- Cultural industries – A cultural industry is an economic field concerned with producing, reproducing, storing, and distributing cultural goods and services on industrial and commercial terms.
- Exhibition / Consumption- consumption is defined as how your content audience reads, views and/or listens to information.
- Commodification – critical view of the media sees the commodities and commodification with two things that connect the object and process.
- Diversity – finding ways to make content both physically accessible and visibly diverse.
- Innovation – is about change, and media products and services are changing
- Media concentration- a process whereby progressively fewer individuals or organizations control increasing shares of the mass media.
All posts by Molly McCaffrey
Filters
television
Witnesses
Police investigate when bodies are taken from a cemetery and placed in houses for sale, along with a photo of retired police officer Paul Maisonneuve.
Witnesses is part of cultural phenomenon of the early twenty-first century which for the first time saw TV series not in the English language become part of mainstream UK broadcasting. That these series were dominated by the crime genre was part of a wider cultural phenomenon which saw the crime genre become the key form for exploring social and cultural contexts. The series used the genre to explore society’s fear of and desire for violence,
social isolation and changing gender roles.
The Missing
Tony and Emily Hughes go to France on a holiday with their five-year-old son Oliver. However, when their car breaks down one night in a small town, Tony suddenly loses sight of his son.
The Missing’s parallel storylines, set in the past and present foregrounds the Iraq war and the political debates and controversies about the British involvement in it. The role of popular culture in examining past history is relevant here. The institution of the army frequently operates as a microcosm of wider social and cultural contexts in the exploration of changing expectations of gender roles as well its relationship to family structures. Values and ideologies of different cultures are represented through different religious and ethnic beliefs. The economic context can be explored through patterns of ownership and production and how the product is marketed nationally and globally.
letter to the free
Music Video – Letter to the Free is a product which possesses cultural and social significance. It will invite comparison with other music videos allowing for an analysis of the contexts in which they are produced and consumed.
Common is an Oscar and Grammy award winning hip/hop rap artist who wrote Letter to the Free as a soundtrack to The 13th which is a documentary.
His output is highly politicised, existing in the context of a variety of social and cultural movements aimed at raising awareness of racism and its effects in US society. For example Black Lives Matter.
• Representation of ethnicity, with focus on how Common is a black man exploring black culture-specific issues.
• Use of specific historical and contemporary experience to construct a political narrative and argument
• How representations invoke discourses and ideologies and position audiences
• Representation of gender within the video and in the context of wider representations of women in the music industry
• Representation of place
• Common as celebrity persona
Postcolonialism
The arguments around postcolonial critical thought ‘constituted a fundamentally important political act’ (MacLoed, 200: 16)
Postcolonial critical thought emerged as a distinct category in the 1990’s, with an aim to undermine the universalist claims that ‘great literature has a timeless and universal significance [which] thereby demotes or disregards cultural, social, regional, and nations differences in experience and outlook’ (Barry, 2017: 194).
postcolonial criticism challenges the assumption of a universal claim towards what constitutes ‘good reading’ and ‘good literature’;
The Link between culture, imperial power & colonialism….
the power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialismEdward Said Culture and Imperialism, 1993: xiii
‘In this view, the outlying regions of the world have no life, history or culture to speak of, no independence or integrity worth representing without the West.‘ (Said, 1993: xxi)
orientalism
How people with power can change the way the general public view certain things like religions and race.
Jacques Lacan- The “other”
Lacan is a type of philosopher. You never actually see yourself you only ever see a reflection of yourself, so how do you know who you are?
In his book Orientalism, Edward Said, points out that ‘the Orient has helped to define Europe (Or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience. most crucial for postcolonial critical thinking, it is possible to identify a process whereby REPRESENTATIONS of – the East /the Orient / the ‘Other’ – are CONSTRUCTED through the lens of WESTERN COLONIAL POWER
The two geographical entities thus support and to an extent reflect each other.
Edward Said & Jacques Lacan
Said explained that people with power influences the way we thing and Lacan said that we don’t actually know who were are as we’ve only ever seen the reflection of ourselves.
film poster semiotics
JOKER- In this film poster the joker stood dead centre is the dominant signifier therefore in my poster if like to use a human as my dominant signifier. The title of “JOKER” is a signifier within this poster as it shows what the film is going to be about. The writing underneath the title is an anchorage which is used to provide extra information about the film like release date and stars etc. The falling mask is an iconic sign due to the fact that it is a sign which looks like the object. Finally the background is an indexical sign as it has a link to the object or in this case the story.
ROCKY- In this film poster there is a signifier or resilience trying to be invoked as you can see by the iconic sign. The link can be seen as a symbol or code in the way the film has connections with the poster. There a high level of signification in the poster due to the blue background effect and the de4notation between the film and the poster.
DUNKIRK- The dark colours in the poster represent a darker way of showing war and portraying across the theme of melancholy. The main dominant signifier is the actor stood in the centre of the poster looking over the war ridden sea presenting how much war destroys.
AVATAR- In this film the dark blue contrasting with the yellow represents the idea of within the darkness there is always hope which i can use within my film poster due to the panic of not knowing what your fate will be.
THE WALK – the minimalistic image presents the films title as the dominant signifier and draws the audiences attention more to the anchorage (information underneath the title) to grasp more information about the film more than the image which also is indexical to the film and films title.
language of moving image
Using art and design to scale, space and size. There is a grammar or convention set of rules which link to the language of moving images.
The most important tool in a camera is the focus and depth of field (ie how much is in focus)
- 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 (students often struggle with the first and the last again issues with SCALE, SIZE & SPACE, so practice is really important)
- Insert Shot
in my film i will show depth of field in the eyes of tom or joe when looking at the other with anger.
