How does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our media product uses conventions of a romance by showing a race against time to show emotions of love, and we chose to create a character that is representative of the genre in a way that the character embodies things that are associated with love, for example art, as when asked what characteristics the main character should have, participants of our questionnaire suggested ‘creative’ ‘quirky’ ‘carefree’ and ‘shy’. We also chose to use a female lead character, as our questionnaire results said that 70% of participants preferred a female main character. However in a way our main female character challenged conventions of the romance genre in a way that she was not stereotypically the ‘average’ woman. We wanted to challenge this convention in order to provide a different way for the audience to use the media for diversion and personal relationships.
Another way we challenged a convention of the romance genre is that out film location is at the beach, when typical romance films are based in the city. We chose to use the beach, particularly Brighton Pier for it being an iconic place in England, therefore many people will be able to use our product for a realistic type of diversion in terms of location.
25/04/2010
24/04/2010
RESEARCH FOR SLIDE SHOW
Theories
As part of our research we looked at theories on media. One was the uses and gratifications theory, where individuals use media for diversion, personal relationships, personal identity and surveillance. Therefore we wanted our film opening to provide some of those factors to entice the audience, we included diversion, personal relationships and personal identity through the characters, mise en scene and location.
Another theory we looked at was the reception theory, the idea that different people receive and interpret a text differently and that their individual circumstances (gender, class, age, ethnicity) affect their decoding of what is encoded by the producers . To avoid major differences in readings of the same code, we used recognised codes and conventions to draw upon audience expectations relating to aspects such as genre and mise en scene, and therefore created a certain amount of agreement on what the code means.
Romance as our chosen genre
The main narrative of a romantic genre follows a construction of finding new love, or falling in love. Which is usually centred around a central woman or male character. Often emotions are dealt with that target the female market as they are put into a position to feel emotional from the narrative of the film, as they can usually relate to the main female characters situations and issues that they express around relationships and love. This is an audience pleasure as audiences can seek gratification needs from the media, by using the uses and gratification model. For example audiences can build a relationship or identify themselves with the female character.
After analysing some romance films such as Bridget Jones’ Diary, The Time Traveller’s Wife and Love actually we found there were similarities:
-The leading female character is looking for love, or falls in love, or is heartbroken but saved by love. (narrative)
-Iconography /misenscene, and camera angles are similar – for example the couple running up to each other and embracing in love as the camera seeks a close up shot of their faces
-A race against time, to express emotions of love
-Non diegetic music that creates a climax and tense atmosphere
-Generic types, characters that are associated with the genre. For example in Bridget Jones’ Diary there is the stereotypical good looking business man, and Bridget is the stereotypical average English woman
As part of our research we looked at theories on media. One was the uses and gratifications theory, where individuals use media for diversion, personal relationships, personal identity and surveillance. Therefore we wanted our film opening to provide some of those factors to entice the audience, we included diversion, personal relationships and personal identity through the characters, mise en scene and location.
Another theory we looked at was the reception theory, the idea that different people receive and interpret a text differently and that their individual circumstances (gender, class, age, ethnicity) affect their decoding of what is encoded by the producers . To avoid major differences in readings of the same code, we used recognised codes and conventions to draw upon audience expectations relating to aspects such as genre and mise en scene, and therefore created a certain amount of agreement on what the code means.
Romance as our chosen genre
The main narrative of a romantic genre follows a construction of finding new love, or falling in love. Which is usually centred around a central woman or male character. Often emotions are dealt with that target the female market as they are put into a position to feel emotional from the narrative of the film, as they can usually relate to the main female characters situations and issues that they express around relationships and love. This is an audience pleasure as audiences can seek gratification needs from the media, by using the uses and gratification model. For example audiences can build a relationship or identify themselves with the female character.
After analysing some romance films such as Bridget Jones’ Diary, The Time Traveller’s Wife and Love actually we found there were similarities:
-The leading female character is looking for love, or falls in love, or is heartbroken but saved by love. (narrative)
-Iconography /misenscene, and camera angles are similar – for example the couple running up to each other and embracing in love as the camera seeks a close up shot of their faces
-A race against time, to express emotions of love
-Non diegetic music that creates a climax and tense atmosphere
-Generic types, characters that are associated with the genre. For example in Bridget Jones’ Diary there is the stereotypical good looking business man, and Bridget is the stereotypical average English woman
EVALUATION QUESTIONS
Media evaluation questions and answers
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The current overbearing representation of teenagers has connotations of criminality, drugs, being out of control, alcohol and trouble-seeking. We aimed to represent teenagers as mature and ‘average’ but with slightly younger characteristics-such as lack of time keeping from the female protagonist and time lapse shots of the male protagonist waiting.
