Representation

Mediation – when you film it, it makes it different, can’t film it without making decisions eg black and white, lighting. Creating an ad, what audience to empathise with emotional pain, the audience being encouraged towards concentrating on one aspect of the text and ignoring others.

Representation - By definition, all media texts are re-presentations of reality. This means that they are intentionally composed, lit, written, framed, cropped, captioned, branded, targeted and censored by their producers, and that they are entirely artificial versions of the reality we perceive around us. When studying the media it is vital to remember this – every media form, from a home video to a glossy magazine, is a representation of someone’s concept of existence, codified into a series of signs and symbols which can be read by an audience.

Bathes code theory:

‘Galaxy of signifiers’ gain access to the signified text through many different entrances, unravel the text and narrative from a different angle.

Hermeneutic code – story avoids telling the truth, drops hints throughout. Eg close ups of mask to suggest they will see her face,  vague backstory/flashbacks to subtextually symbolise she has lost someone, creates the mystery that we don’t know her face.

Enigma code – tension is build and the audience is left guessing. Eg last shot is of the mask being taken off and then a close up of the mask in her hand but you never see her face.

Semantic code – connotation/additional meaning. Eg mask has meaning of hiding away from society and herself, red dress symbolises blood ‘if you’re still bleeding’, black and white is meant to show her dull current life and the colour symbolises how free she feels at the end, implying she has found emotional freedom .

Verisimilitude:

Represents reality that the audience can experience. Shows protagonist wearing a mask and travelling to find emotional freedom, whilst reminiscing on past relationship. It also shows an example of trying to find her own identity, as she wears the mask to imply she has lost a part of her identity hence the mask, and the fact she takes it off. Subject is shown as looking quite vulnerable too as the video is in black and white and she is on her own, isolated. Feeling in this way also shows vulnerability.

This video shows reality as much as possible in that it is her walking through London at a normal pace, dressed in casual clothing such as a red dress, coat and shoes. The narration flows in a chronological sequence which shows realism.

The only aspect of the video that is not realistic is the fact that it is in black and white. The artist would not be viewing black and white and therefore it is an effect to make it look more mellow and upsetting. As well as the black box going against verisimilitude as it is very staged and is clearly separate from the main narrative.

The imitation of reality (techniques)

—Representation is always a re-presentation, in which elements of reality are selected, organized and narrated.

—By nature, media ‘mediates’ reality – it selects it and shows us only what the producer wants.

genre

Genre

The brief for our A2 advanced portfolio in media was to create a promotion package for an album by creating a digipak, advert and music video. I created a these three products for the song ‘Youth’ on the album ‘If You Leave’ (2013) by Daughter, and all my products adhered to the codes and conventions of the indie/folk genre to accompany the style of the album. I specifically focused on the simplicity of indie/folk and the way the style uses simple ideas to convey emotion. Genre is described as a means of categorising different texts and being able to place them in a particular group based on codes and conventions as well as producer and audience relationships. Genres will have recognisable generic pleasures and features for a particular reason as people will identify themselves within a certain genre.

Goodwin

Schatz

Generic signifier

Iconography

Adherering to conventions

Similarities/differences 

Mode of address 
Effect on audience (meaning that I was trying to encode for the audience using these signifiers was...)

Creativity - 1A essay

Explain where your ideas came from and how you were creative in the process of completing the task.

Creativity can be defined as the use of imagination or original ideas to create something. Alternatively, some may define creativity as ‘Good artists borrow, great artists steal’ implying that an idea that is taken from a source and then changed to fit one’s own idea. When making both my music magazine and music video, I took references from other magazines as well as intertextual references for my video and manipulated them into creating my own idea. However, I recognise that within the brief, I had to create a video and magazine, therefore, I did follow typical conventions of the products. I also followed the standard rules of digipaks and magazines when I created my own, as I did not want to deviant from the norms of the products so it was clear what I had made.

The process of making my music magazine began with deciding on the genre and style, I decided to make it typical of the punk rock genre and then began my creating my ideas. For example, I made my own style from existing sell line placements on the front cover, and I took ideas from other contents pages to help form my own layout, For example, the main sell line of my magazine with the artists name ‘Izzy Spyrou’ was a mixture of my own style and that of another magazine, however, I then made a sell line for my featured artists using fonts I had found and then adjusting it to fit the front cover as I wanted.

Once I have decided on the style for my As music magazine, which I did find challenging, as I was not very familiar with how music magazines were laid out. So once I had done research into them I took images for magazine, using a pop punk exiting style and created my own look for the artists featured in my magazine. I used props such as guitars and styled the people in a way that fit the genre, for example, their clothes matched the red, black and white colour scheme of the magazine, as they wore black clothing and heavy makeup, as I tried to resemble existing artists within the punk rock genre.

