In m opinion, the combination of my main product and my ancillary texts is very effective. The design of the ancillary texts reflects the design and look of the video. Where the video is quite dark with glimmers of illuminous light, my magazine advertisement has a simple black background with Luke's illuminated face, which conveys the same themes and motifs as the video about glimmers of hope in the darkness of heartbreak.
As for my digipak, I went with a very retro and bleak design, which reflects the bleak feel of the video. The images of the beach, the rocks and the sea are taken from the same location that we shot the video, which our viewers will pick up on and identify with. This association of music video to CD design is an example of synergy. Viewers of the video will recognise it in the album and buyers of the album will recognise it in the video, meaning more consumers are coming in on both ends.
I think that using Luke's image as the main draw was effective, as he is the star of the video, featured most prominently, which Liam secondary. This is reflected in the advert, which features Luke's face lit up and no sign of Liam, and in the digipak, which features Luke at the forefront, with Liam featured in small doses throughout the digipak. They are a musical group called Omega, but with Luke as the frontman and most popular among viewers and listeners, he is featured the most in the advertising and ancillary texts. This is called good business.
I asked some students in my class if they would consider buying the album based on the advertisement and the digipak. These students are within our target demographic of working to middle class teenagers and nine out of the ten I asked said they would consider buying it. These are strong figures and I am confident I produced some effective ancillary texts.
Friday, 29 April 2016
Tuesday, 19 April 2016
A2 Media Studies Evaluation - What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Audience feedback is essential in discovering how successful a media production is as well as gaining information about how to improve the quality of it. The audience's response is the most important part as they are who the video is for the reason it was made in the first place, so their satisfaction is key. Interactivity with the audience is a great way to step back and see how the video looks from a third party perspective. This is not the only advantage, as there are many more:
The main way in which we gained audience feedback was face-to-face interaction with our target audience, young people aged 17-18 within our school who enjoy the pop music genre our video falls into. Their response was thus: "good use of locations," "loving the saturated effect," and "excellent use of angles, but change the font at the end of the song was quite jarring." We were very pleased with this feedback as it was overwhelmingly positive with very few negative comments to be made. However, the audience feedback still proved to be very helpful in reassuring us that the video we had made was good, but also alerting us to our boring font choice.
Without the audience feedback I would have kept the boring font, however, this exercise has given me and opportunity to take others opinions into consideration, and I agree with what was suggested. As another means of gaining valuable audience feedback I filmed two classmates immediately after they had watched our music video, to gain the instant first opinion. This didn’t give them much time to think about their answer, and so it would be a very basic yet concise answer singling out the main points which stood out for better or worse.
Another way I gained information about my product was by uploading my Music video up on YouTube, an Internet site where four billion people worldwide, according to 2016 statistics, view videos every day. I then waited a week and checked my YouTube video page discovering that 150 people had viewed my music video. To get more in-depth information I clicked on “insight” on the YouTube page and I found that people tend to loose attention after 1:31 minutes which could suggest there is a necessity for more engaging content or perhaps shorter videos to accommodate shorter attention spans.
I believe that there are many benefits of asking individuals as I received a concise and straight to the point answer. However, the group identified weak points within my music video and offered a solution which was far more advantageous. We chose to film our classmates as this enabled us to conform to our target audience of teenagers. After receiving the feedback, I have learned that our target audience is very pleased with the music video as it adheres to most of the pop stereotypes. Furthermore, I have had much praise about the editing and flow of the music video,” even being acknowledged as “like a real music video.” The feedback which I have studied is very pleasing and promising emphasising that our music video is more than acceptable to be categorised in the pop genre.
- Increase knowledge retention
- Improve attentiveness
- Track individual response
- Confirm audience understanding of key points and narratives
The main way in which we gained audience feedback was face-to-face interaction with our target audience, young people aged 17-18 within our school who enjoy the pop music genre our video falls into. Their response was thus: "good use of locations," "loving the saturated effect," and "excellent use of angles, but change the font at the end of the song was quite jarring." We were very pleased with this feedback as it was overwhelmingly positive with very few negative comments to be made. However, the audience feedback still proved to be very helpful in reassuring us that the video we had made was good, but also alerting us to our boring font choice.
Without the audience feedback I would have kept the boring font, however, this exercise has given me and opportunity to take others opinions into consideration, and I agree with what was suggested. As another means of gaining valuable audience feedback I filmed two classmates immediately after they had watched our music video, to gain the instant first opinion. This didn’t give them much time to think about their answer, and so it would be a very basic yet concise answer singling out the main points which stood out for better or worse.
