Report - first part

Report

The pre-production and production must be accompanied by a report of 1200 – 1600 words. 

This report must be completed individually and will include:

• A discussion of the most significant research findings which informed the 
  pre-production.
• A brief justification of the target audience for the production.
• An evaluation of the production which highlights its strengths and 
  weaknesses through, for example, a comparison with existing media 
  products.

The report may be submitted in one of the following formats:

• an illustrated report
• an essay
• a suitably edited blog.

This is the marking criteria for your reports.

A04

Demonstrate the ability to undertake, apply and present appropriate

research.

Level 4: 36–45 top level

Excellent ability to plan and construct media products. Sophisticated

technical and creative skills will also be demonstrated. Sophisticated

ability to use the research investigation to inform the product.

Quality of written communication (where appropriate) will be

sophisticated. A high degree of accuracy. Sophisticated ability to

structure ideas effectively.

24/11/13 - 29/11/13 Requirements

This week, I will be working on a one-to-one basis with each of you to check on how you are progressing. Get your blogs up to date and prepare any questions you might want to ask.
Meanwhile, here are the week's requirements:

1. Research questionnaire findings:

Consider the results of your questionnaire and and create simple tables in Ms Word to represent the quantitative findings and post them to your blog.


2. Focus group findings.

Consider the qualitative results  of your focus group session, create pie charts or graphs (something visual ) that represent your findings and post them to your blog.

3. Pre production rough.

Create an annotated rough of your pre-production using Ms Word. Indicate all the visual codes you have incorporated, the connotations and reasons for your choices.

4. Report, first part, first draft.

Your report should cover research findings and include indications of the favourable or unfavourable elements within the existing material you have analysed. Why have you copied some pieces and decided that other work wasn't appropriate. Eventually, your report will be between 1200 - 1600 words long. It should deal with your research, target audience and product evaluation.

Principle of Repetition

Repetition is used in film in order to emphasise a particular event or meaning in a film. This is used in films in the form of music, character speech or a character reappearing throughout the film. Also, some directors use repetition throughout their films, in order to create a trademark style of film that is associated with them.

Principle

If something happens often enough, I will eventually be persuaded.

How it works

Play it again, Sam. Music repeated gets under our skin. Advertisements repeated replay themselves when we see the product. Repetition of things has a distinct effect on us.

Pattern

Our brains are excellent pattern-matchers and reward us for using this very helpful skill. Repetition creates a pattern, which consequently and naturally grabs our attention at first and then creates the comfort of familiarity.

Familiarity

Repetition creates familiarity, but does familiarity breed contempt? Although it can happen, the reality is that familiarity leads to liking in far more case than it does to contempt. When we are in a supermarket, we are far more likely to buy familiar brands, even if we have never tried the product before. Advertisers know this very well.

Not scarcity

An effect that can happen is that repetition repeals any scarcity effect, making something initially less attractive. When I work with a famous person, my initial state of being overawed might soon be replaced by dislike of their annoying habits. With time, however (if they are not too obnoxious) I will probably get used to them and even get to appreciate and like the better parts of their nature.

Understanding

Repetition can also lead to understanding, as it gives time for the penny to drop. What at first may be strange, after repeated exposure becomes clear and understandable.

This is important for companies bringing innovative new products to the market where users may initially unfamiliar with the product or its usage.

Memory

Remember learning your multiplication tables at junior school? We have to repeat things more than once for them to finally sink into our memories. Our short-term memories are notoriously short-term and can forget something (like a person's name) in less than a second. Repetition is one of getting things into longer-term memory and hence is a key method for learning.

Convincing

Some people just have to do things several times before they make up their mind. Think about the last time you bought a pair of shoes. Did you pick them then put them down several times before trying them on. Did you come back to try them again? If so, you are in good company. Many people have to repeat things several times before they get convinced. Three times is a common number.

Sharp sales people know this when they show you something then something else, then back to the first thing a few times.