However, I acknowledge that my magazine included bricolage/empty borrowing to an extent, as the layout of my magazine was unoriginal, as I followed codes and conventions and produced a magazine that was typical of the punk rock magazine style and colours, such as the use of scheme red, white and black is quite common. Although, the colours were voted for by people on my survey as others thought it was the best colour scheme to go for. Despite the bricolage within my magazine, I could not drift too far from conventions as then it would not fit the brief of a magazine, so I did have to follow codes and rules to produce my brief.

Another creative process for my magazine was through using software such as InDesign and Photoshop to edit my music magazine, which was created on InDesign. I had never used the software before, so I watched tutorials on what to do and how to use it and tried to develop my skills as I went along. Photoshop was also new to me and I struggled to understand how to use the software and therefore, how to shoe my creative potential as I did not manipulate my images that much, so I hoped to develop this skill as I progress.

As for my A2 music video, the process of creating it was slightly different, and I think slightly easier as I found it quicker to come up with an idea. Although, the first decision was to choose the song, and I immediately decided on ‘Youth’ by Daughter, the song choice is actually an intertextual reference from the film ‘A Long Way Down’ as the film includes the song ‘Youth’ in an emotional scene on the beach, which is where I got the inspiration to use Brighton beach and my own ideas and creativity stemmed from that. Moreover, I thought about going to London and Brighton as they reflect the emotional state of the character as London is busy and the beach is calming, the creative process to decide where to shoot consisted of thinking of places that show progression and juxtapose each other.

Once the song was chosen I then started to form my idea, and immediately I thought of a mask that I owned, which then became the backbone of my idea. However, I had then then figure out how to integrate the mask into the narrative, so I used the prop to represent the characters hiding herself from society. The mask also has a very distinctive look and is red/purple in colour with gold patterns, I utilised the colours to make the video more dramatic, although it also allowed me to have a running colour scheme and general look through my digipak and advert. The use of colour in my video was a very important aspect that I wanted to constantly play with as I edited. The video is in black and white with flickers of red and then ends in colour with sepia flashbacks. This creative use of colour manipulation was done to build depth and form different aspects to the video. For example, the sepia tones made the flashbacks obvious and separate from the current narrative, whilst the flashes of the red, such as he dress, door and box make the video more powerful and dramatic, as it was important to reflect the tone of the song with the visuals.

As a whole I think my video does challenge codes and conventions of music videos, as it does not follow certain theory of music videos, it has no lip syncing or set of universal character traits and there is no binary oppositions between characters, like good vs evil as proposed by Claude Levi-Straus. Although, this allowed me creative freedom to create what I wanted too, as I was unknowingly not conforming to all hegemonic norms of music video, and instead went with the ideas that I came up with.

There were additional ancillary tasks along with my video, I had to make a digipak and a magazine advert. My initial thought was that I wanted to create 3 products that tied into one another to promote the album ‘If You Leave’ by Daughter. I took pictures for my advert and digipak, and then used Photoshop to manipulate my images. As I previously struggled to use Photoshop effectively, I made a strong effort to understand the software and play around with my images until I had a style that I was pleased with. I believe I displayed my progress when using Photoshop as I played around with effects and got creative on the image to see what worked best with the product. InDesign was also used to actually build the advert and digipak one my images were done in Photoshop. My advert did have a more rigid brief, so I felt I had less creative control as I had to meet specific targets, such as including reviews, and institutional information on my poster, so the font, placement of info and the image were the parts I continuously messed with to make the advert. I encountered problems with my advert as I was not happy with it and kept changing the image until I was satisfied with the finished product. The didgipak was also problematic for me, and I found creating a unique product was difficult and I did not know what to include on two of the six panels. It meant I had to take more images and get imaginative with the images, and this was when the interesting look of the mask was most helpful to help form the idea and look of my digipak.

Overall, creating my As and A2 products has their difficulties. I found it harder to initially come up with a style and layout for my music magazine, and easier to construct the idea for my video, however, the ancillary tasks also proved to be challenging. Creativity is both being imaginative which I think I have shown especially in my video through the use of elements such as the colour. Although creativity is also taking empty borrowing and manipulating existing ideas to form your own product which I did for my advert, digigpak and magazine as I followed conventions such as sell line placement and relevant institutional information, but in my own way to form my own products.

