MEDIA STUDIES

How have you developed in your Research & Planning skills across the 2 years? At AS I produced a hip hop/r & b music magazine and at A2 I am in the process of completing my horror teaser trailer. Research helps to expand your understanding of something and planning is used to make sure the actual product is executed successfully. However this effects creativity as I am limited and can only re imagine something and input a new idea. In AS I had no idea how to make a music magazine and meet the expectations of a Target Audience as I did not understand the reason certain aspects that make up a magazine (conventions) were put in place. In addition I had not done my research and planning effectively and looked at many other magazines, as a result of this I mainly used my imagination of what I thought a magazine should look like. However in A2 I now know the reasons behind certain conventions and have done my research and planning thoroughly and looking at theories has

I will be talking about my summer trailer that me and my group created. We aimed for this to be a Slasher. In this essay I will discuss whether the trailer is successfully or not according to the audience theory. There are too theories used. The first is mass audience talks could influence a lot of people. These theorists say that everyone reacts in the same way to texts. Where as active audience theorists say that the audience can respond differently or interpret texts differently. The hypodermic theory links closely to mass audience as it says that messages and texts are injected into the audience by powerful syringe like media making them addicted. These are both passive theories. George Gerbner says "persistent long term exposure to television content has minimal but measurable effects on the perceptual words of audience members" which talks about how people eventually become desesitized. It compares light moderate and heavy media users. The psychologist Mary Clover

First of all representation is the description or portrayal of someone or something in a particular way. The media re presents or constructs meanings about the world we live in.Representations in film. Filmmakers can use a number of techniques to establish and develop characters. Their choice of camera techniques, acting, mise en scene, editing, lighting and sound all contribute to the representation of a character. The different theorists that have different idea on representation are Berger, Laura Mulvey, Clover, Dobbs and Derry. The Monster theory is made up by Derry and he talks about how the humans are now becoming the monsters which is turning tables around and saying that the mosnter is not the key focus, instead we should emphasise how evil humans actually are or how they are trying to take over and imitate God. Patriarchy is a key theme when looking at horror movies as they are usually male dominated as the man is the antagonist who posesses power and authority. In add

Repetition of these signs become Horror genre conventions, however overuse results in taking away the signified meaning. Media language focuses on the language and codes used in film. It also takes camera, sound, editing, mise en scene into consideration and how these can be decoded. The word for the study of signs is semiotics. Repetition is used everywhere. But the problem with this is that when certain conventions are constantly repeating themselves the audience becomes desensitised and forgets the meaning as a whole. Ferdinand de Saussure the theorist talks about signifier and signified. Signifier is the physical form off a sign for example a knife(phallic object). Signified which is the concept that the signifier produces and that would be that the fact that the knife is a phallic object which when cutting flesh is a sexual representation. Not many signifiers were used in our trailer, one of the only signifiers used was the white shirt that one of the teenager was wearing conn

Dawn of the dead June 29 1980 Zack Synder Zombie The first scene shows a moon that basically covers 3/4 this is effective as darkness is taking over the world leading the viewers to the assumption that evil near. This could be considered as a warning sign. Another thing I notice is that when the woman screams the audience start to question what is going on, however when the man screams it’s almost as if the zombies have stripped him of his masculinity. This further suggests that zombies (similar to vampires) are a sexual representations which could link to religious points of all. "It will consume us all" frightens us because we are scared of what we have no control over "accurate vision...the mindless excess of our society" is said when the zombies grab the woman’s jewellery this links to consumerism. Halloween 31st August 2007 John Carpenter Slasher The first scene is an establishing shot that shows a house that’s white which suggests purity is surrounded

I will be talking about my summer trailer that me and my group created. We aimed for this to be a Slasher. In this essay I will discuss whether the trailer is successfully or not according to the narrative theory. One of the reasons my trailer wasn't successful was because it didn't have structure like the equilibrium, disequilibrium that Todorov mentioned the reason I didn't include the others like recognition, action, restoration is because these different parts/sections are for the actual film in the trailer it is essential we don't give much away. Although we didn't use much equilibrium and for disequilibrium an example of this from our trailer would be the scene which was exposed to high key lighting and contrasts this using low key lighting. Secondly the other important factor that didn't lead my trailer to success was the use of binary opposites as in this day and age we are obsessed with things like good and bad. In my trailer we did have the idea of

I will be talking about my horror trailer I made over the summer holiday which is a Slasher. Genre is used to show the difference between a horror and and a romance film for example. Within the horror genre there are sub genres like Slasher, Psycological and Splatter. Genre is put together by the common conventions of differnt sub genres. The first major point that should stand out when re watching my trailer was that I wasn't able to tell the genre apart. The main theorist that talks about this is Daniel Chandler he says 'genre is type'. Genre should be familiar and recognisable to the audience, by the looks of it the genreof my trailer is unrecognisable as it doesn't use the key Slasher conventions like low key lighting and stock characters ie; the dumbblonde, the jock, the final girl.Using the main stock characters would make my trailer more recognisable so the audience will be familiar. Adding onto that there is normally a male killer who is hunting down tee