Hello, and welcome to my blog. I am currently studying Media Studies at Ilkley Grammar School at A2 level and this blog will show you everything that I will be looking at this year. Each blog post will be like a piece of work that can be looked at individually. I hope you enjoy looking at my blog as I enjoy posting on it.

Tuesday 13 March 2012

SD - Audience Theories


Audience theories:

- Julian McDougal (2009) suggests that because online age is getting harder to concieve media audiences as a stable identifyable groups.
HOWEVER..
Audiences still clearly make sense and give meaning to cultural products, certain people may not be interested in media products in which others are.

- McQuail (1972) said an audience can be described as a 'temporary collective' ie. people that are linked as being fandoms and are temporary audiences such as a couple going out to the cinema and picking a film last minute which they would'nt normally be interested in they may like or dislike the film after watching it.
HOWEVER..
If there was a cult following (not mainstream) but gathers sucess over a long period of time instead, these people are not temporary collective audiences. Some serious cult followers embrace aspects of a band or film or character intot their lives such as quoting characters and reading up on subjects they want to know more about in the text.

- Ien Ang (1991) says that audiences only exist as an imaginary entity, an abstraction which is constructed from the vantage point of the institution. This theory is talking about companies and corporations and is therefore not relative to people. This theory could be seen as outdated because of recent digitisation, because of digitisation audiences can be now scientifically measure on websites such as youtubes and website statistics.
Ang also said that audiencehood is becoming ever more multifaceted, fragmented and diversified repertoire of practices and experiences. More and more subgenres are coming about which would agree with this theory although the older generation may disagree.

Friday 9 March 2012

AN - Filming 6/03/12


AN - Filming 6/3/12

Today we filmed our penultimate bit of footage during our Rec & Leisure time. In this session, mostly filmed stuff which was based on the feedback we obtained from the previous Rough Cut. This feedback included ongoing continuity errors which had the boyfriend (James) making a dinner for the girlfriend (Katie) at her house, this made no sense to people and because of this, we had to film it that the house belonged to the boyfriend with the girlfriend walking up to the house and walking out to signify the break up has taken place. We used a variety of shots while filming this sequence such a high angle shot of the break up and a low angle shot of the girlfriend's feet walking up to the house.

Besides that we also filmed a close up of the beans on bread for the dinner scene, since people did not understand what was happening during that sequence so by adding shot variety we will give our audience a better idea of what was happening in the situation.

SD Example Three, DigiPak


SD - CD Disc Design: Example Three

I was surprised how plane the CD design for the Girls Aloud single 'The Show' was. The CD is all black and white (something Asa has been wanting to do our digipak like) there is only one image of a directors cutting device on it which is also in black and white. This is a countertype of what you would expect as the girls a a bunch of singers not actresses although this obviously is linked to the name of the album and track one on the track listing, which only contains two songs 'the Show' and the later released single 'Jump' although this is a remix of the origional track. The track listing is shown on the cut thing aswell as the date the single was released underneath. In a box next to the image there is a box containing small font explaining again the full rights go to the distributor and record label which is again, Polydor the same label Hear'say were signed to owned by Universal Music Company. Below this there are four logos; one with an image and then the name GirlsAloud, another saying Aloudsound which is researched and found that it is the name of the official Girls Aloud fan site, Compact disc digital audio (which has been featured on all of my examples), and the last the letters GA inside a triangle which looks like the one which usually contains film age ratings. 

This is the front cover of the single 'The Show' it is quite plane for a Girl band's cover but as the band has recently been put together before this, it names the members and is quite 'cutesy' which matches with the idea of putting a fan site in the bottom right corner in the hope that the band would become bigger and more well known. The 'GA' in the traingle sticks with this idea and is quite fun rating themselves as just the band quite a simple idea, the green obviously means suitable for anyone which may imply that the band are trying to appeal to all audiences and arn't marketing themselves specifically or to one core audience although obviously they don't appeal to all audiences.

SD - Example Two, DigiPak


SD - CD Disc Design: Example Two

I have been looking at the Cd design of the single 'To you I belong' - Bewitched, the design gives off a fantasy genre which may attract audiences interested in fantasy films. The Cd is goldwith silver mirrored stars on the disc, there is small font which goes around the curcumfrance of the cd which explains that all rights are to the producers and record company and that it should not be copied illegally, this is a convention of Cd design as the regularly have mention of these rights of the distributor. The logo reading 'compact disc digital audio' is also on this Cd found on example One. There is a three track list found (like the same as example one) below the centre of the disc, this text is in silver and purple, track times are alos found here next to the song title. Epic records logo is found aswell as the CD number and a weird symbol/logo which probably stands for another record label. The name of the band is at the top of the Cd and the 'e' in Bewitched has been replaced with a gold star, below this is the name of the single 'To You I Belong' which is also the name of track 1.

SD Example One, DigiPak


SD - CD Disc Design: Example One

I have looked at a range of example of how we can design our disc to go into the digipaks, as we're having two (one for the music video we're currently producing and the other featuring other tracks by Desiny's Child) we're going to have more to think about although thetwo discs will be similar in design they will obviously have different description and information shown on the front. Hear'says single Everybody is a white disc with the letters 'R'S' in a bold blue font outlined in darker blue underneath this says Hear'say and lists four featured tracks on the CD, there is then in a very small font information on copyright and Universal Music Company below this there are two logos one Polydor (Polydor is a record company which is owned by Universal Music Group) our will instead feature Columbia Records logo as this is the record label that Destiny's Child were most recently signed to before they split. The other reading compact disc digital audio a feature that has been found on all the examples I've looked at and therefore will be featured on our disc one and two.


This shot of the band inspired a number of shots that me and Katie took during filming. The way in which we used it was to rotate the camera round to each member as their chorus in the song came up which were given to each of them to lip sync before filming.

