Plan for Games cover :
- Front cover
- Back cover and spine
Plan for Games cover :
‘The Male Gaze’ is a feminist ideology that encapsulates the theory that female characters in visual arts and literature are often over-sexualised and presented solely as sexual objects for heterosexual male gratification from a masculine viewpoint (or gaze).
Laura Mulvey, a British feminist film critic, created the term ‘The Male Gaze’ is her 1973 essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’. Mulvey studied at St Hilda’s College, Oxford and is now a professor at the University of London, specialising in Film and Media Studies. She uses the phycological idea of ‘Scopophilia’, meaning to have ‘aesthetic pleasure drawn from looking at an object or person’, as a basis for many of her theories.
John Berger was an English art critic who won the Booker Prize in 1972 for his novel ‘G.’. He is most well known for his essay ‘Ways of Seeing’. This essay explores The Male Gaze in different ways and puts emphasis on the different ways in which male and female characters are depicted in the media.
Sign | Something that stands for something different. |
Code | Systems of signs. Symbols that represent something. |
Convention | Ways of using media codes. |
Dominant Signifier | A signifier is the item that we ‘read’, such as a picture or sign. The dominant signifier is the most important signifier |
Anchorage | Words that accompany an image and give the meaning associated with the image. This gives the image a specific context. |
Signifier | The item, image or sign that we ‘read’ and take meaning from. |
Signified | The meaning that we take and express from the signifier. |
Icon | A sign that looks like its object. |
Index | A sign that has a link to its object |
Symbol | A sign that has an arbitrary or random link to its object (eg. colour) |
Signification | The representation of the meaning. |
Denotation | A description of what we can see in the image. |
Connotation | The meanings and associations we have with the image, the deeper meaning. |
Myth | How words and images are systematically used to communicate cultural and political meanings. |
Ideology | A body of ideas or set of beliefs that people have regarding different technologies. |
Radical | Something that goes against the stereotypical norm, something that you wouldn’t typically expect. |
Reactionary | Something that stays in line with a stereotype. Something that you would expect. |
Paradigm | A collection of signs that are connected and relatable to each other. |
Syntagm | A collection of signs and how they are put together as one |
Without anchorage, Roland Barthes suggests that media imagery is likely to produce polysemic connotations or multiple meanings. Anchorage constructs “a vice which holds the connoted meanings from proliferating” (Barthes 2007).
Based on CS Pierce’s three sign categories, my banner includes symbolic signs such as the purple colour of ‘Media Studies’ which also links to the purple in the ‘Instagram’ logo. Iconic signs are the iPhone, the Magazines and the Newspaper. An indexical sign in my banner is the background which represents many different media forms and people who work with media, it gives an insight into the different connotations of the word ‘Media’.
I intended to create an informative interview to educate students who were deciding whether or not to go to university and wanted to find more about what the university experience was like. I wanted to create a aesthetically pleasing A4 page, whilst allowing it to contain lots of information.
My product included two different sections, one which was a light-hearted Q and A style interview, this ensured that the reader could get to know a bit about the interviewee’s personality before reading the full interview. I used harsh lines to section off the main interview, the bi-line and title. I used colours to complement the image that I included, however on reflection, I would have used more than one image that related more to my subject so that the majority of the page wasn’t just copy. I used a slightly larger title but, now, I would increase the size of the title and decrease the main copy text. This would be similar to a stereotypical magazine product.
The person I interviewed was my cousin, Nina, who had just received a first class degree in ‘Media and Communications’. I wanted to celebrate her hard work, dedication and success through the product. This representation is somewhat radical as it creates a countertype to a stereotypical young adult who often doesn’t really care or put enough effort into their education or contemplate their imminent future and decisions.
I created my product to be published in a Student magazine, perhaps a small, independent company, or a specific universities magazine. My magazine interview would most likely be written by student writers, talking about their own education experience and interviewing others regarding their own. The kind of audience that would consume my product is a range of students, probably at ages 16-23, who want to research into what university life would be like or those already studying who would like to hear about others and events happening on campus.
If I re-created this product, I would include a larger image and wrap my text around it. This would create a main focus to the magazine page. I would use a drop cap to add a bit of variety to my text, this would help to keep the reader engaged. I would increase the size of my title and reduce the size of my copy.
MEDIA FORMS | CHARACTERISTICS | EXAMPLE | |
1. | Television | – Often takes a relatively short amount of time to create – Can provide a means of education – Is normally viewed informally, eg. at home, personal consumption | Loose Women |
2. | Magazine | – Contains lots of images – Interesting topics – Brief in length | Vogue |
3. | Newspaper | – Contains a smaller amount of image – Includes advertisement – Long articles, wordy | The Times |
4. | Radio | – Private listening, auditory – Contains many elements of different media forms, eg. news, music, weather, travel, general chat – Presented by someone, needs to be operated by someone | BBC Radio 2, Channel 103 |
5. | Music Video | – Visual and auditory – Performance, character and story – Less expensive to generate | Hello by Adele, Touch by Little Mix |
6. | Video Games | – Immersive and interactive : Players are needed for it to work (single player, solitary) – Contains characters and a storyline/plot – Levels of game, ranging difficulty | Fifa, GTA |
7. | Film | – Takes a longer amount of time to generate – Often viewed in a more formal setting with others eg. in a cinema – Creates profit | La La Land, High School Musical |
8. | Online, Social and Participatory Media | – Private consumption – Ability to post and share own media (interactive) – Can view others media | Instagram, Snapchat |
9. | Advertising and Marketing | – Commercial | Aftershave, Shower gel |