Examine representation in one of your media productions

For my first year production I was required to make the front page, contents page and a double page spread of an industry style music magazine, I decided to make a rock/metal magazine and needed this to be quickly noticeable within the style and layout of the magazine. My layout was heavily influenced by other music magazine such as Q and Kerrang, and I analysed the codes and conventions of these magazines to gain an understanding of how to represent my magazine.

From the magazines I had looked at, a stereotypical colour scheme for a rock/metal magazine was to use dark colours, I wanted to stick to the common conventions of other media pieces as I wanted to be certain that my piece clearly fit into its respective genre, so I used black and red as my two primary colours throughout the pages I made as this represented my magazine as the genre I was aiming for. I conveyed the stereotypical rock genre layout by using a split between the letters on my masthead and making the bottom of the letters look faded and dirty, this seemed to be a common convention of most rock magazines as they tried to convey this image of grunge. This style of font represents aggression and violence which would appeal to the audience of the magazine I had created as it was primarily directed at teens, who archetypically are associated with violence, vandalism, and disrespect. I aimed to also appeal to my audience through the photography I had taken, firstly the photo on the front cover, it depicted a group of teens (the band) sitting in a stairwell looking directly at the camera, this generated direct mode of address and due to the stereotypical view of teens generated by society it grants a small amount of threat to the audience as teens are perceived as violent youths. Again this idea can be seen within the photo I used for my double page spread which shows two teens together, one looking directly at the audience again and the other about to smash a guitar on the floor, this supports the archetypical view of teenagers as it represents teenagers as being violent and aggressive, and the direct mode of address helps to support this, however this aggressive image could also be represented in a very different way as the high angle camera shot perceives the two teens as 'weak' as we look down on them, this could generate alternate representations for this image.. There is also a counter typical representation of teens within my magazine as well, and this can be seen within the contents page where 3 girls are standing side by side, this does not follow any of the stereotypical negative connotations of teens, but instead just shows 3 girls standing beside each other for the photo.

The two quotes on the double page spread each provide a different representation for the audience, the first "we are the ones running the show, despite what you think" stereotypically represents the band as being obnoxious teens, however the second quote "we were ecstatic; we couldn't believe what we had achieved" does not represent the band as being stereotypical teens, it represents them counter typically as they appear to be modest about their achievements.

The pictures located on the contents page that represent free posters to be found within the magazine depict a sexualised female wearing red lipstick and grungey clothes to represent the rock music genre, this image applies to Mulvey's belief of the 'male gaze', Mulvey stated that women were objectified in film because heterosexual men were in control of the camera, this can also be applied to these pictures as the female seen is sexualised, this representation is emphasised due to features such as the red lipstick which stereotypically represents lust when it is on a woman, and enhances this idea of the 'male gaze'.

Choose one of your productions explaining your use of media language in the text

For my A2 portfolio I was required to create a short horror film, this was a difficult task as I did not have a great understanding of how to create a film, however I had seen many horror films myself so I understood the basis of what I wanted. The mise en scene in our film remained consistent throughout, we had very limited locations as it was all filmed within a field, and one house, this made location scouting easy and by incorporating a consistent mise en scene with locations it ensured that our audience were not confused at any point about the locations within the film, we also ensured that our actors always wore the same clothes each time we filmed, whilst this may seem like an obvious thing to maintain, it was heavily key to ensure our film made sense, otherwise our audience would be questioning as to why our actors have different clothes within each scene. Our mise en scene helped us appeal to various aspects of reception theory, particularly personal integrative needs within the text as the audience were able to relate with the actors within the film as the locations and clothes are common to that of the time, so our audience could see that this was a film set in the present day. Our main protagonist within our film was female, and the antagonist a male, we found this to be stereotypical within horror films as the female is often perceived as 'weak' in relation the antagonist and as we did not want to stray too far from common conventions of horror films we decided to maintain this convention within our own film.

Lighting was another feature we had to focus on as we were creating a horror film, we found lighting to be key to establish this, particularly for the audience, we used a variety of lighting but most of which remained to be low key, and some elements of chiaroscuro (particularly noticeable within the camera glitches) this generated an eerie feel for the film which helped to establish to the audience the genre, this allows us to generate a preferred reading for the audience, however it is still open for a negotiated reading (as are most modern texts). We needed to ensure we followed as many codes and conventions of horror films as possible to ensure our audience received the preferred reading of our media text, we did not want to generate any confusion with the genre. The chiaroscuro lighting in the glitch scenes of the camcorder allowed for some confusion for the audience, this was intended to grip the audience as it generated hermeneutic codes, not only were the unsure as to what is happening within the glitch, but the chiaroscuro lighting provides suspense and further elements of mystery to the scenes. Minimal sound was used within our film, this was a convention we followed from short horror films, little variety in sound, and along with little dialogue. Our film primarily used diegitic sounds that we had added during the editing process, such as keyboard typing, footsteps, skype calling noises, and 2 horror soundtracks that added an uneasy feel to the film, this was all we felt it needed. We had very few non-diegitic sounds, one of the most noticeable however is when the attic is opened, the non-diegetic sound of the attic door opening was discomforting enough to be left within the film. The sound simply aided the construction of our preferred reading as it made it clear that the film was to be taken seriously, and that there was an element of suspense and fear throughout the text.