Another way I gained information about my product was by uploading my Music video up on YouTube, an Internet site where four billion people worldwide, according to 2016 statistics, view videos every day. I then waited a week and checked my YouTube video page discovering that 150 people had viewed my music video. To get more in-depth information I clicked on “insight” on the YouTube page and I found that people tend to loose attention after 1:31 minutes which could suggest there is a necessity for more engaging content or perhaps shorter videos to accommodate shorter attention spans.
I believe that there are many benefits of asking individuals as I received a concise and straight to the point answer. However, the group identified weak points within my music video and offered a solution which was far more advantageous. We chose to film our classmates as this enabled us to conform to our target audience of teenagers. After receiving the feedback, I have learned that our target audience is very pleased with the music video as it adheres to most of the pop stereotypes. Furthermore, I have had much praise about the editing and flow of the music video,” even being acknowledged as “like a real music video.” The feedback which I have studied is very pleasing and promising emphasising that our music video is more than acceptable to be categorised in the pop genre.
Tuesday, 5 April 2016
A2 Media Studies Evaluation - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We used media technologies in the research stage, as I
created an account on Survey Monkey and used the website to make an online
survey in which the survey takers are asked what their gender and favourite
genre of music are, and whether they regularly watch music videos. The
information gathered in this survey was invaluable in the decision-making
process for our own music video, as it gave us a clear idea of who was watching
these videos, what their gender demographic was, and what genres they enjoyed.
Of those who responded to my survey, 40% were male and 60%
were female, a near 50/50 split, meaning we would have to make a music video
that would appeal to both a male and female audience, in order to cover all the
bases. On the question of whether or not they watch the music videos, 100% of
the survey takers answered ‘Yes,’ showing that music videos have universal
appeal and a wide audience, giving us the freedom to choose what to do, rather
than tailoring it to a certain demographic. The favourite music genres widely
varied, as 20% of the survey takers responded to rock, 20% to pop, 20% to house,
20% to electronic, and 20% to classical, which shows that every genre has its
own audience and that whatever we choose will find its own audience. We chose
“Shine” by Years & Years due to its blending of two genres (electronic and
pop) and its appeal to both a male and female audience, thus reaching the
widest audience possible with the video.
We used the video sharing website YouTube to view real music
videos from such artists as Years & Years, whose song we were doing the
video for, Jess Glynne, Coldplay, and Bombay Bicycle Club, to get some ideas of
the conventions of music videos in this genre, and for shots we could use in
our own video.
We didn’t actually use the camera offered to us by the
school. Instead, we used Paddy’s camera which his older sister gave him upon
completing her own Media Studies course with it, as his has a larger lens with
a better zoom function that doesn’t distort the picture quality during a zoom.
It also has a greater resolution than the ones available at school, so it made
sense for us to use his instead. DSLR is typically used for taking photographs,
but it has a video recording function and it worked out great for us. There were
numerous other features which we decided utilise down the road, such as the
ability to reduce the shutter speed. This would increase the light exposed to
the shot, and give us Abrams’ signature lens flare, so we used that as a nod to
the geek behind The Force Awakens. If we have one concern, it’s that the zoom
is manually controlled using the lens, rather than an automatic zoom, so some
zooms were not be as smooth and became jumpy, though in some cases we found a
way to use that to good effect in the vein of the gritty, choppily edited Jason
Bourne franchise.
Our tripod was quite basic, with no enhanced features, but
it did as required and stabilised the camera during the steadier shots. We can
also move the camera with a handle, which depends on the steadiness of the user’s
hand. This handle can be set tighter or loose for handling, but if the user has
shaky hands, the movements aren’t going to be smooth.
We used the dolly briefly as a way of increasing the height
and manoeuvrability of the tripod. Dollies are very expensive bits of kit, so
we couldn’t provide our own and had to borrow one from school. The use of the
dolly, a platform on wheels, was to help diversify our choice of shots, which
it did as it allowed us to do otherwise complicated, smooth tracking shots.
This year has seen the introduction of a new piece of
equipment we’ve never used before, an artificial lighting rig, which allows us
to film in the dark and still see the focal point of the shot (in our case Luke’s
face). So far we’ve seen huge improvements. The project looks overall much more
professional. We had lighting problems in the dark during our previous project
last year, as we relied on limited sunlight and the focus of the shot was often
missed, causing further complications and a lack of professional appearance to
the film. This new project looks a lot better thanks to this lighting rig - as
well as this one missing my poor acting skills.
