Representation

A representation can be defined in many ways. It can either be thought of as being an image of a group of members in a culture or group or predictions about strangers due to their religion, race, culture or ethnicity.

You can portray these representations in media through several things. Mise en scene is in my opinion the main way of showing representations of groups. Costume is a main way of representation a person who is in a particular group for example, someone who is a 'chav' will be clothed in tracksuits, hoodies, caps and 'blinged' up with jewellery (as seen in Kidulthood below).

In my AS coursework we had a 'stalker' in our media production. Therefore we wanted him to seem quite mysterious. To represent him as a 'stalker' we requested that he wore a black jacket and black jeans and the shirt he wore was red and white checked shirt- The red was to resemble blood. I felt that if the audience saw a character in very dark clothing it was connote that the character was quite dark and mysterious. Hopefully this worked well.

For my A2 coursework although we will still be having our actors wearing 'indie' clothing similarly to the band we will be representing the group (to appeal to the audience) through the uses of locations. We will be using shots from locations which our audience should be able to relate to. The locations we will be using are: town, bars and the cinema. As our target audience are late teens it is likely that they will have been to all of these locations therefore they will be able to relate and enjoy the music video because it seems more like real life to them.

Narration Within My Music Video

There are several sections to my music video which include: Narration and Performance.

Within my music video the narrative theory that will be used is Todorov's theory. Todorov's basic structure for narratives will apply to my music video. The beginning will begin with an equilibrium, a calm period where the female character is walking down the road. Then agents of disruption will cause disequilibrium which in this case will be when the boy band see her and decide to try and fight for her love. This will then be followed by a renewed state of peace and harmony for the video where the boy band go on dates with the girl and eventually one of the band members will win her. Therefore the chaos comes to an end.

Narrative and Narration

Here is the way in which I would describe what narrative is:

• It is the structure of a story which pieces together events.

There are three narrative models which you can use to piece together events; Todorov, Propp and Levi Strauss.

For my AS production the narrative model which I seemed to use was Propp. In the opening sequence you are introduced to the two main characters: the villain and the female character would be the princess, as at the end of the film she would be the reward for whoever saved her from the villain.

The reasons why I did not use Todorov is because the first few clips show a complication and then further complications on the jump forward in time. Rather than Todorovs view of: Equilibrium, Disequilibrium (cause by an agent of disruption) and Re-Equilibrium.

My A2 production will contain the final narrative model of Levi Strauss. As my story line will contain several boys after one girl there will be quite a lot of rivallry between the boys (Hate) whereas they all are in love with the girl (Love). Todorov's theory is that narrative is motivated by a struggle between Binary Opposites, where one side of the story will represent 'right' and be the side in which the audience will identify and support.

Question 1b: Media Language and Audience

What was my target Audience at AS?

Our target audience for our AS media product are teens/late teens, who are C2 and watch mainstream films as we wanted to target a mainstream audience with a rating of '15'.

How did i manage to target my audience through the uses of sound?

When me and Sophie (Partner at AS) picked sound we wanted to pick something which could not be linked to anything else, because I find as a late teen that when I hear music or sound in a media product i try to link it to another piece of sound i have heard before. For this we wanted our media product to contain unique music which we were able to produce through a friend who allowed us to produce our own music. This way we were able to include different tempo music which we thought would work well with the images.

Did my target audience influence how I used colour throughout my media product?

I did not specifically use particular colours to use in my media product which I thought would have an inflence from my target audience. The way in which we chose colour was to make sure that we used similar colours to real media products. For the titles we used white at first which connotes purity which then changed to red which connotes danger.

We thought that as these colours are used quite a lot within real media texts our audience who watched these real media texts would be able to notice these comparisons with our media production. However even though we thought that our audience would be looking for quite gory films, the majority of our opening sequence was highly lit. Therefore this is why we needed to make sure that there was a part of our media production that was very dark, connoting danger.

Redundancy and Entropy

Redundancy

In my opinion redundancy is the word given to conventions of media texts which are seen as being predictable.

In our music video we are hoping to include redundancy so that our target audience are able to relate to the video and feel comfortable watching it. They should be able to pick out the redundant elements from our music video which our audience have seen in similar real media texts. For example: Girls Aloud 'I'll Stand By You.'

Entropy therefore is the opposite of redundancy. Entropy is the word given to conventions of real media texts which are seen as unpredictable in that particular genre.

Entropy is a way of adding uniqueness to a media text. We may include several entropic conventions within our music video however they will be minute.

A disjunctive music video is an example of an entropic media text, as they music video has unexpected concepts that are not necessarily narrating the lyrics or music. For example: Daft Punk- Da Funk is an example of this.

Story Boards

Locations

For our music video we were hoping to do our filming in Worcester, Down the A38. If all goes to plan we will still be using this as our location. The reasons why we have chosen this as our location is because of what is situated on that road. There are several bars/pubs and even a cinema, and as our music video will include several couples going on dates we thought this would be ideal!

Treatment

Fly Around the World

Concept
The concept for my music video is to produce a real life production which can compliment the up beat romantic music, using specific lighting and locations which can represent dates.
The band ‘lights and sounds’ that we have chosen to use has given their interpretation of the song, ‘fly around the world’ and that is:
‘The song's about loving someone and getting them to take a chance on you basically. The flying around the world represents that feeling of invincibility you get when you're in love...like you can do anything.’

The purposes for the music video
To help compliment the music itself by making sure the music video is well suited to the ‘indie’ genre. To attract the specific audience and to make our music video well remembered by them.
Develop brand image.

