G325 exam
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Tuesday, 15 May 2012
Tuesday, 1 May 2012
Wednesday, 18 April 2012
Revision - representation (Section A)
The process by which the media present to us the ‘real world’ Rayner
How to Read a Film, James Monaco: “Anyone can watch a film but to make sense of it we must learn to comprehend the visual images with which we are presented.”
Mediation: How a media text represents an idea
Encoding à Messages constructed into products Decoding à Messages read by audiences.
Stereotyping A process of simplification. A short cut for media producers to reproduce certain identities and ideas.
Alternative representations in the media can be interesting as it brings new ideas to an audience.
Character roles and making narrative meaning and deeper messages and values.
Representation of era, genre, location can all be examined. How did you make the era clear? How did location aid genre and narrative?
How to Read a Film, James Monaco: “Anyone can watch a film but to make sense of it we must learn to comprehend the visual images with which we are presented.”
Mediation: How a media text represents an idea
Encoding à Messages constructed into products Decoding à Messages read by audiences.
Stereotyping A process of simplification. A short cut for media producers to reproduce certain identities and ideas.
Alternative representations in the media can be interesting as it brings new ideas to an audience.
Character roles and making narrative meaning and deeper messages and values.
Representation of era, genre, location can all be examined. How did you make the era clear? How did location aid genre and narrative?
Revison - media language (Section A)
Film terminology
Shot sizes, angles, movement, position: CU, LS, ELS, ECU, MS, high, mid, low angles, panning, tracking, dolly, crane, hand held, subjective / objective positioning.
Mise-en-scene: costumes, sets, locations, performance, props
Editing types: Cut away, cross cuts, jump cuts, shot reverse shot, matched cuts, motivated cuts
Sound types: Diegetic sounds, non-diegetic sounds, ambient sounds, sound effects, contrapuntal / parallel sounds
Lighting: 3 point lighting, back lights, key lights, fill lights, ambient lighting, natural lighting, filters / gels, low key / high key lighting
Cinema “suspend our disbelief”.
Roles: Director, Editor, Sound operator, etc. Main areas of media texts: Production à Distribution à Exhibition
Shot sizes, angles, movement, position: CU, LS, ELS, ECU, MS, high, mid, low angles, panning, tracking, dolly, crane, hand held, subjective / objective positioning.
Mise-en-scene: costumes, sets, locations, performance, props
Editing types: Cut away, cross cuts, jump cuts, shot reverse shot, matched cuts, motivated cuts
Sound types: Diegetic sounds, non-diegetic sounds, ambient sounds, sound effects, contrapuntal / parallel sounds
Lighting: 3 point lighting, back lights, key lights, fill lights, ambient lighting, natural lighting, filters / gels, low key / high key lighting
Cinema “suspend our disbelief”.
Roles: Director, Editor, Sound operator, etc. Main areas of media texts: Production à Distribution à Exhibition
Revison - narrative (Section A)
“The way in which a story is told
(fiction or non-fiction)” Media Studies
An Essential Introduction (Rayner)
Todorov : 3 Act structure Equilibrium à Disruption à New Equilibrium
Levi-Strauss: Binary Opposites can be used to tell a story – opposite events and actions enable a story to develop.
Propp’s character roles: Applied to film, updated roles for characters to perform to act out the narrative.
Barthes: Narrative codes: Engimas to pleasurably delay the ending, Action codes to speed up events, Symbolic codes to make meaning and Cultural codes to add depth to events (Cultural awareness further informs audiences)
Contemporary narrative à Shark Model (Eejit’s Guide to Filmmaking – hook audiences in with an instant bite)
Twist ending often used in short films.
Anti-narrative, non chronological order, circular narrative (as the name implies we go round in a circle)
Narrative devices: Helping to tell a story:
Mise-en-scene informs us about people and places and events, short cut devices.
Editing transitions can be read in certain ways (fade to black end of a moment progress to new time, dissolve – pass the time – same or linked events or to indicate a dream or thoughts, fade to white often suggests a flashback)
Sound can help to tell a story – Non-diegetic music can set the mood, the tone, indicate something about the situation.
Voice over can tell the story – but from a particular perspective to alter how the audience respond to the story. (Objective, subjective), Script / dialogue aids narrative.
Superimposed titles can also anchor instant meanings to visuals.
Todorov : 3 Act structure Equilibrium à Disruption à New Equilibrium
Levi-Strauss: Binary Opposites can be used to tell a story – opposite events and actions enable a story to develop.
