Explain how far your understanding of the conventions of existing media influences the way you created your own media products. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how this understanding developed over time.

Real media products were used as an example and as a relation to what we wanted our music video to look like in terms of camera shots and codes and conventions. For example, we used Diggy Simmons music video called 'Do it like you' as one of our examples, as the rap video was rather similar to the type of music video we wanted to create, it target a young niche audience and used a range of camera angles showing their unique styles. Also the main artist was able to convey his charms openly to win over the girl, this links with our music video as our production is attempting to portray similarly to Diggy Simmons music video by using a range of camera angles and using charms and charisma to get the girl. 

We then decided on our narrative after watching a range of different music videos, most urban/funky music videos have a lot of exhilaration and fun in them with some mixtures of young love. Therefore, we came to the conclusion of creating a skating and rollerblading music video, where a young girl is a 'bad mama jama', this clearly conforms to the lyrics of the song as we are making a young girl a bad mama jama in our music video, which conforms to the codes of the music video.

Since we decided to create a music video based on skating, rollerblading and young love, we started to look at different shot types, urban dress codes and videos that had skating shots in them, for example, the Far East Movement was able to show a model skating in time with the music, it also shows emphasis the urban environment and what people do to express how they feel for example, graffiti art. 

The background images of graffiti in our music video empathize and express the urban atmosphere, this conforms to the forms and conventions of real media as a lot of urban landscapes/environments tend to have graffiti around which makes them recognizable and rural.

Our media products show a bit of male dominance, as it shows our main character approaching young women and attempting to woo her. This conforms to conventions of real media as it always tends to be the male figure approaching the young female to try to woo her. On the other hand, our media product subverts and challenges forms and conventions of real media products because we didn't use a conventionally dressed young woman that is provocative.

Close up shots conform to the codes and conventions of real media products, as all music videos have at least some sort of close up shot as they may want to make something recognisable, for example, in our music video we had a vast number of close up shots, this allows the target audience to recognise our main character,  show his importance and promote him (Richard Dyers Star Theory), the close up shots also allow the target audience to see the facial expressions to tell what type of song it would be e.g. sad or happy.

Through our editing we challenged and developed our music video, the slow motion added the effect of professionalism and it emphasised on what the music video was partly about (Skating and Rollerblading). One of the transitions we used challenged the way other real media texts have edited their music videos as we had the screen split in half, one side showing our main character skating and the other side showing the him singing. This was very effective as in one shot we summed up the whole narrative and one side was of our main character and the conventional women together rollerblading looking like a couple and on the other side him singing with the background image of graffiti which is empathising on the urban environment.

Our mise-en-scene uses the same types of codes and conventions a real media products, as music videos can be shot anywhere around the world and they tend to conform to the type of genre to make it effective and realistic. Our camera angles do not challenge the conventions of real media products, as all types of camera shots have been used before.

I believe as a whole our music video conforms to the forms and conventions of a real media product as it has a recognizable urban look to it and a funky atmosphere to it. Nevertheless, it conforms to the postmodern genre; however, the way it subverts from the actual code and conventions is through the use of having a clear story line, in which our music video continually creates. Therefore, it subverts to postmodernism because it postmodernism doesn’t follow the

Artists get very creative in terms of codes and conventions on a website, as they need to make it as attractive as they can so that the target audience would engage init.
By using pre-existing websites of other artists and using them as an example, we made our website very easy to access and understanding for viewers, however, we made it attractive by the colours, which we kept consistent with our digi pack, as soon as someone enters the website our music starts playing, this develops the codes and conventions of real media texts because the websites we viewed didn’t have that, therefore, we decided to put it on, this makes it recognisable to our target audience and plays them the main song that our artist has, which basically promotes our artists song. Within our website we have a page for our artist ‘Alex Jones’, for our production company ‘Cloudkickers’, a gallery full of pictures and a contact section. We made our website conventional.

Our album cover didn’t really challenge codes and conventions real media texts, however, it used and developed them. We used adobe Photoshop to edit our pictures for the album cover to make it look sharper and to change the colour to make it look more professional and attractive. Many artists album covers had their pictures at the front to make them recognisable, therefore, we done the same by putting our main character at the front of our album cover. However, at the back we have a close up shot of rollerblades, this would make the audience aware that rollerblades is our symbol.

Looking at two media, describe the ways in which a particular group of people (youth) are collectively represented or provided for, using specific examples to support your response.

Youth have been represented negatively towards society for years and as the media have portrayed youths more dangerously over time, which has caused a lot of moral panic towards society.

