Useful books

See here for suggestions on useful books.

NARRATIVE in Music Videos: FilmSound.org guide

Detailed article with embedded examples/analyses to illustrate the article: http://filmsound.org/what_is_music_video/
There's a links list on this topic.
Here's a briefer blog post.
This is someone's list of fave narr vids. 

FilmSound's guide has lots of quotes from academic writers

WEB 2.0 Brave/Slave new world? [cartoons]

Not all of these are tech based, but most are, a good indication of how transformative new media technologies have been - and certainly not always for the better.

Q1a of your exam asks you to discuss how you developed skills and aptitude in one or more area (DCRUP) from your AS to your A2. While the timeframe might be narrower, perhaps you could try some similar cartoons to begin to express some key themes (EAA) or EXamples?!

http://www.earthporm.com/funny-illustrations/

CREATIVITY Success through failure...

The 'Music Video Day' concept carries an intentionally high risk of failure at the heart of it. If you're not organised enough, don't work well as a team, don't give clear directions to your cast, underestimate the setup time for each shoot and for each shot, don't quickly move to secure costumes and props, don't book rooms in time ... spectacular, very public failure is a very real possibility.

The flipside to failure is what you can learn from it - and the inspiration and impetus you might gain as you stride on to your main productions. When we had filmmaker Coz Greenop in recently, a crucial part of his story, his ultimate pathway to success in Cannes, was his 'failure' here with his GCSEs.

Not getting the required grades to enter 6th form, he went elsewhere, excelled in Media Studies and set out on the path that led to launching a successful business, a globally distributed debut feature film and getting hired to helm a £4m second feature.

I'm thinking about this not just in the context of the exhausting past week with effectively two videos and a feVocalist shot, but from reading an article about 90s (and very much ongoing) Northern Irish pop rockers Ash (Girl From Mars...) in the summer 2015 edition of Classic Rock magazine, an airport purchase en route to Luxembourg which I'm only now getting round to reading a week later.

Ash had a huge hit with their debut album, but their darker follow-up tanked. That happened while they were still teenagers, quite remarkably. Vocalist Tim Wheeler would consequently languish in a New York hotel, self-harming, before bouncing back with an even bigger third album (having quelled the bipolar disorder that led to such self-destructiveness).

I thought this was a great quote:
We also had significant failures... TBC

Alternative 1a/1b revision pack

Excellent guide from a teacher in Notts. The Section B Q they do is Collective Identity, but the 1a and 1b material is very useful:

A2 Media Studies Revision Pack from Andy Wallis

Thanks to Amber for sending me a link to this.
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EXAMS: Examples of A grade exam essays

Below you will find an A-grade exam script from an IGS student, using Film (AS) and Music Video (A2) for the Q1a/1b (1b on M.Vid) and Media Regulation for the 2nd section (case studies: press, film (and TV, not used here)). You will also find the 'Examiner's Report' which considers what students did well/struggled with and is a useful read with lots of good pointers (this includes reflection on coursework too). You can find reports for every year (and more) here, on the OCR site.

ADDITIONS, MAY 2015: I've added further sample answers, the ones provided by OCR, at the end of the post.Therefore, in this post you'll find (usually including A-grade) scripts from: January and June 2010; January 2011; June 2013; June 2014.

First, here's the June 2014 exam paper:

2014 G325 paper from DB3igs

Past questions for Q1a + Q1b

A reminder of how the paper looks [click to enlarge] - it continues on to a 4th page. You answer both Section A Qs (30 mins, 25% each) and ONE of the two questions from the appropriate Section B category [Media Regulation] (1 hour, 50%)

The Section A questions follow; scroll further down to see the past Media regulation Qs too

 
JAN 2010: R+P/CREATIVITY---REP'N
1A: Describe how you developed research and planning skills for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to creative decision making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time.
1B: Analyse media representation in one of your coursework productions.

