Practise exam question 2 - Analyse the ways in which the media represents one group of people you've studied (Youth culture)

Analyse the ways in which the media represents one group of people you've studied.

Dick Hebdige once said that "youth is trouble or youth is fun"which is referring to the media's representation of youth culture in films. They're either represented as fun loving kids who goof off all the time, or ghoulish trouble makers that prey on the weak like hooded monsters, I'll be looking into this using my case studies as evidence.

Firstly there's the 2009 thriller/drama by Daniel Barber, Harry Brown, whose opening sequence is filled with evidence of the "trouble" half of Dick Hebdige's quote. The opening is an  initiation into a gang which already represents youth as dark thugs since it's shot in an underway passage with handicam movements and low lighting. They are also depicted handling drugs and firearms which are both illegal actions, all done in the stereotypical hoodies that the media has told us to fear so much. The now initiated hooligans mount a moped and begin causing trouble in their area, they disturb the peace by rushing around the estate screaming like madmen as they make their way to the nearby park, where they proceed to demonstrate their cruelty by firing a handgun at an innocent woman and her baby in a buggy, which ends up getting her killed as a result of the youths firing too close to her head. This represents them as inconsiderate, cruel, irrational people who are fine with being the villain as long as they're having fun, and in a really dark resolution they are killed fleeing their manslaughter as they are it by a truck which is kind of the payoff in  this whole sequence. This goes to show how Daniel Barber perceives these kinds of people, he sees them as scum that need to be taken care of.

My second media text used for a case study is Joe Cornish's Attack the Block, this film has an interesting representation of youth; Joe Cornish has represented the main cast as stereotypical thugs that live on a council estate with hoodies and masks on, however there's a twist, they are actually the heroes of the movie, even though they are visually represented with dark costumes they're also given some  typical hero symbolism as well, for example there's a scene in the final act of the film where the main character, and "leader" of the gang, goes through a kind of transformation, over the course of the film he's been getting wounded and battered which leads to him removing his hoodie when he decides to act as a distraction for the aliens. At this point he's wearing a tank top exposing his muscular arms and scars, he even grabs a sword from his apartment as a weapon, all this imagery paints him as a heroic figure in the end, his costume turns him from street thug to anti-hero and his katana sword represents him as an honorable warrior. Plus the situation at hand represents him as a matyr or saviour to "The Block" he tries to protect. Joe Cornish has taken the negative stereotypes of british youth and turned it into a somewhat positive representation of a hero.

A couple other films I'd like to mention are The World's End, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and Paul, all movies that don't have a focus on british youth but they do provide a similar representations of youth in scenes dedicated to them. The World's End demonstrates the main antagonists assimilated threat by having the main cast of adults have a 5 vs 5 fight against 5 replaced youths which can be seen as representing young people as a violent hive mind, like how people today are constantly plugged into social media services.
Shaun of the Dead has a scene with a similar meaning behind it where you see a group of youths in hoodies and tracksuit bottoms shambling down an alley way bobbing along to their music, as if they have already become zombies before the zombies ever appear, which represents young people as a mindless collective of threatening beings.
Hot Fuzz represents young people as  unlawful citizens in the first act, when Nicolas Angel goes into a pub he realizes that the majority of tennants look underaged, and in a comedic sequence of questioning scenes its revealed that everybody but 3 or 4 people were a too young to be drinking, which implies that young people are irresponsible and can't be trusted.
Finally there's Paul which I believe emphasises the "fun" part of Dick Hebdige's quote, in Paul the main characters attend a comic con for comic books and "nerd" paraphernalia which is filled with young, nerdy teens, to me this implies that if kids aren't doing something wrong then they're off wasting their time at a fun party, or in this case a comic book convention.

Moving away from films I'd like to delve into how the news represents the news, for this I'll analyse how The Times has handled the representation of youth. August 9 in 2011 at 02:09am an article titled "Mobs rule as police surrender streets" was published in The Times, the title of the article refers to youths as "Mobs" because of how they're currnently represented by the media and they say that the "Mobs" are "ruling" the streets, as if we are having a hostile take over across the country. The imagery used isn't any better either as it a photo of people running away from the scene silhouetted by the flames of a burning building; the silhouettes I suppose are meant to be the "youths" as that's the medias prefered reading of the encoded meanings in this image, this represents young people as destructive, demonic psychopaths, it looks almost apocalyptic, like World War 3, since all they decide to show off to the readers is destruction.

