The London Riots started after Mark Duggan was shot by a police officer, as they thought he was armed. The riots initially started off as a demonstration against the killing of Mark Duggan but it turned violent and spread across London and even to other cities such as Birmingham.
The Media;
The representation of youth during the London Riots by the news was entirely negative in terms of how they looked down on the youth. They were represented in a violent, careless way similar to the films Sket and Ill Manors. This representation plays on stereotypes, for example the fact that they are from east London and are Working Class. What differs between the films and the coverage of the riots is that the films show gang violence and stabbings, attacks on each other etc whereas the riots focus more on the destruction of property.
Although the riots started as a reaction to Mark Duggans death, the news said that in the end the rioting was just done with no reason behind it, which was how the police and government also portrayed it to be entirely the thought of youths, hence giving them an even worse name. Although the news did show some interviews with youths and others who expressed reasons behind why they looted and took part in the riots - such as Sky News and BBC - they did make them seem stupid and still shift the blame onto them.
This interview from Sky News with four youths involved in the riots does show them telling the reasons why they think that the riots happened, and how it can be stopped which is nothing to do with the killing of Mark Duggan, but because the poor way the government treats youths and takes away their opourtunities. This contrasts with the views of the government and police who were saying that it was all just done for no reason at all and just a demonstration that spiralled out of control. Although they are showing their views, they are also looking down on them and still blaming them effectively. This was done strongly by using stereotypes. For example, one of the looters says how he is 16 and a dad. This gives an immediate image of what you expect from him and expect him to behave and live like. Although this is reported by Sky News, they step back from it a bit at the end where they say how the four guys interviewed will most likely get in trouble with the police as they gave a lot of information away.
Wednesday, 21 May 2014
Friday, 16 May 2014
1B: Analyse media representation in one of your coursework productions
For my advanced portfolio I created a teaser trailer for a horror film, Get Out which shows the representation of older men and young females. Representation is the representing of an opinion or reality that the producer encodes with their own ideology. Representation carries the producers views and therefore cannot be seen as an accurate view of reality, but reality reconstructed.
My trailer has represented females in both a strong and vulnerable way. They are mainly shown as weak in terms of getting caught by the antagonist and not being physically strong enough to fight back. I also showed them as weak through their body language and emotion. For example, there is a scene towards the beginning of the trailer where May, the main character, is looking around very scared and uneasily. This relates to O'Sullivan et al's theory that ideas about gender are portrayed through language. Although this theory mainly applies to how women are seen visually in music videos, it does apply to the fact the language used in the trailer is showing the girls to be very vulnerable and naive. The fact that they chose to stay in a abandoned motel reflects on the fact they are young females, willing to take risks and not fully understand or be ready for repercussions. My trailer also shows women in a different way to how they tend to be shown in horror trailers in the way they are seen visually. Horrors tend to show women in correspondence to Laura Mulvey's (1975) theory Male Gaze that women are only to be seen as visual pleasure for men. My trailer challenges this representation with the female characters wearing casual, outdoors clothes and not being shown in a provocative manner. This more normal representation of young females will mean that the target audience can relate to them more, which relates to Blumler and Katz (1974) theory of Uses and Gratifications in relation to identity.
Similarly, my trailer also shows representations of older males as well. It shows them in a very stereotypical way that they are in charge and are the more dominating sex. This is evident through a range of different factors in the trailer. The most obvious one is the way the the camera tends to be looking up and the masked antagonist which shows him to be in a position of power. There is a scene at the end of the trailer where the antagonist finds the main character May who had escaped. This scene uses and over the shoulder shot looking down on May emphasising he is the one with the power and she is weaker. This relates to Claude Levi Strauss' Binary Opposites theory, that if you know there is a dominating male character you expect a weak female character. The fact that the antagonist is a male plays up to a range of stereotypes. First, the fact it is a male relates to stereotypes as it goes along with the vast majority of existing horrors that use a dominating male antagonist. Visually, he plays up to stereotypes in relation to Orrin E.Klapp's (1962) theory that stereotypes are people that do not belong in or fit into a social group or society. This is because he looks dirty and dangerous - not someone you would expect to see in everyday life.
Ovcrall, I think that my trailer shows gender both in correlation to existing representations and stereotypes in horrors and also goes against these slightly. In terms of representing young women as weak and stupid is an exaggeration of how the media represents girls that age, but showing them in a horror environment. The male character lives up to existing social stereotypes of the type of person that is trouble and you should stay away from. However, the fact that the girls are not represented as visual pleasure for men, makes them seem normal, thus creating a relatively believable verisimilitude.