Richard Dyer's star system

This is a simple but highly useful audience/narrative theory, which also reflects standard marketing thinking (question 1 a potential distributor will ask of a film production: who's the star?). Richard Dyer's (Amazon book list) landmark 1979 book Stars argued that the star system was central to how the media operate, and how we read texts. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (his 1986 follow-up) used case studies of Hollywood icons from the golden era, examining 'the ways in which audiences simultaneously construct and consume a particular star's persona' (Wiki). You might see parallels here with much later web 2.0 theorists such as Gauntlett and Gillmor and such declarations as "the former audience" (see this post for associated material on this).

The point here is that your text's narrative extends well beyond the film opening, 4 minute video, or even the wider promotional package.

I thought about this when reading a Film Guardian feature on Tom Cruise and director Christopher Nolan's insistence on diegetic as opposed to CGI stunts:

It goes deeper still though, into the weird contract we draw up with ourselves when we watch film. “Tom Cruise is doing that for real!” we exclaim to ourselves as we see Tom Cruise doing some casual rappelling. “Whoa!” We never truly watch blockbusters as pure narratives, but instead are constantly aware in their place in a wider ecosystem of celebrity, in which Cruise also has divorces and jumps on sofas and twinkles next to fans. We’re in awe of Cruise-as-Hunt rather than Hunt himself. (Tom Cruise, Christopher Nolan, and the new anti-CGI snobbery)

The excellent MediaKnowItAll site has a useful entry on this, considering not just the film angle but also how the music industry inculcates this approach to its modes of operation:

A star is an image not a real person that is constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) out of a range of materials (eg advertising, magazines etc as well as films [music]).  

Their entry is copied in below, but is best appreciated on their site, where you can also click around and find further useful material.

YOU/audience are the product: Julian Assange

When we consider audience theory in Media Studies, the degree of flux and changing views on this is quickly evident, and a major theme in itself. Which, if any, of the long-established audience theories continue to hold true in the digital age, the web 2.0 era? Is it enough to write of "the former audience", Dan Gillmor's (2011) striking phrase? David Gauntlett even went as far as to declare the "end of audience studies" (2007, 2011), although Julian McDougall's (2009, in a very readable, student-friendly book) more moderate point that audiences are fragmenting, making it more difficult to meaningfully analyse or discuss/define audiences, is perhaps more useful.

There are those who see the blurring of the audience/producer line as full of democratic promise, not least Gillmor, though Henry Jenkins' Convergence Culture (2008) is perhaps the most striking statement of this.

Is Jenkins too utopian, optimistic? [image source]

On the face of it, the democratisation of 'UGC' (user-generated content), fan-made videos etc seems a good thing in weakening the power of the global conglomerate giants who dominate every media industry, often straddling several industries (as even the post-split Murdoch corporations do). But ... the 'new media' (an increasingly redundant term) giants have evolved themselves into even greater corporate behemoths than their old media predecessors. Is Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (still stuck in an asylum limbo in the Ecuadorian London embassy) right when he proclaims:

People who use Google are the product
Every time you go to a party and take a picture and post that picture to Facebook, you’re being a rat. You’re being a narc.

The first statement takes me back to the early days of my Media (and Politics) degree, when a simple enough statement immediately reformulated how I looked upon the media: newspapers sell readers to advertisers; when you buy a paper you're actually packaging yourself and selling yourself. Is the newspaper itself the product or a mere enticement for the actual product, a coalition of demographic types sufficiently attractive to a range of advertisers for the newspaper business to be economically viable?

A popular meme, Google is/Dr Evil [image source]

Baudrillard's 'simulacra': Weezer's Buddy Holly eg

A short post, just reflecting a discussion today on the postmodern philosopher Baudrillard's contentious (but ingenious?) concept of the simulacra, which argues that as we now exist in an endless sea of signifiers, or chains of signifiers with no concrete starting/reference point, we cannot claim to know of any actual 'reality'. So, Disneyland is the real America; the Gulf War, supposedly fought on our TV screens in 1991, never really happened, to take two of his most infamous proclamations.

