Tag: Notes

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Notes from Media course November 2009

  • http://getaheadocrmedia.blogspot.com
  • Formative mark scheme
  • Evaluation / argument / analysis
  • Examples 20% / terminology 10%
  • One over all website with links to kids individual websites preferred
  • Jan 2009 ‘How important is technological convergence for institutions and audiences.’
  • TV Drama see p 18-19 of spec NB p/c it for students
  • Keep a glossary of technical vocabulary
  • Integrate answers with argument, evaluation and analysis see above range of different examples.
  • Synthesised answers are best but difficult to cover all aspects equally quite acceptable to go through each aspect separately.
  • Constructions to be recognised by viewers – can adhere to cultural expectations or undermine or challenge them.
  • Sound and editing also important – pace can be influenced; manipulation of time to make things seem quicker, slower to increase tension; creation of perspective; manipulation of narrative information – e.g. relationships between characters or bits of story line.
  • Look at The Chase for editing of the keys bit – 3 shots – extension of time gives her status; which characters get most reaction shots? Point of view shots?
  • Sound is more than just dialogue; how is non-diegetic sound used? How is ambient sound used?
  • Section B – 2 case studies contrasting? E.g. big vs. small companies, or mass vs. niche? CONCENTRATE MORE ON PRODUCER / INSTITUION LESS ON GAME ITSELF
  • Strong technological element
  • All dependent on New Media Technologies for production / marketing / consumption
  • Start with the student
  • Where do they play? How do they share it? Where did they hear of it? Then back to the institution which produced it
  • Production / distribution / consumption / exchange i.e. shared, adapted, added to, changed, subverted? Mash ups!
  • Greg dyke ‘within 5-10 years 10% of jobs will be in media in some way. Firms have PR / media relations depts. Etc.
  • Technological convergence different from institutional convergence.
  • Section A if student does an intro say e.g. whether or not gender etc. is the key focus of the scene or not or whether it is a stereotypical view or not… But start with mise en scène.
  • On CD useful documents: Take back the tube / second life / their space report
  • Also Music Magazines c/w examples the Beat 56/60
  • Foundation c/w – do screen grabs show page layout / design and how photos cropped see also: Chestnut Grove School; remember not all members will contribute the same and marks can be differentiated. Evaluation should be more on lines of annotation, reflection, could film presentations of coursework to class. Creative & Media Diploma and The Art of the Title Sequence Map out the timeline of a trailer so they can copy it – see ginger snaps at cmdiploma.com Yasmin’s blog!
  • Advanced portfolio see p 32 of spec NB idea – set or sequence of posters for the railway billboards – photograph the boards then Photoshop own posters into them.
  • If using others’ music e-mail for permission – proves you have sought it even if not granted!
  • The 4 questions (see p 30 of spec)
  • Notes from the specimen A2 paper:
    • Q1a concepts 5 areas to be chosen from: digital technology / creativity* / research and planning / post-production / using conventions from real media texts (see on the blog a Mark Redman presentation on Creativity
    • Q1b concepts: representation / audience / narrative / genre / media language (includes genre, narrative etc.!!)
    • NB look at music magazines c/w in relation to these questions likewise soap trailer.
    • *could come up each time.
    • Section B convergence of themes; keep up to date with the news regarding media and issues
    • Collective identity suggestions:
      • Life on Mars – also a postmodern text
      • Facebook – also global media
      • GTA – also global media
      • Big Brother
      • Youth – British film
        • Shane Meadow sympathetically portrays the young
        • The news representation of young people
        • Social networking how do young people represent themselves?
        • Kid British (you tube short film)
      • Two Media is the production / institution not the texts themselves
      • Nick Griffin on question time for the mash up!
      • Downfall (Hitler)
      • Spotify
      • Longroad media
      • Michael Wesch film on the anthropology of the internet
      • Suggested reading about Youth representation
        • ‘Folk devils and moral panics’ – Stanley Coen
        • David Buckingham
        • Angela MacRobbie – ‘Girls and Magazines’
        • ‘Representing Youth’ – Christine Griffin

 

Final note every unit needs: institutions audiences, representation!

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Frasier

They are created as a dysfunctional family unit

 

Martin Crane:

  • Father figure
  • Authority invested in him by virtue of his previous role as police officer retired injured now –
  • Power now curtailed by his injury and loss of job –
  • Vulnerable and dependent on others particularly his son, Frasier and live-in physio-therapist Daphne
  • Working class, quite bluff and dismissive of his sons’ professions and ambitions (coffee…!)
  • Stereotype of masculinity with his love of beer, steak houses, sport and cheap TV!

 

Daphne

  • Role of mother, housekeeper and cook
  • Working class, northern British
  • Naïve – e.g. believes in psychic powers
  • Seen as unsophisticated and primitive by the brothers
  • Sexy
  • Not very clever e.g. the piano –playing!!

 

Frasier

  • Loyal to father
  • Mother-figure in being responsible for the family’s emotional well-being
  • Father-figure financially keeping family together, keeper and provider for the household
  • Arrogant – always assumes he knows better than his father
  • Competitive with Niles
  • Inadequate at maintaining relationships with females
  • Loves fine cuisine, art, the classical arts and clothes,
  • Hates male sports, beer, eating in steak houses.

 

Niles

  • Feminised male: sensitive.
  • Very particular about details, hygiene, colour schemes etc
  • Also has difficulty maintaining relationships with women, his wife Maris remains unseen most of the time but is a cool and heartless female and seems to have emasculated him.
  • Loves fine cuisine, art, the classical arts and clothes,
  • Hates male sports, beer, eating in steak houses
  • Glad he doesn’t have his dad living with him
  • Fastidious, faddy, fussy

 

Roz

  • Is constructed as a masculinised female,
  • Independent,
  • Assertive,
  • Sexually predatory
  • And successful

 

 

The partnership between Frasier and Niles is coded as a kind of marriage:

  • They dress similarly,
  • Share the same profession,
  • Lifestyle,
  • And both find it difficult to maintain relationships thus making their own the most important in their lives.

 

Mostly this almost deviant relationship exploits the jealousy each feels at times towards the other. There is emotional closeness but since it is familial it does not become too extreme or uncomfortable for the audience. But this is important in view of their professions. But in most buddy comedies bonds of emotional attachment are avoided, but based around typical hetero-sexual activities like attending sports matches, pubs and discussing women.

 

The closure at the ends of these episodes inevitably ensures that the deviant character has learned the value of family or conformity.

 

The sit-com creates a sense of shared normality in which groups and value systems outside our cultural hegemony are held at bay; shown to be disruptive, or sanitised or just plain ignored like disabled characters.