A2WCMedia: December 2014

Wednesday 17 December 2014

Christmas Homework

Firstly, CONGRATULATIONS on completing MS3 Coursework! You will receive this back on the week commencing 12th January. If we think you have the potential for a resubmission to increase your grade, you will have automatically have the option to do so. If you have under performed due to a late submission or failure to hand in the work to a standard that reflects your ability, you will have to apply for a re-submission through our CTM. Full details will follow in the first week back.

Secondly, it's time to focus on the exam. You have a mock the first week back and this will test your current knowledge and what you have retained from MS1. This will give Louise and I a clearer idea of what areas to develop and what our focus should be on. Obviously we are not expecting you all to ace this, however it is paramount you do your best and this leads me onto the Christmas task.

The focus when studying these films is...

REPRESENTATION of gender (traditional/stereotypical or contemporary/positive?)
Conventions of the action GENRE (subvert or conform?)

There are three options to complete with option 1 being the best!

Option 1 <--- this is the one you want to do!

Watch all three key texts (Guardians of the Galaxy, Skyfall and Drive) and study the print-based media we have given you (complete a textual analysis!). Complete the pack for each film. Watching the condensed trailers would also be good as it gives a snapshot as to how the studio want the film to be viewed to the masses.

Option 2

Watch the trailers for all three key texts (Guardians of the Galaxy, Skyfall and Drive) and study the print-based media we have given you (complete a textual analysis!). Complete the pack for each film.

Option 3

Study the print-based media we have given you (complete a textual analysis!) for all three key texts (Guardians of the Galaxy, Skyfall and Drive). Complete the pack for each film.

During the first lesson back Louise and I will check the packs, failure to have completed this task to a good standard will result in a meeting with the CTM. It will also drastically limit your response in the mock exam?

Wednesday 3 December 2014

Evaluation

Hello all!

Just a friendly reminder about deadlines.

You need to submit your MS3 coursework on the 18th December at the latest. By now you should have:

Handed in your second draft of the investigation and will be receiving feedback. Amendments should be made for your final hand-in.
Printed out, or handed in a copy of your audio/visual project - you will the receive feedback for the final hand-in.
Start thinking about your evaluation! Although this is only worth 10% it is an essential piece of work and an easy way to boost up your grade!

If you are in need of support, guidance or assistance, remember you can attend a lunch-time support session (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday) and you can be allocated a peer-mentor who can give you support.

It is paramount that you hand the work in by the 18th - this will give Louise and myself the Christmas holiday to mark your work and we will know 50% of your final A2 grade.

Please hand work in in an project folder not a A4 ring-binder. Presentation of your work is key. You should be proud of this research investigation and show it off to its full potential!

Well done so far. You all have created some excellent work and your investigations have been a pleasure to read. Below is a .ppt on how to write an effective evaluation if you are struggling.

Christmas homework will be set next week - it is essential you complete this as you will be sitting a MS4 mock-exam in the first week back. This will gauge your initial understanding and will highlight areas for us to develop upon.

One final reminder; you need to make payments for your AS retakes before 12/12/15.

Monday 1 December 2014

Beyoncé

Beyoncé

Key text: Digital release of Beyoncé

Essential Reading

Billboard (13/12/13): Beyonce Unexpectedly Releases New Self-Titled 'Visual Album' on iTunes

Billboard (17/12/13): Beyonce Makes Billboard 200 History with Fifth No. 1 Album

Buzzfeed (13/12/13) The Best Of The Internet’s Reaction To Beyoncé’s New Album

CNET (13/12/13): Beyonce drops new album on iTunes: Fans, marketers gasp

Essential Viewing

Which exam sections should I use the music industry for?

Audience Response (section B)
Representation of Gender (section A)
Marketing and Promotion (section B)

Additional articles to support (A/B)

Time (17/12/13) Flawless: 5 Lessons in Modern Feminism From Beyoncé
The Independent (12/4/14) Admire Beyoncé for her music, not her feminist credentials
The Guardian (25/08/14) Beyoncé's 'Flawless' feminist act at the VMAs leads the way for other women

Ed Sheeran

Key text: Release of + & X

Essential Reading

Wiki: + (album)

MTV (13/01/11): Ed Sheeran The Interview

Mashable (15/07/14) Music Videos Aren't Enough: How MTV Plans to Lift Album Sales

Essential Viewing

Which exam sections should I use the music industry for?

Audience Response (section B)
Representation of Gender (section A)
Marketing and Promotion (section B)

Additional articles to support (A/B)

Atlantic Press Release: Ed Sheeran
The Telegraph (16/07/14) Ed Sheeran interview: 'I don't make music for critics'
The Guardian (16/02/12) Ed Sheeran: 'I apologise for my fans'
Billboard (07/04/14) Ed Sheeran Un-Zipped: On His Pharrell-Produced Single, Being a Sex Symbol and Turning Betrayal Into Song (Cover Story)

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Glossary

Anchorage - how meaning is fixed, as in how a caption fixes the meaning of a picture

Audience – viewers, listeners and readers of a media text. A lot of media studies is concerned with how audience use texts and the effects a text may have on them. Also identified in demographic socio-economic categories.

Binary Opposites – the way opposites are used to create interest in media texts, such as good/bad, coward/hero, youth/age, black/white. By Barthes and Levi-Strauss who also noticed another important feature of these ‘binary opposites’: that one side of the binary pair is always seen by a particular society or culture as more valued over the other.

Catharsis – the idea that violent and and sexual content in media texts serves the function of releasing ‘pent up’ tension aggression/desire in audiences.

Censorship – Control over the content of a media text – sometimes by the government, but usually by a regulatory body like the British Board of Film censors.

