Genre (Needs to be finished)

I am going to discuss theories of genre in relation to my advanced portfolio whereby I produced a music video for Matthew Perryman Jones alternative pop song ‘Save You.’ The music video is a period piece set In the 1940’s and is based on a couple separated as the male character leaves for war, therefore follows conventions of a romantic narrative.

As Daniel Chandler once stated “genre is too restricting and presents audiences with a creative ‘straightjacket.’” Although genre is a helpful way to define different methods of communicating to audiences and creating boundaries and guidelines there is a lot of criticism that surrounds genre. Genres can create difficulties for those who want to experiment outside of the rigid boxes, yet without genre to conform to it would be hard to fund and sell your product. I don’t believe that genre was too restricting with our music however; therefore it challenges chandler’s theory. Our narrative falls under the romantic genre but both conform and subvert the ideas of romance. Our music video reveals a couple through flashbacks showing portions of happiness and love, yet the tragic nature of the video subverts generic conventions. Unlike in other romantic narrative music video’s such as ‘High Hopes’ by kodaline and ‘The one that got away’ by Katy Perry where the death of the male character proves to be tragic yet end on a positive resolution, our music video focuses upon the sadness and vulnerability of the female character and does not end positively. Due to the fact that the music video doesn’t conform strictly to the genre of romance, the genre was not ‘restricting’ like how chandler suggested. Like Jane Feuer mentioned ‘it is hard for genre to be defined as they’re abstract.’

Warren Buckland suggested ‘Genre creates expectations that condition our responses. The familiarity of the genre enables each spectator to anticipate and predict what will appear in them. Genre sets up hopes and promises and brings pleasure if these hopes and promises are fulfilled.” I believe that the high emotional response to our music video is evoked from the intertwining of tragedy and romance. The fact that our video subverts the romantic genre by not having a return to equilibrium creates a high emotional response because the genre which ‘sets up  hopes and promises’ doesn’t bring pleasure because these are not fulfilled due to the tragic death of the male character. Rarely music videos don’t have a return to a state of equilibrium, however one of the main inspiration for our music video ‘Thinking of you’ by Katy Perry ends similarly to our music video. Perry’s music video is a romantic genre like ours yet challenges it slightly by not fulfilling generic hopes.  

Rick Altman

Narrative

I am going to discuss theories of narrative in relation to my advanced portfolio whereby I produced a music video for Matthew Perryman Jones alternative pop song ‘Save You.’ The music video is a period piece set In the 1940’s and is based on a couple separated as the male character leaves for war.

The narrative for our music video is very interesting as on reflection I noted that it conforms to various theories of narrative. The structure of our narrative is Non linear leaving the audience to conclude the narrative by themselves. The narrative is structured using in Media- Res and a variety of flashbacks which drop subtle hints throughout the video before the closed structure which reveals the tragic end. Boardwell and Thompson once mentioned “the relationship between charcters is shaped by structure of the text.” This can be seen throughout the video due to specific editing techniques and ordering of clips, for example flash backs and slow motion. Our video conforms to this statement as the close relationship of the pair is revealed through a stream of flashbacks which push the narrative forwards and allows the audience to begin to puzzle the narrative together through a variety of codea. Roland Barthes theorised the 5 code rule of narrative, and our music video conforms to this theory. There are many symbolic codes that hint the male characters death throughout the narrative without being explicit. Solving the narrative conforms to the enigma code whilst The semantic code comes into place as the female character prepares for a funeral, the objects surrounding her such as the funeral fascinator give speculation towards a funeral. The female character is filmed walking through a graveyard into a church; the church is a figure of representation of death. The female reads a letter and the camera focuses on the words ‘KILLED IN ACTION’ which applies to the action code due to the specific words. The fact that the video is set during the second world war and the male is going off to war already suggests to the audience that death is an inevitable tragedy due to the negative connotations of war, this makes connections with the word outside of our music video (cultural code.)  The reason we chose to use a non linear narrative was to create audience speculation keeping them intrigued while also allowing them to  unfold the narrative providing emotional responses. Katy Perrys music video for ‘Thinking of You’ was a huge influence to our music video following a similar non chronological structure however was more explicit as it showed the death of her partner unlike ours making her video conform further to a closed structure.

The theory of binary opposition founded by Levi strauss is conformed to within our music video but also challenged due to the fact the video is through a female perspective yet the song is sung by a male. The reasons that the theory of binary opposition is applied in our narrative is the fact that the male is leaving to fight in the war, signifying strength and dominance yet the woman is left at home feeling weak and vulnerable. The theory of binary opposition is challenged in modern society due to the uprising of feminism, for example in the video ‘Stupid Girls’ by pink there are themes of empowerment through the binary oppositions of two types of women rather than a male and female and suggests females should be strong and powerful .Our music video conforms to the theory of binary opposition as it is the perspective of a female therefore audience are passively made to sympathise with her and her loss, this in turn hyperbolises her vulnerability.

