who has been bullied. This is shot in a school and therefore their mise-en-scene is school clothing. The language used here has some foul words such as 'shithead' which is conventional as most children tend to swear in a school.



Tender

 Another short film that we watched was called Tender, this was about a young school boy called Liam, who lives in a council flat with his mother and her boyfriend who is shown to be very aggressive gets a hold of a bundle of cash, later on a classmate of his who suddenly becomes interested in him just for his money tells her that he won it from a scratch card, and so takes advantage of him and tells him to buy this, that and the other for her.



Jade

 This is a short film about a life of a young teenage girl. The first scene starts of with a swimming pool which in fact has no relation to her however it is later found that the swimming pool was a sign of symbolism, to suggest that 'being blue' is a sign of unhappiness and also getting a positive blue sign pregnancy test suggests that she is unhappy about it. This film raises an enigma of why this girl is dating a man who could be old enough to be her dad or even grandfather. However Jade has no choice but to turn to him as she is going through tough times and has no one to turn to.

Post 6 - Representaion Theory

Representations is a key concept in Media Studies, much debated and discussed. Some critics highly rate the way media representation affects our world:

Social groups, gender, age, class, race
- Intuition; commercial TV
                Sky TV
                Sell time to advertisers
BBC is not for [didactic-emotional]
Profitable organisation- can go against stereotypes.
- Audience [Expectation]- Susan Boyle; 'we laughed'
-Technical codes; Camera editing
                            Mise en scene
                            Rich represent Gender/class
Genre; Archytype representation
           Narrow structures a women
All media texts are created in a particular institutional context.
This context will modify the representation.
There is an interplay between the target audience, the institution and the generic conventions.

Representations of three existing media products:

Representation of gender in Doctor Who

Doctor Who

Doctor Who represents men as having more power than women. The main female character, Rose, is shown to be Blonde and attractive, her mise en scene in costume wise is set to be sexualised because her clothing seems to be very tight fitted such as fitted trousers and a fitted bright red top however although she may seem all 'pretty' she is smart enough to figure out where she is whereas her boyfriend is the 'not so tough/strong' one who faints straightaway as he sees that their out of space. The main male character, The Doctor, however is shown to be very clever, The Doctor is shown to have authority over Rose because she is like his 'personal assistant' so she does anything he says or in other words following his orders i.e. "off you go".

Representation of Race in Coronation Street

Coronation street today has more complex of representations of Britishness as before with a range of multicultural and working class people. One of the characters was seen cleaning a window which is not a very highly paid job, some of the women however were portrayed as a bit 'chavy' their mise-en-scene consists of large hooped earrings, bright hooded top and very tight fitted clothing and one of the smoking a 'fag' yet they're both mothers which suggests them being irresponsible whilst having an argument in front of their children. 

Feminists approaches on the representation of gender, these consist of Susan Faludi 'backlash' theory [a series of Hollywood films in the late 1980s/1990s featuring very negative representations of career women: Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct
another feminist called Annette Kuhn 'The industry wants to let everyone have their ideological cake and eat it too. In other words you'll see deliberate ambiguities structured into every film to come about strong women.  and finally Gammon and Marshment in the Female Gaze contested the determinism of Mulvey's views.

Post 5 - Narrative Theory

A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non fictional or fictional events.

What does narrative mean?

- The way that stories are told - how meaning is constructed to achieve audience understanding
- The voice of the narrative can vary whose story is being told and from whose perspective?
- Narrative plot- refers to everything audibly or visibly present i.e. selective
- Narrative story- refers to all events, explicitly presented and inferred
- Organises time and space in very compressed form
- Constructed through camerawork, lighting and mise-en-scene
- Group events into cause (something that happens which causes an event) and effect- action and event

Roland Barthes believed that there are 5 action codes within the genre sector, and these are as follows:
1) Hermeneutic (interpretation) code: An element of life story not explained or unanswered questions make us think.
2) Proairetic code: Builds tension - an indication in which something is about to happen, the reader/viewer starts to question.
3) Semantic code: Connotations/extended meanings.
4) Symbolic code: Symbolisms throughout the film.
5) Cultural code: The things we believe throughout our culture.

Post 4 - Genre as a Media Concept

The word 'genre' originally comes from the french and therefore meaning 'kind' or 'class'. The characteristic ingredients of a particular genre and the elements which make it recognisable can be defined as conventions. Conventions provide a common link between types of films and then becomes the visual elements that we expect when we go and see a film.