Its a concept which often and readily applies itself to music video, with many videos influenced by other videos which may have been influenced by other media (especially TV/film) in turn. Weezer's Buddy Holly, directed by Michel Gondry, is an exemplar - it is a representation of a 90s band as part of a 70's TV show about 50's America, which heavily influenced perceptions of that decade (so, the long chain of signification in which any perceivable reality has been utterly lost, and is rendered unknowable)

Below the video I've uploaded a photo of p. 175 from the excellent Money For Nothing, Austerlitz's history of the music video; he describes the video, for example, as 'a pastiche of a pastiche'. We would later see Nirvana and other acts (see Outkast's Hey Ya at the end of the post) copy this idea of inserting the act into an old TV show (and the Beastie Boys, of course, created their own affectionate pastiche of the 70/80s cop show with Sabotage).

Austerlitz on the Weezer vid

FROM THE WIKI:

Postmodernist French social theorist Jean Baudrillard argues that a simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right: the hyperreal. Where Plato saw two steps of reproduction—faithful and intentionally distorted (simulacrum)—Baudrillard sees four: (1) basic reflection of reality; (2) perversion of reality; (3) pretence of reality (where there is no model); and (4) simulacrum, which "bears no relation to any reality whatsoever".^[7] In Baudrillard's concept, like Nietzsche's, simulacra are perceived as negative, but another modern philosopher who addressed the topic, Gilles Deleuze, takes a different view, seeing simulacra as the avenue by which an accepted ideal or "privileged position" could be "challenged and overturned".^[8] Deleuze defines simulacra as "those systems in which different relates to different by means of difference itself. What is essential is that we find in these systems no prior identity, no internal resemblance".^[9]

<sup>See the ProdEval blog for more on this and other media theories.


... 
Such 1950s representations are influenced by classic movies such as these...


...</sup> 

1B Media Language update

TBC
Briefly:
the overall point is what specific media language makes your text recognisably a music video? M.Lang takes in narrative, representations, editing, mise-en-scene, sound, shots, so as the existing guide highlights, you've got a lot of options for this
A couple of things I'd definitely use though: Vernallis; postmodern theory.

Anita Elberse (2013) Blockbusters - must-read book?

"Because people are inherently social," the Harvard business professor Anita Elberse points out, "they generally find value in reading the same books and watching the same television shows and movies that others do." What's more, and equally understandably: "People have a taste for winners: if, say, a book is popular and has been widely discussed in the media, consumers have more reason to read it." [from Guardian review]

Scroll down for sample quotes and review snippets, such as Bloomberg's fairly critical view

Use the look inside feature for a preview

I'd recommend at the very least sampling this, a book that basically argues that the tentpole strategy (or blockbuster as she terms it) is vital for any and all modern media/entertainment giants. Her examples take in music, film and other media, but also widen out to incorporate 'entertainment' industries such as football, looking at the examples of Barcelona and Real Madrid, and the latter's 'galacticos' strategy.

She very convincingly picks out examples of major conglomerates that have tried more austere, penny-pinching approaches ... and shows, with forensic financial detail, how disastrous this invariably proved.

Interesting that she's not simply referring to production, but also as much about distribution, and the marketing muscle and capacity to make very widely available and prominently placed a given release, Lady Gaga being one such example she dissects.

You can preview some samples by using Amazon's 'look inside' feature, or GoogleBooks (add keywords related to cinema, music or whichever industry you're most interested in to get the most relevant sections), and its for sale as a Kindle book too.

Here's a few snippets from various articles/reviews:

"Because people are inherently social," the Harvard business professor Anita Elberse points out, "they generally find value in reading the same books and watching the same television shows and movies that others do." What's more, and equally understandably: "People have a taste for winners: if, say, a book is popular and has been widely discussed in the media, consumers have more reason to read it." [Guardian review]

Fanbase not Audience the future say YouTube

A nudge/reminder that I often post materials on topics such as audience and web 2.0 on the BritCinema and MusiVidz blogs, such as this...

Sample marked Q1b essays E-A* grade

As of April 2014 these (barring some U examples) are the sample marked essays made available by OCR on A2 exam section A: question 1b.