Propp’s character roles: Applied to film, updated roles for characters to perform to act out the narrative.
Barthes: Narrative codes: Engimas to pleasurably delay the ending, Action codes to speed up events, Symbolic codes to make meaning and Cultural codes to add depth to events (Cultural awareness further informs audiences)
Contemporary narrative à Shark Model (Eejit’s Guide to Filmmaking – hook audiences in with an instant bite)
Twist ending often used in short films.
Anti-narrative, non chronological order, circular narrative (as the name implies we go round in a circle)
Narrative devices: Helping to tell a story:
Mise-en-scene informs us about people and places and events, short cut devices.
Editing transitions can be read in certain ways (fade to black end of a moment progress to new time, dissolve – pass the time – same or linked events or to indicate a dream or thoughts, fade to white often suggests a flashback)
Sound can help to tell a story – Non-diegetic music can set the mood, the tone, indicate something about the situation.
Voice over can tell the story – but from a particular perspective to alter how the audience respond to the story. (Objective, subjective), Script / dialogue aids narrative.
Superimposed titles can also anchor instant meanings to visuals.
Revison - post-production (Section A)
Editing process is where footage is brought to life. What can be done to the raw footage to make
it make sense and to complete a project?
How do editing, cutting, colour alteration, effects, titles all work to create a final piece that makes meaning.
The process of composing and adding music and other sound effects.
Intention of cinema is to “suspend our disbelief “– how is this achieved?
Beyond editing – how did you distribute your film? Where was it exhibited? (Online – youtube, blogs)
How do editing, cutting, colour alteration, effects, titles all work to create a final piece that makes meaning.
The process of composing and adding music and other sound effects.
Intention of cinema is to “suspend our disbelief “– how is this achieved?
Beyond editing – how did you distribute your film? Where was it exhibited? (Online – youtube, blogs)
Revision - Genre #4
- films that are difficult to catergorize are usuaully less successful
- Hybrid - more than one genre
- there are multi-generic genres and post-modern and bricolage also
- Nick Lacey's schema of genre is a way of recognising key elements that help to determine a genre
- Mise-en-scene, cinematography, sound, character roles and editing all contribute to genre
- audiences have expectations - producers use it as a blue-print; distributors can find their audience
- John Truby states that "you have to know how to transcend the forms (genre) so you can give the audience the sense of orginality and surprise."
Tuesday, 17 April 2012
Research - Planning & Research (Section A)
Audience research “For any media product it is essential to know who your audience is and deliver to them” – Lee Kynaston (ex deputy editor of men’s health magazine)
Demographics – age categories, social grades, types of audience.
Media Studies The Essential Introduction, Raynor asks why are audiences important?
1. You need an audience for a media text
2. Size and reaction are ways of measuring success
3. Audiences provide an income for producers (usually)
4. How will media texts affect audiences? How will they consume the texts?
Trends, interests, subject matter can all be determined by audience research. Essential to meet their needs, speak for them, to them.
Exploring the market: Market research is essential . What already exists and how successful is it? What works / what doesn’t work?
Why is it important to research the medium? (Short film – codes and conventions, genre, narrative, etc? How will this information inform your production?)
Why is it useful to draft work? Why is it helpful to organise time?
Demographics – age categories, social grades, types of audience.
Media Studies The Essential Introduction, Raynor asks why are audiences important?
1. You need an audience for a media text
2. Size and reaction are ways of measuring success
3. Audiences provide an income for producers (usually)
4. How will media texts affect audiences? How will they consume the texts?
Trends, interests, subject matter can all be determined by audience research. Essential to meet their needs, speak for them, to them.
Exploring the market: Market research is essential . What already exists and how successful is it? What works / what doesn’t work?
Why is it important to research the medium? (Short film – codes and conventions, genre, narrative, etc? How will this information inform your production?)
Why is it useful to draft work? Why is it helpful to organise time?
Revision - Creativity (Section A)
Where ideas come from?
With digital technology creativity is easier à Argue that creative skill is lacking
Creativity increased – able to do things touch of a button à Encourages people to think creatively
Awareness and imagination – what makes you more creative? Audience awareness.
Capabilities – how can technology help you to develop creative skills? Does it matter anymore if you can’t draw, sing or play an instrument?
(Typically this area will link to any of the others- how does digital technology make you more creative? How does planning and research aid creativity?)
Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire director) famously compiles books of things he likes and incorporates the ideas into his own projects. Do you do that via your blogs?
With digital technology creativity is easier à Argue that creative skill is lacking
Creativity increased – able to do things touch of a button à Encourages people to think creatively
Awareness and imagination – what makes you more creative? Audience awareness.
Capabilities – how can technology help you to develop creative skills? Does it matter anymore if you can’t draw, sing or play an instrument?
(Typically this area will link to any of the others- how does digital technology make you more creative? How does planning and research aid creativity?)
Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire director) famously compiles books of things he likes and incorporates the ideas into his own projects. Do you do that via your blogs?
Revision - Digital technology
Consume à Produce (pro-sumers) The Third Wave (1980), futurologist Alvin Toffler coined the term "prosumer". Predicting that the role of producers and consumers would begin to blur and merge.
Web 2.0 à user generated information, we are actively involved à Media in the Online age and the Digital revolution
Generation Y, Net, Next names given to your generation. Brought up during a digital age. US research at Universities (Junco 2007) found that Next Generation college students used technology at higher rates than people from other generations.
US research figures (Junco 2007) :
97% of students owned a computer,
94% owned a mobile phone, and
56% owned an MP3 player.
76% of students used instant messaging
40% of students used television to get most of their news and 34% the Internet.
This generation spends at least 3.5 hours a day online.
Easy to do complex things
Convergence, inter-connectivity (Research, plan, produce, post produce work and link it all together, distribute and exhibit it all using digital technology. Easy to transfer information and alter it.
Growth in youtube use: Wesch has described the phenomenal growth of www.youtube.com as an interactive site and the idea that human involvement in producing media texts has completely changed how we use media and respond to media.
Web 2.0 à user generated information, we are actively involved à Media in the Online age and the Digital revolution
Generation Y, Net, Next names given to your generation. Brought up during a digital age. US research at Universities (Junco 2007) found that Next Generation college students used technology at higher rates than people from other generations.
US research figures (Junco 2007) :
97% of students owned a computer,
94% owned a mobile phone, and
56% owned an MP3 player.
76% of students used instant messaging
40% of students used television to get most of their news and 34% the Internet.
This generation spends at least 3.5 hours a day online.
Easy to do complex things
Convergence, inter-connectivity (Research, plan, produce, post produce work and link it all together, distribute and exhibit it all using digital technology. Easy to transfer information and alter it.
Growth in youtube use: Wesch has described the phenomenal growth of www.youtube.com as an interactive site and the idea that human involvement in producing media texts has completely changed how we use media and respond to media.
Revision - Genre #3
Definition: “A classification of texts into type” Media Studies An Essential Introduction (Rayner)
Lacey’s schema of genre has been used to look at typical conventions (sets/ locations, character roles, iconography, visual and audio elements, narrative events) an easy way to collate films into types.
Exploring hybrids, sub-genres, post-generic films / multi-generic films.
Trends in genre, developments in genres over the years. What is fashionable now?
Importance of genre to audiences and to institutions / producers (you did a short essay on your blog have a read over what you wrote)
Audience expectations, blue print used by producers.
Did you adhere to and / or challenge conventions?
Lacey’s schema of genre has been used to look at typical conventions (sets/ locations, character roles, iconography, visual and audio elements, narrative events) an easy way to collate films into types.
Exploring hybrids, sub-genres, post-generic films / multi-generic films.
Trends in genre, developments in genres over the years. What is fashionable now?
Importance of genre to audiences and to institutions / producers (you did a short essay on your blog have a read over what you wrote)
Audience expectations, blue print used by producers.
Did you adhere to and / or challenge conventions?
Revision - Genre #2
Why is genre important to film makers and producers?
Denis McQuail refers to the commercial and industrial significance of genres.
The genre may be considered as a practical device for helping any mass medium to produce consistently and efficiently and to relate its production to the expectations of its customers. Since it is also a practical device for enabling individual media users to plan their choices, it can be considered as a mechanism for ordering the relations between the two main parties to mass communication.
In other words it helps producers target audiences and capitalize on the success of previous films because audiences may choose to see a film based on the genre or generic content of the film. They can repeat a successful formula based on audience expectation.
Christine Gledhill notes that 'differences between genres meant different audiences could be identified and catered to... This made it easier to standardise and stabilise production'
Denis McQuail refers to the commercial and industrial significance of genres.