We edited with Final Cut Pro X, which is a popular film
editing software amongst independent filmmakers. Also, a number of major
Hollywood productions have been edited using Final Cut Pro, including: The Ring
(2002), Jarhead (2005), 300 (2007), No Country for Old Men (2007), Burn After
Reading (2008), The Social Network (2010), and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
(2011), the latter two winning the Academy Award for Best Film Editing.
Monday, 4 April 2016
A2 Media Studies Evaluation - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Does your video meet or challenge conventions of music videos?
Our music video both conforms to and subverts the various
tropes and conventions of typical pop music videos. We used a closed structure
as it is a convention of music videos and it is more satisfying for the
audience to have closure. It is ambiguous in the sense that we don’t know where
this boy is going with his life next, but we have the clear, definitive end to
the story and closure as we know he has moved on from the breakup of his
relationship.
Laura Mulvey talks about the male gaze in the media. We challenge the representation of women in music videos. My research shows that 44%-81% of music videos contain sexual imagery. Women are far more likely than men to be presented in provocative or revealing clothing and sexually objectified, often through imagery linked to the sex industry, such as pole/lap dancing. We subvert this convention by having a fully clothed female character presented in a completely non-sexualised way. However, our female does not do any of the singing and is not shown to have any musical ability whatsoever. Women in music videos are frequently portrayed as decorative objects that dance and pose and do not play any instruments.
According the 1999 Children Now report, the majority of male characters in the media are heterosexual, associated with the world of work, and hide their emotions. While we adhere to the convention of the heterosexual character by showing his relationship with a female as well as another male-female romantic relationship, we challenge the other two as our lead protagonist has no association with work during the video and opens up to put his emotions on full display.
Our video adheres to Marx and Gramsci’s idea of hegemony involving the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class, who manipulate the culture of that society, as we feature white characters in a society where other races are still minorities and therefore whites are dominant.
Todorov’s narrative theory dictates that every narrative must follow this structure: equilibrium is disrupted, the characters recognise the disruption and attempt to fix it, and in the end, there is a new equilibrium in place. Our video contains all of the stages of Todorov’s theory, albeit edited out of order for a nonlinear structure. The story begins with the equilibrium of a boy in a relationship with a girl, the disruption is the girl having an affair, the recognition is the boy catching them in the act, the attempt to repair is a conversation between the two to try and work through their issues, and the new equilibrium is the boy having moved on from his girlfriend and happy with the way things worked out. We used this structure because audiences are accustomed to it and comfortable with those kinds of stories.
Vladimir Propp developed a theory about characters in media texts that suggest there are seven broad character tropes in all of the stories he studied. There are: the villain who struggles against the hero; the donor who prepares the hero or gives the hero some kind of magical object; the helper, possibly with magical powers, who helps the hero in the quest; the princess, the person that the hero marries, often sought for during the narrative; the false hero who is perceived as good character in beginning but later emerges as evil; the dispatcher who makes the lack known and sends the hero off; and the hero, also known as the victim, the seeker, the paladin, or the winner, who reacts to the donor, weds the princess, and struggles against the villain. Our video adheres to three of these tropes. Our main protagonist is the hero, the girlfriend who cheats on him is the villain, and the other boy she has the affair with is the helper in a way, because he helped to set the protagonist on the path to true happiness and helped him to realise he’s better off without a partner who is going to cheat on him.
Laura Mulvey talks about the male gaze in the media. We challenge the representation of women in music videos. My research shows that 44%-81% of music videos contain sexual imagery. Women are far more likely than men to be presented in provocative or revealing clothing and sexually objectified, often through imagery linked to the sex industry, such as pole/lap dancing. We subvert this convention by having a fully clothed female character presented in a completely non-sexualised way. However, our female does not do any of the singing and is not shown to have any musical ability whatsoever. Women in music videos are frequently portrayed as decorative objects that dance and pose and do not play any instruments.
According the 1999 Children Now report, the majority of male characters in the media are heterosexual, associated with the world of work, and hide their emotions. While we adhere to the convention of the heterosexual character by showing his relationship with a female as well as another male-female romantic relationship, we challenge the other two as our lead protagonist has no association with work during the video and opens up to put his emotions on full display.