   Q1b Exam Board Sample Answers With Marks

Sample marked Q1a essays

This is a compilation of all the sample answers provided to date by the exam board, brought into one single document for convenience. Where available, I've included examiner comments.
You should find these useful - not just the examples that happen to coincide with your own AS/A2 briefs, but all of them - for ideas on how to successfully approach this section and this specific question.
Take note that you'll need to think carefully about the question - do not expect to see the exact DCRUP terms being used; you'll often have to tease out which are relevant for the question.

   Q1a Exam Board Sample Answers With Marks

Audience previews: 'A degrading, revolting film'

The UK poster

Think carefully and reflect on the role of audience feedback in your work...

I've blogged previously on how BJD initially looked doomed at its key stateside preview, with Miramax's head honcho Harvey Weinstein sat in with a US audience utterly baffled by the film's opening, with its very UK-centric turkey curry references (only for Colin Firth's oh-so-hilarious reindeer jumper to set the place roaring and BJD on to franchise fortunes).

Here's an example of a test audience utterly loathing the Alex Cox (Indie auteur) movie they'd just seen - usually a kiss of death, killing off any hopes of a distribution deal, but not in this case...

[Sid and Nancy] had a preview in LA - one of those events where the invited audience fills out forms and answers a studio's questions. these were some of the responses from the preview audience:
I feel this film was totally evil.

CREATIVITY: Alex Cox on Groupwork dynamics

The following is extracted from the brilliant Indie auteur Alex Cox's X Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker (Soft Skull Press: Brooklyn, 2008). Writing about production of his debut feature, Repo Man (an archetypal cult movie - not to be confused with the Jude Law vehicle Repo Men), he recalls being challenged over portraying a key female character as a serial adultress. He thought his script was spot on, but then again ...

...I am a white male leftist, already guiltyu of the sins of sexism, racism, and generally wishy-washy-ism. As the days went by, I reflected regretfully on the adolescent sexism of my script. ... I [removed a] sex scene. Still I felt guilty: Debbie was still a poor excuse for a character ... I rewrote the liquor-store scene [giving her a heroic send-off].
This was a good idea. ... By alerting the director, the TV coordinator and casting director improved the picture. Could a film made by a group - where all take the role of a director, say - reach a decision like this? Presumably it could. Who knows? Maybe this interaction points to a more collaborative system, in which a group might make decisions more quickly.
(emphasis added; p. 59)

Have you reflected on the role collaboration played in your creativity? Remember, seeking out (at minimum) audience feedback implies that the audience/producer divide is questionable too! (cf. Gillmor's "the former audience" concept (2004))

If you're willing to try out something a little different, you might just enjoy Repo Man...

Female gaze?

UPDATE, 2015: Rather than add another post, I'll add to this one which looked at the example of Magic Mike as an exemplar of an emerging female gaze. That was rather limited to the notion of objectifying; I've added more below on an article for Media Magazine by Sean Richardson in which he challenges us to think more carefully about how a female viewer (de)constructs and receives media images. Yes, media and not least cinema remains somewhat patriarchal overall, but it is just too simplistic to view media entirely through the prism of sexist objectification.


The Female Gaze: Rethinking Representation
Following quotes are from an article in the always excellent Media Magazine (subscription needed - ask the Librarian or me for login details). Sean Richardson wrote in April 2015 on this topic, starting with a simple statement on the impact of male gaze:

Research suggests that advertising campaigns for a female audience are dominated by heterosexual Caucasian size 0 to 2 models. This is a fact, despite what we might think or want, in a multicultural, complex world. Increasingly, accusations have been made by the likes of Naomi Campbell and Dame Vivienne Westwood that representations of women in advertising are too white and nearly exclusively under size 6.

NARRATIVE Nowell's 7 key stages of slasher

Nowell’s book Blood Money (2011) is primarily concerned with a point on audience: that slasher movies were aimed as much at female as at male audiences. He also makes an incredibly useful analysis of what he considers the universal components of the early slasher narratives, listed below, also noting that films were given some differentiation + novelty alongside their redundancy by playing around with the ordering of these. Once more, Todorov’s notions influenced him.

‘Part One: Setup

1.Trigger: Events propel a human (the killer) upon a homicidal trajectory.

2.Threat: The killer targets a group of hedonistic youths for killing.

