Finally Managed To Upload Videos!

After the feedback we received from our peers and teachers we have listed the changes we are going to make to our tasks to improve them and hopefully come out with the best grade possible:

Male Advert: Add voiceover "Amo Tu Vida" at the end ( we did want to do this but didn't have enough time)

Female Advert: "Amo Tu Vida" at the end ( we did want to do this but didn't have enough time) try and change the font at the end to something more classy, but this proved difficult to do when I tried to on my practical last year!

Sponsorship: Add shots of Minty spraying the perfume on her, and edit the images that contain the lipstick as it could be perceived as advertising make up.

Radio: We didnt have any feedback on this, but we are pretty pleased with how it sounds so won't be making any changes, if we do make any we will blog what we have changed and why :)

I have finally managaged to add videos of our media to youtube although because it wouldnt regonise the file i had to chnage it on a strange website which is why there is writing across the video this isnt normally here!

Comments much appreciated :)

Male:



Female:



Tv Sponsorship:



Radio:



We will make the improvements listed as above and then upload our final piece :)

Section A - Using Conventions From Real Media Texts

We used many conventions from real media texts. Adverts will almost always have soft music in the background with a voice over of the name of the product, male adverts tend to be in black and white, many camera angles and shots are used and the characters used are glamourous. We applied all these conventions to our media text.

Section A - Post Production

The post production of our coursework would be the editing, music & sound and titles. Editing was fairly hard in As as we werent used to using the macs but we managed to improve our skills on iMovie which meant the editing of our A2 coursework was affective and up to high standards. Editing would be uploading all the film and then cutting out unwanted clips, making them longer or shorted and adding special effects, if it applied to our film. Music was imported from the uncopyrighted site freeplay.com and this was a simple procedure in which we would upload it to iTunes then import it to our work. Titles were used for the name of the product "Amo Tu Vida" at the end of the film although we found it difficult to remove a text once we had put it onto the clip, so were stuck with an unwanted text on our female advert.

Section A - Research & Planning

We spent many many weeks on research & planning which can be seen on our blog. We started my mind mapping many ideas of what we could advertise, then when we knew it would be perfume we decided on characters and mise en scene to which would look most affective. We created storyboards on paint, used slideshare to present our pitch of ideas to our peers. We used youtube to research into convential fragrance adverts and adapted ideas from this.

Section A - Creativity

Creativity is an important element to our final coursework. Perfume adverts are common and we therefore had to make it original, we added the slogon "Amo Tu Vida Para Elle/Ill' so the audience we able to regonise the product.

The Male Gaze

The Male Gaze was a theory proposed by Laura Mulvey in the 1970s. It refers to how an audience will look at images of people within a media text.

It can be described as feminist, reference to the voyeuristic way in which men look at women.

Johnathan Scroeder 1998 - " To gaze implies more than to look at, it signifies psychological realtionship of power, in which the gazer is superior to the object of gaze."

This theory could be criticized for failure to take into account for female spectators, and only focuses on hetrosexual people, not homosexual.

The Male Gaze could fit into our advert because our adverts are aimed to be seductive to make the audience want to buy it, men could watch the female advert and buy the product hoping their wife will wear the fragrance and look like the character, or may watch the male advert and inspire to be like him. Vice versa for the female watching the advert.

Section A - Digital Technology

When starting Media Studies I was quite familiar with some of the digital technology used. I got an ipod for christmas 2006 so I use iTunes and iTunes store on a regular basis, so when uploading the music we used in our final piece i found this easy. I found Garageband useful in my As coursework as i made music to suit my film opening. However i found more suitable music on uncopyrighted music sites such as Jamendo on the Internet for my A2 adverts. The internet was hugely replied on throughout my media to allow me to do research and also to update my blog and blogspot which meant I and others could track my progress of my work. I don't have an apple mac so was unaware of how to use iMovie, and it took a while to get used to it and develop my editing skills. I had used Photoshop to edit personal photos at home to improve the quality so i was familiar with this, although the tasks i chose didn't require me to use photoshop, as i did a film opening in As and my 2 main and ancillary tasks in A2 were also film. When starting Media we had to do some preliminary tasks to learn how to use the equipment in school like the cameras, Macs, iMovie and Photoshop. By doing a 1 minute film for the preliminary task we learnt how to use the Macs and iMovie. My skills were improved on Photoshop to produce a magazine which was quite easy to do but time consuming to make the actual product.

Section A - Skills Development

Key Areas:
> Digital Technology (Photoshop, Garageband, iMovie, iTunes, Internet, Blogspot.)
> Creativity
> Research & Planning
> Post Production (Editing, Music & Sound, Titles.)
> Using Conventions From Real Media Texts

The question will refer to 1 or 2 of these areas.

Trevor Millum

Trevor Millum studied women magazine adverts, and distinguished these forms of attention:

> attention directed towards other people
> attention directed to an object
> attention directed to oneself
> attention directed to reader/ camera
> attention directed into middle distance, as in a state of reverie
> direction or object of attention not discernable (cant make it out).

Relationships between those depicted:

> reciprocal attention- directed at each other
> divergent attention- directed at different things
> object-oriented attention- both looking at the same thing
> semi-reciprocal attention- attention of one person is on the other, whose attention is elsewhere.

Representing Gender

The Representations of men and women can never illustrate the 'truth.'
This is true because not all men and women in society will conform to their gender stereotype, some women within the family have a higher income job and they are therefore the breadwinner and the male is the child bearer.