Our video adheres to Marx and Gramsci’s idea of hegemony involving the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class, who manipulate the culture of that society, as we feature white characters in a society where other races are still minorities and therefore whites are dominant.
Todorov’s narrative theory dictates that every narrative must follow this structure: equilibrium is disrupted, the characters recognise the disruption and attempt to fix it, and in the end, there is a new equilibrium in place. Our video contains all of the stages of Todorov’s theory, albeit edited out of order for a nonlinear structure. The story begins with the equilibrium of a boy in a relationship with a girl, the disruption is the girl having an affair, the recognition is the boy catching them in the act, the attempt to repair is a conversation between the two to try and work through their issues, and the new equilibrium is the boy having moved on from his girlfriend and happy with the way things worked out. We used this structure because audiences are accustomed to it and comfortable with those kinds of stories.
Vladimir Propp developed a theory about characters in media texts that suggest there are seven broad character tropes in all of the stories he studied. There are: the villain who struggles against the hero; the donor who prepares the hero or gives the hero some kind of magical object; the helper, possibly with magical powers, who helps the hero in the quest; the princess, the person that the hero marries, often sought for during the narrative; the false hero who is perceived as good character in beginning but later emerges as evil; the dispatcher who makes the lack known and sends the hero off; and the hero, also known as the victim, the seeker, the paladin, or the winner, who reacts to the donor, weds the princess, and struggles against the villain. Our video adheres to three of these tropes. Our main protagonist is the hero, the girlfriend who cheats on him is the villain, and the other boy she has the affair with is the helper in a way, because he helped to set the protagonist on the path to true happiness and helped him to realise he’s better off without a partner who is going to cheat on him.
Thursday, 24 March 2016
Magazine ad
This is an advertisement I designed for a magazine, promoting Omega's album "Hello Yesterday," containing the song from our video, "Shine." I went with a very simple, black-and-white design showing Luke with a troubled look which I think is emotionally resonant and will play to our target audience who appreciate the work of troubled, emotionally tortured artists.
Wednesday, 23 March 2016
Digipak - lyrics panel
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| This is the lyrics panel, containing all the lyrics to the song "Shine" from our music video |
Digipak - front cover
 |
| This is the front cover of my digipak |
 |
| This is the back cover, containing the track list for the album |
 |
| The CD disc will sit on this panel |
 |
| This panel goes in the middle of the digipak |
 |
| This panel goes in the middle of the back of the digipak |
|
| This is the lyrics panel, containing all the lyrics to the song "Shine" from our music video |
Tuesday, 22 March 2016
Exam Practice Essay - Representation
An audience is the readership or viewership of a text or
media text, such as a television or radio programme, a newspaper, or a film.
Each media text is targeted at a certain audience called a demographic, which
refers to a section of the population sharing common characteristics, such as
age, sex, class etc.
Fans of other chosen genre of music, pop music, tend to be young, as it is a relatively new genre that only the current generation has had the chance to grow up with, whereas older audiences are engrained with older genres, such a rock, blues, jazz etc. One aspect of our research that suggested to us that young people listen to pop is that they are the most watched music videos on YouTube, on channels such as Vevo, which is a young generation’s medium of viewing which many older people who grew up in a world without the internet don’t know how to use.
Young listeners, if they are fans of pop, which most of them generally are, like to keep up with current trends in fashion, take a lot of pride in their personal appearance, enjoy going to parties with their friends where this music will be playing, and they like to dance, and so they like music that they can dance to but also that makes them feel something and taps into their emotions. “Shine” has a very fast beat that can be danced to but also has softly emotional lyrics, combining these two ideals in pop music.
We tailored our video to this young audience by having young actors play the parts. Our lead is a white male, with another white male and a white female as the supporting cast. This immediately makes the characters in the video relatable to the young people watching it. Young viewers will appreciate our skewering of old-fashioned values now considered by some to be false, for example we show that monogamy is a myth. The idea of dating and figuring out relationships and not being with the right person is a concept that young people will appreciate more than older people, most of whom will be married and not facing such struggles.
According to Denis McQuail, audiences need a reason to watch a media text, even if that reason is just to pass the time. I believe audiences would watch our music video for entertainment, because music videos add something new to the songs they like, and give a visual representation to watch whilst they listen to it. Also, Stuart Hall’s theory about encoding and decoding applies here. We encoded our video as the story of a boy trying to move on after finding his girlfriend cheating on him with another boy. However, it may be decoded by audiences as the story being about a boy who regrets whatever he did wrong that drove his girlfriend to have an affair.
