1B key concepts mindmap

GENRE
- Performance based music video which is typical of the alternative/pop genre. 
- Conforms to Goodwin's theory as I follow the characteristics of the alternative/Pop genre. There is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals of the song, allowing the audience to follow the video and understand what is going on. 
- Genre of pop is generally happy and upbeat however my music video is slow and sombre. Quite similar to the alternative genre however it is a mix of the two together. 
- Gow (1992) suggested that the "predominance of performance indicates that music video defines itself chiefly by images of artists singing and playing songs."

NARRATIVE
- Refers to a story that is told in chronological order, as the woman featured in the video is looking back on her youthful days with it ending back to her towards the end of the video. 
- Beginning to end. 
- Cause and effect. 
- Linear narrative. 
- Heavy performance based. 

REPRESENTATION
- Artist is represented as the typical 'whore' character by Laura Mulvey. 
- Many close up shots of the artists face and body to sexualise the artist. 
- Shots of the artist putting on makeup to appear beautiful and feminine. Putting on heavy lipstick and mascara to enhance her appearance which is clear to the audience which links in with the lyrics of the song as she's trying to appear more "Young and Beautiful".
- Also many costume changes - variety of dresses, jumpsuit etc. 
- Contradicts Saussure's theory of brightness and colour through location and clothing. The artist is in a black studio room to compliment the sombre tones of the music as it is quite slow and sincere. However, the artist does progress towards the end of the video where she is much older, but is at home where there are bright lights and she's wearing bright colours, suggesting she's now happy and cheerful as opposed to previously.  

AUDIENCE
- Goodwin's theory of star power; all attention is focused on my artist through a wide variety of close up, mid shots and long shots with her giving direct mode of address towards the audience which portrays her power. 
- Goodwin stated that meaning is embedded into the music video through codes and conventions with 5 main aspects needing to be considered in order to be successful. Complex meaning is given to the audience through the noticeable link between the visuals and lyrics of the song so that the audience understand the meaning of the song and what is happening. 
- Saussure states that within a music video there are many signs which communicate meaning and suggests that no object is without a meaning. Individual differences depending on who is watching the music video as they can interpret it differently due to their individual experiences, making the signs in the music video polysemic. 

MEDIA LANGUAGE
-  Roland Barthes noted, Saussure's model of the sign focused on denotation at the expense of connotation. 
- Signifiers such as the makeup, the red dress, the black dress and the golden jewellery and diamonds all have signified signs of wealth, beauty and power.
- Many visual progressions including how she starts in a small black studio to a big stage and how she is young in the beginning and then much older towards the ending. 
- I used Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects to create a vintage touch, as the song is quite old and classic with an elegant touch. I also made all of the clips softer to match with the song and make the artist seem more flawless. Enhancing the colours also made the reds and gold’s stand out – both of which are quite powerful colours which connotation wealth power and beauty.

Television and postmodernism

Family Guy is an American animated TV sitcom created by Seth MacFarlane and produced by Fox. It focuses on the Griffins, a dysfunctional family living in the fictional city of Quahog. The family consists of parents Peter and Lois, children Chris and Meg and the family dog Brian. The pilot was first shown in 1998 and became hugely successful. There are many ways in which it is identifiable as being post-modern, as it is full of media and pop culture references, whilst pastiche and intertextuality are the most dominant postmodern traits, which are used to create humour. Episodes feature a huge amount of references to virtually ever subject possible, using a technique "a million gags a minute".

One feature of Family Guy that makes it post modern is the bricolage that it uses. There have been suggestions that Seth McFarlane has taken a lot of inspiration for the characters from past animations, for example the family dog Brian, bears resemblance to the famous character “Snoopy” in that he participates in human activities and also his general appearance.

The episodes are usually non-linear narrative. This is demonstrated in each episode there are numerous comedic flash backs to previous events in the lives of the characters. They are usually set off when one of the characters says a line similar to “this is worse than the time…” After this line there is a flashback to when something has happened in the past. They sometimes contain twisted cartoon representations of famous people in comedic situations, personifications of objects such as clouds talking to one another, or situations which are dragged out over a reasonable amount of time to make them awkward and make the audience almost cringe, which amplifies the humour.

