David Buckingham

Christian Metz believed that genre alters over time through a process of development. He divided this process into 4 stages - 'Experimental', 'De-construction', 'Parody' and in the end 'Hyrid'. Gunther Kress argues that genre evolves with our progression and changes in time and that text is written with the ideal audience.

 In contrast to these theories, David Buckingham studied children's and young people's interactions with electronic media. Ever changing media means ever changing identities - development of the genre suggests that it is not simply culture but rather a constant process of change and negotiation.

Buckingham explores how the development of individuals understands the concept of identity, as a child identity is seen as a simple concept where by a child will simply differentiate between the male and female genders.

When we age, our identity becomes a lot more complex and it is no longer largely dependent on the sole idea of just establishing gender. Buckingham argues that genre is not simply given by the culture rather it is in a constant process of change.

Basement - Covet - Rough Cut 5

This is the 5th rough cut for our music video of the song "Covet" by Basement, we have improved the footage by including new improved shots and by fixing thought beats.

Digipak Template

This is an example of a 6 panel digipak template in a PDF format- the type that we will use for our album. It contains six slots, one for the CD compartment on the inside, one for the front, one for the back and three inner panels.We will use this on Photoshop when creating the digipak on a separate layer to the actual picture in order to see how to layout our own design.

Basement - Covet - Rough Cut 4

This is our Fourth Video of our A2 Music video for the Covet by Basement.

This Cut has been improved because it has no gaps in the visual footage and has once again had new footage included in it. It also has more footage of the lead singer to fit Goodwins theory that will increase the chance of creating an image in our audience's mind. We also shortened some of the shots (in particularly the florist shots because they didn't link between cuts- the protagonist wasn't in the same position that he was in the last) so that they link to each other better, so more shots could be included and to link the pace of the edit to the song.

Final Advert

This is the final idea of our media advert in its full completion with all the typical conventions used in the adverts for rock albums today such as the highest ratings from top magazines and a website link where you can learn more about the band.

Basement - Covet - Rough Cut 3

In this Rough cut I have made improvements in the use of practical effects, for example fades, stabilisation and different cuts have been used.

Evidence of Star Image

The video starts and finishes throughout focusing primarily on our main character in the video who is both protagonist and lead performer in the idea that this will help the audience relate to this character and help establish that star image that we need to achieve.

 We use many shots throughout the video some of his whole body however also some quite close such as this shot to show who the video is focusing primarily on and we want to let the audience achieve that sense of what he feeling through facial expressions that the body cannot show.

 We are going with Andrew Goodwin's theory of presenting the Star image of the lead as more essential than the rest of the band in ways such as giving him more camera time and placing him center camera in performance sections of the camera.

 Throughout the video we place him center camera without placing him to the left or right showing he is the focus in this narrative and it is his story.

 He is primarily shown to great length throughout the mid section of the video so the audience can see the emotions radiating off the character through camera work and editing.

 Again he is placed primarily center and in the middle of the band to show that he is the main focus and that this is one of the main reasons why our product will succeed and why they should buy it.

In the final scenes of the video we use many over the shoulder tracking shots throughout the care home to bring the audience with our star in a way that will hopefully closely show the emotional journey that our star has been on throughout these particular scenes.

In the last narrative scenes of the video we do introduce a secondary character in form of the grandma, however it is arguable that the scene is still primarily revolving around that of the primary character and the development of which he is undertaking at this point.

Sub Genres - Barry Keith Grant

Audience Positioning - Stuart Hall

Stuart Hall is a cultural theorist which shows he should have some ideas on audiences when it comes to media and how texts are sent for the audience to perceive.

He looked at the role of audience positioning in the interpretation of mass media texts by different social groups. Hall built a model suggesting three ways in which the audience may perceive a media production:

Dominant Reading: The audience will read into the text or receive a message from a video exactly how the author or artist wanted them to, so the events seem natural and in order.

The Negotiated Reading: The reader believes the text or products conventions and message/narrative to some degree but sometimes modify certain aspects as to allow them to reflect and compare it to their own situation.

The Oppositional Reading: The position of the reader or audience places them perceiving the narrative in opposition to the dominant code and makes them reject the reading or narrative.

Hall was concerned with the power of media, with aspects of how it propagates particular social values, to create dominant ideologies (how it represents certain things and makes the audience think of them in that certain way).

He believes that the media masses create and define certain issues of public concern and interest with the theory of audience positioning and how they portray their message and what target audience they send it out to.

Polysemy - is the capacity for a text or narrative to have multiple meanings, it is to do with how individuals interpret and decode the messages in different contexts for reasons such as culture, age, upbringing and so forth. 

Feedback from Ben Young Teeside University

Ben Young, from Teeside University came into our college and listened to the ideas of our class focusing mainly on narrative. He believed that setting your audience up and then deceiving them at the climax of the video as " the audience likes to be surprised" and therefore straying away from the norm in our genre is a must to keep the audience interested past the 20 second mark.  He believes we can not achieve the audience's full interest throughout the video if we only have the protagonist waking up and walking to see whoever the song is about throughout the video with sections of live performance, He believes there needs to be more happening with the the character of the boy throughout the narrative to make it interesting and to hint towards a different cause than to her grandma. We are taking this on board and plan to add extra occurrences during the walk to the home as to possibly develop the character more and to give the audience more to relate to in terms of Andrew Goodwin's theory of star image and the main character of the narrative being easy to relate to in terms.

Editing- Tuesday, 2nd of December

During this lesson we made more progress on the video by adding extra footage, changing the narrative (towards the end the grandmother isn't going to be awake so the shots have more impact), arranging extra shooting and by adding a fade out at the end of the video so that video ends smoothly. We added the fade out effect by altering compositing so that the opacity reduces as it reaches the end of the clip.

Andrew Goodwin

Goodwin is a theorist who specialised in media and came up with many different ideas about music videos and how they are successful. In his book (Dancing in the Distraction Factory) Andrew Goodwin writes about six characteristics and features seen in music video.

These are:

• Genre representation such as linking pop with dancing or rock with band performance. 
• Lyrics/visuals link- words represented by imagery. 
• Music/visuals link- the atmosphere of the video matches the music in ways such as through illustration, amplification or disjuncture and through things like thought beats. 
• The need of specific shots such as close-ups requested usually by the record company in order to create a mental image of the artist or a label. 
• Reference to notion of looking and voyeuristic treatment towards the female body which links towards Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze Theory. 
• Intertextual links to other media products such as TV shows and films. 

Our video will support Andrew Goodwin’s theory because it will use a large amount of shots that concentrate on the bands image; this will help to create a brand identity insisted by the record label. Another way our video will demonstrate Andrew Goodwin’s theory of six characteristics is by using performance shots of the band which will demonstrate the genre of rock using real instruments.

Audience Theory - Julian McDougall (2009)

Julian McDougall suggests that in the online age it is getting harder to conceive a media audience as a stable, identifiable group.

However- audiences still clearly make sense and give meaning to cultural products.

An audience can be described as a "temporary collective" (McQuail, 1972).

Key terms:
Mass/Niche & Mainstream/Alternative

This theory can be applied to my products when identifying our audience as alternative rather than mainstream, mass or niche because it isn't found within the most popular of genres although it has still got a large audience size.

Storyboard Adaptations and Changes

Storyboard

Track Analysis

Basement - Covet - Rough Cut 2

This is our second rough cut which has been improved because it has more footage for both narrative and performance, better thought beats and has footage from another setting (the care home).

We plan on improving this more by gathering more footage in order to get rid of blank spots (particularly the shot of him and his girlfriend) and reshoot individual shots that look fuzzy or shaky.