My trailer has represented females in both a strong and vulnerable way. They are mainly shown as weak in terms of getting caught by the antagonist and not being physically strong enough to fight back. I also showed them as weak through their body language and emotion. For example, there is a scene towards the beginning of the trailer where May, the main character, is looking around very scared and uneasily. This relates to O'Sullivan et al's theory that ideas about gender are portrayed through language. Although this theory mainly applies to how women are seen visually in music videos, it does apply to the fact the language used in the trailer is showing the girls to be very vulnerable and naive. The fact that they chose to stay in a abandoned motel reflects on the fact they are young females, willing to take risks and not fully understand or be ready for repercussions. My trailer also shows women in a different way to how they tend to be shown in horror trailers in the way they are seen visually. Horrors tend to show women in correspondence to Laura Mulvey's (1975) theory Male Gaze that women are only to be seen as visual pleasure for men. My trailer challenges this representation with the female characters wearing casual, outdoors clothes and not being shown in a provocative manner. This more normal representation of young females will mean that the target audience can relate to them more, which relates to Blumler and Katz (1974) theory of Uses and Gratifications in relation to identity.
Similarly, my trailer also shows representations of older males as well. It shows them in a very stereotypical way that they are in charge and are the more dominating sex. This is evident through a range of different factors in the trailer. The most obvious one is the way the the camera tends to be looking up and the masked antagonist which shows him to be in a position of power. There is a scene at the end of the trailer where the antagonist finds the main character May who had escaped. This scene uses and over the shoulder shot looking down on May emphasising he is the one with the power and she is weaker. This relates to Claude Levi Strauss' Binary Opposites theory, that if you know there is a dominating male character you expect a weak female character. The fact that the antagonist is a male plays up to a range of stereotypes. First, the fact it is a male relates to stereotypes as it goes along with the vast majority of existing horrors that use a dominating male antagonist. Visually, he plays up to stereotypes in relation to Orrin E.Klapp's (1962) theory that stereotypes are people that do not belong in or fit into a social group or society. This is because he looks dirty and dangerous - not someone you would expect to see in everyday life.
Ovcrall, I think that my trailer shows gender both in correlation to existing representations and stereotypes in horrors and also goes against these slightly. In terms of representing young women as weak and stupid is an exaggeration of how the media represents girls that age, but showing them in a horror environment. The male character lives up to existing social stereotypes of the type of person that is trouble and you should stay away from. However, the fact that the girls are not represented as visual pleasure for men, makes them seem normal, thus creating a relatively believable verisimilitude.
Question 1A: Describe how your analysis of the conventions of real media texts infromed your own creative media practice. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time.
For my first foundation portfolio I created a rock music magazine called Dirt aimed at 17-30 year olds, mainly male. Then for my advanced portfolio, I created a teaser trailer for a horror film called Get Out and a poster and film magazine cover for Empire Magazine to accompany it. These were aimed at a 15-25 year old audience, equally male and female. Looking at conventions is important when creating a media product so you can give the audience what they expect and to give you a starting point when constructing you media product.
Before I started my foundation portfolio, I had no real understanding of conventions and their purpose. I quickly learnt that when creating a media text - whether it be magazine or trailer - that in order to create a product that the audience want and are expecting, you need to follow conventions. For example, when creating my magazine for my foundation portfolio I looked at existing covers for music magazines such as Classic Rock and NME in order to gain an understanding of the content and the layout that attracts fans of the genre and is what there are expecting to find in genre specific magazines. Conventions are important as they establish what genre is, grouping specific themes together and creating recognisable group, which indicates to the audience what is going to be shown. When it came to my front cover layout, I followed conventions for masthead, and colour that I saw on Classic Rock and Q in order to show my audience immediately what the genre is. One convention I followed strictly is the colour palette as it there are specific colours that relate to the rock genre that are recognisable and evident on existing magazine covers that I have looked at including Kerrang!. These are red, black and white. In order to visually attract my target audience and make indicate the genre immediately before even looking at other aspects of the colour I used these colours in cover, especially my title logo which would stick out and create a brand that reflects the rock genre and its audience. In terms of masthead, I followed ideas from NME and Q when choosing my positioning. As my title for my magazine was fairly small, and if stretched across the entire top half of the cover would look to big I decided to position it to the left corner as so it would not overpower the cover and not crowd up and constrict the main image. I also included the issue number and date as for my cover it worked out best there rather than in the right corner with the barcode and I saw examples of both positions. One convention that I challenged in terms of masthead is the fact my masthead is in the foreground of the cover rather than behind the image which is what I saw on existing magazine covers. I challenged this because my title was made to look like stencilled graffiti and therefore looked slightly more realistic placed over the top of the image rather than behind.
