I have chosen brief 5 for my NEA. I will be creating a online magazine which also touches on important topics such as identity and equality too be more appealing to other genders. I will also include things such as advertisements and campaigns which I have made in class which will be advertising and campaigning important things not just makeup and perfume. I will be including theories such as audience theory and feminist critical thinking. My website will have a libertarian view of the media which will link to Habermas theory of the public sphere.

I will create a 3 minute audio feature using the facility’s of the radio studio. I will have 3 people within the interview, i will be leading the interview and i will also have 2 other people who will be discussing and answering questions. I am going to include an article which includes 1 female and 1 male answering the questions to create a contrast between the male and female answers. My magazine will appeal across gender identity and be aimed at millennials and Gen x. I will be including a video of something that will appeal to all audiences e.g. a baking tutorial…The ethos of my magazine will be freedom of speech for women as women have been silenced for thousands of years.

The design for my website will be different for each page e.g. layouts but will all follow the same overall design such as colour schemes. I will be including a main page image on the home page, this will only be seen here. My website will feature links to articles which will make the website easily accessible. As well as hidden links e.g. behind images. There will be a menu displayed at the top which will state the page names. The style model for my website is ‘MS magazine’ an online magazine which follow feminist news as well as health, culture and religion. I will be using the platform www.mozello.com to create my website. There will be the option for the reader to leave comments on the articles, as well as the option for me to reply to them. Hashtags will be provided on the campaign posters for the readers to post on social media as well as free giveaways such as ‘Win a free holiday’ which can be entered by using a hashtag towards an important cause.

‘Habermas argues that the development of early modern capitalism brought into being an autonomous arena of public debate.’

The public sphere is an area in social life where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action ( Realm of communication and is the reality of the world vs private realm.)

The emergence of an independent, market-based press, created a new public engaged in critical political discussion.

‘he argues, the public sphere came to be dominated by an expanded state and organised economic interests’

‘created a new public engaged in critical political thinking’

in this post i am finding out the language of moving image because each media form has its own set of rules. we must understand the terminology.

Space, scale, size are the three fundamental principles.

camera focus– the rack focus. This can be used to draw attention to a certain character or main focus. This can also be used to transition something into the scene.

E.G we see Bonds drink being poisoned and it is highlighted in the scene where he notices by switching the focus.

For my film, I would like to use this technique to introduce the villain.

• High angle / Low angle / bulls-eye / birds eye / canted angle
• Tracking / Panning / Craning / Tilting / Hand held / Steadicam
• Establishing Shot / Long Shot / Medium Shot / Close-up / Big Close-Up / Extreme Close Up

Shot sizes can be used to present a scene in a specific way, for example: a close eye shot of the eyes can create tension or emotion without having the character necessarily acting. – I will be using a close up shot to capture fear in my main characters eyes as she realises she is being watched.

Insert shot this focuses on a specific object or person to place emphasis. This can be used to have the viewer make a mental note which will be applied later in the film.

Edit– editing is placing sequences together, you are stitching things together accompanied by the camera movement and placement. Editing in specific ways can create specific outcomes for the viewer.

1. EDIT ON ACTION
2. EDIT ON A MATCHING SHAPE, COLOUR, THEME
3. EDIT ON A LOOK, A GLANCE, EYELINE
4. EDIT ON A SOUND BRIDGE
5. EDIT ON A CHANGE OF SHOT SIZE
6. EDIT ON A CHANGE OF SHOT CAMERA POSITION (+30′)
8. cutting in film is an effective way to show passing of time or different locations or even flashbacks. I would want to use a cut which shows different locations at the same time (parallel editing.)

parallel editing

The use of sequential editing (editing one clip to another) allows for a number of key concepts to be produced:

• parallel editing: two events editing together – so that they may be happening at the same time, or not?
• flashback / flash-forward – allowing time to shift

Montage consists of number of shots put together to inform the audience context to a character or situation.

i would use this to show my character walking/running then cutting to a different clip of the stalker following her.

Montage

montage is taking various separate clips and placing them together creating: a period of time, a metaphor, contrast or change. This can also create new meaning within a video.

shot sequencing

• establishing shot / ES, moving to
• wide shot / WS,
• to medium shot / MS,
• to close up / CU,
• to big close up / BCU;
• and then back out again

this is used to create realism and believability VERSIMILITY

I could use this to capture the moment that the girl is running through the woods trying to escape the attacker.

Shot / Reverse Shot

The basic sequence runs from a wide angle master shot that is at a 90′ angle to (usually) two characters. This sets up the visual space and allows the film-maker to to then shoot separate close-ups, that if connected through an eye-line match are able to give the impression that they are opposite each other talking. The shots are usually over the shoulder.

I would use this within my work to show 2 characters on the phone.

Steve Neale – Steve Neale states that genres all contain instances of repetition and difference, difference is essential to the to the economy of the genre. Neale states that the film and it’s genre is defined by two things: How much is conforms to its genre’s individual conventions and stereotypes.

predictable expectations – something that happens that you could guess

reinforced – strengthen or support (an object or substance), especially with additional material.

amplify – enlarge upon or add detail to (a story or statement).

 repertoire of elements – Repertoire of elements is essentially features of a film that are repeated within a genre. … The audience expect to see them when watching films and they can be key in helping the audience to grasp the genre of a film.

corpus – body

verisimilitude– the appearance of being true or real.

realism – ealism, in the arts, the accurate, detailed, unembellished depiction of nature or of contemporary life. Realism rejects imaginative idealization in favour of a close observation of outward appearances. As such, realism in its broad sense has comprised many artistic currents in different civilizations.

 construction of reality – part of those observations and experiences come to us preconstructed by the media, with attitudes, interpretations, and conclusions already built in, then the media, rather than we ourselves, are constructing our reality.

historically specific – something from the past that is recognisable.

sub-genres – a subdivision of a genre of literature, music, film, etc.

 hybrid genres – A hybrid genre is a genre that blends themes and elements from two or more different genres. Hybrid genres are not new but a longstanding element in the fictional process

Genre is a type of music, film and anything which can be performed in different ways throughout media. There are differences and similarities, predictable or expected. It should also be unpredictable. Different people see genre in different ways- people who consume it.