Stuart Hall argued that the media appear to reflect reality whilst in fact they construct it. The mass media construct collective identities through different forms of media and through Stuart Hall’s encoding and decoding media messages, for example, in the film ‘Kidulthood’ which was directed by Noel Clarke, showed society how youths are and that their collective identity is corrupted, through the swearing, sexual conducts, drug taking and carefree life. Noel Clarke encoded and portrayed that this was the kind of youth he had which he represented in the film, however, the society have decoded the representation of youth negatively and this has caused the collective identity of youth to be bad. Comparing the way ‘Kidulthood’ has represented youths to how ‘Rebel without a Cause’ has represented youth, there are vast differences, for example, in ‘Rebel without a Cause’ there was no portrayal of youths taking drugs and conducting sexual activities or going majorly against the law by stealing and being ASBO’s, it was more about being rebellious in a small extend for example, going out late or sneaking out.

Through Web 2.0 youths have started to create, develop and improve their collective identities. Social networking website such as Facebook and Twitter have become more popular within youth. It allows youths to use these websites to develop their collective identity, for example, Richard Jenkins stated that ‘we need to interact in order to form our identity with other people or with the media.’, he believed that partaking in an event in reality or virtually with people whom we feel comfortable with helps us to form our collective identity identification and aspiration. Similarly Henri Jenkins had the same concept as Richard Jenkins did as he said, teens are constantly updating and customising their profiles online to construct and experiment with their identities. To youths social networks can give a sense of belonging as they would be in a distinct ‘in group’ (Henri Tajfel). Enforcing regulations and censorship on Web 2.0 is difficult as it allows users to add photos, songs and postings, therefore, it is hard to censor.

One type of media is very important and recognisable to society and this is the way the media mainly create moral panic and construct collective identities and stereotypes. This is through the newspapers and news. The London Riots caused a huge moral panic and uproar in society giving a negative representation for youth’s collective identities and making them more stereotypical, as youths were represented to me uncontrollable, violent and carefree, as they burned down cars and shops, robbed stores etc… The rioters used social networking sites to communicate and plan riots; they used Blackberry Messenger, Twitter and Facebook. It was difficult for regulators to stop this from occurring as rioters where quick to communicate with others, Twitter even got told to shut down during the riots and so did BlackBerry Messenger. Communication was not around in the times of the Brixton Riots, so it was harder for youths to riot in huge groups.

The press encode their own messages to society and make the society decode and deconstruct these messages negatively. The newspapers use buzz words such as ‘thugs’ and ‘yobs’ in big bold letters so that it makes the society recognise and attracts them to read. Tabloids such as The Sun deliberately exaggerate the representations of youths, they look too much into the negativity of the youths than the positive side of the youths for example, education, sports, charity etc… these articles that over exaggerate the negative representations of youths collective identity give an hegemonic view towards to society, making society have stereotypical views of youths and makes them dislike them. The press groups youths in gangs and gives society a stereotypical view of them, this gives youths one main collective identity instead of individual collective identities. By the press doing things like this would only provoke youths to just live up to their stereotypes as they have no say in these situations as it is too late, therefore, it would only aggravate them, for example, many youths said that the London Riots was due to how the newspapers and the society view youths as and how they are rejected by society and adults.

Futuristic films such as Shank, directed by Mo Ali, shows how youths can be in the future, as it is presented in the year 2015. It basically shows how society has rejected youths completely that they have to be in gangs to survive and survive on their own. This can be a possibility as youths have been represented negatively for some many years and over the years it has just been getting worse, so in the future society could reject youths.

To conclude, youths may be able to relate to films, however, films over exaggerate and try to generalise the negative actions of some youths to all youths, which creates a negative collective identity. Youths can use Web 2.0 to create and construct their collective identities, however, some youths decide to abuse the freedom of social networks and communicate on them to create riots like they did in the London Riots in 2011.

Describe how you developed your skills in the use of digital technology for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to your creative decision making

In Year 12, I created an urban film opening for my AS production. In Year 13, I created a music video, website and album cover for my A2 production. To begin with my production I had to research pre-existing products that I could use as an example and to relate to the codes and conventions in order to use them on my production.

