Maisy - Hands - Digital Technology

The development of the use of digital technology really improved from AS level to A2 as I became more aware of the digital technology that I could use and what I could experiment with. In AS, in pre production, the use of digital technology was minimalistic. I used final cut pro to edit the final thriller film opening and also an animatic but my knowledge was basic and so the animatic didn’t help us much further in production because it was not edited to a certain time or soundtrack. However at A2, to create a music video, the animatic I created had to be much more accurate as the shots needed to be cut to time perfectly for the shots to be sequenced and to make sense in accordance with the song. I was able to be more creative with the shots I filmed because of a thoroughly planned animatic that allowed me to be more spontaneous in production when shooting because I knew I had a decent shot list to rely on. Although I used blogger and other sites on Web 2.0 throughout pre production, production and post, I advanced in my knowledge and skills from AS to A2 because in AS, the research and planning I did was very basic and I presented it in basic ways compared to A2, where I used moving presentation site Prezi and Go! Animate to show more creatively my preliminary and initial ideas. In AS, I used a limited amount of software – just literally Final Cut Pro and the internet – compared to A2, in which I also used Adobe Photoshop and Wix in Post-production to create a digipack and a website for my artist. In progression of A2, I had learnt a lot more about Photoshop having seldom used it before and this allowed to be a lot more create and expressive as I could experiment freely and try out textures and tools I previously hadn’t had a need to use. I had not used Wix before at all, and so it was a definite learning curve and a step up from AS in which Blogger was the only platform I used to present my work. I was able to draw together a complete website from little knowledge or my own skills, based only on the other existing media texts of the same medium which I had studied.  Although the cameras I used in AS are the same ones I used in A2, my personal development of the skills needed for them definitely has improved. For my AS thriller film opening, I filmed basic close-up and mid shots and was not very expressive in how I filmed, only wanting to portray the narrative, where as for my A2 music video, every shot needed to be crafted to make the song work, and so they needed to be more aesthetically pleasing and exciting. I was able to do this by experimenting with types of shots including pull focus and more interesting angles. My cinematography skills were more advanced by A2 as I had had time to experiment with the equipment and felt more in control of the camera because I had had the experience of using it before, for AS.  I also used a variety of equipment to edit the footage and manipulate photographs in Post-production, including SLR which I had not used in AS and also iPhones to capture certain shots which were more effectively interesting to do as they were more spontaneous than the set shot list I had created for use for the Sony HD video camera. In conclusion, my skills from AS to A2 media really evolved through how creative I could be when using digital technology ranging from websites to developing software and how this knowledge affected the way I made creative decisions to make the film I was creating in A2 more visually inviting and interesting than the one I made in AS. 

How do post-modern media texts challenge traditional text reader relations and the concept of representation?

How do post-modern media texts challenge traditional text reader relations and the concept of representation?

Post-modern media texts challenge traditional text reader relations as they allow the audience to immerse themselves in a simulated world as a form of escapism which is more aesthetically and physically pleasing than the real world we live in. As Lyotard’s theory suggests that the lack of faith in grand narratives being the reaction to modernism to cause post modernism, the barrier between audience and producer has blurred. This blurring has resulted in audiences being able to immerse themselves into texts as they have never been able to do before. As postmodernity suggests, we as a customer culture choose style over substance and prefer the hyper-real to the real, supported by Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra and the argument that we no longer can differentiate between what is real and what is not.

This idea can be seen in Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror episode 15 Million Merits as the protagonists live in a more or less entirely digital and simulated world reflective of our virtually dependent society. The characters live in an enclosed environment, are watched and controlled via CCTV cameras and their lives are lived through digital avatars of themselves. There are parallels between the narrative of the programme and real life, such as how the characters cannot skip advertisements on the screens in their rooms; similar to the way you cannot skip adverts on YouTube. The show itself deals with the idea Guy Dubord argues of a society of people creating a relationship through mediated images as the protagonist Bing talks through his avatar to Abi’s avatar and this is considered normal practice in the dystopian world in which they live. This idea of the relationship between two characters through avatars being of more importance and value than through the actual humans themselves suggests the idea that what we consider to be representative of humans and human relationships is not what it used to be, and that because this structure of the simulated world being immersed into real life for these characters, we cannot tell the difference anymore. The post-modern element of dystopia which is in the narrative that reflects our actual society challenges the text reader as the programme itself, is a philosophical statement meant for the audience to interpret as a warning, unlike many other shows being broadcasted right now in attempts to gain a stylistic- over substance generated mass audience.