Desired Outcome
My desired outcome would be that our music video works well in co-ordination with the music and that the audience enjoy watching it. Hopefully, as long as there are no problems with production and everything works out well, the outcome of our media product should be a professional style video that would be admired.

Audience
Our target audience are late teenagers who are aspirers (at college/university) who enjoy going to watch small bands in their local pub/club. The band lights and sounds have recently had gigs at university balls, this could be a good way of attracting their audience.

Similar texts which we have been influenced by
There are several texts which we have already been influenced by. We watched a music video which our artists have already produced for one of our other songs. The song in which they have added a video to is ‘feel alive’ and in this music video they have narrative and performance. We believed that the parallel action worked well for this music style. After watching similar music genre’s videos we discovered that many music videos for the ‘indie’ genre do contain narrative and performance. The two music videos in particular that we looked at were: jack penate- have I been a fool and scouting for girls- heartbeat.

How we want our text to be different
In both of these music videos the narrative and the performance have a link, instead of a video like jonas brothers- paranoid where the performance is not connected to the narrative. As we wish for our music video to have similar conventions of other ‘indie’ genre music videos, we will be including narrative and performance in our music video. At first it will seem as though the performance has no link to the narration however at the end the two sections will join.
Another element or editing technique we would like to use is picture in picture. This is after watching a particular video we liked ‘hey there delilah’. This works well with it being a slow paced song so we thought we may not be able to do it for our song as it has a faster tempo. However we managed to find a music video by Plastiscines with the song ‘Barcelona’ which is very fast paced.

What sort of technology do you think will be involved?
We will be using a digital video camera to film our footage and then we will be editing it with adobe premier pro.

What sort of personnel will be involved?
We will need 6 actors in total. We need 5 male characters for the band and 1 female character for the boys to follow.

Dates and Provisional Schedule
Filming- 2nd November- 23rd November
Editing- 23rd – 7th December

Likely Problems
Some problems which may occur include:
Making sure that the editing blends well when we are having the male characters change.
If we use a green screen we need to make sure that it works before we film it so that there are no problems with that.
Making sure that the surroundings are quiet enough when we film so that pedestrians are traffic do not cause us problems.

Possible Costs- Financial
Petrol for transportation of actors and equipment
Costs of costume
Transport Issues

Making sure we can access the settings and transport equipment easily.

Health and Safety Issues
Making sure there are no accidents as we will be filming near the city centre near a road.

Pitch Feedback

Pitch

Here are my 5 slides that helped me to produce my pitch. Although there seems to be quite a lot od text on the slides, this was altered before the class saw it. This however is what we said:

Research and Planning- Similar Media Products

As we were starting to think of ideas for our music video we thought that it would be a good idea to think of music videos that already existed and to try and compare our ideas to real media products.

This music video is Jack Penate- have i been a fool. In this music video there is one male character and he is on a date with what at first seems to be one girl. The girl switches in most scenes so you see he is in fact on different dates doing the same thing. This is what we are hoping to achieve with our music video. Therefore this is an example of a real media text which we are taking notes from.

Here are some print screens of certain clips in the music video which we thought were reasons why Jack Penate- Have I Been A Fool would be a similar media product. As i said above there is one male character on dates with several girls. I think it is really clever how the filming is done so the girl changes rapidly between shots but Jack Penate doesnt move or jump. Here are screen shots of the dates:






The mise en scene in this music video is something which I wish to encorporate into my music video. The setting is an every day place which will show how the entropy within music videos is possible. The target audience for Jack Penate and our band 'Lights and Sounds' should be quite similar- late teen females. This is why this particular setting would be ideal so that the target audience are able to relate to the setting.

The clothing of the actors and singer in 'Have I Been A Fool' is casual. It seems quite typical attire for a follower of an indie band. I believe that what the characters are wearing will be an important factor of the music video, I will need to pay attention to detail if I want my music video to include conventions of a real life media text.

When Jack Penate is running down the road there is quite a lot of match on action between several shots. This is something which is extremely important.

John Legend - Save Room

John Legend Save Room
Uploaded by avajra. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

The conventions i liked in this music video is the use of depth of field so that the audience are shown the important elements of each clip. Again this video contains a storyline where John Legend is with several girls and who the girl is changes frequently. I have noticed that this storyline seems to work well for my specific target audience of teens/late teens therefore believe it to be an ideal storyline to use.

Plasticines

When watching this music video I really liked how picture in picture was used and the variation in colours.



The thing I like best in this music video is the editing. The music and the editing is done so well that when there is a beat or a change in tempo there is a cut. As this music video is a performance we would like to use these conventions in our music video. I thought that picture in picture would be really hard to achieve, however in technical week I was able to explore this and realised that with the right footage it can be very successful. The fast paced music works well with the picture in picture editing therefore we wanted to know whether we would get the same professional look with a slower paced song. Therefore we looked at the music video 'Hey There Delilah'.

Hey There Delilah

This music video showed us how effective certain effects can be with the uses of different clips. I really liked the use of picture in picture in this music video too showing that it also works well with slower paced songs.

Hey There Delilah
Uploaded by SanAndreas88. - Independent web videos.

There are almost two parts to this video. The performance with the singer sat in a room playing his guitar and also the clips where there is a girl walking through the streets. We will be including two parts to our music video. The narrative and performance within our text will hopefully add more entertainment value, and hopefully encourage to watch it more.