Q1.a. Real conventions of Media Texts

Explain how far your understanding of the conventions of existing media influenced the way you created your own media products. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how this understanding developed over time (25 marks)

Throughout my 2 years of studying media, I have produced a film opening for my AS product, titled Amnesia, and during my year in A2 I, along with 2 other group members, produced and created a cross promotional package promoting a new artist, named iSO. During the production of both my foundation and advanced portfolios my understanding of the conventions of existing media influenced my choices often.

At AS, we had to research the typical conventions of teen drama’s as this was our chosen topic for our AS film opening, Amnesia. In order to understand how our characters should act or behave we researched the most common symptoms and the ways in which an Amnesia sufferer can cope. This helped us to relate the narrative to the behaviour and reactions our character would have. When researching this topic and theme we discovered the film Memento, which helped us to portray the behaviours and typical reactions of an amnesia sufferer as the protagonist in this film was dealing with amnesia presently. The theme of the film also stuck to memory loss which meant we were able to understand the thoughts and processes the character would go through so that our protagonist knew how to relate.

I looked at the opening of Toy Story where Andy and the toys are introduced to us who are the main focus of film. It focuses on the representations within this opening scene and the ideas of how the toys are portrayed. In the opening scene Andy is initially introducing the toys to us as the audience. We get to meet Andy and more importantly we are introduced to the toys who are the main focus of the film. Firstly, we learn Woody has some importance as he is featured more often and is played with more by Andy. The ideas and representations are made to seem true to the audience by taking the concept of children making up stories with their toys actually coming to life and having their own independent adventures. Richard Dyers theory is appropriate in relation to the opening of Toy Story as he believes that stereotype comes down to power and that those who have power stereotype those who don't. We also looked at the influence of camera shots within this opening sequence as the wide variety and frequent use of different shots enabled us to experiment with the types and amounts of shots. We realised the pace of the shots kept up with the pace of the narrative so we tried to replicate this in our film opening as it made sense to the audience.

When researching the titles for my film opening, I looked at the titles of Paranorman which is typically more of a children’s film so the titles were mostly cartoon and animated with a character matched to each title. However, from watching this title sequence we took away the order in which the titles appeared which mostly indicated the importance of the role. We also took note of the timings as they appeared and how long they stayed on screen as this was important so that our audience were able to gain an insight as to who produced, distributed and edited our film opening. 

At A2, we decided that our music video and new artist would be classified as the rap genre. However, as my knowledge into this genre was limited, my research into the genre and to the music videos was vital for my understanding of the conventions. I researched several artist who were in the same genre as the one we wanted to portray for our new artist. Kendrick Lamar is an American rapper born in Compton, a city known for producing great rappers like Dr Dre, Coolio and Tyga. He then went on to release Good Kid, m.A.A.d city which was one of the biggest Hip-Hop albums of the decade and has already been dubbed a classic album by many reviewers. With singles like Swimming Pools (Drank), Kendrick managed to reach a global audience to people who don't even particularly like Hip-Hop music but liked the singles. We discovered another rap artist who was less known; Logic is an American rapper born in Maryland, where he gained a lot of fans through the internet and is part of the RattPack group. He is signed to VisionaryMusicGroup and DefJamRecordings. His latest album Under Pressure received wide critical acclaim. Logic is one of the less commercial rappers still releasing a lot of his tracks on SoundCloud for fans to listen to for free. From this we were able to identity record labels that they were signed to and we could relate this to our artist as we wanted to make everything realistic.

For the website, we researched similar artist’s websites so that we were able to identify what were common features were important to keep and what weren’t. Logic's website is like heaven for Logic fans as it has everything they could ask for all in one place. I really like the blog on the home page as I think it's a great way of keeping fans updated but it's also personal. However, I thought the Home Page was too text/content heavy so when we create the iSO website we will incorporate a blog into it but on a seperate page like a news page for example.  We liked the layout of the store page, Logic doesn't have many products but we thought the way they are shown is good. He also liked the header image for the store. After doing a photoshoot, he will edit something similar for iSO's. We then looked at G-Eazy’s website as it has a very simplistic effective layout, which I liked. We will use G-Eazy's home page as a template when creating iSO's as it has everything necessary and looks professional. The other pages also had a great layout but didn't have much content. G-Eazy's store is exceptional and we will refer to it when designing iSO's store and the products in it. The range of products on G-Eazy's store is huge and they are all high quality items.  

