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