Another medium I though would be relevant nowadays would be the representation of youth in video games, gamers already have a world wide representation of whiny teens who are super competitive and nerdy, but I'm going to use a single game as a case study, Grand Theft Auto 5 by British game development company Rockstar. This game's notoriety was enough to have the media give it a bad reputation but that reputation seems to have spread to the players too, because there's of course been some cases of under aged children obtaining this game, as I myself played my first GTA game back in year 5, but even if an 18 year old gets the game it will still be a problem in the media's eyes because of the controversy around it.

 GTA 5 is notorious for its touchy and realistic subject matter but I'm focusing on a single aspect, the main cast, this game has three main characters, Michael the rich busnessman, Franklin the young african american, and trevor the "white trash" drug pusher. 

All in one revision page

30 minutes on 1a / 30 minutes on 1b / 1 hour for question 2

1a - Theorist questions on digi-tech, creativity, research and planning, post production, or codes and conventions.
1b - media language, narrative, genre, etc.
Q2 - Youth culture question, how they're represented in the media.


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Audience theory

Encoding/Decoding
Encoding is when you create something with a meaning, like using colour connotations in an image.
Decoding is when the audience takes in those codes and breaks them down, like when you see red and you think things like; passion, violence, rage or blood.

Hypothermic Needle Effect

Gamsci's Theory
Gamsci believed that the media influences the audience to follow the status quo. The media is used to enforce the support of a government.

Hegemony

Reception Theory
Readers/Viewers/Audiences reception of texts.
Stuart Hall developed the theory that readers have opinions in what they take in from the media, meanings can be opinionated and negotiated.

Two Step Flow
The media we watch has an effect on the information we get.

The uses and Gratifications Model
The base functions of mass communication: surveillance, correlation, transmissions, entertainment,
Surveillance of the environment refers to the medias collection and distribution of information, for example the news tells you its cold so you wear a coat.
Correlation of parts of society refers to the medias interpretations and analytical activities. For example when a charity appears on television that tells you about environmental damage so you donate to save the environment. To convey messages on the outside world.
Transmissions are when the media transmits the social heritage or norms to the audience. For example watching downtown abbey would transmit the social hierarchy to the people watching. It transmits values telling the audience who people are through the connotations.
Entertainment is the ability entertain or amuse audiences, basically keep the viewers happy. For example cartoons are made to entertain young children for hours on end.

Blumler and Katz five base assumptions.
1. The audience is active, the audience has goals in mind when looking to consume mediated information.
2. In mass communication audiences use their own initiative to a degree. We choose what we want to consume specifically, we don't sit by and watch whatever comes on.
3. The media competes with other activities in your life to keep your attention for as long as possible. The media tries to keep you from eating, sleeping, exercising, and even other forms of media.
4. Many of the goals of mass media use can be derived from data supplied by individual audience members themselves.
5. A value judgement on mass media products is null as there are others who would disagree with those judgements, if you don't like something then you should at least try to understand why others would consume those forms of media.



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Genre Theory
Steve Neal:
'Genre is a repetition with an underlying pattern of variations' or more simply referred to as repetition with variety, he is essentially saying that genres are a set of rules that can be used repeatedly but with some differences to make it original.
Steve argues that 'pleasure is derived from repetition and difference', which means doing something you like time and time again will keep you happy as long as you are doing that good thing and having different events occur, making it a new experience.

Daniel Chandler:
Genre is defined by the  conventions that various texts share that are considered as the same "genre".

John Hartley:
The same text can be part of several genres. This is supported by the existence of sub-genres and/or hybrid genres.

David Buckingham:
'Genre isn't simply given by the culture; its more like a constant process of negotiation and change.' This is David basically saying that genre is something that isn't set by a culture, its used as a base with room for compromise.
This is supported by Tom Ryall's quote that states; 'Genre provides a framework of structuring rules, in the shape of patterns which act as a form of "supervision" over the work of production of filmmakers and the wok of reading by the audience.'


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Narrative theory
Film Structures
Linear Structure - ABCD
Non Linear - CABD

Binary Opposition - Levi-Strauss
Focusing on the different sets of opposite values which reveal the structure of the media texts.