Q1.a. Post-Production

Describe a range of creative decisions that you made in post-production and how these decisions made a difference to the final outcomes. Refer to a range of examples in your answers to show how these skills developed over time (25 marks)

Throughout my 2 years of studying media, my post production skills have improved especially, editing as I have gained a better understanding of the programme, Adobe Premiere and how to use it. I have used creative decisions during post production to produce a film opening for my AS product, titled Amnesia, and during my year in A2, I, along with 2 other group members, produced a cross promotional package promoting a new artist, under the name of iSO. During the production of both my foundation and advanced portfolios, post production was an important feature as it enabled me to develop my skills further in terms of editing and creativity along with that. At AS, my skills using all software were limited and basic whereas at A2 I was able to use my knowledge and gain even more technical ability to achieve a more professional and industry standard level of production of my work.

At AS post production stage, it gave me a chance to put my editing skills into practise. Before AS I was unfamiliar with the software therefore I had to start fresh and learn how to use the programme and then put the effects to use.  At AS, our first task was to familiarise ourselves with, the editing programme we would use throughout the two years, Adobe premiere, by creating a video of dancing bears. This included the basic skills of importing clips and placing them onto the timeline using the simple cutting tools. We then had the opportunity to recreate the opening scene of Juno with a partner. We had to be able to reproduce an identical version of it including the filming, costumes and editing. This enabled me to become familiar with using transitions and effects on certain clips in order to get the desired effect to the original clip. I used a programme called Adobe Premiere to create my film opening, Amnesia. This allowed me to start with a blank timeline and rearrange shots to fit an order which I felt was appropriate. This involved me using my basic skills for this programme. The pace of the film opening was relatively slow, therefore I didn’t need to cut the shots often which allowed me to place longer pieces of footage. When I placed the footage onto the timeline, I was able to apply basic filters onto the footage, for example black and white filtering, by applying a black and white filter over selected clips. I was able to add more simple transitions such as ‘Dip to Black’ and changing the speed. For my film opening I needed to add some titles over the shots for it to look realistic, therefore I learnt how to add still titles and rolling titles. I learnt about the pace of narrative for film opening but my skills developed drastically when editing my music video.

At A2, my skills were still fairly limited but I was able to apply simple effects and transitions onto the clips placed into my timeline. We were given a task whereby we had to film 5 different shots and then edit them using Adobe Premiere which was really useful to me and helped me as it gave me an insight into all the different shots and effects we can use in our music video to keep it interesting. It also helped as I was able to practise and expand on my editing skills when I had to edit a cloning shot, split screen, reverse shots, stop animation and depth of field. It enabled me to develop my skills as I used YouTube tutorials to expand skills and then be able to put them into practise in my music video. I was able to progress because the advanced portfolio was less restricting in terms of genre as our rap genre is quite broad which enabled me to use different tools and effects which wouldn’t have been appropriate at AS. My preliminary task also helped me to develop my skills as I had to edit an exact copy of Britney Spears’ ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’. However, this video limited me from showing off the new skills I had developed as it only need some simple transitions and cutting. I sped up the occasional shot too so that the shot would fit in with the timing of the original video. My music video enabled me to develop my skills, particularly in editing as it was suitable to add more effects, transitions and cuts. The pace of the song was a lot faster than my AS film opening so I needed to make sure I cut the shots a lot faster to keep up with the pace and to make it look realistic.  I used several effects including dip to black which was a simple effect that I already knew how to use along with speeding some of the shots up. Although, I developed my skills by learning how to use some new effects for example an animation which creates a blinking effect. To create this I needed to put two shots together and have them move up and down at the same time, this creates the ‘blinking effect’. Some of footage wasn’t too wobbly when we filmed it so I decided to add a new effect I’d learnt to use which was a warp stabiliser onto some shots which made them look more professional. In order to show of the skills I’d learnt throughout the year but also the ones I had developed, I added a feathering effect which blurred the outline of the shot to give the shot an edgy effect. Changing the colour of the background was a new editing skill that I put into practise for my music video and it worked well in my video because the short bursts of colour contrasted the darker colours and background within my digipak and website. The base colour was yellow and so you need to select the clip and chose the eye dropper tool which allows you to change the colour from yellow to whichever colour you wish. We used this several times throughout the middle of the video as we decided it was effective. I altered the brightness and contrast levels in my music video so that all the shots looked the same as looking back at my film opening, the brightness changes on most shots which doesn’t look professional.