Andrew Goodwin theorised five key aspects; The protagonist being the centre of attention, a relationship between the song and visuals, thought through beat, narrative and performance of the song and technical aspects of the video. Our video both conforms to and subverts this theory. The female protagonist is the camera focus, and there is a relationship between the songs meaning and the visuals presented in the music video. Thought through beat is signified in our video as the lyrics create a story and the narrative of our video reveals a story. For example the lyrics of the song goes ‘too many years of dying’ as the camera focuses on a picture of the deceased male character. The way in which we challenge Goodwins theory is we do not represent the artist within the video and the protagonist is not the artist singing. This is because the song is sung by a male and our main character is female. Within real media texts this is also found such as In Ed Sheerans ‘Lego House’ music video where the protagonist is an actor hired to play the artist.  Once again we conform to Goodwins final aspect which suggests that lighting and colour contribute to the mood of the video categorising the narrative. The use of mise- en- scene allows the audience to make presumptions of how the narrative will unfold.

The music video completely disregards Todorov’s theory of equilibrium. This is due to its non chronological structure. The narrative ends negatively, and this does create a higher emotional response.  The music video subverts Todorov’s theory of equilibrium because we used in-media -res and therefore the narrative doesn’t follow a solid structure like how todorov theorised.

To conclude I believe that the most influential theories in the construction of our narrative were Andrew Goodwin and Roland Barthes.

Digital Technolgy (unfinished)

For my media foundation portfolio I first created a magazine cover for a school magazine before moving onto my main task which consisted of creating a Music Magazine cover, contents page and double page spread. During A2 I was tasked with creating a preliminary music video prior to my main task which was to construct a full length music video and subsidiary product (digipak). My skills have developed within digital technology over the course due to my exploration of various hardwares and softwares I explored at A2 in comparison to As which subsequently improved my research, planning, post- production, construction and final outcome.

During AS I had a lack of audience feedback because of my lack of software exploration. I depended solely on my blog to receive feedback, and creating an audience survey on a programme called survey monkey. Not having strong audience feedback to work from prevented me from being able to alter my product to audience preference. Along with my lack of audience feedback I also didn’t research existing product perhaps in depth as I could have done. For example, with the preliminary school magazine I tested fonts on Microsoft word, this limited me hugely to mainstream fonts that lacked professionalism and unique style. When moving onto my Music magazine I downloaded a font called ‘Indie Summer’ which associated with the genre of the magazine being indie/alternative. I created my preliminary task on a programme called ‘Pages’ which allowed me to construct my product like existing media products with the use of professional layout. Whereas for my main product at AS I used InDesign which is a professionally used publication designer. I found this easier to navigate and created a higher standard finished product. When manipulating photographs for the magazine I used Photoshop. I was able to use various tools such as colour corrections and Marquee (magic wand) tool. I feel that using the marquee tool put my work at a disadvantage because of my inexperience with photoshop. On our contents page main photograph I edited the photo in black and white then used the marquee tool crop the two models and put them against a solid white background. At AS I feel as though we didn’t communicate properly as a group therefore shoots were disorganised. We communicated via email and in hindsight it would have been more efficient to communicate over instant messenger such as facebook.

With regards to A2 I had now become more confident with using IMacs and adobe programmes. I learned from AS that is was important to ensure I used a range of different software’s to ensure that I maintained professionalism and be more efficient with planning and research. For our preliminary music video we used Imovie. Imovie allowed us to import digital video footage to edit and organise.

To what extent is human identity increasingly mediated

The possession of qualities that men exert is often scrutinised by the media which has in turn altered the way that male identity is mediated. It is evident throughout different media platflorms as to how men are wanted to be perceived. Looking closely at three different medias- magazine, film and social media I was able to draw several conclusions as to how men have been increasingly mediated.

