MEDIA CONSUMPTION...

Television

• Approximately how many hours a week do you spend watching television? 20
• What times of day do you usually watch television? Evening
• What programmes do you like best and why? Soaps i.e. Eastenders, corrienation street etc because i find it entertaining and I’ve watched it since i was young, it’s more of a routine.
• Do you watch alone or with others? Family
• If you watch with others, who decides what you will watch? Myself

Radio

• What stations do you like best and why? Choice FM because most of the songs i like come on this station i.e. R & B, Hip-hop.
• Approximately how many hours a week do you spend listening to the radio?1 hour
• What times of the day do you usually listen to the radio? Whenever I’m in the car/ Varies
• What stations do you dislike most and why? Heart, because all the old boring songs that i don’t like come on there
• Do you listen alone or with others? With others
• Where do you listen to the radio? In the car
• What other activities (if any) do you do whilst listening to the radio? None

Cinema

• What films, if any, have you seen in the cinema in the last month? None
• What films have you seen in other places – for example, through rental, satellite film channels (free or otherwise) or through video-on-demand? Iron man 3, Fast & Furious 6, Flight
• Who else watched the films with you? Family and Friends
• Who decided what films to watch? Group decision

Internet

• How often do you access the internet? Everyday
• Where do you access the internet?  At home, at college or school, or at work? Home, sixth form, work, Out
• What are the main sites that you access? YouTube, TFL
• What are the main reasons for accessing these sites – for example, for information, to make purchases, communicate with friends or for entertainment? Music videos, and to check the bus times
• What other activities (if any) do you do whilst accessing the internet? None

Media keywords

Anchorage - how meaning is fixed, as in how a caption fixes the meaning of a picture

Audience – viewers, listeners and readers of a media text. A lot of media studies is concerned with how audience use texts and the effects a text may have on them. Also identified in demographic  socio-economic categories.

Binary Opposites – the way opposites are used to create interest in media texts, such as good/bad, coward/hero, youth/age, black/white. By Barthes and Levi-Strauss who also noticed another important feature of these ‘binary opposites’: that one side of the binary pair is always seen by a particular society or culture as more valued over the other.

BBFC- British board of film classification (decide the film certificate of the film)

Censorship – Control over the content of a media text – sometimes by the government, but usually by a regulatory body like the British Board of Film censors.

Consumer – purchaser, listener, viewer or reader of media products.

Conventions – the widely recognised way of doing things in particular genre.

Denotation – the everyday or common sense meaning of a sign. Connotation – the secondary meaning that a sign carries in addition to it’s everyday meaning.

Diegetic Sound – Sound whose source is visible on the screen Non Diegetic sound – Sound effects, music or narration which is added afterwards

Enigma – A question in a text that is not immediately answered and creates interest for the audience – a puzzle that the audience has to solve.

Femme fatale: A seductive woman who lures men into dangerous or compromising situations

Feminism – the struggle by women to obtain equal rights in society

Genre – the type or category of a media text, according to its form, style and content.

Hybrid film- a thing made by combining two different elements; a mixture i.e. comedy/horror

Ideology – A set of ideas or beliefs which are held to be acceptable by the creators of the media text, maybe in line with those of the dominant ruling social groups in society, or alternative ideologies such as feminist ideology.

Image – a visual representation of something.

Institutions – The organisations which produce and control media texts such as the BBC, AOL Time Warner, News International.

Intertextuality – the idea that within popular culture producers borrow other texts to create interest to the audience who like to share the ‘in’ joke. Used a lot in the Simpsons.

Low key lighting- the lighting of a scene so that there is a great deal of contrast between dark and light areas, making artistic use of deep shadows. Low-key lighting is used effectively in dramatic presentations to create variety and establish mood, particularly in mysteries or thrillers.

Media language – the means by which the media communicates to us and the forms and conventions by which it does so.

Media product – a text that has been designed to be consumed by an audience. E.G a film, radio show, newspaper etc.

Media text – see above. N.B Text usually means a piece of writing

Mise en Scene – literally ‘what’s in the shot’ everything that appears on the screen in a single frame and how this helps the audience to decode what’s going on.

Narrative code – The way a story is put together within a text, traditionally equilibrium- disequilibrium, new equilibrium, but some text are fractured or non liner, eg Pulp Fiction.

Non-verbal communication – communication between people other than by speech.