Creativity 1A

Creativity can be defined as the use of imagination or original ideas to create something; inventiveness. Alternatively, some argue ‘Good artists borrow, great artists steal’ and this could be another way of defining creativity. When making both my music magazine and music video, I took references from other magazines as well as intertextual references for my video and manipulated them into creating my own idea. However, I recognise that within the brief, I had to create a video and magazine, therefore, I did follow typical conventions of the products, which 

What is creativity?

The use of imagination or original ideas to create something; inventiveness.

‘Good artists borrow, great artists steal’ took intertextual references and manipulated them into creating my own idea.

Eg took existing magazine sell line placement and style and creating my own style from these existing ideas, eg main sell line – I took the idea for the style from another magazine and then created my own main sell line with my artist/design.

Eg intertextual references to spark inspiration for my video, the film ‘a long way down’ uses the song ‘Youth’ in an emotional scene on the beach, this is where I got the inspiration to use Brighton beach and my own ideas and creativity stemmed from that, eg locations I thought about going to London and Brighton as they reflect the emotional state of the character as London is busy and the beach is calming, the creative process to decide where to shoot consisted of thinking of places that show progression and juxtapose each other.

Eg images I took for magazine, use pop punk exiting style and created my own look for the artists I created, eg I used props such as guitars and styled the people in a way that fit the genre, they wore black clothing, makeup, beanies etc.

Eg mask was the origin of the creative process, ideas of how to integrate mask into story line/narrative, use colour of mask to create the use of colour within the video.

Eg bricolage/empty borrowing, to an extent the layout of my magazine was unoriginal, as I followed codes and conventions and produced a magazine that was typical of the punk rock magazine style and colours, eg use of scheme red, white and black is quite common, although this was voted for by people on my survey, placement of sell lines and masthead.

Eg use of colour, black and white with flickers of red and then ending in colour with sepia flashbacks, creative use of colour manipulation to create depth and different aspects to the video, the sepia tones made the flashbacks obvious and separate from the current narrative whilst the flashes of the red dress/door/box.

Eg use of software such as InDesign and Photoshop to edit music magazine, my magazine was created on InDesign, I had never used it before, so I watched tutorials on what to do and how to use it and tried to develop my skills as I went along, Photoshop was also new to me and I did not fully manipulate my images that much, so I hoped to develop this skill as progressed.

Eg ancillary tasks, I wanted to create 3 products that tied into one another to promote the album ‘if you leave’ I took pictures for my advert and digipak, I then used Photoshop to manipulate my images, showing my progress when using Photoshop as I played around with effects and got creative on the image to see what worked best with the product.

Eg challenging codes and conventions of music videos, mine does don’t follow certain theory of music videos, it has not lip syncing or set of universal character traits, there is no binary oppositions between characters eg good vs evil.

Until Dawn

Postmodernism is a theory that means ‘after modernism’ and it started in the 20th century and was a reaction to the hyper rationalism of the modernism theory. Modernism is a style or movement within the arts that departs from traditional forms. It is concerned with assigning value to things such as art and using modern ideas to modify traditional beliefs. On the contrary postmodernism has no set definition as it is just a social construct that is completely objective with no absolute truth. It is a way of analysing frameworks or text and is an epistemological issue, in other words, how do we understand what we understand, as well as an ontological issue, which means what it means to be human. However, the theory itself is very contradictory, as it is a theory of everything that states it is a fallacy to have a theory of everything. Nothing is ever fixed due to a constant collapse of metanarratives, it reacts against earlier modernist principles, as by reintroducing traditional or classic elements of style. It can be seen in many different types of media, from film to music videos or television.

Until dawn (Jason Graves,2015) is a post modern, interactive, drama, survival, horror, adventure video game, and in this cinematic game the player controls eight different characters and makes the decisions for them, however, the decisions made will alter the narrative of the game creating what is known as the butterfly effect. The choices made will affect how the game plays out, for example locating a weapon in an earlier chapter may allow the player to pick it up down the line when a chase scene leads back to the same room. The game blurs the lines between reality and virtual life forming Baudrillard’s concept of the Simulacra. This is due to the verisimilitude of the game, and how unsettlingly realistic the game characters look to their voice actors forming this augmented reality and uncanny valley as it seems as though the player is controlling the actor rather than just a characters. Furthermore, the game continuously breaks the forth wall with the therapist Dr Hill asking questions directly to the ‘camera’ or player about what scares them and they have the choice to answer, this intense audience interaction immerses the player in the game, potentially forming a loss of identify and conforming to Lyotard’s postmodern self and how the audience becomes part of the simulated game and loses their sense of identity and self. Additionally, Csikszentmihalyi explains that flow is a heavy idea in the game as the player has to make choices that challenge their own morals to reach their desired goal, in the games case this would be keeping a character a live to produce the best possible ending as there are many depending on how you8 play the game. Moreover, the immersion in the game is also evident when making the choices such as to ‘run’, ‘stay’, ‘help a character’ and many more, however, the game takes a further postmodern turn by also providing the option to not act in situations which is, in itself, acting, as well as the game physically making the player stay still as moving the controller will move the character in the game due to the censored controller.

