Postmodern meida essay (Ford)

Discuss why some people are not convinced by the idea of postmodern media.

There are mnay reasons why some people may not be convinced by the idea of postmodern media as for mostpeoplepostmodern media is very confusing. If people do not understand the intertextual references then they will find it hard to understand post modern media and postmodernism is very hard to define. There are many different definations of postmodernism in that it isweird for the sake of being weird and so is unconventional. The main aim of postmodern media is that it aim is to allow the audience to understand that although they are watching a film, everything is completely fiction. However they do it in a way that is not easily noticed by the audience but allows them to understand.
There are many arguements for and against understanding some forms of postmodernism. The thoery from Fredrick Jameson gives off critizisms of postmoderism, but postmodernist do not completly disagree to his thoery. Jmeson explains how postmodernism is just selfreferential jokes that do not particularly have a deep meaning or purpouse. For example, this is used a lot in the horror film Scream. Scream plays jokes on its own genre and although it is a horror movie, things said within the film are selfreferential jokes. An example within the filmis when all the teens are at aparty and go through the rules of whats normally happens within a horror movie. Like the pretty girl is killed first, and the vigins are left to live because they are pure. This is the same in nearly all horror movies, however the film scream explains this and so relatesto the audience by letting them understand that horror movies are fiction. Therefore, Fredrick Jameson sees that the output from postmodernism is purposful and so will remain in a modernist society.

Genre essay (Hammond)

" Media texts rely on audience knowledge of generic codes and conventions in order for them to create meaning"
Analyse on of your coursework productions in relation to genre.

Genre is a big part of my music video that i produced as it had everything to do with connecting to the audience. The genre of a media text is vital for connecting and pleasing an audience and genre is a type of text as Daniel Chandler explains.

I would say that my music video is a mixture of the genres of performance and illustrative. This is because in the video, throughout we are telling a story of the female singer and showing what she is going through. But then we are also giving a performance as we have shots of the band together in the band room and have the main female singer singing to the audience through the camera. The genre of the music of our video would be soft rock and i have used many generic conventions throughout the video. Examples of this would be a close up of lip-syncing as we needed lots of close up shots in our video to get across the emotion of what the song was showing us. Also for the performance of band shots we had mimed playing of instruments to fit in with the music and make it look professional. We had a wide variety of camera shots in the video and the most unusual we had would be when Laura lay down and we had the camera above her. We did this because the definition of her face looked good and it fitted in with the genre as other media texts used these kind of weird shots in the music videos of the genre soft rock.

One of the important parts of my music video was the connect with the audience and so a main thing me and Laura did was ask questions of people that listened to soft rock so we could understand the sort of things they liked to see within a music video so we could keep to the genre and allow the audience to be happy.  By doing this it allowed the audience to feel comfortable when watching the music video as we could structure it to fit the genre and also keeping to what the audience know and like, which in ours was telling a story and connecting with the audience emotionally. Rick Altman as he argues that genres give audiences a set of pleasures. In my music video i had both emotional and intellectual pleasures for the audience. This is because we had emotions from the female singer to connect with the audience and and to create a response from the audience  for example, questioning what the female did to be in this position and what she is going to do about it. The intellectual pleasure was that it left the audience wondering the plot of the story being explained throughout the music video and so made them relate to their own life and how they handle situations.

To make sure that we stuck to our genre we looked at other media texts and the music videos that they did to look at the kind of dress and colouring of shots to make sure we connected to the audience. Also by talking to our audience we got a grasp of the type of things they wanted to see in the way of dress and make up. For example many people said they liked to see the singers as being strong and powerful in what they were saying and to get the emotions across so it linked to the song. So by concentrating on what the audience wanted and still sticking to our genre we managed to create a music video that fit the expectation of generics that were used by other artists with the same genre.

Applying audeince (Hammond).

Is your text popular for a mass audience?