Genre should be predictable and go along with the typical genre conventions but should also be innovative and unexpected. Genre is important to the people who make it (INSTITUTION) and the people who consume it (AUDIENCE).

Genre is a way of thinking about media production and media reception.

It helps identify how media texts are classified, organised and understood, essentially around SIMILARITIES and DIFFERENCE. Media texts hold similar patterns, codes and conventions that are both PREDICTABLE and EXPECTED, but are also INNOVATIVE (different) and UNEXPECTED.

. . . saddled with conventions and stereotypes, formulas and
clichés and all of these limitations were codified in specific genres. This was the very foundation of the studio system and audiences love genre pictures . . .

Scorcese, A personal Journey through American Cinema (1995)

Institutions : Early Hollywood (an still today) revolved around large corporations which could be identified by certain styles and genres.

 “genres are dependent upon profitability”

Concept	strongly agree	neural	agree	strongly agree	opposite concept
good		x			bad
female				x	male
white		x			black
urban	x				regional
poor		x			rich
employed				x	unemployed
protest	x				accept

Gilroys theory:

Paul Gilroy believed “unstable” and politicised identities are “always unfinished, always being remade” and ethnicity is an “infinite process of identity construction”. In other words, ethnicity and national identity are not actually fixed or permanent.

Gilroys main points:

• WW2 immigrants were seen as an alien ‘other’ to an imagined white Britishness.
• Black immigrants were perceived to be ‘swamping’ white communities.
• Black communities were demonised through the representations that associated them with individual acts of criminality – knife crime and muggings were particular media concerns. These representations construct a ‘common sense’ notion of the criminal black male.
• Later representations constructed the black community in general, and black youths in particular, to be naturally lawless and incompatible with British white values.
• Later representations suggested that black otherness had a corrosive effect on white youth culture too.

racial otherness

Gilroy’s hugely important study of black representation.

‘there aint no Black ibn the union jack’ -The story of UK relations from WW2 onwards, the post war wave of immigration from the west indies produced a series of anxiety’s regarding immigrant behaviours.

‘Lurid newspaper reports of black pimps living off the immortal earnings of white women’ – Gilroy 2008, 95.

The black community are constructed as a racial ‘other’ in the predominantly white world of 1950s Britain. There were worries that immigrant communities would swamp / take over white Britain. These fears were further noted in the news in late 1970s and 1980s and routed the black community with assaults, muggings and other violent crimes.

‘It is not then a matter of how many blacks there are, but of the type of danger they represent to the nation’ – Gilroy 2008

post-colonial melancholia

substandard living conditions produced racial representations. There were intensified fears that immigrant communities would fill up Britain. Racial representations were “fixed in a matrix between the imagery of squalor and that of sordid sexuality” Gilroy argued that this was gated the black community out by saying they are a “other” race in the majority white Britain.

The story of UK race relations post W.W. 2: After Gilroy’s study of how black people and immigrants where being pushed aside by people instead of being included and recognised. After that, 2 decades later, Britain was flooded with “fear” that immigrants and other races were going to “swamp” Britain.

Ghost Town – BBC:

Quote – “It was clear that something was very, very, wrong,” the song’s writer, Jerry Dammers, has said.

Quote – “I saw it develop from a boom town, my family doing very well, through to the collapse of the industry and the bottom falling out of family life. Your economy is destroyed and, to me, that’s what Ghost Town is about.”

Quote – “No job to be found in this country,” one voice cries out. “The people getting angry,” booms another, ominously.

 Specials grew up in the 1960s listening to a mixture of British and American pop and Jamaican ska. 1981, industrial decline had left the city suffering badly. Unemployment was among the highest in the UK. The Specials, too, encapsulated Britain’s burgeoning multiculturalism. It expressed the mood of the early days of Thatcher’s Britain for many. 

As Ghost Town reached number one, its lyrics were horribly borne out. “Can’t go on no more,” sang the Specials, “the people getting angry.” As if on cue, the worst mainland rioting of the century broke out in Britain’s cities and towns. For the first and only time, British pop music appeared to be commenting on the news as it happened.

Levi Strauss

Binary Oppositions

This theory suggests that NARRATIVES (=myths) are STRUCTURED around BINARY OPPOSITIONS eg: good v evil; human v alien; young v old etc etc. 

E.G from blinded by the light

dad and son

Uni and no Uni

old and young

Pakistani and English

Pakistanis vs skinheads

It therefore creates a dominant message (ideology) of a film, TV programme, advert, music video, animation etc. So in this way audiences are encouraged to make a judgements about characters, groups, places, history, society etc. In this way, texts can be seen to either support the dominant ideologies of a society, which would make it a reactionary text ,or to challenge, question or undermines the dominant ideologies of society, in which case it could be seen as a radical text