Explain how you used digital technology to adhere to or deviate from the conventions of real media texts?

The media projects that I produced for my a-level are both very different from each other, the first Max Kill is of the horror genre and was the opening of a film whereas Accidentally in love is a trailer of the rom-com genre, the contrast in our texts is very clear and we had to use digital technology to show the reasons why the films genre was the genre.
For Accidentally in love, the most recent of the projects I have made, we spent a long time looking at other rom-com trailers, we found that editing was a big part of the process, the film edited to the beat of the song, we did just that and found a song that went perfectly with the text. When editing it was easy to see where an edit would go, and because half of the trailer was montage we simple had to edit to the beat.
When shooting the film we had to think about what would have come before and after the clips as if we were making the whole film not just a trailer, we came out with some bright colourful shots, the outdoor ones being clearer than the indoor ones because of lighting, we found that in rom-coms it was conventional to show the couple being couple-like, as well as the humorous elements such as Ben’s friend setting him up, its important to show both elements to establish the films genre like conventional media texts do.
With Max kill we couldn’t do a montage of clips, we had to make sure the audience knew what was going on, so that they understood and became involved in the text, we looked at the openings of other horror movies such as Scream and Psycho, the music in these films wouldn’t be as funky and upbeat as a trailer, so we couldn’t cut to the beat, when editing we found that the text should flow into each scene, everything had to fit together, we used cross cutting between the two characters to show the audience what they were both up to so that they could observe them both. When using the camera we had to be more careful with light as we shot at night, we found that in most good horror movies the movie is set at night so we went with this idea and stuck with it even when having to re-shoot because we felt it essential to our genre that the audience be aware of the dangers of night. Night to the audience should become something to be wary of in this film.
With both texts we spent a lot of time researching real films, both trailers and openings to really establish what makes them what they are. Using the technologies was easy once we knew what we were doing, film filming making sure we had the conventional shots, outdoors and bright for the rom-com and dark and dingy for the horror then cutting to the music in the trailer and making the music flow with the shots in the opening.

Postmodern Media Precis (pages 136-167)

Summery of Postmodern Media:

Postmodern media is simply a new way of looking at the media world, its the way we inteprate media products.

Pain Pipesh - a usefull way of remembering what defins postmoderisim

Parody: A text which does not simply imitate the style of another (pastiche) but instead is transformative in that it eaither mocks or shifts in some way the origonal text's convestions. e.g Family guy's 'something something something dark side'
Aesthetic: Visual appearance, related to taste e.g cinematography in blade runner aposed to Ugly betty or Glee
Intertextual: The chain of signification in which texts make references to one another. When one text refers to another it is called "intertextual" while "intermedial" describes a media form which relies on understanding and experience of other media (e.g film and music) to make meaning.
Nihilistic: Total rejection of established laws and institutions e.g breaking the 4th wall
Plays: Playing with the genera conventions, can make the media funny.
Irony: e.g "50 first dates". Adam Sandlers' character doesn't want to establish a lasting relationship until he meets Drew Barrymore's character who has no long term memory
Pastiche: Like Parody is a form of humor directly imatating another subject.
Eclectism:Drawing upon multiple style or genres. Often contrasting. This can be found in black comedies.
Self-referential: refering to themselfs.
Hyperreality: Something that is hyper-real over real, can be confuzing to watch if media is film or tv.

Some basic postmodern ideas:

• Rejects the idea that a media product of text is of any greater value than another. All judgements of value are merely taste. Anything can be art, anything can deserve to reach an audience, and culture "eats itsself" as there is no longer anything new to produce or distribute.
• The distinction between media and reality has collapsed, and we now live in a reality defined by images and representations-a state of simulacrum. Images refer to each other and represent each other as reality rather than some "pure" reality that exsits before the image represents it- this is the state of hyperreality.
• All ideas of the truth are just competing claims- or discourses-and what we believe to be the truth at any point is merely the winning discourse

Glee - Gotta love it

check that out!

Postmodernism in Tv over chrsitmas!

The Royal Family:

• Self referential
• Audience can relate to the text, the characters especially
• Stereotyping working class
• Use of camera - long shots give us time to look at the characters and compare ourselves to them
• making fun of yourself!
  

• Watching TV of people... watching TV.

xfactor & I'd do anything (nice play on words there)? - Media interference

• The way that the judges are cut into the shots of the pro formers changes the opinions of the audience.
• Jedwood - When Simon said they were "OK" so did the nation

• Jessie - Inserted shot of Sir Andrew lord Weber looking ecstatic, the nation were ecstatic too!
  

I find that this is everywhere on television, Ill investigate Big brother and get back to you! How much of each celebrity is shown? Are they always shown in a bad light or are they actually acting that way ALL THE TIME. Hmm.



She is amazing though.

Happy New Year! What will this year of tv & film bring us?

Looking forward to a huuuge variaty of films coming out this year! The last series of lost! How will it end?
Glee, a fantastic rip off of high school musical, THE LAST POTTER FILMS EVER! Tim Burtons Alice in wonderland (why hasnt he done this before?) The long awaited Toy story 3! A new Doctor Matt Smith love or hate? Torchwood! Its going to be a great year for Tv and Film and with the whole 3D imax thing too! soo exsited.

Parodys dont have to be movies.

They can be songs to.

Meme - Scream vs Scary Movie.

In Class we have being looking at Meme "An Idea or creative item that is passed on virally from person to person, to the point where lots of people know about it and are talking about it" this could be anything. In this case it is the mask from Scream. I think that meme can be used to describe the symbolic mask from scream (shown left) Scream is a horror movie in which a murderer uses the mask to conceal him self, in the film their are enormous amounts of people wearing the mark making it hard to tell who the murderer is. The mask being shown in large quantity's makes the audience uneasy, they recognise the mask and relate it to danger.
This classic mask comes from the painting Scream by Edward Munch (shown right)
which is parodies in lots of things e.g the Simpson's.
Scary movie is a Parody, it uses typical stereotypes and ideology's that audiences are used to seeing in film e.g Blonde ditzy woman and exaggerates them to the extreme.






The two trailers to compare. :D as you can see the second video is a complete parody