essay stucture for question 1b

Decod the essay to produce an essay structure.

Parag1:
 Introduction

Parag2:
genre specific element
theory-steve neal
own example:(micro element)
Macro(s)-concept(audience/genre)

Section A Question 1A:

Describe how you developed your skill in the use of digital technology and evaluate how this contributed to your post-production.


In my AS i edited all my images on three photo editing softwares, First i downloaded my images using a USB cable to conect my camera to my laptop this brought my photos up on IPhoto this downloaded the raw images and put them into a file. I then open photoshop and picked the choosen few i decided to edit from the many raw images i took. I then changed the focus's and made them look more defined, i changed the contrast to it all was in sync, i tried to make the images look as professional as i could. As i wasnt very familiar with Photoshop i couldnt do to much editing so i then went onto the internet and i logged into Piknic which is an online photo editing software.This let me add effects for example like 'Black and white' and 'Sepia' It also let me crop my images so the waste part of the photo was cut out from what i wanted in my magazine photos and front cover.My magazine was then put together mostly on Publisher as my knowledge of Indesign was very small. Once my images were uploaded to publisher i then began finding the title font and effect i wanted for my magazine. With my title i fadded the letters to make it more transparant as i felt this went more with the theme of my magazine.



I edited all my raw material of my trailer footage on final cut pro on a mac laptop. I started by conecting by video cannon camera with a USB to the laptop, this brought up Imovie which was the storer to my raw footage. On Imovie it saved all the rushes to a file which i downloaded into final cut pro.




In my AS evaluation I used Blogger, this was my base to laying out all my coursework and my final evaluation. In my evaluation i copied and pasted into it my manipulated images and took images from google that were the logo's of the certain magazine distributioners, so that when i was describing my progress of my AS coursework i had photographic images to back the information up. In my progression to A2 i once again used blogger as my base layout as this was the easiest and most clear way of showing my coursework and evalutation in various different ways without complication. Using blogger let me be able to insert videos in the answers to my evaluation questions which made my coursework a lot more technology varied. By making the videos; for one of the questions i filmed myself answering one of the questions spoken directly into the camera. For another question i took screen shot images of the trailer and magazine and poster so that me and my partner could put a running comentry over the top of the images showing our experimentation of our knowledge of different media variations to answer the questions. I Still included a written answer with the images i had copied and pasted like in AS to back my A2 answer up, infact i even included pie charts which was a slight progression from my AS written answer as it showed the technical sided example of what i was explaining about the sizes and proportions.

How has digital technology impacted on your creative decision making?

How has digital technology impacted on your creative decision making?



STRUCTURE:

pre-production: research and planning, ideas, planning structure of the filming day.

production: filming trailer, taking photos, (ID, Publisher)

Post-production: editing, manipulating images, finding and putting in sounds,

In my progression to my AS to A2 coursework, i started from developing a 'rock' music magazine to finishing my coursework making a short 'thriller' teaser trailer including a magazine and poster to compliment it. Technology played an important part throughout this whole process. I learnt various new technological methods to making my whole pieces much more creative to my best abilities.

Digital technology has impacted certain important parts of my decision making for my AS to A2 media coursework's. From the start of my AS it was the base of holding all my coursework together using 'blogger' this held all my images, written analyse, information, research and final pieces. My AS blog only had images and written analyse, but by A2 my blog had videos imported from you tube that we had created for our analyses and different media approaches. This blogger helped me show my coursework in a neat, organised and professional way with media aspects among it.

The internet was my source to all my findings using this technology i was able to research and find examples of magazines and teaser trailers on sites such as Google images and you tube. This helped my creativity as i was able to take examples and find ideas such as through my thriller trailer idea i could compare with other thriller trailers looking at the certain type of shots they used and include them in my teaser trailer to make it a more successful thriller. The trailer i found to have as my focus point and the base of my idea for my trailer was called 'Hard candy' this included diegetic sound and pauses to create tension it then finished with fast pased built up shots finishing on one long shot this created tension and this was exactly what i wanted from my teaser trailer and if you look at our final teaser trailer we have used various montage shots which then build up faster and shorter than a final long shot with breathing then a final non diegetic sound to create that lasting final tension to the last shot of the man's hand coming towards the wardrobe.