The sitcom is heavily based around inter-textuality, examples of which are often seen in flashbacks or sometimes on the family’s television. An example of this is the episode which features the program “Jackass” – where Johnny Knoxville is seen to take a shotgun blast to the face, and then dance around laughing and shouting in pain with a partially revealed skull. Whilst this is a highly entertaining example of pastiche (another feature of a post-modern text) it is highly ridiculous situation, which would never be plausible, as it would almost definitely result in death or serious injury rather than giggles and moderate pain. This playfulness with realism is another post-modern convention.

Another example of the many Intertextual and pastiche references seen in Family Guy is the feature length film “Blue Harvest” Which is a Family Guy take on the Star Wars films. The name came from the fake working title used to hide the 1982 production of Star Wars VI: Return Of The Jedi, which, again, enhances its intertextuality. It features the characters from the episodes starring as the many characters from Star Wars, for example Stewie playing Darth Vader, Lois playing Princess Leia, Peter as Hans Solo and Chris as Luke Skywalker. More fun is poked at star wars by the suggested paedophilic character Herbert playing Obi-Wan-Kenobi.



The decline of the meta-narrative is also prominent in Family Guy; frequent criticism is made about Christianity, Buddhism, and other religions. Examples of this are when Jesus comes to dinner, and when “the super devil” (a devil riding a flying motorbike with a jar of marmalade which forced people to commit adultery). This is then used to make fun of politicians when a picture of George Bush sharing a beer with the ‘super devil’ is seen. Making fun of politicians and other influential people such as Bill Gates is frequent in Family Guy.



In Conclusion, Family Guy is a hilarious post-modern text in many ways, it’s constant inter-textual references, playfulness with realism, confusions over time and space and bricolage are all features that can be described as post-modern and set it aside from some of the other family based cartoon sitcoms.

The Darkness

Mock

1A

For my AS coursework, we had to create a music magazine. I created an indie/alternative magazine called Alternate which had the audience of both female and males aged between 18-30.

Digital technologies is used to describe the use of digital resources to effectively find, analyse, create, communicate, and use information in a digital context. This encompasses the use of web 2.0 tools, digital media tools, programming tools and software applications.  For my AS coursework, I used digital technology in a various amount of ways. I used Photoshop to edit the images for my magazine as there is a huge variety of tools that you can use to make the images look more appealing and suitable for the magazine. Photoshop is very widely used by successful magazines in the industry therefore I felt that it was necessary to use it. I used tools such as the Magic Tool, enhancing saturation and colour levels as well as playing around with the Actions tools to create my desired look. I used InDesign to create my magazine as it is a lot easier to use than Photoshop (which we used for our GCSE magazines). InDesign enables you to view the document as a magazine and you can use various different tools such as the Master page which quickly and effectively adds the same text to all of the pages. This makes adding page numbers and the website name of the magazine very easy and saved me a lot of time which I can instead use to improve my magazine elsewhere. Paragraph styles has also been very effective as it also saves time and matches the fonts up when necessary. I also used PowerPoint's, Word documents and Scribd a lot whilst planning tasks and used Scribd to upload the documents to my blog. As I am not used to using these programmes, it took quite a while to get the hang of using all of the new tools however it was quite easy once I knew how to use them.

To takes images for my magazine, I took my model to one of the media classes in our school and we used a variety of different equipment such as cameras, lights and white screens to mimic a professional photo shoot and create the desired look for my magazine. We used a variety of different poses to appeal to the target audience; she appears almost bare, with strikingly bold black eyeliner and red lipstick in order to make a statement. In my main cover, she appears to be posing quite seriously, giving direct eye contact with the audience to lure them into purchasing the magazine. This cover supports Laura Mulvey’s theory of the Male Gaze. For the subscriber edition, my model wears the same makeup and still appears bare however she is screaming whilst sticking her tongue out, reflecting the controversy of the magazine and the genre itself. I used a Canon SLR camera to take these images as it enabled me to take high quality images which is mandatory for any successful magazine. As my magazine needed to be completed to the best of my ability, I felt it was necessary to use a white screen as it allows the audience to focus on the model and nothing else. White screens are effective because they are very simple and plain, and can easily be edited on software's such as Photoshop to enhance the image. The lights enabled me to change the way my images appeared and allowed me to create the best looking images for my shoot, and the lights also allowed me to cast the shadow I wanted so that the editing process was a lot easier and smoother. The lights and the SLR camera were the most important to me as they created high quality images which made my magazine look professional and realistic.