The development of games that use simulacra as a main selling point has challenged the traditional text reader relation of post-modern media as the structure of fixed fluid identity has collapsed, allowing gamers to completely immerse themselves into games to the point where it overtakes the value of their real life and actually has a serious effect on the social norms of the 21^st century which we abide by and conform to. The game Second Life promotes this as gamers can make real wages by working in the online world and some even use this website for their real jobs by owning companies and having jobs to make money, allowing them to make a living through the game and in some cases not have to get a job or career in reality. This line between the hyper-real and the real, as Baudrillard suggests, is blurred by the increasing popularity of games such as this – games where people can reinvent themselves more accordingly to what they want to be like rather than what they actually are or can in actuality create themselves as a totally different person of different gender, skin colour, age etc if they wish. In this era of arguable post-modernity, people prefer the fake over the real and so these games are ideal outlets for their deepest desires of themselves to be portrayed. These avatars and creations people make are often representative of themselves in some form as they hold some slight personality reminiscent of their human creator.

In the same way that games such as Second Life or the Sims allow one to be expressive in their multiple characters and extensions of themselves, singer artist Nicki Minaj presents herself as a concept of this multiplication. The post-modern text reader and an artist’s relationship is arguably developing to a point where as Baudrillard would suggest, style is more important and more valuable in strategically marketing singers than substance. Nicki Minaj for example, is sold to mass consumers by her dominating image and style. She uses multiple alter egos including ‘Black Barbie’ and ‘Roman’ to sell her image and this gains text readers’ undivided attention because as our attention span is so short, we are visually enticed by images and vivid caricatured details. As the post-modern audience themselves are able to change their identities so fluidly and with no hindrance, this change in Minaj’s portrayal of herself is unsurprising to a certain degree. Although the way she visually depicts herself, often using arguably pornographic and provocative costumes and outfits teamed with pretty and ‘girly’ dresses, a bricolage in itself, we as a postmodern culture have become used to this too in day to day life by the over-sexualisation not only of singers, but of performers in all fields, through image. The hyper reality connoted with the hyperbolic styling of Minaj is used as a form of escapism for the post-modern text reader in which some find aesthetically pleasing and more interesting than sights they see daily, encouraging them to take notice, and therefore develop a relation with the artist, eventually leading them to be a fan or sorts.

With this loss of distinction between what is real and what is fake, Jameson’s theory of the more empty and superficial a text is, the more consumption there will be of it – relating to the ‘cultural logic of late capitalism’. And so in conclusion, as a post-modern audience, we read texts in a way that challenges everything modernity suggested was progress. We do not just accept narratives of TV programmes - they are created in such a way that we, who arguably have no faith in anything new, have to think about our society and the way progress has stopped and what this has stopped us as a people from doing. With this lack of faith, we revert to escapism through meaningless and vacuous games, programmes and musical concepts in an attempt to find a reality in which we can progress and to some certainty, be ourselves.

Maisy - Audience

Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to the concept of audience.

For my AS thriller film opening production, audience was of great importance as I tried to portray my film to the right type of people. Although Julian McDougall suggests that because of how dependent we as a society are online and on the Internet, it has become harder to sustain and identify a group to create a media text for, I found that because of the genre my film was, this was not a total hindrance. The psychological thriller genre is niche and breaking boundaries of genre conventions would not ultimately create a decent thriller opening, so with this in mind, I stuck to conventions. This allowed me to make a film that would be appealing to a definitive audience in terms of researching previous films’ target audiences, which were alike.  My film opening allowed for the audience to gain some gratification via the use of dramatic irony as the title sequence showed a character deceiving another who you would later find out was the character’s best friend. This allowed the audience the pleasure of knowing something, which the characters don’t. And this form of power given to the audience invites them as Denis McQuail argues into escapism as they consume the media text. For me, from research and planning I knew the target audience for my film would range from 18 to 35 year olds of both genders, and so as Ien Ang suggests that media producers already have an audience in mind, the process of my film supports this.  AS she suggests that audiences are becoming more and more fragmentented, although this is true, because of the genre of my film and the ideas I was trying to present through it, I was able to have a clear target audience in mind, throughout all stages of creating my product. In my thriller film opening, I used the male protagonist James as a concept to invite the audience to form a relationship not only with the character but also with film itself, as John Hartley argues that institutions need to not only speak to an audience but also get them to ‘enter into relation with them’. The opening to the film shows doing the most mundane things – brushing his teeth, doing up his shoes laces – but it is these menial tasks that allow the audience to identify themselves with the character and through the snippets of flashbacks, this entices the audience into something more interesting and something worth continuing watching.  Although the narrative of the film opening is not gender specific, there is a prominent sense of Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze as the title sequence is filmed from the point of view of the male killer, as he abducts the lead female character and ties her in the boot of his car. The audience is also encouraged to come into the story through the view of James, a stereotypical good looking, strong, heroic man whom the audience sees in a flashback coming back from the army, in uniform. I wanted to portray these two male characters in this way to encourage male viewers just as much as females. 