Part Two: Disruption

3. Leisure: Youths interact recreationally in an insular quotidian location.

4. Stalking: A shadowy killer tracks youths in that location.

5. Murders: The shadowy killer kills some of the youths.

Part Three: Resolution

6. Confrontation: The remaining character(s) challenges the killer.

7. Neutralization: The immediate threat posed by the killer is eliminated.’ (p.21)

GTA5 + postmodern theory! (Baudrillard)

A little snippet from a lengthy Guardian preview of the upcoming Grand Theft Auto V, which just goes to show that postmodern theory is used beyond the confines of academic books and exams!

Baudrillard would love the version of America that Rockstar has constructed, a hyper-real theme park of violence, corruption and excitement. But you don't have to think about it. You don't have to think at all. GTA V might be about friendship or ambition or regret, but it also looks to be a game in which you can blast through the streets in a truck, boot filled with guns; a game where you can pilot a jet fighter over the Californian landscape; where you can bike down a mountain or jet ski into that fluorescent sunset.

If YOU come across further examples of real-world usage of concepts we use in Media, please pass on a link/quote!

Blogging: now mainstream + converged?

See http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/blogging-orwell-prize.

Femen: radical feminist protest movement

I raise this as a potentially useful concept to include in your consideration of representation issues. This is a feminist protest group that is using nudity to protest at the sexist, misogynistic patriarchy that they believe dominates global culture.
Its pertinent to analysis of music videos and slasher films as each feature near-nudity or nudity frequently, with artists such as Madonna, Rhianna and Lady Gaga clearly trading on their bodies and sexual appeal ... BUT claiming (as post-feminists would argue) to be strong women in control and expressing themselves, rather than victims of the male gaze. The slasher movie is often criticised for its wide use of female nudity, though these feminist campaigners are partly making the point that women have long been encouraged to feel ashamed of their bodies - can a seemingly sexist genre really be reclaimed as a positive expression of female liberation?!
The starkly contrasting ways in which traditional feminists and post-feminists (who believe that equality of the sexes has been achieved, so its outmoded to perceive women as victims of a male-dominated culture, or patriarchal society) read media texts is certainly something for you to consider when analysing your own work as well as existing media texts.

NB: the web page contains a topless image, so if you do follow the link take care not to do so in a school setting or around younger siblings. I've copied in the full article below so you needn't do so!
ARTICLE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/22/femen-topless-warriors-global-feminism

In a chaotic and crumbling former public washhouse in a rundown district of northern Paris, Inna Shevchenko was explaining how a large leather punchbag hanging from the rafters might be used by the foot soldiers of a new generation of feminists.
As she prepared to welcome recruits to the Ukrainian-based feminist group Femen's first "international training camp", it was clear that the instruction would not be all ideological. The talk was of "war", "soldiers", "terrorism" and "enemies". Was it not curious, one French journalist asked, that Inna and her warriors had adopted the language of combat, traditionally a male domain, to describe their mission?
Was it not also inconsistent, another asked, that the new feminists were using nakedness to rail against female exploitation? In a week that had seen the banning of photographs of a topless Duchess of Cambridge, it was certainly topical.
"Ah, but we have a different idea; we are talking about peaceful war, peaceful terrorism," Inna said. "We are taking off our clothes so people can see that we have no weapons except our bodies. It's a powerful way to fight in a man's world. We live with men's domination and this is the only way to provoke them, the only way to get attention.
"We don't hide our bodies, we don't hide our faces, we confront our enemies face to face. We look them in the eyes and we have to be well prepared physically for that."
There was, she explained patiently, no contradiction in going topless or naked to protest against what they view as the three main evils of a global "patriarchal society": sexual exploitation, dictatorship and religion. Protesting naked, as Femen's slogans insist, is liberté, a reappropriation of their own bodies as opposed to pornography or snatched photographs which are exploitation.
On a less intellectual level, taking their clothes off ensures a lot of publicity.

How Audience became Movie-Makers

See http://mediabritishcinema.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/how-audience-became-movie-makers.html

AUD v CREATIVITY: does research stifle your voice?

