Survey of Students

I asked students between the ages of 17 and 18 a selection of questions to do with their media consumption and placed the answers in the format of a graph:






You hear a song on the radio and you want to hear it again, how do you go about this?









You hear about a TV show you want to watch, how do you go about it?

Importance of Properties

Props are used throughout all media forms and the film industry is no exception. In the making of Harry Potter each and every prop was hand made including all of the wand cases in Ollivander Wands being made and inscribed by hand. This is a painstaking process that is a necessity for the film to be believable so even the smallest jobs needs to be pulled off with precision and care to convey authenticity and immerse the viewer totally in the fictional world of Harry Potter.




    


 Furthermore attention to detail is a key factor in the believability of the film franchise with intricate designs such as this cane wand for Lucius Malfoy with a detailed serpents head at the top of the cane. This item is so significant as it represents the character it belongs to which is a running theme of the production of properties. Bellatrix Lestrange has a wand with wicked carvings and a curve to convey her mental instability and its shape is similar to that of a pistol displaying her deadly intentions. Through these props it can be conveyed to the audience what the director is intending for the reaction to be for the certain character.

Importance of Sets

The attention to detail shown by the creators of Harry Potter mimic the professional and expert precision that needs to be applied to every set in order for a film to seem convincing to the audience. However just as importantly there needs to be good camera movement and intelligent use of space and sets e.g. utilising small cameras to convey a claustrophobic feeling under the stairs in Harry's Aunt and Uncle's house. These camera tricks are used to get around issues such as getting bulky cameras in an enclosed space or just to generally make a difficult shot easier to film. Sets can be 2 or 3 sided without the audience ever clicking on. This allows for a wider range of shots to be ready to use along with aerial shots and just to generally save time assembling and deconstructing the set again.

Sets are the keyhole in to the world of the media you are producing which means realism is the most important aspect to take in to account when making a set. The lengths that some producers go to to ensure that their movie is hyper-realistic can range from the production of Full Metal Jacket when they replicated Hue, a place in Vietnam devastated by the Vietnam War to The Matrix Reloaded when they built an entire freeway for the sole purpose of filming certain scenes to feature in the film.

Genre Convention

Pop

Aiming towards a younger audience of around 9-16 this genre utilises colourful and trendy clothing and costumes along with choreographed dance routines, which are often sexualised especially considering this content is viewed by society as inappropriate for their supposed target market. Furthermore it is generally manufactured around external appearances and 'Body Fascism'. 'Body Fascism' is the prejudice or discrimination of a group of people due to the way that they look or their weight which is further linked to fat shaming which is the intentional shaming of a person due to their body composition and weight.

Examples of Pop music:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-u5WLJ9Yk4 Britney Spears-Hit Me Baby One More Time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NO-h9PFum4 Steps- 5, 6, 7, 8

Ideal female body for pop examples-

Britney Spears

Ideal male body for pop-

Zac Efron

Goodwin's Theory

Music videos more often than not tend to include a demonstration of typical genre characteristics e.g. girls, money, drugs and flashy cars in a rap video, live stage performances for a heavy metal band or a dance routine for boy/girl bands.

Examples of this include a dance routine performed by S Club 7, Verne Troyer in an expensive car with large amounts of cash and Rammstein, a German heavy metal band who use flamethrowers in their performance live on stage

 

 

 

 

Furthermore there is a succinct relationship between music and visuals, either contradicting or reinforcing.

One video that lives up to Goodwin's theory is The Less I Know The Better by Tame Impala.

This video seems to follow no apparent narrative but as it comes under Psychedelic Rock this is fairly common. The video gives off a cartoon effect and blurs reality between the normal filming which is then spliced and gives the viewer a sense of wonder along with intense visuals to accompany the music.

The video does follow certain genre conventions for any music video with there being a boy meets girl situation as the main body of the narrative. However this is as far as being conventional that this music video reaches in terms of mainstream music videos.

The psychedelic movement also utilises vibrant colours in an artistic manner as can be seen throughout this Tame Impala song.