Repitition and difference has successfully created audience pleasure and cemented the bond between encoder (film-maker) and decoder (audience), like a contrast the film makers adhere to and we pay them by returning to the cinema. 

Genre theories


Christian Metz in Language and Cinema


He believed that there are four stages to the genre development theory:
- The experimental - Encircles generic codes and conventions of a thriller i.e. Scary Movie
- The classic - Structuring on narrative, mainly victorious i.e. Dracula [1931]
- The parody - Conventions have been deformised i.e. Shaun of the Dead [2004]
- The deconstruction - Generic essentials of thriller varied with current genres such as horror and thriller, where other genre elements and sub genres are introduced i.e. The Blair Witch Project

Emilie Atenloh


Emilie was a film historian and critic who often approached film form a sociological point of view. She was one of the first to realise the specific gender differences when relating to audience perception of films. Women preferred music and melodrama, male working class cinema goers preferred films which included blood and violence.

McQuail, Blummer and Brown 1972

Media provides a diversio, we create a personal relationship (feel part of a social group) create a personal identity (re-inforce our own values through compassion to stars in the media/film . Surveillance (we can see what's happening in the world).

The problems with genre theory 


Thomas Schatz states there are only two types of genre, order and integration. Films use the same structures with different paradigms so is it problematic to break down films into categories? Altman semantic elements hijack syntactic elements/ this is the same as the syntagmatic line with the paradigmatic sets (i.s. Lara Craft in Tomb Raider- The paradigmatic set would be vest, guns)
Altman's semantic is when the stories are the same but the costumes are different i.e. a cowboy fighting native american Indians and with the change of semantics its the same as spacemen fighting aliens therefore this suggests that semantic changes but syntactic stays the same.

Genre Themes


Metaphysical (meaning beyond science): 
Metaphysical themes are those ideas in society, which are general and abstract, ideas about life, the universe and everything. Science fiction could be said to use metaphysical themes because it deals with issues and abstract.

Social themes


Social issues such as sexuality, race, crime and drug addiction may be included in the horror or Sci-fi genre. Sci-fi films may deal with social issues such as showing a vision of a perfect society or a non-perfect society.


Ideological themes


As America has a massive influence on the cinema which is received in most countries it might be fair to ask what type of ideological themes are being conveyed by the movie makers. In Sci-fi films, the Americans are the ones who are shown to have the 'brains' and the characters with foreign accents (including English) are mostly represented as the 'evil characters'.



Review of genre from my AS opening sequence

For our opening sequence me and my group had chose to go for the genre 'comedy', this is because we wanted to amuse and entertain the audience and also after receiving the results from the questionnaire that we produced for our target audience, the majority of them preferred the genre comedy. The conventions we used for our opening sequence consists of the main character dressed 'geeky' wearing knee high cocks, huge glasses and going through a series of events to make the audience laugh, one of them being her having tissues trapped in her socks after using the toilets. We realised that it was quite hard when trying to add comical events into the opening sequence because we didn't want to the audience to feel sorry for the main character but instead find it funny and humorous.

Conclusion


After all the research and finding out more in depth detail about genre, I believe that it will help a lot when producing our short film as a group, and know what characteristics, background, props and mise-en-scene fit altogether to suit the genre.


A paradigm is a set of associated signifiers.   
Genre employs a paradigmatic sets for action and adventure for example in the film 'tomb raider' there are signs such as a hand gun, machine gun, vest top and boots which are easily read by the audience.

My understanding of what genre means:


The following codes are the characteristics of a particular genre which can be defined as conventions:

Technical codes – camera, lighting techniques, sound
Enigma codes – A sense of mystery that intrigues the audience

Narrative codes – the shape and structure of a story
Action codes – action that makes us realize where we are in the narrative and that the story is developing
Written codes – captions, anchorage
Character codes – similar to symbolic codes, including costume, make up of a particular character
Symbolic codes – body language, use of colour, mise-en-scene

Review of genre from my AS opening sequence

For our opening sequence me and my group had chose to go for the genre 'comedy', this is because we wanted to amuse and entertain the audience and also after receiving the results from the questionnaire that we produced for our target audience, the majority of them preferred the genre comedy. The conventions we used for our opening sequence consists of the main character dressed 'geeky' wearing knee high cocks, huge glasses and going through a series of events to make the audience laugh, one of them being her having tissues trapped in her socks after using the toilets. We realised that it was quite hard when trying to add comical events into the opening sequence because we didn't want to the audience to feel sorry for the main character but instead find it funny and humorous.