This is a question and an issue you need to engage with, and something I've blogged on before.
The following is excerpted from a longer article about how eBook makers are starting to data-mine their devices and selling info to publishers, which in turn shapes what storylines and character types they focus on for future publications...

"It's absolutely true that there is practically no market research done in terms of readers," says the Carnegie medal-winning British children's author Melvin Burgess. "I'd be fascinated to see how people read my books, who's reading them, when they're reading them."
But there "is a danger", says Burgess, that "you just start responding all the time" to what readers want. "Storytelling isn't interactive, really – you are taking the lead. So I'd love to know [how people are reading my books], but I wouldn't necessarily take any account of it."
Award-winning author China Miéville feels similarly. "I hope it wouldn't change how I wrote, but conversely I do wonder if getting specifically worked up about this is simply a kind of neophobia, because if it did change how you wrote, wouldn't it just be a new variant of what authors have done for centuries, which is writing to a market?" he says. "In other words, that writing to algorithm, while I'm certainly no fan, is just writing to what one believes readers want – no more or less infra dig than writing in response to demands from the marketing department, or in response to one's analysis on perusing the bestseller list, or trying to second-guess what makes a best seller. A bit more micro-level in its analysis, but not qualitatively 'worse' or 'better'."
The "one very different thing" here, says Miéville, is reader privacy, which he calls "a real issue". Burgess agrees. "I'd love to know what my readers are up to but I don't like the way social media do it all behind your back," he says.
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jul/04/big-ereader-is-watching-you

So, how has audience feedback influenced your creativity, for good or bad?

German teen novelist

This is explicit material, but usefully explores and illustrates one of the common ideas associated with Pomo theory, that originality is now impossible: Then came the fall, as spectacular and dramatic as her rise to literary celebrity had been, when a blogger revealed that material in the novel had been lifted from the much less well-known novel Strobo, written under the nom de plume Airen. Other unattributed sources subsequently came to light, and the early gushing praise turned to a deluge of indignation and opprobrium. Hegemann is apologetic but only to a point. "There were 14 sentences that I took from a blogger and modified," she says. "Suddenly they were rubbishing the entire book. Critics who had feted me were suddenly distancing themselves completely. But I think they were looking for a way to neutralise me and debilitate me as an author, and the plagiarism claims were the approach path for allowing them to do that. "But I've said it again and it's still my best defence: there's no such thing as originality, just authenticity," she says. I cite the most infamous of the lifted passages, near the start of the book, where Mifti's brother Edmond tells her: "Berlin is here to mix everything with everything, man … I steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels my imagination … because my work and my theft are authentic as long as something speaks directly to my soul. It's not where I take things from – it's where I take them to." The thoughtful and precise English translation by Katy Derbyshire has been slightly but very noticeably altered from the German, to have Mifti pointedly ask her brother: "So you didn't make it up?" To which he replies: "No, it's from some blogger." The modified remark is intended, thinks Hegemann, to make clearer the quotation's origin. "But you know the joke of it is, they say I stole that sentence from Airen, when in fact it's originally from Jim Jarmusch, who I think saw it on a gallery sign somewhere, and then the line 'I steal from anywhere' is Jarmusch quoting Jean-Luc Godard." She beams as she tells me this. Throughout the interview she speaks in long, complex sentences sprinkled with the odd English word ("surrounded", "shit", "nightlife"). She says how stressful the accusations were and that her publisher, Ullstein, offered her little protection. "It is ironic that what I was accused of 'stealing' had already been 'stolen'," she adds, segueing into an explanation about intertextuality and how words and phrases percolate into works unconsciously. SOURCE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jun/24/helene-hegemann-axolotl-novelist-interview

REP'n: Bechdel test

The Bechdel Test, Bechdel-Wallace Test, or the Mo Movie Measure*, is a sort of litmus test for female presence in movies and TV. The test is named for Alison Bechdel, creator of the comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For, who made it known to the world with this strip.
In order to pass, the film or show must meet the following criteria:

1. It includes at least two women,*
2. who have at least one conversation,
3. about something other than a man or men.*

[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/TheBechdelTest?from=Main.TheBechdelTest]