At AS, I produced a film poster for which I had to use Adobe Photoshop. Before creating a film poster, I had to create a production logo using the same programme I would use for my film poster. When creating my production logo, I changed the levels of the brightness and contrast so that the logo and text looked together. I also changed the shadowing of the original image so that it looked effective yet recognising. At AS, I produced a film poster for which I had to use Adobe premiere. My skills were basic when it came to using this programme but from watching YouTube tutorials, I soon learnt some simple yet effective techniques I could incorporate into my film poster. I was able to create simple layers when making the poster as I wanted a background image but then I also wanted some writing to feature over the top. I applied a black and white filter effect to the image so that synergy was created between my products. I then added text over the top to create a realistic film poster. In the post production of this ancillary text, I gathered all the basic skills I would need in order to create a simple yet effective film poster.

At A2, I produced a digipak, using Adobe Photoshop, and a website, using a new programme, Wix. I had to use Photoshop much more than at AS so I decided to teach myself some specific skills through watching YouTube tutorials. This meant I could incorporate some more complex effects into my digipak and album cover which would make them as good as they could be and interesting to look at. For my album cover, I added some colours around the outside of the image of iSO which represented the coffin outline as we tried to include this from the video, whereby the character is being buried alive. I also added some text onto this album cover, but experimented with the way in which it was displayed on the cover as we wanted it to stand out but didn’t want it too appear to large. We were able to apply effects which made the title change shape and adjust the shadowing and colour to it. For my digipak, we also used adobe premiere as it allowed us to experiment with new effects to make our digipak unique. This enabled me to add layers to my image with text on top and I added different effects to change the brightness of the background. At A2, I also used Wix in order to create my website, however I was new to using this programme but I discovered how to use it through trial and error as I was able to experiment with the layout, style, fonts and content. 

Q1.a. Research and Planning

Explain how your research and planning skills developed over time and how these decisions contributed to your media productions outcomes. Refer to a range of examples in your answer (25 marks)

Throughout my 2 years of studying media, I have researched for and planned for a film opening for my AS product and during my year in A2, I, along with 2 other group members, researched for and planned a cross promotional package promoting a new artist. During the production of both my foundation and advanced portfolios, research and planning contributed a massive part in allowing me to develop my ideas and understanding of the topics studied.

Research plays a big role when it comes to producing any media product or ancillary texts and is vital in order to ensure your product is suited to your intended target audience. When starting AS secondary research was important for us as media students so that we could gain an understanding of the specific theories involved. We researched theories and theorists and applied them to our film openings. We also researched into the genre of our film opening as we didn’t initially fit into any specific genres. After researching the conventions of Teen Drama we decided we would fall into this category as the props, narrative and costumes we wanted to use linked more clearly to this genre. We learnt about semiotics and how we could apply them to our film openings or how the audience could perceive our video. This helped us to understand all the different connotations of shots and locations within our film opening. For my ancillary texts, I had to research the layout and content of advertisement and which style of advertising would be suitable for my product. This helped me to develop my skills as I gained a further understanding of what conventions would link with certain genres. The font research was important to my product as when advertising I wanted to make sure the font was simple and clear so that it could be easily read from afar of near. I carried this out by experimenting with different fonts on a website and then asked people what they thought.

In A2 all of my research was carried out with increased detail and specific details were massively important to my music video and ensuring it falls and is perceived to be in the right genre. Research into the genre was important because it plays a vital role in being the main referral point for all of my research. We also did some research into theories of music videos, for example Andrew Goodwin and Carol Vernallis, and how their theories have been applied to previous music videos. This helped me to understand what content a music video should contain and what stages are involved, that I should follow, in order for my music video to be successful. The research that we carried out as to who would distribute our artists album was thorough as we felt this would be an important decision to how successful our marketing campaign would be. We didn’t want to promote our artist through mainstream distributors, so we researched similar white rappers in order to compare the ways in which they distributed their products and who distributed them. When researching our audience, looking into which ages our artist would target was difficult as it meant we were limited because of the bad language so we decided, after researching similar artists with similar use of bad language, that we would aim it at 15-22 year olds but anyone younger with a particular interest in the rap genre was welcomed. Skills research played a vital role in my A2 portfolio as I had to make sure I was able to include new skills and effects into my music video to show off everything I had learnt to make it the best I could. When researching most effects to use on the editing programme, Adobe Premiere, I used YouTube to search for tutorials which would guide me through the process of adding new effects to my work. This was the simplest and least time consuming way as I was able to watch a video and follow it step by step, which I could then apply to my music video. However, when using Wix became more trial and error as it was a fairly easy site to navigate and use and I just wanted to be able to experiment with different layouts, styles and content. This meant I could update and change my website to fit in with whatever promotional events and seasonal advertisements were current at a particular time.