The game plays out like a film, with a very long story line introduction to build up a character hierarchy so the audience connects with their favourite characters and will try harder to make them live by making, what the player hopes to be, the right choice, as if they were directing a friend in trouble. Further adding verisimilitude to the exaggerated horror scenario, and constructing an augmented false reality, especially as the characters look so realistic. Additional Postmodern aspects are the declining of meta narratives, once the villain in the game is revealed, as the audience then play as the antihero establishing that there is no clear definition who is good or bad in the metafictional media. This also creates meta discourse as the player is figuring out how they want the narrative to go by choosing what to do or who to kill, for example, the player can choice to shoot another character in the head or allow themselves to die in a gruesome way. The choices made form a strong critical awareness of the player’s actions, building a sense of moral subjectivity and making the audience aware of their own moral conscience. Furthermore, within the game, there are element of Nudity for Nudity’s sake, forming a very postmodern feature of flattening of effect, such as when Samantha is wondering around in a towel after taking a bath and them hiding from the potential killer.  

Until Dawn - Postmodern Game

Until dawn from Elliezambakides

1B Rewrite - Media Language

Media language is the ability to communicate media texts through language analysis. It is the way in which the meaning of a media text is conveyed to the audience, so they can encode and decode the text, through the use of signs and symbols as well deconstruct text through camera, editing, sound and mise en scene. I was instructed to make a music video to a song of my choice, of which I chose ‘Youth’ by Daughter. I created a narrative around the theme and tone of the song, and it includes a girl wearing a mask who is travelling to London to find emotional freedom, however, she then travels on to Brighton beach, whist having flashbacks of her past relationship. Symbols such as the mask was a very clear way of giving the audience a way to decode the media language and understand why the character feels so lost and confused without having to be so literal about it.

Saussre was the founder of semiotics, he developed the concept of sign, signifier and signified as well as stating that everything has meaning. In my music video the sign was the setting I chose to film parts of the video in, the signifier was the beach and the juxtaposition between the beach and London as theses were the places I filmed, and the signified was the meaning behind the beach location. The seaside was a key setting due to its lonely, isolated, yet freeing and calming atmosphere. The vast land and sea portrays a tranquil and open feeling coupled with the contrasting tones of loneliness. This setting juxtaposes the busy London streets, the binary oppositions of stillness and chaos sub textually symbolise the apparent isolation from the main character. The ways in which the mise en scene so violently contrasts suggest a sense of loss and confusion. The audience’s relation to such signifiers could be that they recognise how the protagonist is feeling through the visual imagery, to deduce the emotion as the wonders alone amongst people yet is free on her own. The audience could take from this the importance of portraying emotion through location in a subtle way.

Laura Mulvey is also a key theorist; she explains how camera work and the idea of the ‘Male Gaze’ can objectify females, creating gender inequality. The main prop in my video is a mask that covers the protagonist’s face and her face is never revealed. This could symbolise a sense of hiding who she is, all her femininity and personality is hidden by an emotionless mask. The audience may relate or understand the characters need to cover up as it is a very directly visual way of conveying that she is purposely hiding her features. However, from Mulvey’s point of view it could be argued that the mask does still draw attention to the over sexualised features of her face due to the male gaze and societies need to sexualise certain features such as the eyes and lips as these are still visible even with the mask on. In the video there are many close ups of the subjects face with the mask on, therefore, this could be seen as a way of purposely attracting attention to these certain features of her face. There are also low angle shots that pan up from the subjects feet to her face, Mulvey would state that this is potentially a provocative shot to sexualise the character, although, many people could counter Mulvey and argue that the close ups and low angle pans do not need to be over analysed that much to be seen as sexual. Seeing as the mask has connotations of concealing or hiding and putting on a fake front to distract others from what’s underneath, the audience could recognise this and see the mask as a symbol for covering who you are so you can face people in public and try to get over a bad memory.

Overall, media language and the theorists that are within the theory is a key way of analysing text using signs, symbols and camera work. There are many symbolic images in my video such as the mask and the location which can be analysed and denotated by the audience through theorists such as Mulvey and Saussre. The finished product has symbolic imagery that the audience can relate to and use it as a subtle way of understanding both the character’s emotions and feelings, and the narrative.