For Question 1(b) you have to select one production and evaluate it in relation to a media concept. This will be one of these:
- Genre
- Narrative
- Representation
- Audience
- Media language
Past Questions:
January 2010 - Analyse one of your productions in terms of representation.
June 2010 - genre
January 2011 - narrative
June 2011 - audience
January 2012 - representation
June 2012 - media language
January 2013 - narrative
June 2013 - representation
June 2014 - genre
June 2015 - narrative
Basic essay structure for 1b (Choose only ONE product to write about):
Para 1 Intro:
1. First, define the concept you have been given in the question. For example, for Narrative you might say that every text tells a story. Add a quotation, such as for genre, "Genre is a type" (Daniel Chandler, 2001).
2. Outline the production you've chosen to evaluate.
3. Tell the examiner you're going to discuss (x) number of ideas about the concept. Use no more than 5 theories in your answer (so you'll need to have learnt about 6-7 theories in total).
para 2: Using the theorists, describe some of the key features of the concept you are being asked to apply. Outline two or three of the theories/ideas of particular writers, relating them to your production.
para 3: Start to apply the concept, making close reference to your product and to other examples to show how the concept is evident in it.
para 4: Show ways in which ideas work in relation to three areas of your product - production, distribution and exchange - and also ways in which those ideas might not apply/could be challenged.
para 5: Conclusion - Sum up by returning to the question and, having discussed key issues, say how your product follows or challenges the conventions of that issue
Tips for each concept from Pete Fraser, Chief Examiner:
1. Genre
Discuss how this changes over time and how the industry uses it to help find audiences and distribute work, and how YOU have used this knowledge. If you’ve made a music video at A2 level, an analysis of the video would need to set it in relation to the forms and conventions shown in such videos, particularly for specific types of music. But it would not simply comprise a list of those conventions. There are a whole host of theories of genre and writers with different approaches. Some of it could be used to inform your writing about your production piece. Some you could try are: Altman, Grant and Neale- all are cited in the wikipedia page here.1. Andrew Goodwin, "Dancing in the Distraction Factory" (1993)
Quotation from Andrew Goodwin: "Music videos are simply an extension of the lyrics."
Goodwin's theory intro and tasks from Naamah Hill
Also see this good example of Goodwin's theories in practice at:
http://mrsblacksmedia2.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/andrew-goodwin-music-video-theory/
Genre as a concept is complicated. See textbook p35: Should we read genre as a noun or an adjective? Mark Reid (2001) asks the challenging and critical question: "How something is categorised is determined by who does it, for whom, where, and when. The same is true for films" (and, in our case, for music videos).
Reid uses the example of tomato puree, suggesting we ask the philosophical question: what would happen to this item if it were shelved in another part of the shop? Would the 'thing' itself be any different? You could use Reid's quotation at the beginning of your essay, then move on to how your own work fits into Reid's categories of 'who, for whom, where and when'.
David Buckingham, Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Loughborough University, argues that 'genre is not... simply "given" by the culture: rather, it is in a constant process of negotiation and change' (Buckingham 1993, 137). Also see this good example of Goodwin's theories in practice at:
http://mrsblacksmedia2.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/andrew-goodwin-music-video-theory/
Genre as a concept is complicated. See textbook p35: Should we read genre as a noun or an adjective? Mark Reid (2001) asks the challenging and critical question: "How something is categorised is determined by who does it, for whom, where, and when. The same is true for films" (and, in our case, for music videos).
Reid uses the example of tomato puree, suggesting we ask the philosophical question: what would happen to this item if it were shelved in another part of the shop? Would the 'thing' itself be any different? You could use Reid's quotation at the beginning of your essay, then move on to how your own work fits into Reid's categories of 'who, for whom, where and when'.
Genre Quotations to use:
"Genre is a type" (Chandler, 2001) (see theory page)
For Chick Flicks, use this quotation from the book 'Chick Flicks: Contemporary Women at the Movies' (2007, Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young): The chick flick is, "in the simplest, broadest sense, a commercial film that applies to a female audience". See article: http://www.culturacritica.cc/2015/01/the-film-industry-and-the-chick-flick-genre/?lang=en
2. Narrative
Discuss how you have structured your product to create a story (or how you have deliberately NOT followed conventions to create something new, different, edgy...). A film opening or trailer will be ideal for this, as they both depend upon ideas about narrative in order to function. An opening must set up some of the issues that the rest of the film’s narrative will deal with, but must not give too much away, since it is only an opening and you would want the audience to carry on watching! Likewise a trailer must draw upon some elements of the film’s imaginary complete narrative in order to entice the viewer to watch it, again without giving too much away. If you made a short film, you will have been capturing a complete narrative, which gives you something complete to analyse. If you did a music video, the chances are that it was more performance based, maybe interspersed with some fragments of narrative. In all these cases, there is enough about narrative in the product to make it worth analysis. The chances are you have been introduced to a number of theories about narrative, but just in case, here’s a link to a PDF by Andrea Joyce, which summarises four of them, including Propp and Todorov.3. Representation
Discuss how you've mediated representations of social groups or subcultures, etc, to create your own production. If you take a video you have made for your coursework, you will almost certainly have people in it. If the topic is representation, then your task is to look at how those representations work in your video. You could apply some of the ideas used in the AS TV Drama exam here- how does your video construct a representation of gender, ethnicity or age for example? You need also to refer to some critics who have written about representation or theories of media representation and attempt to apply those (or argue with them).See the PowerPoint below for key points and theories:
Going further: Interesting writers on representation and identity include Richard Dyer, Angela McRobbie and David Gauntlett. See what they say...