Hollywood mainly operate in gender binary opposites.
I disagree with this, because when thinking about celebrities in Hollywood such as Paris Hilton, although she is criticised for not working at all and using all her fathers wealth, she does have her own business of products such as fragrance and make up, which isn't stereotypically correct for a female to have her own business. However, the richest people in the world such as Bill Gates are all men and have their own business which is operating to the gender binary opposites.

Gender can only be understood in relation to the culture that produces it.
This is true, our culture means we are brought up the norms and values are the society we are in, gender stereotypes may be represented differently from someone who is a Christian to someone of an Asian culture.

Gender stereotypes are a useful way of understanding culture.
Yes, the environment, religion, clothes and food we associate with in our culture are useful in understanding how men and women are expected to act in the society, this may change within cultures.

Gender Stereotypes

To what extent do they conform to or subvert traditional gender roles?





Media Children Advert

Postmodernism & Pulp Fiction Intertextuality

Media reality is the new reality. We no longer have any sense of the difference between real things, images of them, or real experiences and simulations of them. Representations are re interpreted and played around with through pastiche and intertextual references. People will deliberately expose the text as constructed to tell the audience that the piece is not real and it never pretends to be real at any point, they don't try and hide the fact the media text is constructed. An example of this is in Quentin Tarantino's film 'Kill Bill' the mise en scene shows the audience that this is a film and not real life. There is a childs painting on the wall which is meant to be a "doodle" but indicates splattered blood. The cereal is called "kaboom" showing the audience a gun exposion may happen. The spraying blood is over exaggerated. The camera shot in which it shows a birds eye view, shows the audience it is a film set because the angle shows there is no room of the house.



Pulp Fiction (1994) directed by Quentin Tarantino tells the story of hitmen linked into different stories. The criticism for this film has been that because the film makes so many intertextual references it is so sly and knowing that it doesn't seem 'real' it feels/looks like a construction. Does this make Pulp Fiction postmodern?



Jules quoting from the Bible is reminiscent of Robert Mitchum's character quoting from the Bible in Night Of The Hunter (1955 Charles Laughton)



Mia's haircut styled after Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box (1928 G.W. Pabst)





Marilyn Monroe's skirt flying up over a subway grating in The Seven Year Itch (1955 Billy Wilder)





The weapons that Butch considers before saving Marcellus:
Hammer—The Toolbox Murders (1978)
Baseball bat—Walking Tall (1973)
Chainsaw—The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)



The moment where Butch is waiting at a crossroads in his car has his path crossed by Marcellus Wallace is a direct reference to the moment in Psycho (1960 Alfred Hitchcock) when Marion Crane sees her boss walk in front of her car after fleeing from him, having stolen $40,000.

pulpfictionnn

Young and Rubican

Dr Maslow was studyed monkeys (1969) He found that monkeys always made sure they weren't thirsty before they looked for shelter and always made sure they found shelter before finding a companion. He then went on to study humans, and he found humans acted the same was as monkeys, for example humans wouldnt worry about love until they felt secure.
What became of this was, Dr Maslows hierachy of needs.




Young and Rubican researched on where people stood in the differernt catogories.
The hierachy of needs accepted that people from different cuntries were influenced by their culural background. They therefore named it the Cross Cultural Consumer Characterisation. (4Cs) for short. This puts people into one of 7 groups, depending on their motivation:

The Explorer is driven by a need for something new. Often the first to try out new ideas and experiences. Their core need for live is discovery.

The Aspirer is driven by other people's perception rather than their own opinion. This could be what other think of their appearence, fashion and personality. Their core need for life is status.

The Succeeder has self confidence and are organised. They feel they deserve the best reward given. They have an aggressive attitude to life and need to sometimes relax. Their core need for life is control.

The Reformer has independent judgement. They are often perceived as being intellectual and pride themselves on tolerence. Their core need for life is enlightenment.

The Mainstream are the largest group within the 4C's. They are the mainstream of society, in the domestic world. They respond to big established family brands. Their core need for life is security.

The Struggler lives for today and no plans for tomorrow. Often binges on alcohol and junk food. There only chance in life would be if they won the lottery. They seek escape.

The Resigned are mostly the older generation who's values have been built up over time. They act in traditional ways and their aim in life is to survive.

The relevent catogories that link with our advert are the aspirer, explorer and succeeder.

When I took the quiz on www.4cs.yr.com/diys to see what type I was. I got these results:

Theorists

In Thursdays lesson with Mrs Hammond we learnt about theorists and how we can appropriately apply them to fit into our advertisments. The main theorists we learnt about were Todorov, Barthes, Propp and Levi- Strauss.

Todorov's work was based on the fact that nearly all stories start with equilibrium, followed by a disruption finished with a new equilibrium.

Barthes talks about narrative codes, these codes are used to keep the audience interested and their attention to the storyline. These codes are:

>Enigma Code - Something in a film that is not explained, and raises a problem within the storyline. This enables the audience to think about what is going on.

>Action code - This is basically any action within a film. Props or dialogue will let the audience know that action is/will happen and keeps them interested.

>Semantic Code - This is how the audience interpret something that has happened or is said. The audience are thinking about the suggested meaning.

>The Cultural Code - This is where a film can relate the storyline to the audience based on their knowledge, for example an opening scene of snow and presents the audience know it is christmas.

Propp from his research on children's stories found that all films have set key character roles. They have:
The Hero
The Villain
The Donor
The Dispatcher
The False hero
The Helper
The Princess
Her Father

Obviously we have to break conventions of this research because we are doing an advert, so cant apply all of the roles to our advert.

Levi-Strauss talked about binary opposites in stories, for example love vs hate, beautiful vs ugly and good vs evil, they could be viewed as moral messages within the storyline. This could mean something will only be defined in relation to something it is not.