I used creativity within my AS coursework as I wanted to create something that followed the typical conventions of a magazine whilst being somewhat original and unique at the same time. The name of my magazine was “Alternate” which means to ‘occur in time repeatedly’, and it also represents the genre which is alternative. I hosted photo shoots in locations that differ from the norm of my Indie genre and which stand out, including photos of the artist explicitly holding up her middle finger and sticking her tongue out. I also added an Instagram page with photos from the artist’s page to enhance interactivity with the audience of the magazine, including captions that were conventional, for example “just got tatted up! #feather” which is relevant to the indie genre as they are generally interested in tattoos as well as a hashtag which allows users on the social media website to easily access what they like. Another example of a caption I used is “”writing for the future… hmm” which links to the magazine as it is based on music. I looked at other magazines such as Q, Kerrang! and NME for inspiration on what house style to use, story lines and even images in terms of poses. I chose a red, black and white colour scheme as it looks professional and very sleek whilst also representing both love and anger – my genre of Indie/alternative seems to represent both of these issues. I also chose story lines such as the ‘50 gigs you have to see’ and a list of all of the bands and artists on the front page to give the audience a huge glimpse of what is inside. In terms of poses, I had my model looking directly at the magazine in the standard issue with her screaming insanely with a rocky edge in the subscription special magazine. This enabled me to take advantage of the different poses available.

Research refers to the investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions. Planning is a scheme, program, or method worked out beforehand for the accomplishment of an objective. When planning and researching for the project, I used a wide variety of programmes such as Prezi and even creating videos on Youtube to express my ideas. I looked directly into what I wanted to add to my magazine such as searching the internet for inspiration.

Using conventions from real world texts means to look for what is normal and established within existing media products. A convention is a rule, method or practice established by usage. I used very popular music magazines within the industry as style models for my magazine, as already mentioned, such as Q, Kerrang! and NME. Using the key conventions that they use and turning them into my own really helped me to develop my magazine and make it look as realistic and professional as possible

1B

Media language refers to how I communicated with my audience in my project. This includes editing, sound, mise en scene and camera. These are the tools used to create meaning in a text, which are used to create ‘signs’. Ferdinand De Saussure offered a 'dyadic' or two-part model of the sign. He defined a sign as being composed of a signifier, which the form which the sign takes, and the signified, which is the concept that it represents. Roland Barthes noted, Saussure's model of the sign focused on denotation at the expense of connotation.

For my project, I created a pop/indie music video the ‘Young and Beautiful’ by Lana Del Rey. As it is a pop/indie genre, I had to be careful with how I communicated with my audience with the decisions I made as this song is not the conventional ‘pop song’; most pop songs are fast paced, fun and light hearted whereas mine was sad and sombre. My music video reflects how the artist is looking back on her life rom when she was a young woman, however now she has gained a few years. In order to achieve the desired look, I used lingering close up shots of the artists where she was young to make the audience empathise. My audience is typically girls from the ages of 13-25. Close up shots really worked in my favour as its relevant ti the song to show how young and beautiful she was – literally. Most of the close up shots follow my artist putting on makeup and singing to the camera quite passionately; “Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful?” I also used close up shots of a young man playing the violin as it is quite a slow and classy song so the violin fits in as well as the instrument is used in the song, which is from the soundtrack of “The Great Gatsby”, again linking to the memories from the olden days. I used one long shot of the violin player in my video which is at the beginning of the video. Other long shots of the violin player in my video which is a th the beginning of the video. Other long shots I used include the artist spinning around slowly from the side to the other. This created a nice transition for me from one clip to another. I also used a few mid shots of the artist singing and playing with a rose which is later on shown to be fake – real beauty never dies. Other props I used that were shown on a close up include a vintage gold mirror and her makeup and hairbrush – the things which keep the artist beautiful. Lastly, a mid shot of the end was used as the artist is now looking back on herself and the audience identify that this is her later on in her life. This was followed by a close up of a photo frame of which a photo from when she is young is used – of her in her red dress. This is a visual progression, as firstly, starting off with the young girl 'getting ready'. She puts on makeup, brushes her hair and puts on a new dress. She does this for the first minute of the video. The second visual progression would be the progression of the character herself; originally looking very plain and basic which then transforms to her looking very made up and pretty where she appears to be more confident. Another visual progression that links into this is the setting. Whilst the character is on her own, she is in a very enclosed space (black box studio) and it clearly is just the model alone in there. It would all be very dark so the character appears to be isolated. This then contrasts with the big stage and auditorium that would be seen in the next few shots where although she would again look very isolated being alone in such a big room, it would look very effective and show the visual progression. One visual progression which I will add to the video myself will be the colour highlighting the time change. I plan to use a soft, glowing effect to emphasise the light-heartedness of the video. I could also use a 'sepia' effect to reinforce the time period it would be set in, as the song itself was made for the hit movie "The Great Gatsby" and features on the soundtrack. This will stay until the very end of the video where it would change to very vivid colour informing the audience of the time change to the 21st century. The last visual progression within my music video would be the age difference - the overall music video would show the old lady at the end watching back on herself when she was younger so the visual progression is her growing up.