Stages of a Story - Equilibrium Theory - Todorov
Equilibrium --> Disruption --> Conflict --> Climax --> New Equilibrium

Character Theory - Propps
The Hero - the character who brings equilibrium to the world
The Villain - the enemy who will interfere with the equilibrium and the hero's plans, an obstacle
The Dispatcher - the one who sends the hero on there way to regaining equilibrium, usually a father/father figure
The Donor/Mentor - the donor gives the hero something to help him/her/them on their journey
The Helper - an ally to the hero
The Heroine - usually a love interest that is passive and is threatened by the villain
The False Hero - essentially a traitor

Barthes Enigma Code
A question that is presented to he audience that is answered at a media texts conclusion.



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Media Language
Preface - How meanings in media texts are created.

Ferdinand de Saussure - the signifier and signified
The signifier is what is there to provide the meanings, signified is referring to what we associate with the signifier. For example the colour green is the signifier and to a driver it signifies that they should go.
Iconic signs are signs that look like what they mean, an obvious sign.

Indexical signs are signs that have a connection to something else, for example smoke means fire was there.

Symbolic signs are signs that have disconnected meanings where they don't have a logical connection to what they mean. For example the love heart means love but real hearts aren't loving at all. metaphorical signs.

Roland Barthes - denotations and connotations
A denotation is something that is in the media text, an object in the world of the text. Connotations are the meanings he audience tale away from that object.
Connotations are different from the signifier and signified because the signified is a singular meaning, but connotations have multiple possible meanings.

Stuart Hall - encoding and decoding
Media texts have intended messages for the audience to pick up on, the messages themselves are encoded by the author or maker, etc, the  meanings are then decoded by the audience.
This theory is more about personal values rather than literal signs and meanings.
Preferred meaning is when the audience gets the intended meanings from the text
Negotiated meanings are when the audience is partly accepted
Oppositional readings are when the meanings are completely rejected.

Chekov's Gun

Polysemy - When something has many possible meanings

Juxtaposition - contrasting meanings, for example a gift is a good thing but a bomb is inside which is bad.

Anchorage - to hold meanings to something, for example if headlines and captions anchor meanings to things, like if lady gaga were to appear on a gaming website; people would be intrigued and then see the headline that justifies her presence on the website.


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Subjects of the Questions (Prepare For Each of These)
Digi-tech: Talk about improvements in final cut pro from AS to A2. Use of more sophisticated technology like the Roxio capture system and improved skills in adobe photoshop.
Use of blogger and apps to demonstrate organisational skills

Creativity: Talk about the colour schemes of the website as apposed to the darker, more dramatic tone of the short film.
Tonal shift from comedic drama, to pure entertainment

Research and Planning: The inspirations for the short film and the website.
How specifically and how efficiently did I study for the A2 and AS tasks.
Use of blogger and apps to demonstrate organisational skills.

Post-Production: Talk about the production of video content to accompany the websites written content.
The editing style of the short film compared to the gaming videos.

Codes and Conventions: The use of colour coordination.
Use of stereotypes and character archetypes.

THEORY on the mocks - Basic Run Down of the Questions

Q1A could be about digital tech, creativity, research and planning, post-production and using conventions of real media.
Talk about what YOU did and YOUR skills with EXAMPLES that relate to he question.
Digi-tech - hardware, software, online stuff
Creativity - anything that I used my imagination for
Rand P - real media, logistics, statistics, audiences, institutions, etc
Post Pro - photo editing, video editing, changing raw material, rewrites and such.
Using Conventions - examples of other media that influenced my work.

Exam is half an hour for each question, be quick to describe and move to evaluation, analysis,= and reflection. Make it known that you have learned something from this course and your research.
Look at the blogs. Make a list of real texts and know why you used them, plus what you learned form them.
Practise the exam

Plan:
Intro

Examples form AS pre-production, link to what was developed from A2

Examples form AS production, link to what was developed from A2

Examples form AS post-production, link to what was developed from A2

Conclusion

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Q1B will be about a product you have produced; genre, narrative, representation, audience, and media language.

What genre is the product? What are the conventions of the product? How is the genre established? How's the mise en scene? How have the conventions been adhered or subverted? Whats the role of specific elements of the mise en scene? How do the generic elements of the production appeal to the audience?

Narrative, whats the narrative structure of the product? how do the specific elements of production relate to narrative structure? How does the production adhere/subvert the conventions of the narrative? How does the narrative support thew establishment of the chosen genre of the production? How've narrative techniques been used to appeal to audiences?