Using my photo camera cannon in my AS i had a focus edit on it so could change the focus point on my photos to make them more creative this expanded in my A2 coursework as this helped my ideas for angles and focus points for my teaser trailer and i could take my knowledge of images and adapt them to fit there genre. In my AS i did not use a tripod to take the photos for my magazine i just took them hand held, progressing to my A2 i still only took the magazine and poster photos hand held but when filming our trailer i had to have a steady base so my shots were clear and straight, not wobbly and eye straining.

 In my AS i used publisher to edit and put together my magazine this was because i was not aware of Photoshop to well and i didn’t know any other photo editing sites, this left me limited and not as creative as i could be making my coursework not full to the potential i wanted it to be, for my AS i wanted to create a 'indie, rock' kind of look: i tried very hard to obtain this but because of my lack of knowledge to editing photos but images did not look as professional enough. By A2 however i had learnt simple editing tricks on Photoshop helping to put in contrasts and focuses into our magazine and poster, and the editing software 'final cut pro' was the teaser trailer editor, i knew how to use this and had the knowledge to be able to change my moving images lighting sounds and focuses to create the look i wanted.

Having all our work displayed on the computers we could show each other our work and get feedback in our A2 year so we could take the constructive criticism away and adapt it to our work to make it the best it could possibly be. During AS we still had audience feedback but it wasn’t as in depth and involved in the A2 progression.

Our magazine and poster was much better as we also used an editing site called picnik which has certain photo changing aspects that benefited our genre for our trailer.

For our sounds in our teaser trailer we were not allowed to use soundtrack music it could only be sounds that have label etc. due to copyright issues. The site was called ‘freesounds.org’; this had all the backing soundtrack sounds we used to create the tension for our trailer. To edit and put in my sounds i had to download them from this website on the internet and sync them to final cut pro to be cut and edited into their right slots we needed them for.

With my evaluation questions in AS I had just typed the answers out adding images where appropriate. However in my A2 coursework I used various different approaches for the questions. With one of the questions me and my partner took images about our process and actual coursework and put over it a spoken commentary, on another one of our questions I spoke directly to the camera answering the question as fully as possible. Other questions included typed up and also we did pie charts and tally’s to show our findings. My AS evaluation to my A2 is very different and you can see my more creative and experimental side come out once I was aware of how to use the technology I had been given.

Essay question:

Analyse the ways in which the media represent one group of people that you have studied?

The Media can represent any certain topic in any light they find most preferable to entertain and inform their audiences. The Media organisations tend to be solely run on the more educated older adults who have their own views on certain classes and ages. For example our youths today are perceived as being ignorant and violent to the law. This is an example of Giroux(1997)'s theory of youth as an empty category. This theory is described that it is the adult generation that is reflecting the ideas of how all our youths act today. This is not entirely on the true identities of the youths. This is more of the representation of how the adult generation see them in an unlightening way. This is all part of the media represenatation as the adults show how they want the youths to be shown; through their online social media distribution of communication to the rest of the world. The media represents our youths in all kinds of negative ways and it is becoming out of control and these youths are being represented in extreme threating ways when in reality this is not the case at all. Newspapers dont sell if they have stories about youths behaving and doing good deeds for their communitys, Newspapers sell when we witness and hear that these youths are being terrorising and 'yobs' so this encourages the newspapers to hightlight and take more focus to the negative representations then the good because the negative representations are more interesting to read. The newspapers




Stuart hall quote.
what is representation?

historical quadrophenia- mods and rockers
+ newspapers- moral panic(cohen)

spercifically
micro impacting on the macro.
talk alot about macro with the element of the narratives.

contemporary
harry brown- negative representations comparisions between quad+harry brown.

symbolic violence
(mcrobbie)
vs fish tank

police representations in H.B newspaper

society self fofilling prophacy, group vs individual

attack the block challenging societies views- cultural hegemony.

london riots in newspapers

mediation

essay structuring

core base is about Contemporary media represention.
Harry brown, fish tank, the inbetweeners, attack the block, the london riots news coverage, the internet and self mediation. - have to discuss 2 or more different medias.