In terms of mise en scene, the artist wears two different costumes. A black mini dress which is simple yet sweet, and a long, red, diamanté gown. Both of these costumes represent the woman well as a lot of young women would wear these outfits when going out for a special occasion. Therefore, they can relate to her. The artist wears a lot of jewellery, including an engagement ring and gold bangles with gold hoop earrings – she loves to appear to be ‘beautiful’ and shows signs of wealth. Other props include makeup such as powder, mascara, golden eye shadow and red lipstick. Her hair is also in a neat up do which is quite similar to that of the 1920s which is the time of The Great Gatsby. In the video she is shown to be applying her makeup. This complies with Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze as she wants to be beautiful and so looks into the camera quite passionately and endearingly, giving direct mode of address through eye contact. We see the artist looking into a vintage golden mirror at herself, admiring her beautiful that she believes she will lose with age. A hairbrush is also used as she brushes her hair, all to make herself ore beautiful. In terms of light, I used a black studio, with soft but bright lights behind her to make her stand out. As the song is quite heart wrenching, it made sense to use deep and dark colours to represent the emotions and overall tone of the song.

In terms of editing, I used Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects to create a vintage touch, as the song is quite old and classic with an elegant touch. I also made all of the clips softer to match with the song and make the artist seem more flawless. Enhancing the colours also made the reds and gold’s stand out – both of which are quite powerful colours which connotation wealth power and beauty.

For the sound, which was purely diegetic, I had to make the sound match the visuals, following Goodwin’s theory. I did this by matching the “diamonds, brilliance” line with a diamond ring to make the engagement ring stand out. Also, I had to fit the lip-syncing with the lyrics in the chorus in order for the music video to fit well together.

To summarise, I used a wide variety of signifiers to give across the point of the music video. Signifiers such as the makeup, the red dress, the black dress and the golden jewellery and diamonds all have signified signs of wealth, beauty and power.

2

Postmodernity is a very complex theory. Modernity refers to the modernist movement with everything we know today however postmodernity means “coming after modernity”, and in fact contradicts itself. There are a few characteristics of postmodernity, including pastiche, parody, intertextual references and flattening of effect.

Two key examples of postmodern films are both Blade runner and Pulp Fiction. These are very popular exams of postmodernism in the film industry. Firstly Blade Runner is possibly the most popular postmodern film. Ridley Scott's 1982 film is about a future dystopia where "replicates" have been invented and are deemed dangerous enough to hunt down when they escape. The film highlights to be playing with time (the various types of clothes) and culture and genre by mixing them all together to create the world of the film. "The postmodern look of Blade Runner is therefore the result of recycling, fusion of levels, discontinuous signifiers, explosion of boundaries, and erosion. The disconnected temporality of the replicants and the pastiche of the city are all an effect of a postmodern, post-industrial condition: wearing out, waste." Moving on pulp fiction is another popular example of a postmodernist film. The film tells the interweaving stories of gangsters, a boxer, and robbers. The film breaks down chronological time and demonstrates a particular fascination with intertextuality: bringing in texts from both traditionally "high" and "low" realms of art. By focusing on intertextuality and the subjectivity of time, Pulp Fiction demonstrates the postmodern obsession with signs and subjective perspective as the exclusive location of anything resembling meaning.

