Hands Homework

Digital Technology

Pre-Production - Before even thinking of a concept for a thriller myself and my group used digital technology in order to research the thriller genre and its conventions. For instance we used YouTube to watch clips of infamous thrillers such as Se7en and Lock Stock to see what made them successful and to draw inspiration from them, and this was a strategy myself and my partner used for our music video also, by using YouTube we watched various music videos between us in order to begin to build a baseline for our own music video and to gather ideas of the genre for our music video and to get creative, therefore there was no progression in this sense from AS to A2. We also used Blogger which was essential for displaying our research and planning in creative ways which enabled us to refer back to our research and planning over and over again, we used Blogger in AS and A2.

Production - In AS we were introduced to framing our shots, match on action and continuity with the use Samsung mini DV camera, plus we learnt about the different settings on the camera such as white balance, however in A2 we progressed to use more advanced equipment, such as the Sony HD1000p camera. By changing to a more advanced camera, this enabled me to be more creative with my shots as it introduced different types of focus such as shallow focus by learning how to change the manual focus and also how to set exposure. Therefore due to this change in digital technology, this allowed me to extend my skills and develop a better understanding.

Post Production - After we had completed our production in AS and A2, we used Final Cut Pro in order to edit our footage, and to ensure it was brought up to a good quality, by manipulating the footage by colour correcting it, adding effects and even titles. Once we had decided on our genre and chose our song from the rock genre for our A2 production, we used digital technology such as Final Cut which enabled us to put pictures we had taken of our storyboard and make them into an animatic which then enabled us to creatively construct our ideas into a timeline and to be able to refer back to them when shooting our music video. This was also relevant to my group's thriller. However, comparing AS and A2, it is prominent that my skills have developed due to in AS the sound we used was diegetic such as the actor's voices and background noise, whereas in A2 we had to edit to a pre-recorded track, so in AS I used the blade tool religiously so that the everything was in sync, however in A2 I had to cut the footage in time with the music so it matched the visuals, and advanced beat syncing. Another comparison to be made is that in AS I used effects such as Bad TV, fast paced editing, colour correction and overlay, all of these skills were basic, whereas in A2 I progressed to use cross dissolves, slowed the tempo of clips and helped to create a clip of our performance appear as if it was playing on an iPod by using overlays, therefore I have developed. After I'd finished editing I exported the video to QuickTime Movie files then uploaded them to YouTube to receive feedback.

Research and Planning

Pre-Production
During pre-production for my group's AS thriller we used YouTube to research existing thrillers in order to draw inspiration from them and go on to implement the conventions from them into our thriller. Furthermore, we used Blogger to document our research and planning so that we could refer back to it along the way. We progressed

Production

Researching and Planning was essential when it came to Production as it gave us ideas in order to be creative, for instance in AS we researched multiple thrillers in our pre-production stage which enabled us to be able to recognise forms and conventions of thrillers and to implement them in our thriller. Whereas for my group’s A2 music video, we were introduced to the concept of lip synching and had to research how to do it, therefore using YouTube we watched LMFAO’s Sexy and I Know It music video and learnt the words, so that we could film ourselves singing to the song at various camera angles and so that we could then take this footage and edit in Final Cut Pro. This gave me the knowledge I needed in order to edit the lip synching on our music video and enabled me to direct our lead singer and bassist in the band when filming.

Post Production

In both AS and A2, it was vital that we obtained feedback on our productions so that we could analyse if we had reached our target audiences successfully. Therefore in both we used primary research such as an online survey website called Survey Monkey, which allowed us to ask 10 questions and to analyse the feedback collectively. We did this for our rough cut also which enabled us to make the alterations suggested from the feedback.  Furthermore, we used Facebook to promote our online survey and also uploaded our productions, both rough cut and final onto YouTube and received hundreds of views on both AS and A2 videos.