Fans of other chosen genre of music, pop music, tend to be young, as it is a relatively new genre that only the current generation has had the chance to grow up with, whereas older audiences are engrained with older genres, such a rock, blues, jazz etc. One aspect of our research that suggested to us that young people listen to pop is that they are the most watched music videos on YouTube, on channels such as Vevo, which is a young generation’s medium of viewing which many older people who grew up in a world without the internet don’t know how to use.
Young listeners, if they are fans of pop, which most of them generally are, like to keep up with current trends in fashion, take a lot of pride in their personal appearance, enjoy going to parties with their friends where this music will be playing, and they like to dance, and so they like music that they can dance to but also that makes them feel something and taps into their emotions. “Shine” has a very fast beat that can be danced to but also has softly emotional lyrics, combining these two ideals in pop music.
We tailored our video to this young audience by having young actors play the parts. Our lead is a white male, with another white male and a white female as the supporting cast. This immediately makes the characters in the video relatable to the young people watching it. Young viewers will appreciate our skewering of old-fashioned values now considered by some to be false, for example we show that monogamy is a myth. The idea of dating and figuring out relationships and not being with the right person is a concept that young people will appreciate more than older people, most of whom will be married and not facing such struggles.
According to Denis McQuail, audiences need a reason to watch a media text, even if that reason is just to pass the time. I believe audiences would watch our music video for entertainment, because music videos add something new to the songs they like, and give a visual representation to watch whilst they listen to it. Also, Stuart Hall’s theory about encoding and decoding applies here. We encoded our video as the story of a boy trying to move on after finding his girlfriend cheating on him with another boy. However, it may be decoded by audiences as the story being about a boy who regrets whatever he did wrong that drove his girlfriend to have an affair.
Exam Practice Essay - Audience
An audience is the readership or viewership of a text or
media text, such as a television or radio programme, a newspaper, or a film.
Each media text is targeted at a certain audience called a demographic, which
refers to a section of the population sharing common characteristics, such as
age, sex, class etc.
Fans of other chosen genre of music, pop music, tend to be young, as it is a relatively new genre that only the current generation has had the chance to grow up with, whereas older audiences are engrained with older genres, such a rock, blues, jazz etc. One aspect of our research that suggested to us that young people listen to pop is that they are the most watched music videos on YouTube, on channels such as Vevo, which is a young generation’s medium of viewing which many older people who grew up in a world without the internet don’t know how to use.
Young listeners, if they are fans of pop, which most of them generally are, like to keep up with current trends in fashion, take a lot of pride in their personal appearance, enjoy going to parties with their friends where this music will be playing, and they like to dance, and so they like music that they can dance to but also that makes them feel something and taps into their emotions. “Shine” has a very fast beat that can be danced to but also has softly emotional lyrics, combining these two ideals in pop music.
We tailored our video to this young audience by having young actors play the parts. Our lead is a white male, with another white male and a white female as the supporting cast. This immediately makes the characters in the video relatable to the young people watching it. Young viewers will appreciate our skewering of old-fashioned values now considered by some to be false, for example we show that monogamy is a myth. The idea of dating and figuring out relationships and not being with the right person is a concept that young people will appreciate more than older people, most of whom will be married and not facing such struggles.
According to Denis McQuail, audiences need a reason to watch a media text, even if that reason is just to pass the time. I believe audiences would watch our music video for entertainment, because music videos add something new to the songs they like, and give a visual representation to watch whilst they listen to it. Also, Stuart Hall’s theory about encoding and decoding applies here. We encoded our video as the story of a boy trying to move on after finding his girlfriend cheating on him with another boy. However, it may be decoded by audiences as the story being about a boy who regrets whatever he did wrong that drove his girlfriend to have an affair.
Fans of other chosen genre of music, pop music, tend to be young, as it is a relatively new genre that only the current generation has had the chance to grow up with, whereas older audiences are engrained with older genres, such a rock, blues, jazz etc. One aspect of our research that suggested to us that young people listen to pop is that they are the most watched music videos on YouTube, on channels such as Vevo, which is a young generation’s medium of viewing which many older people who grew up in a world without the internet don’t know how to use.