Audience, who is the target audience for your product? what social classification does your demographic fall under? Why would the your production appeal to your audience or demographic? What techniques and lines of appeal does the production have that attracts the target audience? What use or pleasure do the target audience get form the production? How does the production use narrative theory?

Media language, USE IT!!

Social class grades:
AB - upper middle to middle class
C1 - lower middle class
C2  - skilled working class
DE  - workng class, unemployed and dependants

Psychographics:
Aspirer materialistic people who value things that make them look like who they aspire to be
Mainstreamers are people who are part of the majority
Strugglers, people who are alienated
Succeeders are people with strong goals and confidence.
Resigners, peple who are rigid, strict, and who value familiarity.

More exam revision

Be more specific in your answers, make sure your examples form A2 and AS link to each other.

prepare examples for post-production, digi-tech, research and planning, creativity and the codes and conventions of real media.

Digi-tech: Talk about improvements in final cut pro from AS to A2. Use of more sophisticated technology like the Roxio capture system and improved skills in adobe photoshop.
Use of blogger and apps to demonstrate organisational skills

Creativity: Talk about the colour schemes of the website as apposed to the darker, more dramatic tone of the short film.
Tonal shift from comedic drama, to pure entertainment

Research and Planning: The inspirations for the short film and the website.
How specifically and how efficiently did I study for the A2 and AS tasks.
Use of blogger and apps to demonstrate organisational skills.

Post-Production: Talk about the production of video content to accompany the websites written content.
The editing style of the short film compared to the gaming videos.

Codes and Conventions: The use of colour coordination.
Use of stereotypes and character archetypes.

Creative decisions made in production

Logo creation - the idea to use a human icon and circular imagery.
Pixelated font.

Web design - The use of green and blue as a colour scheme and what they mean.
The inclusion of multiple games consoles and platforms
The ancillary tasks; the billboard ad. Its bubbly design and inclusion of other gaming icons, also the ads that accompany it and their use of a pixel based style.

Video production - visual gags; use of the MLG soundboard, conversation subjects, the games themselves
The ident (intro) and the outro.

Question 1a - Mr Lamont

Describe how you developed your skills in the use of digital technology for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to your creative decision making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time.

The first thing I made for my website was the logo which was made using Adobe Photoshop, the design of the logo was a fully original idea as I wanted to be different from the logos I had studied in my research for the website, so I had to be creative with it. I started off with a circular base which later became a recurring theme of the sight and added a smaller black circle inside with a line through it as a subtle reference to the pokeball from Pokemon and decided whether I should distort it in any way, so I lowered the line slightly. I made use of the extra space by adding an icon of human silhouettes to imply that my website is the home of a community, I used the paint bucket to colour the middle man green and left the other too white as well as adding a games controller icon on top of the middle man's head to indicate he's a member of my site's community. I also added a bunch of smaller ovals around their bottom half's and blended them into the line using the crop tool to make them disappear below the line, which left space for the abbreviation of the site's full name "CGC"  which took up the space below the line.
After the completion of the first draft I had to look over it again and try to make some improvements, at this point I just polished the outlines of the silhouettes to make them cleaner cut and changed the text font on "CGC" to a more pixelated font, I also filled the in a space in the text with black to make the letters look hollow.

My video content is full of creative uses for the production of my site's products since they require a lot of editing for the visual gags used to make the audience laugh. For example the show I made for the site uses a lot of gaming related and meme related comedy, this is evident in the rage explosion gag and the sad slow-mo gag from my SSX video which both took a long while to make. The explosion gag for example, not only needed the addition of extra stock footage, and the syncing of the visuals with the audio, I also had to amplify the sounds and loop them so that the same scream repeats while getting louder each time so that on the finale of the explosion it seems like the explosion is causing the loudest scream.

Building an answer - Mr Roberts

AO 1 - Analyse Explain and Argue

AO 2 - Case Studies

AO 3 - Media Language

Discuss Social Implications

talk about dominant ideologies - young people are all about trouble or fun

Talk about hegemony

Don't hold too much information, write a plan in order to hold focus on one point at a time.

Discuss the social implications of media in relation to collective identity. you may refer to one group or more in your answer.

Intro: Outline arguments, Address the question and introduce the main topics


The collective identity of young people in the media are commonly represented negatively. The social implications of this are that young people are nothing but trouble or fun (fun for the audience/to be laughed at). I'll be discussing this introduction using information I gathered from my case studies on Harry Brown and Attack the Block along with theorists I've found to be useful like Tessa Perkins and Richard Dyer.