I would say that my text is not particularly popular for a mass audience. this is because the band is not as well known and only certain types of people like the style of music and so not lots of people will know about it. Also the design of it is not to suit a mass audience as i only wanted to connect to a small group of people who has big interests in that type of text. Our media texts are not seen to be cheesy and has little detail but stand out to the type of audience we were going for and would connect to the smaller type of auience as the usic choice is not a partiuclarly popular one and is not hear much on radios or anything it is more  band that you would only listen to them if you knew about them on your own.

Detail the target audience of your product

Our choice of music was set to please both female and male, mainly teenagers, and for people who like rock type of music. We did generally try to please everyone by not going too over the top and keeping the costume to everday people so that we could apply the music to engage new people. But we were mainly targeting teenagers as it is there type of music because the lyrics can go in to detail.

Ien Ang

to what extent do you agree with Ang?  I partly agree as there are lot more different types of audeinces now and people are looking for different types of things.

Postmodern media (Ford).

How do postmodern media differ from other media?

Post modern media is different from other media because it goes against traditional modernism. Post modern media rejects what is normal to be seen within a media text, for example a film. Post modern media is different as it plays with the audience and plays with what is seen to be as a norm and so is unexpected.

One film that can be seen to be post modern would be the thriller film Scream which was made in 1996 and directed by Wes Craven. One post modern aspect of the film would be reflexivity as it is a horror film and knows its a horror film and so makes fun of this. One example of this would be when one of the main female characters states what happens in a horror movie and says 'What's the point? They're all the same. Some stupid killer stalking some big-breasted girl who can't act who is always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door. It's insulting'. This shows that the film is self reflexing on what is happening and to what normally happens in a horror movie and this is not normally expected. The film Scream mocks its own genre of it being a horror movie by what characters say and do within it. For example when the girl runs up the stairs away from the killer instead of running out the door. This creates a humour for the audience and acknowledges them that it is a fiction story, and this is a element of post modernism.

However, although Scream has humour within it, it still sticks to the normal horror theme and still keeps itself a horror movie instead of it being a comedy. This then creates a new type of horror movie and and supports the theory that there is no more originality and so everything is now a mix of bricolage and intertextuality. The way in which Scream use bircoloage is that it still uses scenes from other scary movies for example virgins are not killed, and that the pretty girls are the stupid ones who run the wrong way towards the killer. However Scream uses this as bricolage as they change it around as the tell the audiecne of what they are doing a that they are aware if it. Another way in which bicolage is used is the setting of the movie in that it is in a isolated place where not many people live and that the killer is not known because the identity is hidden by a mask. This is used in many horror movies, but Scream uses this to their advanatage in that they change it around a bit.

The intertextuality of the film Scream is when the director, Wes Craven, appears qucikly on screen looking like freddy kuger, but is not easily seen by the audience. This then follows on from the aspect of the film not taking its self seriously and being aware of other horror scene and using them. A reason that the director does this is because the characters in the movie are always talking about other scary movie and so it was convineint for there to be a showing of other horror movies within the film. Another example of this would be when they are at a party and the film 'The exorsist' was spoken about as are many other horror films throughou the film. By doing this it makes the film relate more to real life and so this is how Scream keeps its horror genre as it is still able to scare the audience. This relates to modern society in how everything is now a representation from other things.

Postmodern media differs from modern media as it includes things that an audience would not expect to see normally for example on the film Inglorious Basterds. An audience would expect to see lots of fighting and for the soldiers to be rough and dirty. However in Inglorious Basterds the soldiers are seen to be clean and well dressed and for a war film there is not lots of fighting going on, more the odd disagreement and bits of gore. This shows how it is post modern as this is not the norm expected by people in a war film. Also the music that goes with Inglourious basterds is spagehtti western and so mixes cultures together. This relate to Kramers music theory of that the music is on some level and some way ironic. This meaning it doesnt really connect to the type of film Inglourious Basterds is and doesnt really have any meaning to it. However it sounds right and the director used the nusic well to link in with the film without the audience thinking it doesnt match.

Representation (Hammond).