See http://mediabritishcinema.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/actresses-hwds-expectations-limitations.html
http://mediabritishcinema.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/womans-place-is-inthe-directors-chair.html
http://prodeval.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/creativity-sans-la-femme-bechdel-test.html
etc

Your sample 1b answers

For now, this one only - the main point here is look at my suggestions, though there are also good egs of applying theories by Jess here too:

1b. Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to genre

A genre is a critical tool that helps us study texts and audience responses to texts by dividing them into categories based on common elements. David Chandler (2001) stated that the word Genre came from the French word for type. My music video was just on genre, Pop, this genre is so broad and wide that it is hard to distinguish whether it was just pop [APPLY THEORY: many poss’s here: Mittell (2001) genres are cultural categories or perhaps Abercrombie (1996) ‘a steady dismantling of genres’ as genre boundaries collapse]. All of Robbie Williams songs are pop and this was my groups personal taste. The conventions we found for our genre in music videos were, dancing, heterosexual relationships, lighting, lip syncing. When male artists are in a music video, they tend to be portrayed as a alpha male who is in love with a women, not only is this [heteronormative in forming part of the dominant discourse (Fairclough)] stereotyping but in today’s post-modern society, it doesn’t represent males who are gay etc [Queer theorist Judith Butler has written about how gender and sexual identities are wholly artificial constructs; concepts which do not have any objective meaning or exist in nature, but which we learn to perform through the reinforcement of acceptable, ‘normal’ behaviour through videos such as ours. We were aware of reflecting common stereotypes and encouraging such ‘performativity’ of gender, as Butler would put it, but felt that this was necessary to fit within the expectations of the genre and our stated audience. This highlights that genre is more than a neutral means of categorising content. Daniel Chandler has also raised similar points, arguing that genre texts provide a “reading position” for audiences; embedded within texts are assumptions about the 'ideal reader', including their attitudes towards the subject matter and often their class, age, gender and ethnicity]. Artists that do this [what? confusing] are Olly Murs, One Direction, The Wanted and Bruno Mars. However showing a male in a heterosexual relationship was perfect for our video because the lyrics matched the narrative [is there not polsemy over who the other person is who thinks ‘she’s the one’? even if not, make the point explicitly re the title ‘she’s the one’].

Our music video consisted of 3 generations of a boy and girl and performance, with lip syncing and typical conventions of a pop music video. Are narrative scenes and performance was a clear indication to the audience that it was the pop genre, and after getting lots of feedback, it was clear that our predictions were right. Rick Altman argued that genre offers a set of pleasures, I think that our music video offered emotional pleasures because the audience can relate to the narrative, we have created verisimilitude which again makes it more realistic and watching cute children growing up into young adults in love would make the audience feel different emotions. [this is good and will pick up marks; you could also draw on the uses & gratifications theory here]

The cast we used were attractive, and our male cast members linked with Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze Theory because they were attractive [you could be more specific; break this down: Western beauty stereotype of slim, make-up, long hair, Caucasian, blonde for instance?] and the audience liked watching them, this was also helpful as our main target audience was 15-24 females, so therefore they relate more because they are the same age as the cast. Steve Neale declared that genres are instances of repetition and difference, our video has elements from existing current music videos [point starts well with EAA, but you’re not getting easy marks for EGs here as you don’t back the point up with any specific example/s], I think that within the pop genre, it is all very much similar and the trends were set back in the 80’s when videos were first starting to come alive [Simon Reynolds 2011 book has coined the term ‘Retromania’ to describe the growing popularity of older existing texts with young and old audiences alike].

After receiving plenty of feedback we decided to have our narrative in a non-linear sequences but we still stuck to the conventions of cutting to the beat and matching lyrics with the narrative. Most pop videos are fast pace and serious, however, we challenged these conventions because our video was slow as was the music and within the narrative was cute and funny elements, for example, when the girl puts paint on the boys noise.

I think that our music video is clear and precise as to which genre it is conveying. The video can really relate to the audience and overall the video is not a typical pop video.