 

Conventions of Real Media
Pre-Production
Before even beginning the production of our thriller and music video, we looked at real media in order to begin to understand the industries we were targeting. For instance, we watched thrillers and tried to determine who the target audience was and once we knew, we could start to research the conventions along with it. For instance, for our A2 production we listened to alternative rock songs and tried to determine the meaning behind the lyrics, and then watched the existing music videos for the song to see whether our ideas matched or were along the lines, this enabled me to begin to think of ideas for my groups song and music video. 

Production

In AS and A2 the conventions of real media texts played a big part in my work, in AS knowing the conventions of thrillers was vital in order to make our own thriller opening, and by watching clips of thrillers such as The Orphan and One Hour Photo, this enabled us to spot the different camera angles and shots, stereotypes, iconic sounds and other conventions. Furthermore, in A2 we watched a variety of alternative rock videos such as Linkin Park’s Numb and Muse’s Starlight which showed us the excessive use of close ups were vital to a successful music video, in addition in Numb, we took an intertextual reference of our protagonist running through a church, and used high angles to show the vulnerability of our protagonist, therefore gave us inspiration for our music video. Without watching real media texts I would not have known the different conventions I needed to incorporate in my own productions and would not have been able to produce a convincing thriller or alternative rock music video. 

Post Production

I feel that in AS paying close attention to real media texts helps me dramatically to edit our thriller opening as it enabled me to see how other thrillers were edited such as in the Orphan, the editing was fast paced in order to obtain the audience’s attention span and to build up the suspense of the storyline. Therefore when it came to editing our thriller, I used fast cuts by using the blade tool in Final Cut Pro, creating an eclipse edit which in effect built the suspense and followed the conventions of existing thrillers.  However, without question I developed a lot in the second year, as being faced with a new challenge of having to match visuals to a pre-recorded song and create meaning, tested my editing skills.

Post Modern Tradition Text Reader Relations and Conception of Representation

How do post-modern media texts challenge traditional text-reader relations and the concept of representation?

Postmodernism is a historical period after Modernism, in other words, Modernism saw belief in progress, a self-serving unfulfilled culture with structure and order and a world inspired by science and technology, until people begun to question their ideologies due to wars and the bombs used in them. Therefore, in the Post-modern world we now live in, we are left with defragmented ideologies, a spoilt culture in which we have a lack of faith in anything new and where we celebrate technology for technologies sake and not the science behind it. Therefore in Postmodernity, we are faced with media texts in which offer style over substance, where we are much more accustomed to the look and style of the text rather than the content. Audiences used to passively watch television, whereas in Postmodernity audiences now actively watch, and now there is a huge variety of different media forms for audiences to watch, and due to this in Postmodernity we now celebrate popular culture. And in comparison to the structured meaningful modern texts, postmodern texts are hyper-real with no specific structure or meaning, which is a result of our postmodern world where structures are blurred and broken down.

Postmodern texts contradict modern values and beliefs and as a result challenge tradition text-reader relations. For instance, examples of such texts include Wreck-It Ralph, reality television shows such as the X Factor, music artists such as Nicki Minaj, video games such as the Sims and television programmes such as Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror: White Bear.

Postmodern media challenges modern representation, an example of this is Nicki Minaj, one of today’s most popular music artists and is a prime example of how the structures have broken down since Modernity. She bases her image on a Barbie doll, which was predominantly modern and yet, as Jameson would say, she has recycled the culture of Barbie, and from using this intertextual reference, Nicki Minaj has created a representation of herself which is simulated and hyper real. This refers to Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra and his belief in the fact we cannot have anything new anymore, 'an artificial representation of reality that no longer bare any resemblance to the original', therefore in postmodernity the media create idealistic representations of reality that outclass reality. Furthermore, Nicki Minaj has several alter-egos, which Foucault would describe as her having a ‘fluid identity’, meaning her identity is framed and is a shifting, temporary construction. And due to the collapsing of structures in postmodernity, we as an audience accept her representation of herself as we have adapted to post-modern texts and have surrendered to popular culture.