Now how does this contemporary representation compare with that of the past?
similaritys and differences.
Quadrophenia - the mods and rockers.
have they changed? - plato quote?

The social implications of different media representations of groups of people:
Sterotyping: whats this impact
what power does the audience have to 'resist'
propaganda, moral panic, youth as empty categories, cultural hegemony, stuart hall, and reading the texts and their messages
statistics on result of these representations on attitudes and beliefs vs the reality of the issues.( how people think youths do a lot more crimes then they actually do)

the extent in human identity:
increasing media - increasing mediation different ways to portray yourself.
re-presentation by others/by selves (facebook/youtube (youthtube))
Be critical of who is offering the representations and for what purpose - what result do they want for the representation.
mediated: how the media shapes your world and the way you live in it.

add own personal opinion
what in your opinion is the future of representations and what are you basing this on?
connections must be made between the examples/contrasts are discussed
you must embed the theory into what you are saying.


EXAMINER ADVICE STRUCTURE:
ALWAYS have a introduction: could start with a quote, paraphrase it and link it to issues of identity, representation,and the media.
historical examples - quadrophenia
contempory examples -MAIN BULK OF ESSAY
connect examples together
conclusion - return to start. summarise key idea. Prediction for the future.
maintaining cultual hegemony.
-
use referencing - name and year of publication given after first mention, e.g. (giroux,1997)
quote - paraphrase - critique
one text older then 5 years
other texts should be from within last 5 years
make a prediction for the future.

example - significance - theory - critique.

SECTION A: 2 QUESTIONS 25 MARKS EACH
SECTION B: ONE QUESTION 50 MARKS.

representation of young people

'what is happening to our young people? they disrespect their elders; they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets, inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?' - Plato 4th century.


Stereotypes:
They originate in and reflect the power relations in society because they are part of a culture's ideology.
They marginalize people, treating them as 'the other'
They categorize people into groups whose members supposedly share inevitable characteristics, most typically, negative ones.

They are inflexible or rigid, thus not easily corrected.
they are simplistic
they are prejudgements not based on experience(they could be reinforced by negative personal experience).


Propaganda: a form of communication aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position.

what words describe youth and youth culture in today's media? - Ignorant to the law, no morals, thugs, uneducated, undisiplined, lazy, reckless...


our view on the elderly: fragile, old fasioned,

How have British youth been represented through different media in the London Riots

 that's the nature of the medium; as it whizzes past the eyes it seems very relevant but the malady of reality TV stars is that their shelf life expires, like dog years, by the power of seven

When I was warned to be discreet on-air about the extent of the violence, I quoted a British first-world-war general who, reflecting on the inability of his returning troops to adapt to civilian life, said: "You cannot rouse the animal in man then expect it to be put aside at a moment's notice."
"Yeah, that's exactly the kind of thing we want you to say the opposite of," said the channel's representative

If we don't want our young people to tear apart our communities then don't let people in power tear apart the values that hold our communities together.


I remember Cameron saying "hug a hoodie" but I haven't seen him doing it. Why would he? Hoodies don't vote, they've realised it's pointless, that whoever gets elected will just be a different shade of the "we don't give a toss about you" party.



Politicians don't represent the interests of people who don't vote. They barely care about the people who do vote. They look after the corporations who get them elected. Cameron only spoke out against News International when it became evident to us, US, the people, not to him (like Rose West, "He must've known") that the newspapers Murdoch controlled were happy to desecrate the dead in the pursuit of another exploitative, distracting story.



my hands are sticky with blood money from representing corporate interests through film, television and commercials, venerating, through my endorsements and celebrity, products and a lifestyle that contributes to the alienation of an increasingly dissatisfied underclass