Editing
Editing is the concept of stitching things/clips. Putting one thing next to the other in order to create a sequence.
When to edit
- EDIT ON ACTION
- EDIT ON A MATCHING SHAPE, COLOUR, THEME
- EDIT ON A LOOK, A GLANCE, EYELINE
- EDIT ON A SOUND BRIDGE
- EDIT ON A CHANGE OF SHOT SIZE
- EDIT ON A CHANGE OF SHOT CAMERA POSITION (+30′)
During the music video I decided to cut where there was tension which was on a change of shot camera position. This time I intend on cutting on an action to create a sense of security about what’s going on.
- 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
I can use parallel editing when tom is looking at at joe and joe staring at his phone clueless about what’s going on.
Montage
Montage is the quick edit of clips together to move the story along faster and also provide the audience with information which will help guide the story along.
During my film I can have a montage of the girl that the boys are fighting over and some memories that she has made with each of them.
Conventional shot progression
- 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
During the staring between joe and tom I can slowly get closer to their faces and end it was an extreme close up of their eyes.
he Shot / Reverse Shot a really good starting point for students to both think about and produce moving image products. The basic sequence runs from a wide angle master shot that is at a 90′ angle to (usually) two characters.
You can see shot reverse shot in my work when the boys are talking about how they want the girl.
Continuity editing can be seen as the opposite of montage editing as the main aim is to create a sense of realism or ‘believability’ known as verisimilitude and has it’s own structure of rules where shots are edited together at particular times or on particular shots
- match on action
- eye-line match
- graphic match
- sound bridge
- 30′ rule
- 180′ rule
i will use continuity editing during the fight over the girl.
The key is to somehow recognise the orthodox way (of ‘doing things’) while at the same time recognising the way in which creative producers: filmmakers, animators, directors, producers and so on, adapt, adjust, challenge or introduce new ways of ‘doing things’.
- enigma
- dramatic irony
- foreshadowing
- repetition / reiteration
- back story
- exposition of theme / character / setting / plot
- development of theme / character / setting / plot
- pay off or resolution of theme / character / plot
- denouement
- dramatic arc
- climax / resolution
- interior monologue
- cause and effect
- resolution
- non sequitur
- ellipsis
- cliff-hanger
narrative 2
Seymour Chatman.
satellites and kernels- 2 districts
Kernel- Key moments in the plot, moments which cannot be removed.
Satellites- embellishment, doesn’t affect the plot of the film.
As such, some elements may emerge and play out but actually turn out to be of little value, meaning or consequence to the overall / main parts of the narrative – these can be called non-sequitars. Nevertheless, the use of light & shade is very important in terms of constructing an effective and enjoyable narrative.
- Proairetic code: action, movement, causation
- Hermenuetic code: reflection, dialogue, character or thematic development
- Enigma code: the way in which intrigue and ideas are raised – which encourage an audience to want more information.
ghost town
When we first think about political protest, what comes to mind?
○ Attempts to change to laws or legislation
○ Organised political movements
○ Public protests
○ Petitions, marches
However, we can look at political protest in terms of:
○ Cultural resistance
○ Everyday people
Why look at cultural resistance?
○ Overt political protest is uncommon. When it occurs, it often results in a backlash.
○ Even if overt political protest does results in changes in legislation, it won’t necessarily change public
opinion.
○ Culture is what influences people’s hearts, minds and opinions. This is the site of popular change.
Hegemonic: dominant, ruling-class, power-holders
● Hegemonic culture: the dominant culture
● Cultural hegemony: power, rule, or domination maintained by ideological and cultural means.
● Ideology: worldview – beliefs, assumptions and values
Cultural hegemony functions by framing the ideologies of the dominant social group as the only legitimate
ideology.
The ideologies of the dominant group are expressed and maintained through its economic, political, moral,
and social institutions (like the education system and the media).
These institutions socialise people into accepting the norms, values and beliefs of the dominant social
group.
As a result, oppressed groups believe that the social and economic conditions of society are natural and
inevitable, rather than created by the dominant group.
Birmingham school was the first to notice youths which were punks and teddy-boy etc which therefore invented the idea of the teenager.
Bringing race into the picture in the 1980s, Paul Gilroy
highlighted how black youth cultures represented
cultural solutions to collectively experienced problems
of racism and poverty.
Music influenced kids to stand up against racism.
Margret Thatcher proposed black people as a threat to white British citizens.
Police didnt do anything about white on black crimes as they were brainwashed by news papers and the government to believe it was right and that it was black peoples fault.
New cross fire 1981 when a believed white British citizen set alight a group of black people celebrating a friends birthday police said they were on drugs fought and killed each other even though there were witnesses.
film poster 2
film poster 1
narrative
1- Todorov
Todorov- the stage of equilibrium
the conflict that disrupts this initial equilibrium
the way / ways in which the disruption looks to find new equilibrium
the denouement and/or resolution that brings about a new equilibrium
This stage is found at the beginning of the film, where everything is as it should be and the characters lives are normal.
. The second stage is the disruption stage. This is when the state of equilibrium is disturbed by an event occurring.
flexi-narratives – three act structures in a similar pattern to that used by master plot/ sub plot sequences.
metanarratives- provide the audience with moments that draw attention to the idea that they are watching a story.
disequilibrium and transgression – Todorov identifies the use of transgressive action as a mechanism that also enables ideological meaning to form. characters break rules or violate social norms and to repair those transgressions they must be punished or effect a transformation.
Transgression is an act that goes against a law, rule, or code of conduct; an offence
2- Vladimir Propp
Propp suggested that stories do not necessarily have to use all stock characters.
there is a
- hero
- villain
- princess and the princess’ father
- donor
- helper
- dispatcher
- false hero