In my AS production, for my film opening, I used the Internet to search for different videos that I could relate to and use as an example for my own film opening that I was trying to create. Before deciding what genre to use for our film opening, we decided on a specific target audience which was teenagers and then we decided to make a survey to find out what type of genre teenagers could relate to the best and the specific types of codes and conventions they like in a film. We made the survey on a website called www.surveymonkey.com which was a quick and effective way of creating a survey and getting the statistics of the results. I used the Internet search engine Google to search for different website that can help me find the different synopsis of film openings to get a rough idea of what I would like my product to be like. I used YouTube to find openings of other films, which I could view and see what types of codes and conventions the film has, the different camera angles used to make the film opening affective and attractive for the target audience and the different editing used to make it more professional and attractive. I found that many film openings or trailers were enigmatic which would insure that the target audience would be interested, attracted and engaged to the film as they would want to find out what happens in the film.  I used examples such as Kidulthood and Shank as examples and relation to our music video, the openings had a sense of action and the theme of fighting. We decided to conform to the stereotypical urban opening, with a young teenager coming out a council estate, with the weather being dull and gloomy, with police sirens in the background and quite roads. We also added an enigmatic ending to our film opening trailer to make it more affective and attractive. We used a HD camera to film our film opening and used Final Cut Pro to edit it. We learnt how to use Final Cut Pro on a basic level to sharpen our film opening.

In my A2 production, for my music video, yet again I used YouTube to find different music videos that I could use as examples and relate to for my music video. My group and I collectively decided a specific genre after searching on youtube for different music videos and we decided to go for the urban/funk genre back in the 80’s, making it unique and retrospective. By researching other music videos we also decided what type of codes and conventions we wanted to specifically use for example, skateboards and rollerblades. So I started to research different music videos with skateboards and rollerblades and also videos that had different shot types of skateboarders and rollerblades since we decided that our singer would be on skates. By researching on different types of skateboarding/rollerblading videos and shot types we found a few that we wanted to imitate for our music video, as we found that there was loads of close ups of the main singer to see the different expressions, slow edits to make it effective and close ups of the skates to show it as a symbol for the music videos. Far East Movement’s song “Fly” had certain shows that we wanted to imitate for example, when the guy was on a skateboard and the way they filmed him from the side whilst he was moving fast and the background of people’s graffiti and have a skater atmosphere to show how it was symbolised. We used HD camera again, however, this time we used fish eye camera which allowed us to get footage of what the person sees for example, the viewers would be seeing what the main artist sees. We used Final Cut Pro again to edit our music video, however, this time it was to an advanced level, as we had to sync our lyrics so that it is in time with our main singers lip syncing. We used different colour fading techniques to make the video more retrospective as it would be like in the 80’s. We slowed down a specific shot so that it was in slow motion adding effective to our music video making it more professional.

With creating the website, I used a website called Wix, which was an easy and affective way of creating a website that could appeal to our target audience. On our website as soon as someone would go onto it, we would have our music automatically playing which is good because the person viewing the website would be able to hear the type of song we made our music video to. I didn’t make the website too complicated because it would make it difficult for the audience to use; therefore, I made it easy to use for the target audience. I made the background colour of the website to the colour of what our artist was wearing to make it consistent. However, before creating my website, I looked at other artist’s website to get examples on the way it was represented for the target audience.

For the album cover and digi pack, we got different examples from other artists, for example, for Far East Movement’s album cover they had all their pictures at the front with big bold attracting title making them recognisable, they use a star as a symbol which is effective as it makes their target audience recognise them. For our album cover we used consistent colours which matched our website and also put an advisory logo which many artists have on their album cover to state that people buying it need to be a certain age, this made it more professional and legit. The font used was urban writing which was effective as it makes it recognisable for the audience about what type of genre the music is. We used the front cover as our singer to make him recognisable to the audience.

Throughout my course, through AS to A2 my skills have developed from researching to filming to editing. I believe my editing skills has developed as I didn’t do much editing and didn’t know what to do whilst editing, however, I can now create transitions to make it look effective, use slow motion and change the colours to make it more attractive and professional. I believe that my knowledge of media has also developed in terms of different camera angles, making the production look more attractive and professional.  

Structure for Collective Identity

• Introduce the construction of youth culture through media. 
• Explain how media represent youth negatively through films and give examples that cause moral panic such as rebel without a cause and Kidulthood.
• Explain how media represent youth negatively through newspaper articles and give examples.
• Compare older generation of youth construction via newspaper articles to a more modern generation of youth construction. 
• Explain how filmmakers have given an accurate representation of youth or a stereotypical representation of youth. 
• Use theories and back them up with different examples that relate to the construction of youth. 
• Explain how youth can be represented positively. 
• Talk about web 2.0 and how youth use it to communicate.
• Refer to the music industry and how youth respond to lyrics and their favourite artist. 
• Conclude the overal construction of youth and how it is more negative than positive and how media constructs collective identity.