Young listeners, if they are fans of pop, which most of them generally are, like to keep up with current trends in fashion, take a lot of pride in their personal appearance, enjoy going to parties with their friends where this music will be playing, and they like to dance, and so they like music that they can dance to but also that makes them feel something and taps into their emotions. “Shine” has a very fast beat that can be danced to but also has softly emotional lyrics, combining these two ideals in pop music.
We tailored our video to this young audience by having young actors play the parts. Our lead is a white male, with another white male and a white female as the supporting cast. This immediately makes the characters in the video relatable to the young people watching it. Young viewers will appreciate our skewering of old-fashioned values now considered by some to be false, for example we show that monogamy is a myth. The idea of dating and figuring out relationships and not being with the right person is a concept that young people will appreciate more than older people, most of whom will be married and not facing such struggles.
According to Denis McQuail, audiences need a reason to watch a media text, even if that reason is just to pass the time. I believe audiences would watch our music video for entertainment, because music videos add something new to the songs they like, and give a visual representation to watch whilst they listen to it. Also, Stuart Hall’s theory about encoding and decoding applies here. We encoded our video as the story of a boy trying to move on after finding his girlfriend cheating on him with another boy. However, it may be decoded by audiences as the story being about a boy who regrets whatever he did wrong that drove his girlfriend to have an affair.
Exam Practice Essay - Narrative
Todorov’s narrative theory dictates that every narrative
must follow this structure: equilibrium is disrupted, the characters recognise
the disruption and attempt to fix it, and in the end, there is a new
equilibrium in place. Our video contains all of the stages of Todorov’s theory,
albeit edited out of order for a nonlinear structure. The story begins with the
equilibrium of a boy in a relationship with a girl, the disruption is the girl
having an affair, the recognition is the boy catching them in the act, the attempt
to repair is a conversation between the two to try and work through their
issues, and the new equilibrium is the boy having moved on from his girlfriend
and happy with the way things worked out. We used this structure because
audiences are accustomed to it and comfortable with those kinds of stories.
Vladimir Propp developed a theory about characters in media texts that suggest there are seven broad character tropes in all of the stories he studied. There are: the villain who struggles against the hero; the donor who prepares the hero or gives the hero some kind of magical object; the helper, possibly with magical powers, who helps the hero in the quest; the princess, the person that the hero marries, often sought for during the narrative; the false hero who is perceived as good character in beginning but later emerges as evil; the dispatcher who makes the lack known and sends the hero off; and the hero, also known as the victim, the seeker, the paladin, or the winner, who reacts to the donor, weds the princess, and struggles against the villain. Our video adheres to three of these tropes. Our main protagonist is the hero, the girlfriend who cheats on him is the villain, and the other boy she has the affair with is the helper in a way, because he helped to set the protagonist on the path to true happiness and helped him to realise he’s better off without a partner who is going to cheat on him.
Andrew Goodwin has a theory that there are three categories about the relationship between what is conveyed in musical lyrics and what is on screen during music videos. Illustrative music videos are simply straightforward visual representations of what appears in the lyrics. Amplified music videos take the meaning of the lyrics and amplify them creatively to give them a surreal bent. Contradictory or disjunctured music videos are completely abstract, and the visuals bear no relation to the lyrics, music, song title or artist, and therefore contradict the other two categories. I believe our video is illustrative, as the “Shine” lyrics are about a confused man who is struggling with his love life, desperate to escape and only now just realising it, just like our lead character.
We used a closed structure as it is a convention of music videos and it is more satisfying for the audience to have closure. It is ambiguous in the sense that we don’t know where this boy is going with his life next, but we have the clear, definitive end to the story and closure as we know he has moved on from the breakup of his relationship.
Claude Levi-Strauss created a theory called binary opposition, which in music videos applies to the idea of juxtaposing two concepts which don’t agree with each other to create internal conflict for the character. The binary opposition in our video is love versus hate, as the boy loves the girl, but she hates him enough to cheat, and he is filled with hate upon catching them and when he leaves her. He then goes out to the coast where he learns to love himself and have a sense of self-worth.