Exemplar Response for REPRESENTATON
Analyse Representation in one of your Coursework Productions.
I will be analysing my music video that we filmed and edited for our main task which formed part of my Advanced Portfolio in Media – a promotional package for release of an album, to include a music promo video. In class, we studied representation in existing Music Videos such as Miley Cyrus’ Wrecking Ball, Pharrell Williams’ Happy, Katy Perry’s I Kissed a Girland Lady Gaga and Beyonce’s Telephone – I extended this study to look at videos across a range of genres including Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Blur’s Parklife and Johnny Cash’sHurt to get an idea of representation across a range of genres. This enabled us to fully understand how representation can be applied to our own productions.
My music video was a high energy hybrid of both Electro Pop and Dance using the music of a local, unsigned band called Money Honey, making clear intertextual references to the music of Gaga and Beyonce’s Telephone but also Toni Basil’s Mickey from 1982. The song was called Take Me There and our intentions from the start were to represent femininity asempowered, referencing Angela McRobbie’s concept of the post feminist icon. Looking at existing media was important in helping us understand the representation we were looking to achieve, linking with a sense of narrative – in Gaga and Beyonce’s Telephone for example the narrative shows a sexualised, but in control Lady Gaga leaving prison, picked up by a sultry but again in complete control Beyonce. The video then takes on the genre conventions of a road movie while also referencing the Tarantino film, Kill Bill and also the Ridley Scott production Thelma and Louise. Take me There has limited production values but we did manage to film the three characters (one male and two female) in three separate locations and believe we achieved the representation we were looking for.
The narrative of the song was important in terms of how to decide to achieve this representation – as a song about wealthy banker who loves, and cheats on two women, the song and music video has a revenge narrative. As well as challenging hegemonic cultural stereotypes of gender, a more liberal pluralistic view of race and ethnicity is apparent with all three actors being of mixed race origin. The main setting is on the north bank of the River Thames at St Katherine’s Dock, with Tower Bridge in the background establishing regional identity, intercut with two domestic interiors and an exclusive west end club suggesting wealth and status – connotations are made here with the song title, Take Me There which encodes an aspirational representation.
The establishing shot shows the two women at home, isolated and alone while the video intercuts with a male character in a plush west end bar, flirting with women – he is framed using a canted ‘dutch’ angle suggesting his drunken state and insert close up shots of his body indicate his overweight body shape. At this point the music is fast tempo and upbeat which creates the ideal reading in terms of how contrapuntal sound reflects the isolation of the two women – high energy dance music is playing while one character works on a laptop in a sparsely furnished room while the other is seen sitting in a bath with a glass of wine. The shots then cut to the two girls performing the number on St. Katherine’s dock to an elaborate dance routine that uses red filters and extreme high key lighting to frame the action. The girls are wearing elaborate outfits that are similar to Jean-Paul Gaultier fashion garments with dramatic primary colours, high shoulders and plunging necklines – close up shots show knee length black plastic boots, again of elaborate design as the speed of the editing increases and intercuts with the happy, smiling faces of the singers.
The St. Katherine’s Dock setting is then cut with a key narrative moment in the video which sees the two women meet up in the same bar that the male character was initially photographed in, as they engage in clearly romantically provocative action that is filmed by a friend’s phone. The quality of the image and resolution changes to represent this narrative moment as the next shot cuts to an image of the girls uploading the images to Facebook for the male character to see – close up shots of shock on the man’s face mirror a joyous moment in the song as the dance rhythm become euphoric reflecting their triumph. Using Laura Mulvey’s male gaze theory, both female characters are framed for the male gaze but also are represented as aspirational and progressive to a female audience. The music video moves from a marginalised representation to an empowered narrative thatcelebrates female sexuality. Dominant, mainstream culture is challenged and usingRichard Dyer’s theory - the initial gendered representation suggests that thesestereotypes legitimise the ideology of patriarchy.