My first case study is The Lego Movie (2014) which was directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Lego is a very popular franchise therefore it’s known to be a postmodern film without even trying. This is because the Lego franchise creates many different characters for their toys for children to play with such as Batman. The Lego movie is set in an animated world and is the heroic journey of regular-guy Emmett and his quest to stop Lord Business from destroying the world with his super weapon: The Kragle. On the other hand the boy is set in reality attempting to play with his dads Lego while his dad does’t want to give in to the creativity that Legos can unleash. In many ways it can be seen that the Lego Movie is The Matrix with Emmet replacing Neo, the boy and Vitruvius combined to be Morpheus, Wild style as Trinity, and Lord Business as Agent Smith/The AI. There are layers of reality, and only the main hero is able to see both completely. Also, there are robots. Built within this multiple-layered-reality are iconic figures like Batman, Star Wars characters, as well as eclectic combinations such as Unikitty. Pastiche is highlighted to us throughout the film. It is never taken too seriously and the script reads like it has been written by a 9 year old, allowing the audience to relax and enjoy watching the film. Moreover intertextuality is displayed bringing characters in drawing iconic personalities that we already know. A prime example of this in the film is the character batman as we do not need any explanation of who batman is and why he does certain this as we already know this from previous experience. Flattening of affect is suggested through the character Emmit where he lives in a world of popular music, formulaic television, and people who always follow the instructions. At first it seems like an evil corporate plot, but when we pull back and see the father-son relationship in the framing narrative, we realize that this isn’t exactly the case.

My other case study is the music video “California Gurls” by Katy Perry ft. Snoop Dogg. The video begins with an image of a board game. This, as well as the pink, candy floss clouds suggests an element of hyperreality. There is a play of words – ‘Candyfornia’ instead of ‘California’.

The whole video seems to imitate the classic film ‘The Wizard of Oz’ (1939), through the use of pastiche, with Katy taking on the role of Dorothy as she saves three candy characters (who are replacing the characters of the tin man, the lion and the scarecrow as she skips across a candy lane (the yellow brick road). The video is heavily based on candy and all things sweet. The audience are then introduced to featured artist, Snoop Dogg, who is dressed as ‘Sugar Daddy’ in a sweet patterned suit. Through mise-en-scene, his clothing can be intertextually linked to Gene Wilder’s costume as Will Wonka in Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (1971). Audiences will immediately identify the similarities of their sweet patterned clothes and brown cane, associating Snoop Dogg with the hyperreal sweet land. By placing him over the game board, and close up shots of him putting Katy Perry into the game, which creates a God-like status. This hyperreal candy land is based in Hollywood which is an intertextual reference. This also references the board game ‘Candy Land’, with much of the set decorated with cupcakes, ice creams, cotton candy, and lollipops. There is also a lot of teddy bears and dream-like scenarios; Katy is seen to be conforming to Laura Mulvey’s theory of the Male Gaze as she is seductively eating candy floss, lying bare on a pink cloud and using direct address to the camera by giving eye contact. The lighting is very bright and everything is colourful to make the video seem like a fantasy. Katy wears a lot of eccentric outfits, such as a corset and tutu with a lot of sweets stuck to it as she wonders around a forest of candy. She’s wearing a purple wig which makes her seem very childish in a teenage dream. We can also see Katy waving to over-sized gummy bears who appear to be alive which uses personification. An element of parody is seen in the music video, as the references to Willy Wonka is reinforced as Snoop Dogg is followed by these gummy bear workers. This is an intertextual reference to Willy Wonka as his workers are ‘Oompa Loompas’ so the audience can relate to the bears and gain an understanding of what their purpose is. We can see that Snoop Dogg is rolling sugar dice; controlling Katy on a board game which signifies that the video is not real. Other props involve Katy’s friend floating in a bubble gum balloon and Katy saving her with her stiletto heel – which is clearly very unrealistic. The candy canes at one point turn into snakes which symbolizes that even a dream has it’s faults. Katy then proceeds to climb the candy cane and is floating in a candy floss cloud. Whilst in the cloud, Katy is nude which signifies her growth within the video, in contrast to her previous child-like behaviour. At another point, Katy crosses another candy cane over a very dark ‘town’ which is actually chocolate. The gingerbread man is saved by being given a heart by Katy to make him happy – similar to the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz who doesn’t have a heart. Half way through the song, Katy switches outfits into denim daisy dukes and a bralet which is like cupcakes and cream; the lyrics match the visuals of the music video. The next person she saves is stuck in a sweet wrapper. They then proceed to find a castle which is like Emerald City and she then stays in this wonderland. The director uses pastiche to self-consciously imitate the ‘fembot’ scene from film ‘Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery’ (1997). This is reinforced through the use of mise-en-scene where the Katy’s hair is styled in a similar way and she fires whipped cream at the gummy bears from her chest. She quickly defeats the army after which the stunned king throws down his staff and surrenders. The video ends with "Sugar Daddy" buried up to his neck in the sand by the women, nonetheless admiring their beauty and wishing that women everywhere could be California girls. Various California landmarks appear in the video, such as the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Hollywood Sign and some West Coast beaches which were all made out of confectionery.