The idea of fluid identities is also carried on through playing video games such as the Sims, as it enables the audience to represent themselves to be whomever they want to be, to be a character, via a simulation. Video games offer the audience a heightened reality and due to this heightened reality, the audience become immersed in the game, losing sense of reality in the process. This process of immersion and fluid identities also refers to our use of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, where we a population have become immersed in the use of these websites, and can represent ourselves to be whomever we wish, where we can post photos in various poses or photos of other people who we can say we are, and due to being behind a computer, people can live out their fluid identities over the internet. The idea of flow and immersion and fluid identities was not possible in modernity as media such as television did not offer the text-readers the opportunity to decide what happens in the programme without a chance to control the outcome, however in postmodernity we as an audience prefer to have a sense of control. This sense of control is demonstrated in television shows such as White Bear and The X Factor. Even though White Bear is not an interactive programme, Charlie Brooker demonstrated our need for control by having the audience in White Bear participate in a television programme which follows the public ridicule of a known criminal. In reference to the X Factor, a reality television programme, which showcases aspiring music artists who compete against one another to win a recording contract, the irony being they sing songs from the record label in question’s back catalogue, hence demonstrating Jameson’s theory that nothing new can be created and that culture is being recycled. In comparison to the modern audience, in postmodernity, The X factors allows the text-reader to have the ability to choose their winner by voting and hence leads them to fill a sense of control.

Films and games are similar as they both revolve around a character who wants to accomplish a goal or end, therefore breaking the boundaries between audience and media content because without an audience to use, the media cannot exist. Therefore Wreck-it Ralph is a prime example due to the fact it draws intertextual references from 1980 games such as Pacman, Sonic and Tappers, plus various others, which creates Nostalgia, an aspect of Jameson’s post-modern views and comes together as a film. And due to this bricolage of intertextual references where the characters from such games have their own world and merge together such as at the end when all the games who’s plugged had been pulled out, merged into Fix-It Felix, Wreck-It Ralph in effect breaks down modern structures as in modernity genres did not merge together in hybrids. And hence by using these intertextual references, this shows that by recycling the gaming culture, something new can be created that will create nostalgia and as a result be marketable not only to the 1980s/90s generation, such as the parents of today but to the newer generation such as their children.

On the other hand, as a film, it could be argued that Wreck-It Ralph embodies a grand narrative structure, which is a modern aspect and follows the traditional stereotype of an imperfect ‘odd’ hero overcoming their perceived deficiency and who prevails in a fight against evil, which we see in many modern texts such as Aladdin, a thief who becomes the hero. Due to the film being narrated by Ralph, this is an example of self-reflectivity, as he is aware he is a game character and decides to go against his ‘villain’ status and become a hero, this in effect blurs the modern structure of Lyotard’s grand narrative where the hero is good and the villain is bad, therefore also blurring the binary opposites of good vs evil, on the other hand another Post-Modernism view on grand narratives is that films had a typical  ‘happy ending’ and in the case of Wreck-It Ralph there is a happy ending, and hence conforms to the modern structure. Therefore, I would argue that Wreck-it Ralph is not as post-modern as the other texts I have referenced.

In conclusion I believe that Postmodern media does challenge the traditional text-reader relations and representation, as in reference to the Postmodern theories they can be applied to the texts I have studied such as Jameson’s recycled culture, the breaking of boundaries with Lyotard’s Grand Narratives and Baudrillard’s simulacra and simulation, and as a result found the texts to be Postmodern, with recycled modern aspects.  In reference to the future, I am led to wonder how postmodernity will evolve, due to the idea of nothing ever being new, whether we will stay at a standstill of recycled ideas with no progress ever to be made, or to effortlessly carry on trying to create something new, I think Black Mirror is right in what it is trying to put across, if we carry on the way we are, the likeliness of a dystopian society is inevitable.

Terminology      7/10

AEE      12/20

Examples             13/20