Men’s health magazine is a magazine that employs masculinity at its highest and has constructed the ideology of men which is in most cases unattainable. The front cover tends to feature a well know male figure who emits wealth and power which feeds into his appearance. The images tend to be photo shopped and the lighting is strategically placed to highlight muscles symbolising strength and power. The male audience admire the cover man who appears to be the epitome of masculinity thus making the reader want to attain a similar identity. More often than not the cover man will be hetrosexual and the cover lines and tag lines will all slant towards hetrosexual ideals. There is a complete lack of cover men with disabilities featured on the cover of the magazine which once again points to the ideals of how men should be mediated as strong, powerful and fully able individuals whom reader would strive to be like, as the cover man attracts the readers to buy the magazine because they want to achieve a similar identity. Although the media  has ways of ‘injecting’ ideals into the audience as suggested by the hypodermic needle theory, david Gaunlett states otherwise suggesting “The medias suggestions may be seductive but can never simply overpower contray feelings in the audience.” Therefore the audience process and interpret what the media relays in their own understanding yet there is an element of believe what the media says. It can be seen through alternative groups such as goths and punk who do not follow the media’s ideals for men. These social groups, which become more and more popular rebel against the norm therefore it is evident in some cases the media doesn’t project their ideals onto every male.

The British television drama 'The Night Manager' conveys ideological views of how men should be perceived through fiction, therefore it is a constructed idea of men that is being relayed to the audience manipulating the way they perceive males. Richard Roper is portrayed as wealthy, therefore exhibits strength and power, like Men's health creating a unattainable identity.Roper the wealthiest and most powerful man can be seen at the top of the social hierarchy with the other male characters out-shined by the power he holds. The social hierarchy allows Roper to abuse his social status and be a figure to be feared. Much like Men's Health Magazine the audience view Roper as a character with an unattainable identity due to his wealth and influence within society. The male characters falunt their wealth by having lavish, houses, props and bodyguards this could perhaps link to trying to have control over the female characters by using their wealth as a method of control.

Past Paper Questions

Describe the most important post-production decisions you made for your different media productions and explain why theses decisions were significant. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how your skills developed over time.

The most important programme that we have used for the post-production of our music video coursework would be Imovie. This is how we selected significant clips of our recording that we wanted to edit. Without Imovie we wouldn’t have been able to make a professional music video as we have used many features on this programme which have all contributed to ensuring that our music videdo is of a high standard. Examples of the features of Imovie that we have used on our music video include: stabilising shaky movement, slow motion, cutting, filters and cropping. These were important attributes in creating our music video as our music video explores a dramatic narrative based in the 1940s. We as a group believed that slow motion triggers dramatic effect therefore in turn evoking emotion from the audience and captivating them. Due to the fact that our music video is a 1940’s period piece we had to crop out modern day things within the shot. We looked at the colouring of videos in 1940’s and added a filter to our music video to symbolise the fact that it is old. I believe this is something that in our music magazine coursework we did not really look into. We used Photoshop for the post production of our music video and although we did manipulate the picture slightly I don’t feel as though we edited it accordingly to suit the genre of music that the magazine looked at.  When analysing other music videos we noted that their shots lasted roughly 2 seconds, this is something that we failed to do in our preliminary task. I feel as though we did not edit the preliminary video quite right as the shots were too long,it made the audience lose focus of the video and become bored. This is evident from the analytics of the video whereby 15% of the audience only watched the video for 5 seconds before clicking off. I also believe that the transitions that we edited in looked too experimental rather than professional, therefore in our main music video we used fairly quick shots and no transitions.

Add the concept of genre to one of your coursework productions.

As Ryall (1998) theorised, genre is cognitive repository of images, sounds, stories, characters and expectations. Our music video follows the romantic and tragic story of a couple during world war 2. This is evident through the images portrayed through each shots where there is a great deal of different elements of mise en scene visible, from location to props and costume. The actors portray that of 1940’s people due to their costume, hair and make-up also the way in which they hold themselves. There is a great deal of expectation in this music video. I feel as though the audience know from the sounds that this is a tragic love story and contributes to their expectation of what will happen. The audience can tell from the fact the female actor in the music video is getting ready for a funeral that there is a tragic narrative.  Uses and gratification theory can be adapted to our music video- it is an escapism causing the audience to Become involved in the plot and triggers emotional response from the audience. As Deborah knight notes “satisfaction is guaranteed in genre”I think with our music video the satisfaction stems from the acceptance of her partners death. The happy and romantic parts also add to that element of satisfaction.

Men's Health Magazine Analysis

The layout of the Men's Health magazine suggests the concept of superiority. The photograph of the men holds approximately  3/4 of the front cover, showing authoritativeness and a sense of power. The large image of the men shows something for the readers to aspire to and the use of photoshop highlights their muscular figures expressing both their masculinity and strength consequently making them appear to have an unattainable identity.
The majority of Men's Health magazines have bold sub headings which are usually appearance orientated that leads to an article within the magazine about how to manipulate your appearance usually sport related as the ideal for men is to be muscular in order to exhibit strength, authority and masculinity.
In the bottom left corner written is features of the magazine- fittness, sex and style being the main focuses. These are general roles that men have had to adopt and excel in, in order to be masculine in society.
Some may argue that Men improve their appearance in order to attract the opposite sex, others say it is to be assertive within in society. As human beings we have an animalistic instinct for competition, therefore males exert their authority in order to be the most powerful being they can. Chemically, men tend to be more drawn to sexual culture than woman, another way in which they are able to assert their authority by being a control over women. Men have a stereotype to be highly sexed unlike women who are portrayed as being "impure." If a man fails to be up to the standard society deems as being socially acceptable then they are seen as being less masculine.

