Analyse one of your media productions in relation to media language.

Media Language is the ways in which meaning is created in a product. This meaning is created through narrative, genre, representation and the audience that the product is aimed at. I will look at my product that I created for the brief that asked me to create a Music Video in my A2 Year. The song that I chose to use for this task was Save The World by Swedish House Mafia, which is a song from the dance genre.

Andrew Goodwin says that a music video should have 5 key concepts, and these are: Thought Beats, Narrative and Performance, Star Image, Relation to visuals and the Technical Aspects. When creating our music video we felt that these were important values to include to make it an effective product. We used thought beats in our video, specifically at the beginning when the drums have just started and there is very little else happening. These were effective because it meant that we could create a relationship between what the audience could see on the screen and the music that they could hear. We also used the Star Image idea, as it meant that we were able to create our music video as a unique brand. We felt that this was important to our media product because otherwise the entire structure of the video may have appeared unnecessarily fragmented. To create this Star Image we introduced the character early, zooming into his face to do a meat shot and make him the centre of the frame. We then used him in all the key moments in the video and this meant that the audience could see that he was meant to be the main character.

Carole Vernallis had a similar idea to Goodwin, but said that there were 4 key concepts, and not the 5 that he said. The 4 that she said were most important were Narrative, Editing, Camera and Diegesis (The world of the music video). She said that this could include Jump Cuts and Disjointed Narrative. We used both of these in our video, with the jump cut being used on more than one occasion. We first used it in the scene were the main character, in superhero mode, was running down an alleyway to save a young woman who was being attacked. We used a jump cut here to give a slightly surreal feel and to make the time frame that it was happening in seem strange. The next time we used it was when we had slowed down the video, at the point that a young man was going to be ran over by a driver who was texting at the time. We used them here to keep the hyper-real theme, because in real life time doesn't slow down, but in the diegesis that we created, anything was possible, so the jump cuts weren't out of place. The disjointed narrative that we used was created when the shots that we were showing didn't really link up properly, as a whole, linear video. For example, it was quickly cutting from him sitting in college, to putting a costume on and then to saving someone from being attacked. Having this disjointed narrative meant that we didn't need to worry about it looking linear and helped when filming and editing them together. It also meant that we could create a more surreal story due to him seemingly being in more than one place in a matter of seconds.

Barthes said that music video and similar products have both denotations and connotations. This is to say that they have certain signs and signifiers in them, and then relate these to different ideologies and attitudes that are being expressed in the music video. An example of this is that if there was a black cat in the video, walking across someones path, then people may think that this is unlucky, and that would be the ideology behind it. In our music video we had a costume with a stereotypical superhero logo on it and this meant that when the audience seen this costume they could easily see the story of what was happening. The costume was the denotation and then the connotation would be that the main character was going to become the superhero that he had been day-dreaming about in the college. We also see a denotation when we are seeing one of the crimes and then see a shot of the superhero running. In this situation we haven't been directly told that he is going to be solving this crime, but because of our previous knowledge of this kind of character we know that he will be. Because we have already seen him wanting to be a superhero we already know that he will want to make a difference and save the person in danger.

Umberto Eco said that all texts, including music videos, will have either an open or a closed meaning encoded into them. The texts that have an open meaning will be open to the opinions of the audience that consume them, whereas those with a closed meaning will make the message/ ideology perfectly clear. Our music video was reasonably simple, and this meant that we had a closed meaning, and this was reasonably easy to understand. Our idea, and the one that we wanted our target audience to understand, was that ordinary people can be heroes, in whatever they are doing. By using a closed meaning we were able to get our message across strongly and tell them exactly what we wanted, rather than let them make up all their own ideas, and to get a meaning that we didn't really want to create.