As the music video progresses, the representations become more fragmented and suggest that, using David Gauntlett’s theory that “identity is complicated, everyone’s got one’. A number of diverse representations are addressed in my music video that both reinforce and challenge dominant, mainstream culture that ultimately allow audiences to understandpluralistic representations through narrative and creative visual language.
4. Audience
Discuss how audiences are represented and how your product applies - mention the effects theory and audience consumption habits. Every media product has to have an audience, otherwise in both a business sense and probably an artistic sense too it would be judged a failure. In your projects, you will undoubtedly have been looking at the idea of a target audience- who you are aiming it at and why; you should also have taken feedback from a real audience in some way at the end of the project for your digital evaluation, which involves finding out how the audience really ‘read’ what you had made. You were also asked at AS to consider how your product addressed your audience- what was it about it that particularly worked to ‘speak’ to them? All this is effectively linked to audience theory which you then need to reference and apply. Here are some links to some starting points for theories:
general intro
presentation on reception theory
Audience has only come up once, in 2011, and there are no exemplars from the exam board on this topic, so the video below outlines how to write an essay on audience for 1b and below the video for an exemplar response from Media Edusites:
Exemplar Response for AUDIENCE
Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to the concept of audience.
I will be analysing my music video that we filmed and edited for our main task which formed part of my Advanced Portfolio in Media – a promotional package for release of an album, to include a music promo video. We studied audience and audience theory and in particular, the way music videos are consumed on a range of media platforms reflecting a digital convergence culture – audience consumption of music videos as a media productstereotypically target youth audiences so we wanted to ensure this demographic was the main focus of our music video.
Importantly, it is necessary initially to identify the target audience in depth of our Electro Pop/Dance hybrid music video of the song Take Me There by the unsigned band Money Honey – students and first time jobbers, 16-25 both male and female are the primary target audience who are aspirers and mainstreamers using psycho graphic categorisation but also from the socio economic backgrounds, C1, C2 and D. Typically the target audience are unmarried, single and free from responsibilities and a have a ‘live for the weekend’ lifestyle. This is very much reflected by the narrative and representations in our music video that show aspirational urban (city) locations and focus on interpersonal relationships. Themise-en-scene is very colourful using a bright palette but also saturated high key lightingto appeal to this audience. Editing is fast paced and the shots are dynamic and also use humour to appeal to youth audiences. Relationships are a universal theme, particularly with young people and female empowerment we felt would not necessarily alienate a male demographic.
In this way, using Stuart Hall’s theory the audience were positioned into decoding a dominant preferred reading (in terms of female empowerment) not just through the mise-en-scene but also through our use of technical language which included shot selection, camera angle and camera movement – close up shots of the overweight body of the banker in a club scene for example reinforced a critical reading of his personality. Audience positioning is as important as audience identification for commercial reasons in a music video media artifact for purposes of entertainment - we ensured the acting and performances mirrored this need in a mainstream market saturated by upbeat, dynamic music videos. In terms of audience identification we linked the key signifiers of the dance genre to the music video to ensure audiences make connections, and used graphics that would allow audiences to go online and follow the band on social networking platformslike Twitter and Facebook. Colour, pace, graphics, representation, body movement and sex appeal were all aspects of the video we hoped would draw audiences in.
Using Blumler and Katz’ Uses and Gratification theory as a model to understand audience appeal in our music video, surveillance was achieved by uploading information about the band. Personal relationships were established through blogging, YouTube and forums discussing the video while personal identification in relation to the actors and performers (particularly the female representations) was apparent. Diversion was a key appeal – the Electro Pop/Dance genre has an upbeat mode of address that sometimes suggests escapist scenarios that are aspirational to an audience. In filming an ‘amateur’ music video by an existing unsigned artist and uploading to YouTube we were invitinginteractive feedback but also seeking publicity for the band. While Andrew Keen would suggest this creates a long tail of amateurs, we believe that as well as being the stereotypical audience of music videos we were now producers of media. This made us more appropriately labeled using Gauntlett’s model of the prosumer. We understood what audiences would be interested in seeing and constructed the video in this way – we were both the originators of our music video but also the first audience to see it and able to offer aself-reflective evaluation on it to which we could then add audience feedback.
The concept of audience is now much more of a complex concept – our music video needed to be made available online initially but also to be seen by as many people as possible within the limitations of a restricted marketing budget. Seeding the video on YouTube seemed the obvious first move to encourage file sharing but also to build a micro blogging website to promote the video and the band: takemetherevid.co.uk. This was a hub that allowed the video to be viewed but also ensured that convergent links to the band were embedded, as were links to the band’s Facebook page and Twitter feed. We received interesting feedback on the genre hybridisation that we felt was necessary to maximize target audiences and also align the product (in terms of intertextual references) with existing successful media. We believe that what was also important was recognising the limits of promoting a band through a music video that to all intents and purposes were independent and not signed to a major artist. The net result was positive in terms ofaudience feedback and was an interesting exercise in constructing media with a specific audience in mind.