Our media product uses different techniques to represent an ‘indie’(which is short for individual, creative) style social group through sound, editing, camera shots and mise en scene. The female protagonist is dressed mellow colours and floral patterns, this represents the current ‘indie’ style of females. She is surrounded by artwork in the establishing shot, art is a main focus of ‘indie’ for its expressiveness. The male protagonist is also dressed in current ‘indie’ style, both of the characters are not dressed in designer clothes or well known brand names because the term ‘indie’ embodies not being mainstream.
The social group is also represented through our choice of soundtrack, the fact that we used music from an unsigned and uncopyrighted shows this in itself, however the style of music is a mix of acoustic, folk, and indie to represent the social group.
The editing effects we used were sketch-like for the credits, art is typically seen as a factor of the ‘indie’ social group as it is a form of creativity and expression, and that is what the term ‘indie’ is based on, being individual and expressive.
Our camera shots also are art focused, as they are bright and colourful, and the location is at the seaside which is a place of natural beauty, another factor of ‘indie’.
What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
We have learned a lot and come to have a good understanding of the whole process involved in creating a movie sequence, using the camera, tripod, imovie software on the apple mac and much more. Operating the camera and tripod was not very hard, though we learned that it could be difficult to align the camera to take a level shot, or that the tripod was sometimes stiff. We accommodated to this by taking extra time to make sure the camera was in suitable positioning and turn the camera while holding it, not just using the handle on the tripod.
We also learned how to use the program imovie on the apple mac. Once we learned which keys to press to perform actions it was fairly easy to edit our camera shots. We also made use of the video fx options on our work with the credits. However sometimes the mac froze when we had been doing a large amount of editing, so we had to wait until it worked again.
Another program we learned to use on the mac was garageband. This is software that we could use to make a soundtrack for our product, we made a sequence of music but in the end we decided that it was best to use music from a band because it was done professionally and sounded better for our movie opening.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The current overbearing representation of teenagers has connotations of criminality, drugs, being out of control, alcohol and trouble-seeking. We aimed to represent teenagers as mature and ‘average’ but with slightly younger characteristics-such as lack of time keeping from the female protagonist and time lapse shots of the male protagonist waiting.
Our media product uses different techniques to represent an ‘indie’(which is short for individual, creative) style social group through sound, editing, camera shots and mise en scene. The female protagonist is dressed mellow colours and floral patterns, this represents the current ‘indie’ style of females. She is surrounded by artwork in the establishing shot, art is a main focus of ‘indie’ for its expressiveness. The male protagonist is also dressed in current ‘indie’ style, both of the characters are not dressed in designer clothes or well known brand names because the term ‘indie’ embodies not being mainstream.
The social group is also represented through our choice of soundtrack, the fact that we used music from an unsigned and uncopyrighted shows this in itself, however the style of music is a mix of acoustic, folk, and indie to represent the social group.
The editing effects we used were sketch-like for the credits, art is typically seen as a factor of the ‘indie’ social group as it is a form of creativity and expression, and that is what the term ‘indie’ is based on, being individual and expressive.
Our camera shots also are art focused, as they are bright and colourful, and the location is at the seaside which is a place of natural beauty, another factor of ‘indie’.
What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
We have learned a lot and come to have a good understanding of the whole process involved in creating a movie sequence, using the camera, tripod, imovie software on the apple mac and much more. Operating the camera and tripod was not very hard, though we learned that it could be difficult to align the camera to take a level shot, or that the tripod was sometimes stiff. We accommodated to this by taking extra time to make sure the camera was in suitable positioning and turn the camera while holding it, not just using the handle on the tripod.
We also learned how to use the program imovie on the apple mac. Once we learned which keys to press to perform actions it was fairly easy to edit our camera shots. We also made use of the video fx options on our work with the credits. However sometimes the mac froze when we had been doing a large amount of editing, so we had to wait until it worked again.
Another program we learned to use on the mac was garageband. This is software that we could use to make a soundtrack for our product, we made a sequence of music but in the end we decided that it was best to use music from a band because it was done professionally and sounded better for our movie opening.
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