Stuart Hall said that a media text, like a music video, would have 3 types if readings. These would be a preferred, a negotiated and an oppositional reading. If you had a preferred reading then the audience that you aimed your product at would get the message you wanted. If it was a negotiated reading then the audience may recognise some parts of the message that you were trying to create, but may have some of their own ideas, and an oppositional reading would mean that the audience you had aimed at didn't agree with the intentional reading, and chose to interpret a completely different one. In our music video we had a preferred reading, according to some of the feedback that we had, and what we as a production team thought. The meaning that we wanted to put in, believe in yourself and anything is possible, was widely thought of as the one that most people seen. This was good because things like signifiers and signs that we put in to emphasise that message were then more effective because our audiences would be able to connect with what they were for.

Analyse one of your media products in relation to representation

Representation is the way that certain places and people, including age, gender and race, are portrayed in the media. Stuart Hall says that media shows us things in society, using careful mediation, as to say that the media can give us an idea of the way these people and places should be viewed. All media texts have messages, which are either obvious to the reader, or are encoded so that it is harder to see these messages. I will look at my A2 Music Video for Swedish House Mafia - Save The World, a dance song, in relation to these representations and look at theorists who talk about it.

Marxism states that there is always a hegemonic view of society, which is to say that the mass medias that the public consume give them ideologies to follow and agree with. When exercising their influence they are able to encode messages into what they produce i.e. newspapers, videos, television programmes and this would tell the public what to think. The music video that we produced did a similar thing, with it having a message encoded in it. In the scenes where the main character is transformed from an ordinary student into a crime-fighting superhero it gives out messages, such as telling people to believe in themselves. It also tells them that if they do believe in themselves then there is no limit on what they could do. This technique that we have used represents our main character as a good role model for people who could be in the same, or similar, position. It has some elements of escapism, as it shows people that if you act as this character does then you can do what they do.

O'Sullivan was a theorists who talked about stereotypes and the ways in which they acted like labels to certain groups in society. He said that it was easier to label these people as a collective group e.g. chavs, goths, scene, rather than see what these people are like individually, and then represent them for who they are, and not the groups they are part of. He says that having these stereotypes shorten our ideologies and allow us to make our decision more quickly. We have stereotypes in our video, with the superhero being a male, and being a dominant character, having control over the situations that he is involved in. We also have the stereotypical damsel in distress, with there being a woman who is being mugged and then needs the male superhero to come and save her. These are common in the media, as they like to show these stereotypical elements because it means that the audiences that they attract will be able to relate to the characters.

Perkins says that stereotyping is not that simple, and if it was then these stereotypes would not work as a cultural brand. For example, if one of your characters was a stereotype of an British male, he may not be recognised as that in somewhere like America or Australia, where the culture is different. She also says that counter-types exist, to challenge the stereotypes that have been created.  We use counter-types in our video with the hero needing to save a man, which isn't usually expected, as it is usually a woman who is shown as the weaker individual. This means that we are able to challenge the usual representations of the males always being the dominant strong characters, and the females being weak and submissive. This could make our audience think, and this can mean that we are able to let them look deeper into the meanings that we have created in our videos.

Baudrillard says that there is now a culture of hyper-reality, where the society is one of simulacra. This means that there are certain aspects of life where people prefer to be in this hyper real world, and this has aspects of escapism, with them wanting to be somewhere that they don't have to face normal life and can live one of enjoyment. In our music video we reflect this, with the student sat in college, daydreaming about being a powerful superhero, rather being in that hyper-real world, rather than being sat in a lecture. This is an idea that the audience that watches our video would be able to relate to, with them being in a similar age group and college/ university/ work environment most of the time. The representation here is to show that people in the media reflect the public idea that they would like to escape from the monotonous day to day tasks and do something exciting that they will enjoy. By having the idea of escapism and hyper-reality twinned together we are able to show the way that the character is feeling, due to the way he acts and the pictures that are shown on the screen.