Conclusion


After all the research and finding out more in depth detail about genre, I believe that it will help a lot when producing our short film as a group, and know what characteristics, background, props and mise-en-scene fit altogether to suit the genre.

Post 3 - Skills Table

The ‘Skills Table’ allow us to see what we as a group have developed over the past 2 years in this course; it illustrates what new skills we have achieved and what further skills we need to improve during our short film.

My own personnel SMART targets which I would like to achieve are as follows:

SMART:         Specific           Measurable      Achievable      Realistic/Relevant       Time Bound

My first target is to make some independent research for the post production process, this is will help to know which genre will suit best for our project and what further details we could add when filming and to make sure which type of films do audience like best.

My second target it to make sure we as a group, have a better communication when it comes to filming and organising the filming schedule, this I believe is very important because sometimes it can get delayed due to poor communication and therefore re-scheduling for another day, which therefore may result in rushing to get the whole filming finished and seeming very unprofessional.

My third target I want to make sure that I am up to date with all my coursework tasks so that I do not fall behind, I believe that this is also very important and a lot of spare time is needed when doing this as when it comes to theory work it may take up a lot of time. So I need to make sure that I update my coursework every so often.

My fourth target is to make sure that I improve my ICT skills when in the edit suite, to do this I will need to practice at home editing videos as I have the editing software at home, this will therefore help me when it comes to editing the actual short film.

My fifth and final target is to try and influence others, negotiating and balancing diverse views to reach workable solutions. This will also help the group to have equal priorities and job roles when filming.

Post 2 - "Creativity"

Define "Creativity"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity
Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new (a product, a solution, a work of art etc.) that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs. What counts as "valuable" is similarly defined in a variety of ways.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/creativity
1. The state or quality of being creative.

2. The ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination: the need for creativity in modern industry; creativity in the performing arts.

3. The process by which one utilizes creative ability: Extensive reading stimulated his creativity.

Class work from our game of consequences:
As a class we played a game called the 'game of consequences' we realized that we played it wrong first time round producing the creative sentence 'Amber Zoe and David Beckham met at Aqua Splash, He said "Hiya" she said "I have a chicken farm" and the consequences were, they went on a boating trip together and had a lovely trout supper'. However we played the same game again and changed it a little bit by adding nouns, verbs and adjectives to make it more creative, here is an example of what we had done:

Creativity Task Video:

The Consequences Game

As a class we all played the 'consequences game', to do this we had a piece of paper each and had to write the word 'the' and an adjective, we folded the paper over and passed it over to the next paper and they had to do the same again however this time using a noun, same again but using verb, then 'the' and adjective and lastly finishing it off with another noun. After we finished the game we were all left with the paper we started of with first and received an creative certain each to which we had to produce a picture out of the sentence, so this was my sentence I had recieved:

'The yellow rubber swims the purple plum'

Independent Study:

We were all set a task to produce an individual creative piece for our work so for my independent part of being creative I decided to produce a collage of 'me', and showing how it is being a 'Muslim', I did this by putting lots of images together with my family and my cultural beliefs:

Post 1 - Define the term "Skills"

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/skill

1. The ability, coming from ones knowledge, practice, aptitude, etc, to do something well: Carpentry was one of his many skills.

2. Competent excellence in performance; expertness; dexterity: The dancers performed with skill.

3. A craft, trade, or job requiring manual dexterity or special training in which a person has competence and experience: the skill of cabinetmaking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skill

A skill is the learned capacity to carry out pre-determined results often with the minimum outlay of time, energy, or both. Skills can often be divided into domain-general and domain-specific skills. For example, in the domain of work, some general skills would include time management, teamwork and leadership, self motivation and others, whereas domain-specific skills would be useful only for a certain job. Skill usually requires certain environmental stimuli and situations to assess the level of skill being shown and used.

My own definition of "Skills"
My own understanding of the term "skills" is meant to do something well and resulting in achieving a certain goal, skills can be part of anything for example, in terms of school work, one of the required skills needed in this would be to have good listening skills in order to understand the topic/subject.
Some skills in relation to media productions:
- Communication skills
- Group work skills
- Technical Skills- Using edit suites and camera
- Production skills
- ICT skills e.g. Knowing how to use different types of software's including finding resources and information on Internet, using Microsoft word, PowerPoint etc.