At AS, my planning wasn’t very detailed and didn’t relate to my final film opening as we changed our original concept for the opening more than once therefore the planning was mixed. For our AS, the location recce was difficult to get at first as we filmed in Southend which wasn’t local to any of us so we had to rely on google earth images for us to choose where exactly we wanted to film. Once we were there and filming we were able to see the places for ourselves and we had to change some locations as they didn’t look as though they did in previous images which suited our film opening. The prop we used in our film opening was a simple scrapbook which we used to tie into our narrative. Planning the use of the prop was much easier than actually filming with the scrapbook as when it came to editing, some shots featured the scrapbook and some shots didn’t because of the order we actually filmed in. This should have been resolved through the use of the shooting schedule and storyboard as we had completed both of these and taken them with us. However the shooting schedule didn’t fit after the morning of filming as we had to adapt the footage we shot because one of our original chosen locations was unavailable to be filmed at. The shooting schedule needed to be filled out in much more detail so that we were aware of which types of shots we wanted as well as angles and the position of our characters. My storyboard was too detailed with the length of shots that we didn’t have the important things written on it such as when the character did and didn’t have the scrapbook on her as this became confusing once we’d shot all of our footage. I also needed to make sure that the shots were all individual as when shooting this was mixed up and very time consuming having to go through each shot individually.

At A2, my planning was undertaken with extended detail and specific aim in order to stay on task with all the things we needed to discuss and plan so that we didn’t waste time and get tasks wrong. My storyboard at A2 included detail about important factors which would help us when filming the shots. I made sure that I had included what type of shot each of them would be and the location. I also added a short description of what I wanted the character to do or feel so that each shot was filmed like we’d planned. To make sure we planned the locations right, especially the graveyard, we went out as a group to search the locations to check they were appropriate and then we were able to place which shots we wanted to shoot in more precise places within a location.  For example when researching for costumes of similar rap artists, we wanted to get this just right so we compared the colours and items of clothing white rappers wore. We also researched in great detail about the conventions of the rap industry as this was important for us to execute correctly as we wanted to portray the correct image for our new artist. We wanted minimal props in our music video as we felt this wasn’t all that common to see in rap music video. However, we did plan for our character to place a flower on a grave. In order to execute this correctly we needed to plan the shots we wanted which would involve the flower. 

Stuart Hall

Encoding and Decoding tests AND preferred, negotiated and oppositional readings. Thinks that audiences will react in different ways to media products. 

In the 1980's and 90's, a lot of research was undertaken on the way individuals received and interpreted a text, and how their individual circumstances (gender, class, age, ethnicity) affected their reading. The text is encoded by the producer, and decoded by the reader, and there may be major differences between two different readings of the same code. However, by using recognised codes and conventions, and by drawing upon audience expectations relating to aspects such as genre and use of stars, the producers can position the audience and thus create a certain amount of agreement on what the code means; known as a preferred reading. 

Frankfurt School

Hypodermic needle theory. Thinks audiences might be directly influenced by media products. 

The hypodermic needle theory suggests that audiences passively receive the information transmitted via a media text, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data. This theory was developed when the mass media was still fairly new - radio and cinema were less than 2 decades old. Governments had just discovered the power of advertising to communicate a message, and propaganda to try and sway populations to their way of thinking. 

Blumler and Katz

Think that audiences want media products that gratify particular needs (uses and gratifications) e.g escape, entertainment etc. Individuals might choose and use a text for the following purposes:

- Diversion - escape from everyday problems and routine 
- Personal Relationships - using the media for emotional and other interaction, e.g. substituting soap operas for family life
- Personal Identity - finding yourself reflected in texts, learning behaviour and values from texts
- Surveillance - Information which could be useful for living, e.g weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains 

Richard Dyer

Thinks that audiences want media products that offer them Utopian solutions to their problems.

Dyer’s Utopian theory is linked with the Uses and Gratifications theory:

- audiences consume media products with a clear set of pleasures to draw from that experience

- Utopian theory = gratification that allows people to escape from their real lives

- reality = full of negatives and unfullfilment

- the ‘mediated‘ world represents an escape