Maisy - Representation

Apply media representation in one of your coursework productions.

In my A2 music video, the representation of the characters as well as the ideas I wanted to present was made through the prominent themes I tried to portray. The main theme of my video involved the Marxist idea of a people fooled into a form of equality but with some form of dictatorship – in my video I represented this via a group of young people being physically kept inside with the band portraying a ragged form of bourgeoisie.  The lead female protagonist fights against and rejects the hegemonic authority, which the band playing depicts. This running political theme of control over a mass can be supported the ideology of Marxism and this was something I portrayed primarily through the narrative. As Rosalind Brunt states that ideologies are never just ideas but are myths which we live by and are attributes to our self worth, this supports how the lead protagonist Rhi, how she takes the situation that has been forced upon her and to make herself and her life better, she rejects the control that has been held over her and escapes. I portrayed Rhi as being a headstrong and independent female who carries the film, which contradicts Laura Mulvey’s idea of the male gaze being prominent and the idea that the camera objectifies women. In my video, there are no shots which present Rhi as being weak, objectified, or being there for the purpose and pleasure of a male viewer. The target audience I made the film for was not gender specific and I wanted to present this idea of equality from the audience projected in the film, giving no gender dominant point of viewing.  However, the idea of viewing people leads directly to the idea I wanted to portray of society being constantly watched. I presented this politically heavy idea of surveillance and how we are being watched through shots of CCTV cameras and also the narrative structure of the film being a chase scene as Rhi runs away from the governmental organization represented as the band and how even that is being watched and recorded, as the viewers watch the video. This was how I presented the socially increasing theme of voyeurism and how the controlling aspect of this has an affect on our culture’s behaviour.  Foucault’s theory of Panopticon suggests that although we cannot see each other, we are all connected via another being observing us, just as Rhi and the other characters captive to the organization are being watched, so are we in the real world and in our postmodern influenced society.  Although in my film, the world is hyper real as gold and black masked characters chase people through the streets of a dystopian London, the themes I presented are reminiscent of the way our society is according to Lyotard’s postmodern theory that because nothing new can be created, there is no hope for the future and this I tried to present through the setting and structure of the narrative.  As David Gauntlett’s theory that Identity is a complicated idea because it can be changed so frequently, as many artists play with the realms of identity and characterisation, I wanted to play too and did this by giving the band varying identities including being the band themselves and also the organization controlling the audience. With this I was able to experiment with how the band present themselves and how others might see them, in the same way that bands are marketed and sold in the real world. 

In conclusion, postmodernism is controversial as it itself is a grand narrative and therefore merely a theory and doubts creativity and the progress of creativity and originality by having no faith in anything being newly created, something which society and modern society deemed itself to be supporting and based upon. Postmodernism argues that there is no meaning to anything anymore, that everything is superficial but when everything has an implicit message coming from the 'cultural leaders' to large masses of people how can media texts now, be postmodern and empty of meaning when they hold something much more important subliminally. I think this causes the controversy because as barriers of modernism have broken apart, it has allowed the idea of postmodernity meaning nothing in place of meaning in our society, something which I don't think any society can live on.

Why is Post Modernism controversial?

Post modernism is a grand narrative within itself, but contradicts this fact as it goes against all grand narratives there ever were, and also believes in a lack of progress however is in fact a progression from modernism. It is controversial because it is all a matter of opinion, and people have different views of it, what one person may call post modern, another may argue against this and say that it has elements of modernism.

Post modernism says that there is no depth or meaning to anything, however the reason it's controversial is because any platform of media is not just there for entertainment, and the audience can create their own hyper real meaning for what they are watching or listening to, even though it is just there for the sake of it, and what a person believes will fix and register in their mind.

Maisy - Genre

Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to genre.