Nagging

We can also get persuaded in a negative repetitive way. All children know that if they repeat a request often enough, their parents will cave in. Some remember this when they grow up and get married--the nagging spouse is a legendary icon.

 Cues

As Pavlov discovered with his dogs, with repetition you can connect a cue or trigger with a selected action. This can be a color, a shape, a tune or a host of other things. The ideal that advertisers search for is that when you see the product in the shop, the pleasant or funny feelings that the advert evoked are re-awoken, making you somehow want to buy the product (and preferably lots of it!).

Music

A core principle of music is repetition. It appears in runs, trills and stanzas, as well as in pounding rock rhythms and dance music.

People dancing in clubs and waltz-halls commonly go into trance-like states. Music, rhythm and repetition have a hypnotic effect that can lull people into following a pattern in unthinking ways.

Trance

Repetition is also a basis for trance states and is consequently a basis of hypnosis and hypnotic techniques.

In language, alliteration is the repetition of a particular sound in the prominent lifts (or stressed syllables) of a series of words or phrases. Alliteration has developed largely through poetry, in which it more narrowly refers to the repetition of a consonant in any syllables that, according to the poem's meter, are stressed, as in James Thomson's verse "Come…dragging the lazy languid Line along". Another example is Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers.

The tongue-twister rhyme Betty Botter by Carolyn Wells is a brilliant example of alliterative composition : "Betty Botter bought some butter, but she said, this butter's bitter; if I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter, but a bit of better butter will make my batter better..."

 

   So what

Use friendly repetition to create familiarity and hence liking. Use it to help the other person remember the things you want them to remember. And whilst you are at it, associate the repetition with a trigger that can re-stimulate good feelings.

Some people have a greater or lesser number of times something needs to happen for them to be convinced. 

Task: You should include alliteration in your production.

With consideration given to your target audience;

Magazines:  

Write down three taglines that would fit with your masthead.

CD Cover:

Write down three options which will enhance the title of the CD and so attract a target audience.

Scripts: 

Consider three taglines that would re-enforce the genre of your film.

Conduct some research with your peers to decide which one is most effective.

INTERTEXTUALITY

• Intertextuality is the way in which texts refer to other media texts that producers assume that their target audiences will recognise. 
• One of pleasures that audiences experience is the joy of recognition. 
• One form of this pleasure comes in recognising the reference in one media text to other media texts. 
• This process of referencing is called intertextuality.

Intertextuality can be demonstrated in several ways in the media:

Pastiche and parody are both examples of INTERTEXTUALITY. Intertextuality is the defining of a work’s meaning through the understanding of other texts. Look at this example from the Simpsons. It’s meaning is made when you understand that it’s a reference to the film Silence of the Lambs.

The image of Monty in restraints links him to the mass murderer Hannibal Lecter. If you have the foreknowledge of Lecter then you can make the connection; Monty is evil. Intertextuality is like a short cut to meaning, it uses people’s understanding of media texts to make new meanings.

- Parody Taking the mickey out of different texts for example “scary movie”. Anything that takes itself too seriously is putting itself up for parody!

- Pastiche Recycling other media texts for example Kill Bill is a mixture of Japanese samurai, french new wave, Hong Kong kung fu. 

- Homage referencing other texts and people for example the remake of Hitchcock's 1960 film Psycho in 1998.

- Mimicry Often this borrowing of a text to link it to a second one is stylistic. This means that a text will mimic or otherwise copy stylistic features of another text, for example Katy Perry’s ” The one that got away” music video.

- Marketing of media texts. Making reference to other texts and marketing them, for example when Jonathan Ross had Daniel Radcliffe and David Attenborough on his TV chatshow.

- Media performers working in more than one media form. (Cheryl Cole as a judge on The Xfactor. Cheryl Cole won a show similar to Xfactor).