[Good in parts and close to a C overall – very strong on EAA at times, picking up useful marks too on TERMY, though the EAA can be extended and the real weakness here is EGs: too little specific illustration from your text and/or from your research]

EAA              7

EG                4

TERMY         3

Your sample Q1a answers

I've passed these on, so for now just the one new one - worth reading mainly for the suggestions:

[eg1: this is only part of the full text]

Describe how you used your research into real media texts for your production work, and describe how you developed your ability to use this research over time.

The transition from AS to A2 was huge, I feel that all of my skills have improved especially research and production skills. At AS I created a 2 minute opening for a slasher film, “Last One Standing”, centred on a voyeur targeting and killing a teen girl in her suburban, semi-detached home, with ‘Blair Witch’ themed flashbacks of her with her friends in the local woods hinting [foreshadowing or signifiying] at an earlier beginning to the stalking, and a threat to her remaining friends, A2 I created a music video,  for Robbie Williams’ ‘She’s The One’ three generations of a boy and girl (ages: 5, 12, 18) and how their relationship developed from innocent friendship to romance, using changing technologies and other aspects of mise-en-scene to signify the changing time period and create verisimilitude for each. We also had a performer who was signified as Robbie.

For both productions I started with researching genre conventions (for the opening Slasher/Horror like ‘Halloween’ and for the music video, Pop, with artists such as Olly Murs, The Saturdays and One Direction these egs should come out through later points, probably a waste here). For my slasher 2 minute opening I researched existing films that include aspects that were similar to my idea [no: make these two clearly sep points: general genre research AND multi-genre research into certain aspects; the difference at A2 is you looked beyond music vid], such as, flashbacks which were found in the “Blair Witch Project” and POV of the killer looking at the house, found in “Halloween” by John Carpenter, this showed me how to make the audience feel like they are looking at the same thing the killer is [you should denote some of the media lang observed/used to achieve this] and also sort of go on a journey with the killer which builds the tension for both the viewer and the victim.

I developed these skills in my advanced portfolio, for example, instead of searching into just one specific genre initially I searched into several [no! we did this too at AS: started with the general THEN focussed on genre. Perhaps you used web 2.0 sites eg Facebook/fan forums to get further suggestions for viewing at A2? And because you weren’t relying so much on DVDs you were also able to use the YouTube recommendations sidebar?]. I looked at a range of genres, from Katy Perry (Pop) to The Darkness (Rock), this helped me distinguish different genre conventions and what to include in my pop video. To create our video, the main pop artist we looked at was Olly Murs because he is similar to Robbie as he is known as cheeky [again, not strictly necessary for every point, but you want to denote some of the specific media lang (in this case I’m assuming direct gaze at the lens/audience with winking or ‘gurning’ as RW’s often described? Plus other ‘antics’ that will be scripted but are designed to appear spontaneous – postmodern deconstruction of the music video form by exposing the supposed behnd-the-scenes aspects? Give example/s] and his videos linked to some aspect of ours, for example, in most of his videos he is in love with a woman, this helped because we were also portraying a heterosexual relationship. Another media text was the 2009 John Lewis advert, this was about a heterosexual couple who have grown up together, it also showed different time periods, which really helped in our video because getting the mise-en-scene correct was vital and to create verisimilitude was just as important because we wanted the audience to relate to the on screen characters. The video wasn’t the full on typical Pop genre [the media lang here is high key lighting which tends to glamourise the subject, thus its use in pop videos – low key or natural lighting is more common in rock (eg Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony or Chilli Peppers’ alt version of the Under the Bridge vid), especially Indie for its connotations of realism. You need to try harder to reflect your research + cite a relevant eg of a pop vid using natural lighting], because we didn’t use special effects or studio lights, partly because we didn’t have access to them but also are video wasn’t a big production, it was more like a home video of the generations. [okay, so maybe you argue your AS was more like a form of postmodern bricolage: reassembling familiar signifiers, but your A2 work, whilst similarly postmodern in its intertextuality, sought to create something more fresh and distinctive? Also, you were aware of reflecting the dominant discourse around sexuality (as Fairclough would argue), but felt that anything but a heteronormative text wouldn’t work for the genre or audience?]