Code – a sign or convention through which the media communicates meaning to us because we have learned to read it. Technical codes – all to do with the way a text is technically constructed – camera angles, framing, typography, lighting etc. Visual codes – codes that are decoded on a mainly connotational level – things that draw on our experience and understanding of other media texts, this includes Iconography – which is concerned with the use of visual images and how they trigger the audiences expectations of a particular genre, such as a knife in slasher horror films.

Consumer – purchaser, listener, viewer or reader of media products.

Context – time, place or mindset in which we consume media products.

Conventions – the widely recognised way of doing things in particular genre.

Denotation – the everyday or common sense meaning of a sign. Connotation – the secondary meaning that a sign carries in addition to it’s everyday meaning.

Diegetic Sound – Sound whose source is visible on the screen

Non Diegetic sound – Sound effects, music or narration which is added afterwards

Enigma – A question in a text that is not immediately answered and creates interest for the audience – a puzzle that the audience has to solve.

Feminism – the struggle by women to obtain equal rights in society

Gaze – the idea that the way we look at something, and the way somebody looks at you, is structured by the way we view the world. Feminist Laura Mulvey suggests that looking involves power, specifically the look of men at women, implying that men have power over women.

Genre – the type or category of a media text, according to its form, style and content.

Hegemony – Traditionally this describes the predominance of one social class over another, in media terms this is how the controllers of the media may on the one hand use the media to pursue their own political interest, but on the other hand the media is a place where people who are critical of the establishment can air their views.

Hypodermic Needle Theory – the idea that the media can ‘inject’ ideas and messages straight into the passive audience. This passive audience is immediately affected by these messages. Used in advertising and propoganda, led to moral panics about effect of violent video and computer games.

Ideology – A set of ideas or beliefs which are held to be acceptable by the creators of the media text, maybe in line with those of the dominant ruling social groups in society, or alternative ideologies such as feminist ideology.

Indexical sign – a sign which has a direct relationship with something it signifies, such as smoke signifies fire.

Image – a visual representation of something.

Institutions – The organisations which produce and control media texts such as the BBC, AOL Time Warner, News International.

Intertextuality – the idea that within popular culture producers borrow other texts to create interest to the audience who like to share the ‘in’ joke. Used a lot in the Simpsons.

Media language – the means by which the media communicates to us and the forms and conventions by which it does so.

Media product – a text that has been designed to be consumed by an audience. E.G a film, radio show, newspaper etc.

Media text – see above. N.B Text usually means a piece of writing

Mise en Scene – literally ‘what’s in the shot’ everything that appears on the screen in a single frame and how this helps the audience to decode what’s going on.

Mode of Address – The way a media product ‘speaks’ to it’s audience. In order to communicate, a producer of any text must make some assumptions about an intended audience; reflections of such assumptions may be discerned in the text (advertisements offer particularly clear examples of this).

Montage – putting together of visual images to form a sequence. Made famous by Russian film maker Eisenstein in his famous film Battleship Potemkin.

Moral Panic – is the intensity of feeling stirred up by the media about an issue that appears to threaten the social order, such as against Muslims after 9/11, or against immigrants, or against ‘video nasties’ following the Jamie Bulger murder.

Multi-media – computer technology that allows text, sound, graphic and video images to be combined into one programme.

Myth – a complex idea by Roland Barthes that myth is a second order signifying system ie when a sign becomes the signifier of a new sign (2^nd years only this one!)

Narrative code – The way a story is put together within a text, traditionally equilibrium- disequilibrium, new equilibrium, but some text are fractured or non liner, eg Pulp Fiction.

News values – factors that influence whether a story will be picked for coverage.

Non-verbal communication – communication between people other than by speech.

Ownership – who produces and distributes the media texts – and whose interest it is.

Patriarchy – The structural, systematic and historical domination and exploitation of women.

Popular Culture – the study of cultural artefacts of the mass media such as cinema, TV, advertising.

Post Modernism – Anything that challenges the traditional way of doing things, rejecting boundaries between high and low forms of art, rejecting rigid genre distinctions, emphasizing pastiche, parody, intertextuality, irony, and playfulness. Postmodernism favours reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subjects! This is tricky!

Propaganda – the way ruling classes use the mass media to control or alter the attitudes of others.

Reader – a member of the audience, someone who is actively responding to the text.

Reception Theory (Hall) - Preferred Reading the interpretation of a media product that was intended by the maker or which is dictated by the ideology of the society in which it is viewed. Oppositional Reading – an interpretation of a text by a reader whose social position puts them into direct conflict with its preferred reading.Negotiated Reading – the ‘compromise’ that is reached between the preferred reading offered by a text and the reader’s own assumptions and interpretations

Regulation – bodies whose job it is to see that media texts are not seen by the wrong audience (eg British Board of Film Censors) or are fair and honest (EG Advertising Standards Association)

Representation – The way in which the media ‘re-presents’ the world around us in the form of signs and codes for audiences to read.

SFX – special effects or devices to create visual illusions.

Shot – single image taken by a camera.

Sign – a word or image that is used to represent an object or idea.

Signifier/Signified – the ‘thing’ that conveys the meaning, and the meaning conveyed. EG a red rose is a signifier, the signified is love (or the Labour Party!)

Sound Effects – additional sounds other than dialogue or music, designed to add realism or atmosphere.

Stereotype – representation of people or groups of people by a few characteristics eg hoodies, blondes

Still – static image.

Sub-genre – a genre within a genre.

Two Step Flow theory - the idea that ideas flow from mass media to opinion leaders, and from them to a wider population.

Uses and Gratifications – ideas about how people use the media and what gratification they get from it. It assumes that members of the audience are not passive but take an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their own lives.