Vladimir Propp developed a theory about characters in media texts that suggest there are seven broad character tropes in all of the stories he studied. There are: the villain who struggles against the hero; the donor who prepares the hero or gives the hero some kind of magical object; the helper, possibly with magical powers, who helps the hero in the quest; the princess, the person that the hero marries, often sought for during the narrative; the false hero who is perceived as good character in beginning but later emerges as evil; the dispatcher who makes the lack known and sends the hero off; and the hero, also known as the victim, the seeker, the paladin, or the winner, who reacts to the donor, weds the princess, and struggles against the villain. Our video adheres to three of these tropes. Our main protagonist is the hero, the girlfriend who cheats on him is the villain, and the other boy she has the affair with is the helper in a way, because he helped to set the protagonist on the path to true happiness and helped him to realise he’s better off without a partner who is going to cheat on him.
Andrew Goodwin has a theory that there are three categories about the relationship between what is conveyed in musical lyrics and what is on screen during music videos. Illustrative music videos are simply straightforward visual representations of what appears in the lyrics. Amplified music videos take the meaning of the lyrics and amplify them creatively to give them a surreal bent. Contradictory or disjunctured music videos are completely abstract, and the visuals bear no relation to the lyrics, music, song title or artist, and therefore contradict the other two categories. I believe our video is illustrative, as the “Shine” lyrics are about a confused man who is struggling with his love life, desperate to escape and only now just realising it, just like our lead character.
We used a closed structure as it is a convention of music videos and it is more satisfying for the audience to have closure. It is ambiguous in the sense that we don’t know where this boy is going with his life next, but we have the clear, definitive end to the story and closure as we know he has moved on from the breakup of his relationship.
Claude Levi-Strauss created a theory called binary opposition, which in music videos applies to the idea of juxtaposing two concepts which don’t agree with each other to create internal conflict for the character. The binary opposition in our video is love versus hate, as the boy loves the girl, but she hates him enough to cheat, and he is filled with hate upon catching them and when he leaves her. He then goes out to the coast where he learns to love himself and have a sense of self-worth.
Friday, 18 March 2016
Thursday, 14 January 2016
How can God of War and Kratos be considered an example of postmodernism?
God of War is a third-person action-adventure game that
follows its lead protagonist Kratos, a demigod and Spartan warrior, on his
quest to kill Ares, the God of War, after he tricks Kratos into murdering his
family. Postmodernism is a movement recently established now that tropes,
conventions and stereotypes within media have been set. It subverts these by
blurring the lines between reality and fiction, and good and evil, and recycling
old concepts with a fresh spin.
Kratos is a postmodern character as he is an antihero. This
means he lacks heroic attributes. He is a killer and struggles to control his
rage. Since the death of his family (by his own hand), he stopped caring. He
goes around killing everybody in his path, not just antagonists who mean him
harm but also innocent civilians without reason. He is barbaric, and wreaks
havoc without considering the ramifications his questionable actions might
have. This dubious, ugly, aggressive character contrasts with a typical
videogame hero such as Nathan Drake from the Uncharted series.
Kratos does not have the appearance of a traditional hero. He
looks more like a villain the hero has to defeat. He has a bald head, he’s covered
in tattoos that serve as emotional scars, he’s massively built with huge,
rippling muscles, he’s never happy, always grimacing, and carries big,
dangerous weapons such as swords or chains. He skin was tainted pale white by
the ashes of his family, which gives him a frightening and formidable
appearance.
God of War is a postmodern game as the story has its roots in
Greek mythology. The makers of the game have taken the characters and
conventions of Greek mythology and given them a new spin with graphic violence
and sexual content, which makes it more contemporary for a modern audience that
has come to expect this from current games. The antagonist is a god, who an
entire civilisation of people once worshipped, and has now been flipped to the
point that audiences are expected to root against them.
The bloody violence is so excessive and gratuitous that one
might take it as an ironic jab at the action-adventure genre, which is
typically controversial for its violent content, especially among Christian groups.
It may also be intended as irony that a game that features a villainous ‘god’
that the player must kill that might offend the Christian community is about an
outdated god from mythology, rather than a religious deity that is worshipped
today.
In conclusion, I believe the game God of War and its
character Kratos are both separately postmodern, each in their own way. Usually
a character and its game are one and the same, and the character is synonymous
with the game rather than being open to its own critical and cultural
examination, but God of War and Kratos are each operating on their own playing
field, and therefore open to their own examination.
Tuesday, 5 January 2016
Finished Editing
Finally, after three gruelling months of filming and simultaneously editing while we shot, all the footage has been edited.
And it's great. The video is great. It's a good video. It's certainly better than half the music videos I've ever seen.
And it's great. The video is great. It's a good video. It's certainly better than half the music videos I've ever seen.
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