Strinati said that media producers use pastiches, parodies and intertextual references to make their texts recognisable to the audiences. He says that by using things that the audiences had seen before, that they would recognise things like genre, due to the way that it was represented in the media. For example, in a rock video you would expect band shots a lot and when you seen this in a video that is the what you'd expect to hear, just because of how they were represented. In our video we both adhered to and challenged this theory, by both using things you would expect at points and then things that you wouldn't at others. For example, we used thought beats at the beginning of the video, which you'd expect to see in a dance music video. This was the way in which we adhered to the conventions, alongside having parts of hyper-reality, which is common in dance music videos, such as Day n Nite by Kid Cudi. The video features a montage of speech bubbles on the video and a talking cat. In our video we had 'Pow' signs to get away from real violence and this was part of the conventions of a dance music video. We also challenged the conventions by using parts of other genres suck as shots of instruments being played, which challenged his ideas that you would always see the things that you's expect in these music videos.

Analyse one of your media products in relation to audience

In this essay I will be looking at one of my previously create coursework products in relation to audience. Julian McDougal said that in the online age it is harder to define a certain audience accurately. I will look at 5 theorists in relation to this and look at how these are relevant to my media products. The media product that I’m looking at will be my A2 Music Video for Swedish House Mafia’s song Save The World (Tonight).

Denis McQuail said that an audience could be described as a temporary collective, which is to say that audiences are inter-changing and that the borders between these genres of audiences are becoming more permeable. Our target audience was a mass, mainstream audience, rather than a niche, alternative one and this meant that it was slightly easier to create a product for this kind of audience. However, as McQuail says, our audience now would be completely different in 5 or 10 years time, due to the shifting boundaries that define what a genre is, deciding what the audience would watch. 

McQuail also said that there can be elements of diversion or escapism in the media that we consume and we included this in our video. The storyline that we included was a disillusioned student who wanted to escape the monotonous college life and do something different. If our audience could relate to this then they would also be able to escape from any problems that they may encounter in their lives. This meant that we would be building a relationship with the audience, both speaking to them and listening to them, this links into Hartley’s theory, which I have mentioned below.

Hartley said that institutions have to know their target audience so that they can target them effectively. When we were creating our music video we took this into consideration and made sure that we did enough research to know what we needed to do. We did this by doing vox pops and this meant that we were able to ask our audience questions like ‘What do you expect from a dance music video’ and this meant that we were able to plan things into the video that people would expect and enjoy. By doing this we were able to ensure that the products that we were creating was suitable for the demographic that we wanted to aim it at. By putting things like fast paced editing and surrealism, which were some of the things that the people who we did vox pops on recommended.

Stanley Cohen says that media can create moral panics, which is a mass response to a group, person or attitude that threatens to disturb society’s norms. You can see this in many music videos, such as iLL Manors by Plan B, who shows young hooligans in his music video, beating people up, videoing assaults and intimidating the elderly. This would make the general public think that all young people who live on the council estates are like this and would be afraid to go there. This could be amplified by masses and could then be like a hegemonic control, telling people what to think and not letting them think for themselves, which is common in the media e.g. newspapers, websites.

Stuart Hall said that there are 3 ways that you can interpret a media text, preferred reading, negotiated reading and oppositional reading. This means that when an audience is consuming these media products they are able to either get the opinion of the artists or make up their own minds, or a bit of both. Our video was open to all 3 of these meanings, as we had an idea of the message that we wanted to get across, but also saw that there was a way that other people may interpret it. The message that we had was that even though someone is seemingly unimportant in one aspect of life, they can be heroes in another part e.g. when he is saving the different people as the video progresses. This would be our preferred reading, but the audience that we had could interpret it in a different way.

Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to narrative

In this essay I will be looking at narrative in relation to one of the media products that I have previously created. Tim O Sullivan said that all media tells a story, or includes a narrative that is there for the audience to interpret. I will look at it in comparison to the Music Video I created as part of my A2 Portfolio. The song that I selected was Save The World (Tonight) by Dance group Swedish House Mafia. I will look at 5 theorists who have opinions on narrative and then relate these to my product.