The coursework production in which genre played a crucial part was my AS thriller film opening Dead by Alliance. The audience reaction to the film was my main focus when working to the standard of the thriller genre and with Rick Altman’s theory of genre causing particular types of pleasurable feelings, my film aimed to create a particular reaction of the audience and a feeling in them. There’s a certain emotional pleasure as the twist of a main character goes from a good guy to the enemy, I aimed to evoke a feeling of general shock and interest in the audience as a body, in which they could mentally involve themselves in. There’s also an intellectual puzzle and therefore pleasure in the drastic discovery of the good to bad guy character which invites the audience into developing an interest in the outcome of the film, urging them to continue watching. This is a popular technique used in the genre of thriller as it creates a mystery and a mentally stimulating and visual challenge in the film itself for the audience to enjoy. Daniel Chandler argues that the way in which we define genre depend on our purpose. My purpose was to create a film opening that really followed the strict conventions of the thriller genre and I did this by using visual conventions such as a mysterious figure at the beginning, taking inspiration from the film Seven as well as the dim blue tones of colouring and filtering to give it the intense look of the thriller genre and also I created a soundtrack and foley to really support the film and to intensify the atmospheric feeling as the story progressed. Whilst Nicholas Abercrombie argues that ‘the boundaries between genres are shifting and becoming more permeable’, my thriller opening conflicts and rejects this as the genre of psychological thriller which my film was of, is of a more niche area in terms of film genres. There were many conventions I had to follow as I have mentioned to be able to entitle the film as a thriller so whilst other genres may be confused and form bricolage of genres; thriller is one that my film opening attempted to portray that genre only. Contradictory to genre theory, my film opening also rejects John Hartley’s theory that ‘the same text can belong to different genres in different countries or times’ again because thriller films directly rely on the support of the genre’s conventions, this argument is void in my case. I needed to portray the fixed genre of thriller and I did this through using stereotypical archetypal characters such as the ‘hero’ and the ‘victim’ and the enigmatic narrative which I did. If I did not follow the thriller genre conventions very carefully, I would not have fulfilled the genre’s purpose – it could have turned into a horror very easily had I not of kept to conventions of the thriller genre. Jonathan Culler’s theory supports my use of sticking to thriller genre conventions as he argues that the ‘generic conventions’ of any genre allow a form of contract between the producers/directors of the film and the audience viewing it which basically invites the viewers to expect certain things from the film, such as structured thriller narrative and all the conventions which come with a film of that genre.  

Maisy - Narrative

Apply theories of narrative to one of your coursework productions.

The coursework production in which the theories of narrative are most prominent are in my A2 music video. The video highly relies on the quantity of the narrative which gives the piece fluidity and supports the performance bed. The narrative allows the audience to follow a young woman as she escapes the claws of an ambiguous governmental organization. This main theme shows elemental support of Lyotard’s postmodern theory that there is a lack of faith in anything new and that this causes a rise in dystopian narratives which break conventions of the modernist idea of grand narratives. The bleakness of the narrative is portrayed through the dim, blue colourings which Final Cut Pro allowed me to do. As the female character Rhi escapes the physical and metaphorical prison by hearing the band play and then running out of the place where she’s been captured, she rejects what she should be doing and rejects the band and masked figures, creating herself as an opposition to what holds her. Levi-Strauss’ theory of all stories holding binary oppositions of sort can be seen in my music video as Rhi and the band itself, the lead singer primarily, are binary oppositions, leading the audience to relate and form a preference to the female protagonist. The production fits into Barthes’ five narrative codes as the ending to the piece in enigmatic in that you, as the audience, do not find out what happens to Rhi once she is caught by the antagonist – does he let her go? Does he kill her? What happens and what will happen is unclear and is left up to the viewer to decide and imagine. Barthes’ cultural code also applies to my film as the body of knowledge being the controlling governmental organisation that fuels the narrative, depicts the way we see the world being controlled through CCTV and surveillance which is a rapidly growing debate in our society. We tried to keep the anonymity of the organization throughout the video but slowly built up the tension of what they symbolized through more screen time and this follows Barthes’ code of action, in which the audience is kept guessing as the tension increases throughout the film.

In the video’s narrative there is a strong case of Todorov’s theory of equilibrium – the film starts out with stability as characters come into an abandoned area to watch the band play and they are unfazed by this. The second stage being the disruption comes at the climax of the first chorus, in the form of Rhi causing disequilibrium by challenging the norm and escaping the place, running out into the city of London. The third stage of recognizing what has happened appears as a masked figure from the organisation chases after her, causing a fast step forward in the action of the narrative. Equilibrium is brought back into place right at the end of the video, when the masked figure/ lead singer and Rhi come face to face, juxtaposing and awaiting finality in the narrative of what will happen. Although there are many theorists to support the narrative structure of my music video, there are some theories that do not apply to it such as Pam Cook who argues that the key to the standard Hollywood narrative structure includes a strong closing and end to the narrative. In my video, the narrative is largely based on the ambiguity of the characters and their situations and I played on this to build interest and a climax in the story, so because of the this, I decided the ending of the film needed to be just as dramatic and cliff-hanging as the rest of the video. Because of this, I broke the conventions which Cook’s theory argues, including the idea that the classic narrative has verisimilitude in which I also rejected to keep the narrative overall, and especially at the end, enigmatic. In conclusion, on the whole, there are many theories of narrative which support the decisions I made to keep the music video story’s plot interesting and dynamic.