5. Media language
In your case, media language refers to the ‘language of film’ or 'video' - ways in which film-makers make meaning in ways that are specific to film/video and how audiences come to be able to 'read' such meaning within film/video. This is closely connected to other media concepts such as genre or narrative so you will make such connections in your answers. Think connotations, mise en scene, camera angles and shots, semiotics, binary oppositions, codes and conventions. See this film terms glossary for illustrated explanations of film language. If you think back to the AS TV Drama exam, when you had to look at the technical codes and how they operate, that was an exercise in applying media language analysis, so for the A2 exam if this one comes up, I’d see it as pretty similar. For moving image, the language of film and television is defined by how camera, editing, sound and mise-en-scene create meaning. Likewise an analysis of print work would involve looking at how fonts, layout, combinations of text and image as well as the actual words chosen creates meaning. Useful theory here might be Roland Barthes on semiotics- denotation and connotation and for moving image work Bordwell and ThompsonTheorists to quote:If you've made a short film:
See Christian Metz's academic essay on Film Language: http://academic.uprm.edu/mleonard/theorydocs/readings/Metz%20on%20film%20language.pdf
Bordwell & Thompson Narrative Theory
A very interesting text, 'Three Dimensions of Film Narrative' by David Bordwell is at http://www.davidbordwell.net/books/poetics_03narrative.pdf
In 'Three Dimensions of Film Narrative', Bordwell explains that a chain of events within a media form (such as a film or music video) cause effects on a relationship in time and space. The narrative shapes this material in terms of time and space, such as where and when things take place. This can be portrayed by using effects to show the time and space: for example, flashbacks, forwarding time, slow motion and speeding up. There might be titles used, such as in 'The Shining', to show which day it is during flashbacks or flashforwards, connoting the importance of time in the narrative.
Narrative is one of the main ways that characters and their characteristics are relayed to the viewer. Narrative also dominates and affects other aspects of film such as editing. For example, if a film centres on the story of a particular character (Shaun in 'This Is England' (2006); Rita O'Grady in 'Made In Dagenham (2002), Jenny and Steve in 'Eden Lake' (2008)), it needs to be filmed and edited to privilege their point of view.
Levi-Strauss and binary opposition – Claude Levi-Strauss identified a narrative system of 'binary opposites' in which symbols and ideas exist in relation to their opposites, with which they are in conflict. The theory is that this helps us draw meanings from a text, such as the need to side with a character who is 'good'. Typical binary oppositions are Good v Evil; Male v Female; Us v Them (Think 'Eden Lake', 'Ae Fond Kiss').
"Genre is a type" (Chandler, 2001)
The study of genre has often focused on film, where certain codes and conventions have been identified. These are recurrent character, narrative and visual tropes (patterns) that can be identified over a series of films. For example, if we consider the horror genre, we can identify key components that tell us we are viewing that type of film. For example, use of the supernatural, gory scenes, shots from behind objects, through windows, at odd angles, use of a vulnerable female character, music to add tension, sometimes an 'unhappy' tragic ending.
David Buckingham, Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Loughborough University, argues that 'genre is not... simply "given" by the culture: rather, it is in a constant process of negotiation and change' (Buckingham 1993, 137).
Barthes - semiotics, enigma codes, 'steak and chips'
Barthes, a French media theorist writing from 1950s to 1970s, developed the theory of semiotics - where any text is a complex bundle of meaning which can be unravelled to create a whole range of different meanings. These threads are called narrative codes. Texts that can be read in a number of ways are polysemic texts. The handiest code to refer to in essays is the enigma code - found in all successful texts from 'Bob the Builder' to 'CSI'. These codes are constructed to attract and hold the attention of the audience, usually be creating a mystery or puzzle which the audience want to see solved - why has this man been murdered?See Barthes' article 'Steak and Chips' on p62 of his book, 'Mythologies': https://soundenvironments.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/roland-barthes-mythologies.pdf
All you really need to know about each of the five areas including theorists and theories, is on the presentation below:
Media Theory - Audience Representation Narrative Genre from MissMoore866
* Music videos rarely point to the lyrics; typically they serve to set a mood.
Carol Vernallis, "Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context"
If you've made a music video:
Andrew Goodwin, "Dancing in the Distraction Factory" (1992)* Music videos rarely point to the lyrics; typically they serve to set a mood.
Carol Vernallis, "Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context"