When I started my advanced portfolio, I had more of an understanding of the importance of conventions and a stronger understanding of how to use and apply them to planning and construction of my work. As I had a deeper understanding of them, I could develop them and challenge them even more. When it came to looking at conventions for my advanced portfolio I had a much broader spectrum of media texts to look at due to creating a trailer, magazine cover and poster. This aided my creative decision making as it gave me the chance to look at broad conventions for the horror genre, and conventions specific to the each individual media text. I also had to look at conventions in terms of how I could effectively link together each of my products in order to create a recognisable sense of branding to help promote my film Get Out. When looking into existing teaser trailers, I looked at the teaser trailer for Hostel Part One (2005). One thing that stood out to me in this trailer was how the talking was limited to just screams and moans to emphasise the sense of pain. Instead of voice overs or clips of the characters talking, the story was told through the use of intertitles. This helped to cram in more action and get the audience hooked. Another convention I got from the Hostel trailer and other similar to it was the use of fast cut. These help to include more content and action into the small time space as well as the pace of the cuts matching the fast pace of the film itself. As I was doing a horror trailer, I knew there was certain aspects that had to be included that go with it such as lighting, and mise en scene. In terms of lighting, I knew to fit the horror genre the film had to be set at night, therefore resulting in the resultant footage being relatively dark which suited the genre and me having to use artificial light. Lighting was also thought about a lot in the shoot for the ancillary tasks. For this I looked to posters such as One Missed Call and vintage horror posters to mimic the shadowy lighting looking up at the model to create a dark image with a lot of shadow which reflects the horror genre.This technical planning was far more advanced than any technical planning such as lighting in my my foundation portfolio as I did not look into conventions as much, whereas in my advanced portfolio I spent more time looking into conventions and de constructing different trailers, posters and magazine covers. Mise en Scene was also carefully considered in relation to conventions. One area this strongly applied to was the use of location. I decided to use an abandoned Motel as it is a location that is typical to horror films, and the desolate location also made the film more believable. This also shows dramatic improvement from my foundation portfolio as for that I did not really pay much attention to choosing a location in terms of how it fit the genre and the ideas I was putting forward in the magazine.
In the advanced portfolio I also challenged some conventions as I had looked into them enough to decided how they could effectively be challenged without changing the genre or loosing the films appeal to the target audience. The main thing that I challenged was Carol J Clover's Final Girl theory. This theory states that the innocent, weak and typically blonde female character is the one who survives. I challenged this visually by having the final girl being ginger rather than blonde, and although I made her nervous and sceptical at the begining of the trailer, she immediately becomes stronger and fights back.
Overall, my analysis of conventions has greatly improved from my foundation portfolio to my advanced portfolio, with the first year me following the conventions, and also not having much understanding of them and their importance. Whereas in the second year not only did I have understanding of conventions to build upon but I got to look at the use of conventions over different media platforms which helped me understand conventions specific to each individual media text, and those which cover the genre across all platforms. I also felt confident enough with the understanding and use of conventions that I challenged some as well.
In the advanced portfolio I also challenged some conventions as I had looked into them enough to decided how they could effectively be challenged without changing the genre or loosing the films appeal to the target audience. The main thing that I challenged was Carol J Clover's Final Girl theory. This theory states that the innocent, weak and typically blonde female character is the one who survives. I challenged this visually by having the final girl being ginger rather than blonde, and although I made her nervous and sceptical at the begining of the trailer, she immediately becomes stronger and fights back.
Overall, my analysis of conventions has greatly improved from my foundation portfolio to my advanced portfolio, with the first year me following the conventions, and also not having much understanding of them and their importance. Whereas in the second year not only did I have understanding of conventions to build upon but I got to look at the use of conventions over different media platforms which helped me understand conventions specific to each individual media text, and those which cover the genre across all platforms. I also felt confident enough with the understanding and use of conventions that I challenged some as well.
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