Todorov said that most media products generally go through the same cycle – equilibrium, disruption, recognition of disruption, action against it and then back to an equilibrium. In our music video we followed a cycle that was similar to this, with our main character starting the story in a college, listening to a lecture. It then goes onto to him aspiring to be a superhero, this would be the disruption, then cutting to him putting on a costume with distinct superhero conventions, with this being the recognition of the disruption. The story then moves on to him acting like a superhero, with him saving a woman being mugged and a man about to be ran over. This would be the action against a disruption and then at the end of the video it shows him back in college revising, meaning that the equilibrium has been restored. We decided to use this after watching a video by Jason Derulo and his song What If, where he starts by moving into a new house, and is looking at a photograph, and then going through a whole host of emotions and ends up back at the same house, looking at the same photograph.

Levi-Strauss said that media products usually include binary oppositions. This could be good vs. bad, man vs. woman or love vs. hate. You see this in many genres of music video, from dance, which was our genre, through to rock e.g. ‘Damned If I Do Ya’ by All Time Low, showing that him and his girlfriend are portrayed as the bad guys, while his parents and band mates are the good guys, fighting on a reality show. In our music video we had binary oppositions, showing that the main character was part of the ‘good’ side and when he was fighting the criminal was part of the ‘bad’ side. This was the easily recognisable part of the video and the binary opposites that most people will see, but binary oppositions could be seen with him being disillusioned with school and him and the teachers being opposites.

Propp had similar ideas, but portrayed these in a different way. He said that all media products must have ‘stock characters’, which will be people in the narrative that people will recognise due to them being a mainstay in these products. In certain genres you see certain characters, like in dance music you would expect to see a main character, which is central to the music video, for example, and in a pop video you’d expect to have a narrative including an antagonist, protagonist and possibly someone who needs to be rescued. For example in TGIF by Katy Perry, the protagonist is the geeky guy at the part, the antagonist is the member of the football team and the person needing to be rescued is Katy Perry’s character in the video. In our music video we had all three of these things, with the antagonist being either the criminal who tries to attack the woman, or the man who is driving without looking and nearly hitting that man crossing the road. The protagonist would be the ‘superhero’ in our video, as he ends up saving the two people who are in danger. It also has someone needing to be rescued, mentioned above, the woman being attacked, or the man who would have been ran over.

Andrew Goodwin said that narrative is complex, and that it usually includes some sort of intertextual reference, either to another genre or to another piece of real media. A good example of a video that does that is Blink 182 and their video for All The Small Things, where they parody the video of Backstreet Boys ‘I Want It That Way’. They are able to do this because it means that their target audience will already have some understanding, due to them seeing that the conventions that they’ve used are becoming more blurred and that there is humour being used in these videos. Our video didn’t use any intertextuality of other real media products, but did use parts of other genres, for example when we were in the recording studio, the instruments that we used were more suited to a rock video than a dance one, meaning that we were able to challenge the normal conventions of these videos.

Sven Carlsson said that a music video can be put into two groups, either performance or conceptual. This would mean that in certain genres, like Heavy Metal, you would expect to see almost all of the video with the band in it, and seeing very little narrative, whereas in a dance video you would expect to see a lot of narrative (conceptual) and very little actual performance. An example of a video that is almost all conceptual is Levels by Avicii, where the whole video is based around a man in an office who starts dancing erratically. The opposite end of the spectrum is in a video like Weightless by All Time Low, which has a small bit of narrative at the beginning and a small part at the end, but the rest is of the band playing, with snippets of crowd footage and other related shots. In our video we had a lot of narrative and only small parts of performance, with that coming in the recording studio. With our video being conceptual we were able to create a deeper meaning than we could if we were doing it the other way, with it being more performance based. 

Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to genre

In this essay I will be looking at genre in relation to one of my media coursework products. Daniel Chandler said that genre was ‘a distinctive type of text’ meaning that it is instantly recognisable to a certain type of audience. I will be looking at my A2 Music Video, which was a Dance video and was for the song ‘Save The World (Tonight)’ by the group Swedish House Mafia. I will look at 5 theorists in relation to my Music Video and will look at points within this, looking at conventions, codes and how we used these in said product.

Barry Keith Grant said that all genres have sub-genres and can be mixed to become hybrids. He also said that they use familiar characteristics to show what genre they are a part of. My music video went alongside this theory as its primary genre is dance, but its sub-genres are house and pop, both of which we used elements of when constructing the final product. We knew the conventions of dance music, as we had researched them prominently in pre-production, so we were able to put these into our video. We then had to look at the conventions of house and pop videos, such as lip-syncing for pop or thought beats for house music. When we had got these conventions we were able to construct an accurate representation of the genre(s) we were aiming to reproduce.

Jason Mittel said that industries use certain genres to target particular audiences and to sell the products. He also said that to sell these products they had tried and tested codes and conventions. Taking this into account we knew that we had to include these conventions to make it a desirable product and one that our targeted audience would be interested in. We knew that by constructing a dance/ house/ pop video we would be aiming at 3 different sets of fans and this would give us a wider demographic when it came to promoting the product. One of the conventions that we used could be the fast paced editing, as this was a convention of all 3 genres that were merged together, so it is what they would expect from a typical video that they’d watch. We also had a degree of surrealism and this would be a part of the dance and pop videos so this would still apply to a wide audience, while not fulfilling the conventions of all 3 genres.

Christian Metz said that the genres of a product will always being going through the typical changes and cycles. This could mean that what once was a convention of one style is now not associated with it and is associated with something else entirely. For example RnB is completely different now, compared to what it was 40 or 50 years ago and now seems like a hybrid with hip-hop, dance or pop. In our music video you can see this through the hybrids/ sub genres that there is a distinct difference in what you would expect to see in older texts and what you can actually see. Because we had a ‘melting pot’ of genres we were able to play with the conventions that we used and create a unique, individual product for our wider demographic. Metz also said that media, which is set into genres can give a broken sense of reality and our video reflected this by showing a student in education who was disillusioned escaping into his imagination and becoming a superhero.

David Buckingham said that genre is not a given thing, but it is negotiated and changed, due to the perception of those consuming these media products. This is particularly relevant to our video because it is originally meant to be a video for a dance music song, but a lot of the conventions that we used were for the pop genre and by going against the conventions of dance music we were moving further away from this. For example in a typical dance music video you would see provocatively dressed women and this would come into the Laura Mulvey male gazed idea, but we didn’t do this, somewhat reversing it and making the primary male character the main focus. Similarly you would expect to see neon lights and a party/ gig atmosphere for dance music, but we didn’t include this, challenging the conventions as we did so. We used things like lip-syncing and surrealism in our video, which you do see in dance i.e. in Commander by David Guetta ft. Kelly Rowland where Guetta turns into a pair of turntables and Rowland appears to be singing the song. However these are much more relevant themes in pop videos and there is hardly a video released that doesn’t include lip-syncing, with lots also using surrealism.

David Bordwell said that any theme associated with a music video could appear in any genre of music video. We used this predominantly in our music video, with using a studio scene that you would normally expect to see in a rock video but we included it in a dance music video to challenge these conventions. By doing this we were able to create something that few people had done before and doing this meant that we were able to attract an ever wider demographic than we would previously expected. We also had more shots of instruments being played than you would previously of expected to be in dance videos in the past. We did use a lot of conventions of dance music videos, such as the thought beats that we had throughout the video at different points and the narrative going alongside the performances that we included meaning that it was still plainly obvious that it was a dance music video to an audience that would recognise these conventions and the style that they were done in.