Preferred Reading - the interpretation of a media product that was intended by the maker or which is dictated by the ideology of the society in which it is viewed. Oppositional Reading – an interpretation of a text by a reader whose social position puts them into direct conflict with its preferred reading. Negotiated Reading – the ‘compromise’ that is reached between the preferred reading offered by a text and the reader’s own assumptions and interpretations

Reader – a member of the audience, someone who is actively responding to the text.

Representation – The way in which the media ‘re-presents’ the world around us in the form of signs and codes for audiences to read.

Shot – single image taken by a camera.

Sound Effects – additional sounds other than dialogue or music, designed to add realism or atmosphere.

Stereotype – representation of people or groups of people by a few characteristics eg hoodies, blondes

Sub-genre – a genre within a genre.

Typography- The style and appearance of printed matter i.e. the font

Tag line- A caption on a poster

                                                                       

Uses and Gratifications – ideas about how people use the media and what gratification they get from it. It assumes that members of the audience are not passive but take an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their own lives.

Scream 4

This poster is a character poster, as it only features the main character; who is the killer; Ghost face.

The genre of the Scream movies is Horror. This is obvious because of the typical iconography within the poster, such as: Most of the poster is dominantly in black; which connotes evil and something sinister, also the chin of Ghost face is shaped as it is the end of a knife, which connotes that there will be murder within the movie, and violence.

The title of Scream 4 is at the bottom on the poster, and is written in bold white and red. The white in the title connotes innocence of the victims within the movie. The knife shaped chin of Ghost face is pointing towards the white of the title, which could connote harming of the victims. The red within the title connotes bloodshed and anger. This can be directed towards the victims within the movie as well.

The main character in the poster (Ghost face) is turned sideways, making indirect motive address. This is done on purpose so the audience viewing the poster can see the knife, and so that more attention is drawn to it, emphasizing that this movie is of a horror genre. The black colour of the poster surrounds Ghost face’s face so that no other body parts are shown. This is done to make his face stand out against the black, making an impact on the audience, as it is striking. From the character’s expression, you can tell that he is the villain and murderer of this movie. This is because his face is not a normal, human face, because he is wearing a mask, which makes the audience create narrative enigma within their minds which question the reason of why he is wearing a mask. This is obvious, because he is wearing a mask to cover up his identity so the Police or victims within the movie cannot identify him. This film’s tagline is “New Decade. New Rules.” The tagline is place at top of the movie poster, instead on the title of the movie. The tagline is place here because it is the first thing the audience sees.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti0H-bvMi3I

This film trailer is of twilight breaking dawn part II, the main focus on the beginning if the trailer is of one if the main characters Bella (Kristen Stewart) as she has just been turned into a vampire; they focus on her speed, strength and rose red eyes as she was so ordinary in the rest of the films. This appeals to the audience as they were building up to her becoming a vampire from all four film so the audience is eager to see what she would look like now she has turner from a human to a vampire. In addition, in breaking dawn part II book, they describe Bella to look very beautiful therefore everyone wants to see the transformation. In the beginning of the trailer the camera shots that have been used start from a long shot then into an extreme close up of Bella’s eye to emphasise she has now turned into a vampire hence her eyes being red. It then changes to a medium long shot to show her body language and facial expressions as she is currently hunting an animal at the beginning of the trailer, in order to show her speed and strength they make they focus on her and the animal, going into a low angle shot which shows the audience how viscous the attack is. Throughout the trailer most camera angels are either long distance to show the whole impact of the action going to happen or a medium long shot to get facial expressions in and body language in; there are some really quick camera shots in this to show the speed of the vampires. Plus there are some fades, when it changes from one scene to the next as a trailer only has a certain amount of time to the important scenes in.

Each scene changes within a matter of seconds as when you are advertising you only have a matter of a couple of minutes to grab the audience’s attention straight away. In this trailer the scene lasts for about 4-8 seconds depending on how important the scene is for example, the beginning and end are quite long as that has a big impact on audiences judgment of the film, where as throughout the trailer they want to fit in loads of different parts of the film so each clip they show is for about 5 seconds then it fades out into another one.  The background music gets people to feel exited for the movie to come out, in addition the characters voice are on top of the background music which makes it more intense as we can hear bits of what they are thinking, which could be an enigma code, as it makes the audience think, why is that happening? Towards the end of the trailer the music speed up and gets louder as they are showing the action in the last 15 seconds of the trailer which creates a mood within the audience. 