SD - Defining our audience


SD - Defining our Audience

- The age of our core audience is 15-24.
- General fans of the band and the R&B genre.
- The male gaze aspect would bring in a secondary male audience.
- Our audience may be interested in viewing romantic comedy films rather than indie and horror films.
- They will be interested in mainstream music and genre's such as R&B, Pop and maybe Hip-hop.
- The audience may also read gossip magazine rather than informative newsletters and papers, these may include the ones that target the same age group ie. More, Now & Look 
- The uses of gratifications theory is good to use when thinking about the audience you are trying to target, getting a fuller view of what the viewer is interested in will help when making decissions to include within the text itself, magazine advertisment and digipak.
- Destiny's Childs audience is Mainstream but also a Mass audience although because they are a female band in the R&B genre which could be seen as attracting a niche audience. 

'Uses of gratifications theory is an approach to understanding why people actively seek out specific media outlets and content for gratification purposes. The theory discusses how users proactively search for media that will not only meet a given need but enhance knowledge, social interactions and diversion. 
This theory assumes that members of the audience are not passive but take an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their own lives. The theory also holds that audiences are responsible for choosing media to meet their needs. The approach suggests that people use the media to fulfill specific gratifications. This theory would then imply that the media compete against other information sources for viewers' gratification.' 

Monday 5 March 2012

SD, Blazing Grace So Far....


All - Blazing Grace so far, Schedule for finishing all products

On Tuesday we filmed a new scene, this was just another scene showing the boyfriend and girlfriend together before the aftermath's take place. 
We now need to film the girlfriend's aftermath and re shoot the scene when the meal takes place for the girlfriend and boyfriend because their was a bit of a mix up with the scene itself, so a quick re shoot should fix the problem.
So far with the Digipak and Magazine Ad, we have not spent enough time as we would of hoped but all three of us have either made a prototype or researched on previous Digipaks and Magazine Ad's. 
We will have an update soon, and will hopefully have a final rough cut to post up early next week.



Here is our plan to deal with these products and what we have to do.
Filming: 
Girlfriend's aftermath
Girlfriend walking up to the house
Girlfriend leaving house
Close up of beans on toast
We plan on filming this stuff this weekend and edit the items on Monday.

Digipak: 
Implement feedback into Asa's digipak
Sophie and Katie need to learn how to use Photoshop. If they run out of time, Asa's digipak will be the main one although we shouldnt see this as being a problem as there are afew ICT students in the class who could show us how to use it.

Magazine Ad:
Research done.
Sophie and Katie will use either Photoshop or Microsoft Publisher to create the advert.
A photoshoot of the band will also take place so that pictures can be obtained for the digipaks this will be done this weekend on a cobbled suburban road in which the band members will be featured walking dow a street away from the camera in a long shot which will be used for the back face of the digipak

SD - Magazine Adverts

We have really struggled to find Destiny's Child magazine advertisements Katie is the only one that has managed to find an actual one found in Rolling Stone magazine. The other ones we've found have been fragrance advertisements released by Beyonce which are much more common. From looking at the ad's we've been able to denote there is often a lot of the colour red used in lips which we already knew is a common convention found in girl band music videos to include the male gaze theory.
The magazine advertisement I have found is a L'oreal lipstick shade (red)

The male gaze theory has been brought into the advertsement by focusing on the eyes and lips in a close up of Beyonce's face (left) On the other side of the double paged advertisement the page is split the left side left showing the product although the ad is dominated by the celebrity endorsment, Beyonce. At the far right of the ad Beyonce is featured in a short red dress showing her thighs and she is staring into the camera. Gold and white text is used, but white ontop of the image to not distract the audience too much from the image ' This is my color riche intense 375' making the audience believe that this is infact the lipstick Beyonce wears when it's probably not true. The brand is featured at the bottom in the signature Gold text which is recognisable to buyers that know the cosmetic market.



Friday 2 March 2012

KM/AN Blazing Grace So Far..... New!

On Tuesday we filmed a new scene, this was just another scene showing the boyfriend and girlfriend together before the aftermath's take place.
We now need to film the girlfriend's aftermath and re shoot the scene when the meal takes place for the girlfriend and boyfriend because their was a bit of a mix up with the scene itself, so a quick re shoot should fix the problem.
So far with the Digipak and Magazine Ad, we have not spent enough time as we would of hoped but all three of us have either made a prototype or researched on previous Digipaks and Magazine Ad's.
We will have an update soon, and will hopefully have a final rough cut to post up early next week.


Here is our plan to deal with these products and what we have to do.
Filming: 
Girlfriend's aftermath
Girlfriend walking up to the house
Girlfriend leaving house
Close up of beans on toast
We plan on filming this stuff this weekend and edit the items on Monday.
Digipak: 
Implement feedback into Asa's digipak
Sophie and Katie need to learn how to use Photoshop. If they run out of time, Asa's digipak will be the main one.
Magazine Ad:
Research done.
Sophie and Katie will use either Photoshop or Microsoft Publisher to create the advert.
A photoshoot of the band will also take place so that pictures can be obtained for the digipaks. More information coming soon.

Thursday 1 March 2012

Blazing Grace So Far...

On Tuesday we filmed a new scene, this was just another scene showing the boyfriend and girlfriend together before the aftermath's take place. 
We now need to film the girlfriend's aftermath and re shoot the scene when the meal takes place for the girlfriend and boyfriend because their was a bit of a mix up with the scene itself, so a quick re shoot should fix the problem.
So far with the Digipak and Magazine Ad, we have not spent enough time as we would of hoped but all three of us have either made a prototype or researched on previous Digipaks and Magazine Ad's. 
We will have an update soon, and will hopefully have a final rough cut to post up early next week.