The genre may be considered as a practical device for helping any mass medium to produce consistently and efficiently and to relate its production to the expectations of its customers. Since it is also a practical device for enabling individual media users to plan their choices, it can be considered as a mechanism for ordering the relations between the two main parties to mass communication.
In other words it helps producers target audiences and capitalize on the success of previous films because audiences may choose to see a film based on the genre or generic content of the film. They can repeat a successful formula based on audience expectation.
Contemporary theorists tend to emphasize the importance of the semiotic notion of intertextuality: of seeing individual texts in relation to others. Katie Wales notes that 'genre is... an intertextual concept' (Wales 1989, 259). John Hartley suggests that 'we need to understand genre as a property of the relations between texts' (O'Sullivan et al. 1994, 128). And as Tony Thwaites et al. put it, 'each text is influenced by the generic rules in the way it is put together; the generic rules are reinforced by each text' (Thwaites et al. 1994, 100).
Roland Barthes (1975) argued that it is in relation to other texts within a genre rather than in relation to lived experience that we make sense of certain events within a text. There are analogies here with schema theory in psychology, which proposes that we have mental 'scripts' which help us to interpret familiar events in everyday life.
Revision - Genre #1
Are genres just a convenient way for theorists to categorise texts
Are they timeless (set in stone) or do they transcend (change) over time?
Are genres related to culture?
THERE IS NO RIGHT OR WRONG ANSWER BECAUSE THESE QUESTIONS ARE ALWAYS BEING CONSIDERED
David Bordwell
'A genre is ultimately an abstract conception rather than something that exists empirically in the world,' notes Jane Feuer (1992, 144). One theorist's genre may be another's sub-genre or even super-genre (and indeed what is technique, style, mode, formula or thematic grouping to one may be treated as a genre by another). Themes, at least, seem inadequate as a basis for defining genres since, as David Bordwell notes, 'any theme may appear in any genre' (Bordwell 1989, 147). He asks: 'Are animation and documentary films genres or modes? Is the filmed play or comedy performance a genre? If tragedy and comedy are genres, perhaps then domestic tragedy or slapstick is a formula'. In passing, he offers a useful inventory of categories used in film criticism, many of which have been accorded the status of genres by various commentators:
Grouping by period or country (American films of the 1930s), by director or star or producer or writer or studio, by technical process (CinemaScope films), by cycle (the 'fallen women' films), by series (the 007 movies), by style (German Expressionism), by structure (narrative), by ideology (Reaganite cinema), by venue ('drive-in movies'), by purpose (home movies), by audience ('teenpix'), by subject or theme (family film, paranoid-politics movies). (Bordwell 1989, 148)
Another film theorist, Robert Stam, also refers to common ways of categorising films:
While some genres are based on story content (the war film), other are borrowed from literature (comedy, melodrama) or from other media (the musical). Some are performer-based (the Astaire-Rogers films) or budget-based (blockbusters), while others are based on artistic status (the art film), racial identity (Black cinema), locat[ion] (the Western) or sexual orientation (Queer cinema). (Stam 2000, 14).
OR are they infinite?
Are genres related to culture?
Recognises that there are many ways of categorising genres and asks if genre is determined by style, structure or content or cultural factors
Grouping by period or country (American films of the 1930s), by director or star or producer or writer or studio, by technical process (CinemaScope films), by cycle (the 'fallen women' films), by series (the 007 movies), by style (German Expressionism), by structure (narrative), by ideology (Reaganite cinema), by venue ('drive-in movies'), by purpose (home movies), by audience ('teenpix'), by subject or theme (family film, paranoid-politics movies). (Bordwell 1989, 148)
Another film theorist, Robert Stam, also refers to common ways of categorising films:
While some genres are based on story content (the war film), other are borrowed from literature (comedy, melodrama) or from other media (the musical). Some are performer-based (the Astaire-Rogers films) or budget-based (blockbusters), while others are based on artistic status (the art film), racial identity (Black cinema), locat[ion] (the Western) or sexual orientation (Queer cinema). (Stam 2000, 14).
Bordwell concludes that 'one could... argue that no set of necessary and sufficient conditions can mark off genres from other sorts of groupings in ways that all experts or ordinary film-goers would find acceptable' (Bordwell 1989, 147). Practitioners and the general public make use of their own genre labels (de facto genres) quite apart from those of academic theorists. We might therefore ask ourselves 'Whose genre is it anyway?' Still further problems with definitional approaches will become apparent in due course.
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