Task:

• Analyse the following videos and make comparisons. 
• How would you categorise the different features of intertextuality? Pastiche or Parody? 
• Are there any other intertextual considerations? 
• Check out who directed this and what else did he directed?

 

  

Task2: Individually find a couple of additional texts that use intertextuality to position the audience and consider the relevant features. Start by investigating the genre of your own production.

Embed videos/images into your blog and write about them there. 

Composition 2/4

COMPOSITION CHECKLIST:

• Is there one dominant object?
• Is the eye lead through the picture to the centre of interest?
• Is the eye kept in the picture? (Remember Degas' Absinthe Drinker).
• Is the centre of interest in a good position?
• Does the greatest tonal range appear at the Centre of interest?
• Are travelling objects moving into the picture?
• Is the picture in balance?

Rule of Thirds:

The rule of thirds is a "rule of thumb" or guideline which applies to the process of composing visual images such as designs, films, paintings, and photographs. The guideline proposes that an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally spaced horizontal lines and two equally spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections. Proponents of the technique claim that aligning a subject with these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the composition than simply centering the subject would

These points are generally agreed to be the basic rules for composition:

• Horizontal emphasis within a composition is considered to be calm, passive, pleasing to the eye.
• A wide open landscape with distant hills or the far horizon of a seascape.
• Diagonal is dynamic and will stress movement.
• Detail of complex machinery, piles of tumbled masonry.
• Vertical shapes and lines make for strength and stability,
• The receding columns of a cathedral or mature trees in a forest.
• Symmetry is balanced and visually comforting, implying order.
• Asymmetrical compositions will create a visual dynamic.
• Visual rhythm (with no particular emphasis) can lead a viewer’s eye around the composition.
• Overcrowding will create a kind of visual claustrophobia.
• Jagged shapes create tension.

Movement

Movement shows actions, or alternatively, the path the viewer's eye follows throughout an artwork. Movement is caused by using elements under the rules of the principles in picture to give the feeling of action and to guide the viewer's eyes throughout the artwork. In movement your art should flow, because you are controlling the viewers eye. You control what they see and how they see it, much like a path leading across the page to the item you really want to be seen by the viewer.

Unity

Unity is the wholeness that is achieved through the effective use of the elements and principles of art. The arrangement of elements and principles to create a feeling of completeness.[2]

Harmony

Harmony is achieved in a body of work by using similar elements throughout the work, harmony gives an uncomplicated look to a piece of artwork.

Color Harmony or Color Theory is also considered a principle through the application of the design element of color.

Variety

Variety (also known as alternation) is the quality or state of having different forms or types. The differences which give a design visual and conceptual interest: notably use of contrast, emphasis, difference in size and color.[2]

Balance

Balance is arranging elements so that no one part of a work overpowers, or seems heavier than any other part. The three different kinds of balance are symmetrical, asymmetrical, and radial. Symmetrical (or formal) balance is when both sides of an artwork, if split down the middle, appear to be the same. The human body is an example of symmetrical balance. The asymmetrical balance is the balance that does not weigh equally on both sides. Radial balance is equal in length from the middle. An example is the sun.[2]

Contrast

Contrast is created by using elements that conflict with one another. Often, contrast is created using complementary colors or extremely light and dark values. Contrast creates interest in a piece and often draws the eye to certain areas.[2]

Proportion

Proportion is a measurement of the size and quantity of elements within a composition. In ancient arts, proportions of forms were enlarged to show importance. This is why Egyptian gods and political figures appear so much larger than common people. The ancient Greeks found fame with their accurately-proportioned sculptures of the human form. Beginning with the Renaissance, artists recognized the connection between proportion and the illusion of 3-dimensional space.

Pattern/Rhythm

Pattern and rhythm (also known as repetition) is showing consistency with colors or lines. Putting a red spiral at the bottom left and top right, for example, will cause the eye to move from one spiral, to the other, and everything in between. It is indicating movement by the repetition of elements. Rhythm can make an artwork seem active.[2]