Laura Mulvey (1975) - I disagree with the view that women are used for erotic please. This is necause in my music video the girl was not dressed to come across like that and also did not have lots of makup on the make her come across as this perfect woman. In our music video we had Laura as a vunerable yet powerful woman and so came across dominant and was not there to please the audince in a secual way.

John Berger (1972) - In some ways i agree that woman are aware that hey are being looked at by male specktaters. However this does not mean that they dress to please for example in our music video we had plain clothing and not much makeup and the type of camera angles we had were not there to make Laura be shown off sexually.

" representations in media texts are often simplistic and reinforce dominant ideologies so that audiences can make sense of them"
Evaluate the ways that you have used/challenged simplistic representations in one of the media products you have produced.

I feel that i have both used and challenged simplistic representations in my media product in a variety of ways. In my music video i chose to have a band with a female singer however i challenged representations of female singers to that i wanted mine to look powerful and not be seen as a sexual object. i wanted her to attract the audience by being powerful and a difficult situation and show that she can over come things. I felt this was different to many female artists in modern society.

This links to the Martin Barker theory in that women are stereotyped to be seen as sex objects, which they should not be because like anyone else females can be seen as powerful and independent  This shows that i have challenged other media products in that i have not used the dominant idealogical of a female singer being helpless with not much clothing on and to be there for male watchers. Also within our music video we wanted to concentrate more on the storyline to give off a different representation of music. In most music video of the genre like the one we chose the female although are dressed nice, they seem to have body parts on show and have lots of make-up to make them come across more attractive. For my music video i did use the style of look but we put our own twist on it that we wanted a more natural look so we could give off a better emotion and also allow our audience to concentrate on what we were representing.

Another way in which i challenged representation of other media products was the limitation of things in the background. i did this because i wanted the female to be the main focus and also by having a plain background it helped to give off the effect of loneliness. however in other media texts there is normally lots going on in the background to create a scene or to make something look more exciting to the audience eye. On the other hand i did use some other media texts ideas for the set and angles of the shots to make sure it did not look boring by having nothing much in the background. I looked at videos by evanessance as that was the same genre and style of music as to what we chose.

I did use the idea of having a story to a song for example like Beyonces song if i were a boy. i chose this because i liked the way in which lyrics can represent how a person is feeling and also by portraying this across on a music video. By using this idea it helped me to keep to the representation of Laura and how we wanted our band and female singer to come across. By sticking to a story line it helps to keep into contact with the emotions expressed on the lyrics.

Essay (Hammond)

Discuss the ways that you have  used  media language to create meanings in one of your media products

The media product in which i have chosen is my music video as i created many different meaning through media language and the moving image. I did this through the camera, editing, sound, lighting, mise en scene, and special effects.

The way in which the camera work helped with the media language was in many different ways such as the angles used and the variety of shots used, therefore this is the posistioning and the movement of the camera itself. By posistioning the camera to where i want it to be it means that the audience has to look at that particular shot, rather than being able to look at whatever they want, unless it is a long shot. The types of shots in which i used was, extreme close up, close up, mid shot, and long shot. I used extreme close up quite a lot on Lauras face and she had a good bone structure that fiilled the shot, also the song had a lot of emotions being expressed within it so to use an extreme close up was the best idea to get the true emotions across. I used close up shots to get across not just emotion but to show the use of hand movement to portray emotion so it was not just her face giving off the emotion. I think this works well as allows the audeince to connect to her and view how she is handling the situatin in which she is in. The mid shots that i used were to show the costume of the character off because then the audeince could then see the type of person she is and connect to the way she looks and uderstand her body language. Also using a mid shot alows there to be a quick shot of the surrondings. As for the long shots i used that to show how deserted she is and show her emotion through the wide shot of lonliess. I also used a variety of angles such as, behind the shoulder, and to get a sort of birds eye view feel by being higher that Laura. I did this to mix up the look of the shots so it did not get boring but also to shows things from Lauras point of view e.g. behind her shoulder when walkin to give her letter away.