Representation of Men in 'Men's Health' Magazine and 'The Night Manager'

Representation of 'Men in Men's Health' Magazine and The 'Night Manager' 

The possession of qualities that men exert is often scrutinised by the media which has led to several different gender roles- a framework built that is entirely a social construct. It is evident from the mainstream male magazine, Men's Health, that men are seemingly portrayed to exhibit male ideals and adapt to gender roles that society has fed us. The British Television series 'The Night Manager' portrays men in a similar stance with their male actors becoming an unattainable identity that are artificial standards the audience are unable to measure up to.

The front cover of Men's Health magazine has over 3/4 of it filled with the male figure. Typically, these men are often either well known figures or male models with enhanced muscles. The images more often than not tend to be manipulated on photoshop to create an almost unreal body structure that the targeted male audience admire and by reading the articles found in the magazine the audience feel they will be able to achieve the same appearance as the male on the front cover. Competition is a common and main function of nature, as human beings we have animalistic instincts much like competition and this can be seen through men wanting to appear muscular and strong in order to obtain and maintain power. The majority of Males featured on the front cover are heterosexual, similarly the sub headings and tag lines all slant towards heterosexual ideals which is another portrayal of masculinity that men are sexually attracted to women. Not only is this under representation found in Men's Health Magazine but also throughout the whole of media, although it is slowly becoming more common. From a feminist perspective this would be due to the fact in a opposite sex relationship the male is the controlling force asserting his strength and power within society, while women are depicted as more passive and dependant upon men. There is a severe lack of those with disabilities featured on the front cover of Men's Health Magazine once again pointing at the masculinity ideals to show what they perceive to be powerful, fully able individuals who the readers crave to be like. The masculine ideals include; toughness, emotionally distant and self- reliance. The front cover is able to showcase all of these qualities through the font cover for example an individual man photographed on the front cover shows self-reliance and then their stance and enhanced muscles suggest strength and toughness. Articles related to sex that are featured on the front page with tag lines suggest sex being less about love and more about pleasure hence the emotional distancing quality. 

The British television programme 'The Night Manager' presents men as being wealthy and their wealth consequently establishes power. The power they have enables them to use their wealth as a threat to other men- Roper the wealthiest and most powerful man can be seen at the top of the social hierarchy with the other male characters out-shined by the power he holds. The social hierarchy allows Roper to abuse his social status and be a figure to be feared. Much like Men's Health Magazine the audience view Roper as a character with an unattainable identity due to his wealth and influence within society. The male characters falunt their wealth by having lavish, houses, props and bodyguards this could perhaps link to trying to have control over the female characters by using their wealth as a method of control.

advertisements in Men's Health Magazine show men of a high wealth and status pictured to sell products that will improve the males appearance. for example in aftershave adverts the man is unusually photographed in a suit appearing well groomed with an attractive female by his side. It almost appears as though women are an accessory of the male to improve their own status by owning something that other men do not have and therefore asserting their power from using their control and influence over women. 

Sociologist Max Webber theorised the ideals of class, power and prestige. According to this theory if applied to The Night Manger we could say that (the male characters in particular) exercise their power. There are various ways in which Webber theorised individuals can do this including class and power, social power and political power.  If someone owns something that you want- much like Roper in the Night Manger he possess lavish items  and money that others desire this can make him more powerful than those who don't own what he does. He is in the dominant position because he has access to what others desire. Respect also creates that person to be your social superior, like in the Night Manager where Roper is respected by his bodyguards therefore he is their social superior.  

Patricia Sexton suggested that males impose qualities such as "courage certain forms of aggression, inner direction, autonomy. mastery, technological skill, group solidarity, adventure and considerable amounts of toughness in mind and body. It is suggested by some that women exist to be sexual objects for men and men compete with each other for this, this could be why in Men's Health Magazine their are lots of sexual focuses and articles to improve their performance. The theory of hegemonic masculinity is centred around the idea that to be masculine males possess particular qualities and Men's Health Magazine highlights these qualities by making the ideal man to be masculine assuming that society believe this is the right way to look, think and behave.