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.

Mr Roberts Lesson

Cultural Hegemony

Giroux
Giroux argues that in the media representations of youth become an 'empty category'
The media representations of youths are constructed by adults which reflects their concerns, anxieties and needs through their representations of youth.Because of this media representations of young people don't reflect the reality.

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Presentation plan - state how young people are generally represented, introduce the films,
O Sullivan and Richard Dyer

Richard Dyer when talking generally about media representation said:
What sense of the world does it make?
What's the implication?
Who is it speaking for/to?
What does it represent and why?

How and more importantly WHY are the representations constructed?

Youth culture presentation Script:

Introduction:

British films! I love British films, haven't seen many, but I love them when I do, and you should too because they tend to be grittier and (at risk of sounding like an elitist) more "realistic" than the glamorously polished and romanticised American movies.

However, in all the British films I've seen there's been a trend that I've noticed... Why are kids so scary?

*Title card

Kids in British films are a strange case, or more specifically young people or teenagers. They seem to be represented in one of two ways - either this *partying* or like this *gangsta* - which is strange because I'm a teenager as of making this video and I'm more like this *nerdy scene*.

But jokes aside, what are the similarities and differences of young people represented in British media?

It isn't the stereotype I'd prefer to be associated with but there are some ways that certain films use these characteristics, I'll be comparing two media texts to explore this question, Attack the Block and Harry Brown, with a few other films sprinkled in to strengthen my point.

So, let’s jump right into it.

So, how do these films represent young people? Well, they both have their youths acting like thugs basically, they're antagonising, they're shady, and they have little respect for the law or law abiding citizens, which is demonstrated by the scene in ATB where the main gang mugs a woman at the start of the movie, like this is how they establish these characters, they are introduced as malicious hoodlums, bandits even!

Similarly, the youths in Harry Brown are made up of the same traits, they too wear the dark hooded clothes, operate in groups, mug people and speak "awl li'e dat bruv".

Following the stereotype of those dark, scary youths to a tee.

First Theorist:

In fact, Walter Lippman came up with the term stereotype in order to identify differences between different things or people, and in these films, you are given clear black and white representation of these characters compared to everyone else;

In ATB the main characters are all dressed in black and red, colours used to convey danger, evil and violence, and what are they specifically wearing? Hoodies and masks, clothes universally recognized as signifiers of threatening character.

They are introduced to us in a series of fast jump cuts whilst mugging an innocent woman which is supposed to invoke a feeling of intensity and fear by recreating the pace of a what the film maker believes a mugging is like.

Their caretakers on the other hand, all wear brighter outfits to show that they're good people, parents just looking after their kids.

This is also evident in Harry Brown where I think we should take a look at who the characters are interacting with; Harry Brown himself had a single friend, a sweet old man who is killed around 20 minutes in by the youths who drove him to breaking point, and the police force/detectives who are a symbol of authority and righteousness in a community, apparently not this film's community but in most communities.

However, when we look at who the kids are interacting with it gets dark, there's obviously the other youths, which is expected because, gang mentality, but there is also this man; Stretch, the warped, drug dealer that is apparently well known by the youths around the estate as Harry learns about him through the youths he spies on, AND on a couple of occasion we see drugs being exchanged in broad day light!

These black-hearted teens are also represented as territorial, since they hold the underpass hostage throughout the majority of the film, not to mention how in both films youths have an entire estate under their thumbs, which, along with everything else that’s been mentioned so far, adds to their image of malicious, domineering, predatorial, youths.

Yet there is an interesting difference in the two films stereotypical youth cultures.

They go on different kinds of character arcs throughout their respective films,

Harry Brown keeps them in a negative light whilst ATB gives them a kind of redemption arc, ATB represents them as diamonds in the rough, anti-heros.

The way they handle the antagonists of the film, the aliens, represents them as a group of rebellious heroes that operate by a sense of chaotic good, they see the threat, they know that exterminating that threat is the best thing to do, yet they are completely opposed to following the status quo.

These guys are violent thugs, but they are, in the films eyes, heroes.

Second Theorist:

Okay, now after all how’s and what’s we finally make our way to the WHY, why are they represented this way, and for that I’d like to talk about my man Richard Dyer.

So, this is Richard Dyer, a theorist who once asked when talking about media representations What sense of the world does it make, what's the implication, who is it speaking for/to, and what does it represent and why?

As for what these films youths represent I believe we’ve covered enough of that already and as for why well, that’s what you’re about to find out.

What sense of the world does it make?
The youths in both films build up a world of darkness, a world that has been taken over by negatively influenced youths.

The dark atmosphere of these films provides a grim outlook on these council estates, which is an insight to how the film makers see these troublesome youth;  
What's the implication?

Who is it speaking for/to?