Our film used a range of different camera shots to establish different ideas within each scene, we wanted to create hermeneutic codes throughout the entirety of our film, until the final scene was reached. We used a number of high angle and low angle shots around the main protagonist, this enabled us to shift the perception of power between the protagonist and the antagonist, as the high angle shots made it appear that the protagonist was weak (stereotypical of a female victim) however the low angle shots we used allowed us to make a counter typical representation as it appeared that the protagonist was stronger than the viewer. Half of the film is viewed from the antagonists perspective on a handheld camera, this meant we had a lot of shake cam shots that cause discomfort for the audience and further reinforces the establishing of genre, it also means that we view the majority of the film from the killers perspective, which puts the audience within the position of power, in relation to the effects model of audience theory, this means that the audience are passive and powerless to prevent the influence of the film upon them, particularly within the final scenes of the film where they must witness the murder of an innocent girl, this could cause discomfort for the audience which is another common convention of horror films, this helps us to reduce the likelihood of oppositional and negotiated readings that we do not want.

Editing was one of the most important features for our film, primarily due to parallel editing. We used parallel editing throughout the entirety of our film as the audience were moved to and from the protagonist and the antagonists position, the audience are required to piece together the film themselves. As our film is consists entirely of parallel editing it meant that we followed a non-linear narrative, however we did not follow Todorov's narrative theory when doing this. We followed the conventions of short horror films that equilibrium is never restored at the end of the film, within our film, the film begins with equilibrium, then disequilibrium is established as the killer is bought into the film, however equilibrium is never restored as the protagonist is killed at the end of the film, this applies directly to the effects model as the audience are subjected and passive towards the murder of a woman. In relation to uses and gratifications theory our film primarily appeals to the audience as a needs to entertain and hopefully by following common conventions of horror films, providing the appropriate audience are watching the film, it does this.

Argument FOR postmodernism

One of the main arguments for postmodernism comes from the philosopher Lyotard who states that postmodernism is “incredulity towards metanarratives”, we can analyse the reliability of this quote by applying it to media texts that could be defined as being postmodern. For example, Zeitgeist is clearly a postmodern text; it clearly contains elements of intertextuality, bricolage, flattening of effect, simulacra, and hyper reality. In particular within zeitgeist there is a scene where clips of Dick Cheney, Rudy Giuliani, and George Bush’s speeches are strung together where they are talking about terrorism to show how this threat is being forced upon us, a comical soundtrack is played over the top of this bricolage of speeches which almost exaggerates the idea that this is all a joke, this directly applies to what Lyotard states about postmodernism and it is clear that this primary feature is present within this text. Baudrillard states that “We live in a world where there is more and more information and less and less meaning.” this supports Lyotard’s statement, particularly when applied to Zeitgeist. Zeitgeist is a bricolage of news clips, images, and quotes, it is clear that within a media saturated world it is difficult to find a (true) meaning behind what we see within the media, zeitgeist expresses the idea that terrorism has been “hypnotically repeated” to the public to generate an automatic idea of fear whenever someone is to repeat the word terrorism, this shows that we are having information almost thrown at us, yet we have no meaning or understanding of our own to gain any meaning to the information we receive, we just simply believe what we are told as a hyper reality is generated for us by the media. Chomsky believes that postmodernism is too vague, he poses the rhetorical question “what do they explain that wasn’t already obvious?” this could be applied to Zeitgeist, implying that Peter Joseph had no intention of creating a postmodern text, instead he just had the intention of constructing a text compiled of information and ‘facts’ to present to an audience making this text an agitprop which is a postmodern idea, this means that Zeitgeist can be applied to a variety of different postmodern ideas and theories implying that it could have always had the intention to be a postmodern text. It is clear that Peter Joseph has made Zeitgeist as a means to spread this propaganda meaning that this text is an agitprop, something that can be a defining feature of a postmodern text.

Describe how your developing understanding of digital technology impacted on your creativity.

A key piece of software I was required to use throughout my media course was Photoshop. Within my first year I was required to make an authentic music magazine using Photoshop, I had very little knowledge of how to use this software at the beginning of the year and began my production using the shape and text tool to create a basic template for my magazine as these were the only tools I understood how to use, this limited my creativity greatly as it made for a very uninteresting magazine to look at. I decided to use YouTube to watch tutorials to gain a greater understanding of how to use Photoshop and this then had a huge impact upon my creativity within making my product as I was able to add drop shadows to shapes to generate a 3D effect within my work, I also learnt how to adjust brightness/contrast, and alter colours and apply filters to imagery, this was particularly noticeable on the primary image for my contents page where I adjusted the contrast to create intense white patches across the image and then applied a light brown filter. Another key feature of Photoshop I found useful was the clone stamp tool, this enabled me to airbrush and adjust images to make them cleaner, this can be seen within the image used on the front cover where I needed to remove a display board from the wall behind the band that I had photographed, using the clone stamp tool enabled me to copy segments of the wall to cover this up. In my second year I felt my creativity was limited within Photoshop as by this point I had a much greater understanding of theories such as Uses and Gratifications, and Reception theory, because of this I found I was trying to comply with these theories to ensure my media products generated the preferred reading I was trying to create for my audience. For example within the review page I created I followed many of the conventions I had seen within other film magazines, meaning the page I had created looked like a generic review page, this was however positive as this ensured the preferred reading was established to its audience, however this limited my creativity as I was trying to conform to these conventions.

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