I used lots of media launguage through editing for example, the use of colours, putting video clips together, editing in the sound, and adding in different effects to match the type of shot. this also links to sound in that we had to edit out the background noise to allow the song to play and then had to match everything up so that laura was synced into the same words being said on the csong. The use of colours was used for my flashbacks as i used to colours black and white with a cold metal effect over it to make it look more emotional and allow the audeince to understand that it is a flashback. The main part of editing was fitting the videos i had taken on my camera and getting them in order of the storyline and also by matching it up to the music so that it was sycned properly. Without this all of the shots would have been mixed up and not been in time and wouldnt match the storyboard that me and my partner had created. As for the different effects on the shot, this was not used much, we used a slow motion tool to match with the music but also to match with the emotion that we were giving acros which was lost. I also used a face out at the end of the video and it was fading out from a close up and lauras face and this then showed that it was the end of the song and also the end of the characters journey. This links to special effects that we added as these effects gave across different emotions. For example the scene f when singer walks towards the person to give the letter, it goes slow, this was to both match with the music but also to match with the feelings as it was a big thing for the character as the song explains.

This then leads us on to the use of lighting within the video as all of the outside shots were used in a natural light as we went quite early in the morning to allow us to be able to get a good light souce that complimented Laruas face. As for when we were inside, i had a band room at my house which we used for the band shots. In that room we have had very bright lights installed to create the effect of it being a clear room for thinking and creating music. Therefore when we were shooting in that room we had the lighting on full so that everything was highlighted. By doing this it then created a different scene of joy and the main character was no longer on her own and was in real life with her band and so it cuts from her outside problems that she is singing about. As for the other shots of the flashback, we just used completly natural light as this worked best with the camera amd also helped with the feel of emotions in the shot.

As for mise en scene, we more used the natural background to give off effect and as for props we mainly used these when shooting the band shots and the flashbacks. As when Laura was singing we wanted to give off the feel of lonliness and so by having no props with her it just shows more of how on her own she is. The props used for the band shots included a guitar, and guiatr stool, a piano, and also a microphone for Laura to give off how it is normal life and this is where they practice all of their music. As for the flashbacks we used a chair and desk for when she was writing her letter so it gave off the feeling that she was at home but wasnt particularly happy to be there. There wasnt a great deal of mise en scene used because of the emotion of the song was to be alone so we used this throughout many shots to give off that feeling.

Theories (Hammond).

John Hartley

• Create a relationship with the audience
• Understand what the audience want
• Understand both points of view

Music video- For our music video we created an audience profile that was based on a real person that would like the type of music that we chose. We also poke to people were interested in that type of music and asked what type of things they wanted to see, for example the type of costume.

Music magazine- Looked up the same type of music and look at what people in those audience wanted and saw what they like and so then i could relate the style of my magazine to it.


Julian McDougal (2009)

• Difficult to define specific audience.

Music video- People have a prefered type of genre of music and how they like they to come across, however everyone is different and so like different things within a music video. I tried please all the type of people that i spoke to in order for there to be something that appealed to everyone.

Music magazine- Again with this i wasnt setting out to a specific age, i was at a range of ages between 16-30 so it wasnt neccersarily spacific. I tried to please people of all ages and abilities of music.


McQuail (1972)

• Changing niche

Ien Ang (1991)

• More sub categories

Hypodermic theory

• Injects ideas into audiences heads- not necessarily in a bad way

Music video- i would say that this theory relates well to my music video as i didnt have the female come acoss sexy or suductive to a male audeince. i had her come across as a powerful yhet vunerable girl so it injected the idea of that women have feelings and not all of them need to sing in tight clothes with lots of makeup.

Music magazine- i didnt so much try to inject ideas into the audeinces head it was more to do with giving them information about music and bands and things. i didnt necercarilly portray people to inject ideas as i left it up to the audeinces interpreations and what they thought so my music magazine does not relate to this theory.


Pluralistic (active) theory

• Own interpretation

Music video- this also relates to my music video as i have a story line to go with it and then what the story is, or the problem that the singer is running away from the audeince can decide and interperate it themselves.

Music magazine-



Uses and gratification theory

• escapism, relationship, and surveillance