The Strangers

The strangers was directed & written by Bryan Bertino in 2008. Three A-list actors starred in this movie; Scott Speedman, Liv Tyler and Gemma Ward which helped this film to hit $20,997,985 on its opening weekend of the movie premiere. The genre to this film is Horror/ Thriller, due to the plot of the story which contains a lot of violence. The Film is based on a newlywed couple going to a vacation house to find them getting more than what they bargained for. What ensues is a violent invasion by three strangers, their faces hidden behind masks. The couple find themselves in a violent struggle.

 The lighting from the trailer contrasts with the poster as it focuses mainly on the characters expressions. The outside of it is blocked out with a pitch black light, this makes the person look more effective as the main light is making them stand out to the rest of the poster. However, in the poster it could connote that something bad is going to happen due to a dark colour blocking out the light; this could suggest evil taking over good. Is there something in the dark? Live Tyler is the only thing to be seen in this scene of the trailer which shows us she is alone. It could cause us to interpret that the movie is a dark film that has to be revealed to get into the light, and see what is revealed behind the scenes. Another interpretation of the enclosing lighting could be that the poster is clearly telling the audience that the main character is Liv Tyler as she is standing alone in the poster with the lighting directly shining directly on her face. This suggests that Liv Tyler faces something terrible by herself as she is by herself in both the trailer and the poster, with the dark surrounding her, nothing to be seen expect her terrified face.  In this scene of the trailer it shows Liv Tyler is scared, with her arms above her head which could tells us that she puts up a fight but only for so long as she is facing something terrible with nobody but her and her reflection. If you look closely you can see Liv Tyler is wearing a white & red chequered shirt the red may connate blood and violence, however, on the other hand the white could suggest innocence and some sort of hope for her. In the poster her whole body is used in the camera shot, where as in this scene of the trailer they have just taken a long shot of her head and the background.

This image is from the trailer, its shows Liv Tyler undoing the back of her dress which could suggest she is unwrapping something that is supposedly meant to be hidden. The angle in which the trailer was filmed was a medium long shot, it shows us a view of many things but stops halfway down her waist. This could connote something being half seen with a double meaning to it. Indeed, a mirror has been used which also shows another side of the character which could suggest there’s another side to her that we may not know about. Similarly in the poster there are 3 masked characters, this could relate to the this scene in the poster as both have double faces, or unmasking who each character is by trying to figure out what each one is about. Although Liv Tyler isn’t in a mask there still her reflection which suggests to us that there could be two sides to her character in the movie. There is a door halfway open which could connote there’s a little bit of hope for Liv Tyler to escape before it too late.  The poster shows Liv Tyler’s innocence in the movie where as in the trailer is shows there could be two sides to her, with a ray of hope which could be the reason of the lamp being there and it shining on the side of her face. The way the camera has been positioned to suit Liv Tyler’s head so we can’t see here face could suppose that shes hiding something, or shes going to reveal something to her husband after a nice night get ready for bed un zipping her dress wondering whether she wants to tell her husband a big dark secret. In contrast the poster shows her face with a big expression of fear; it shows her emotions which is giving the audience a sense of tension between her and something. In the trailer a slow mysterious sound of music is used for this scene to get the audience thinking what is about to occur after this. In the movie trailer the way Liv Tyler’s hair is in the way of her face can also connote something is watching her but she cannot see it coz she is unaware, therefore she needs to look more carefully hence the reason why there is a mirror right in front of her.

In conclusion both, trailer and poster have contrasted really well together, due to all the high/low key lighting, also the way the camera angles/shots have been used. It helps the audience to capture what is happening through the poster, which conveys them into seeing the movie trailer which gives them a better idea on what the film is about. The trailer of the movie relates really well to the poster as a  lot of similar lighting and facial expression where used in both trailer & poster but the movie trailer explains it in more depth giving the audience a better idea of the movie’s plot.

Why I chose AS Media

I am currently a year 13 student, however I am doing AS media as I dropped English literature after I took my AS exam. I chose to drop English as I didn’t particularly enjoy it, and I had to pick up another subject as I am doing my A2 applied business which is worth 2 A-levels, now I have chosen to do media as an A-level as I really enjoyed it at GCSE.