Sunday 29th Oct
Exam Preparation
The
A2 Exam.
Answering
1B to grade B/A standard.
2016: Media Language.
In Question 1(b) you must write about one of your media coursework
productions.
b) Analyse the ways in which one of your coursework productions
communicates meaning to the audience through media language. Narrative, genre, audience, representation.
Candidates
demonstrate a clear understanding of media
language and can relate concepts articulately to the production outcome.
Candidates offer a range of specific, relevant, interesting and clear examples
of how their product can be understood in relation to relevant ideas about
media language.
1b. A minority of candidates focused too
heavily on the inclusion of theoretical concepts at the expense of the application of concepts to their own production outcomes.
It was pleasing to see a wide variety of responses that clearly demonstrated a
wide range of relevant ideas about media language and how it communicated
meaning to audiences
Media in the Online Age
Candidates adapt
their learning to the specific requirements of the chosen question in
excellent fashion and make connections in order to present a coherent
argument. The answer offers a clear, fluent balance of media theories and
knowledge of industries and texts and informed personal engagement with
issues and debates.
Examples of
theories, texts and industry knowledge are clearly connected together in the
answer. History and the future are integrated into the discussion with
conviction.
Throughout the answer,
material presented is informed by contemporary media theory and the command
of the appropriate conceptual and theoretical language is excellent.
Complex issues
have been expressed clearly and fluently using a style of writing appropriate
to the complex subject matter. Sentences and paragraphs, consistently
relevant, have been well structured, using appropriate technical terminology.
There may be few, if any, errors of spelling, punctuation and grammar.
Media in the Online Age 2016 Questions
8
Assess the changes to media brought about by the internet in recent years.
[50]
9 How far do you
agree with the view that the move to online media has been damaging for a
large number of media producers? [50]
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Notes to examiners:
The generic mark
scheme above for questions 2-13 will be the same for every examination. The
indicative content for each topic area provided in the Specimen Assessment
material was produced to offer guidance for centres, and is not for
use in marking scripts. Guidance for each topic will be provided at the
standardisation meeting for each assessment session.
Where
candidates refer to only one media area in their answer, the mark scheme
clearly indicates that marks should be restricted to level 1.
NB – online
media, as a convergent form, is regarded as more than one media area.
Where
candidates fail to provide or imply historical references and/or future
projections, marks should be restricted to the lower half of the level 4
range (44 or under). The same applies for answers that do not focus mainly on
contemporary examples (from the 5 years preceding the examination).
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50
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Media in the
online age was often
tackled well with students working with a good range of current issues and
contemporary industry knowledge. The music industry was the most popular area,
with candidates discussing issues related to artists’ rights and the
development of iTunes, Spotify and Tidal. However, the use of academic theory
(e.g. Gauntlett) and critical voice to assess the various debates about winners
and losers / societal issues was sometimes simplified or inaccurately mapped
between writer and theory. Where a well judged range of examples was put to
work, candidates oscillated around discussions of the Arab Spring, the Paris/
Brussels attacks, rise of citizen journalism, theories from Dan Gilmoor, The
long Tail, and the cyber dystopians (Andrew
Keen etc.).
2015: The
1B question.
Apply the concept
of narrative/audience/genre/to one of
your coursework productions.
There have been
theorists of narrative ever since
Aristotle was writing about Greek tragedy in the 350s BCE but I am going to
select a modern and influential theory of narrative to apply to my TV documentary extract entitled ‘The Anxiety of
Anxiety’ a story of teenage panic attacks.
Gérard Genette’s Introduction
to Narrative Discourse (1980) seeks to clarify the meaning of narrative
when he argues that it has three
distinct uses or levels. I will illustrate these different notions of
narrative through my TV doc extract.
The first meaning
is what he calls the narrative statement
(its form), which -in my case- is the discourse of words, pictures, video, graphics,
sound effects, after effects, body language and music of my TV doc. Unlike a
novel my text (TV doc) is multi-modal and
this is its narrative statement. My texts begins with a close up shot of an event in motion so the narrative
is already –‘in media res’ as the
subject of the TV doc is experiencing a panic attack. The hand-held camera
signifies the capturing of actuality while the non-diegetic soundtrack of an
increasing heartbeat dramatizes a rising tension. The main point here is that
the multi-modalities of my TV doc illustrates what Genette means by the narrative statement. The narrative statement of music video is
different from a TV doc or a radio news bulletin or a short fiction film and
contains different elements as part of its narrative
statement.
The second meaning
of narrative is the succession of events
that is the subject (topic) of the discourse. In my TV doc I started with an
incomplete panic attack episode over which the title appears. This is my first event because it makes an impact
and expresses the main topic of the TV documentary. The second event shows the subject of the panic attack being
interviewed. She is now calm and her identity is clear. It is the second event because I wanted to show
my audience that the distressed subject of event one was not helpless but was
going to –perhaps- overcome her condition during the course of the documentary.
Event three is the subject’s
personal history up to the point of the panic attacks beginning when she is 16.
It is event three because I wanted the audience to become emotionally invested
in the character’s situation so that they continue to watch the whole
programme. Event four is where the
main character is on a train about to visit a theatrical production of Low Level Panic. The point of this event
is to show how much in charge she is becoming………..THIS COULD GO ON & ON….
Understanding this
second meaning of narrative entails understanding how the succession of events gives meaning to the whole story or -in my
case- the whole TV doc. The succession of events constructs a hopeful story of
crisis leading towards resolution.
The third meaning of narrative also refers
to events but not the events of
what’s happening BUT rather the act or acts
of narrating itself. Without the act
of narrating itself there would be no narrative
statement (the TV doc) or no events
would emerge.
But it is the
narrative statement that implies the means of narration itself. I use several means of narration in my TV
documentary. A key means of narration is the use of interview questions designed to explain the topic to the TV
viewers. This act of narration comes
in two versions: one is where the
subject is being interviewed and the
second is where the subject is the
interviewer. I used these different acts of narration, firstly, to
introduce the subject and, secondly, to show the subject taking control of her
condition.
Another act of narration is through the use of
photographs from the subject’s childhood flying onto the screen one by one with
screen graphic dates as the subject’s mother relates the context in voice over. The voice over works well because it elaborates the visual information
being presented at the same time.
A fourth act of narration I used was the
non-diegetic audio bed of Moroccan music to contextualize the point of view of the subject’s mother who speaks in her
Moroccan accent and this act of
narration implies authenticity and knowledge.
A fifth act
of narration was to film an expert (a hospital doctor) explaining the medical
condition and potential therapies. This act of narration gives authority to my
TV doc.
A sixth act of narration is to illustrate
the doctor interview with an insert of the subject experiencing an actual panic
attack caught with a go-pro. The go-pro
footage runs while the doctor continues to talk then the footage shrunk and
pull back to reveal the doctor in interview. This act of narration is doubly rich
because it combines an impartial expert with footage of the real thing being
presented simultaneously.
DON’T MAKE THIS
MISTAKE
A
minority of candidates focused too heavily on the inclusion of theoretical
concepts at the expense of the
application of concepts to their own production outcomes.
I
DON’T THINK I HAVE.
8 Assess the changes to media brought about by
the internet in recent years. [50]
20 marks for
explanation, argument and analysis
20 marks for examples
Terminology.
The music and news
industries have undergone massive changes since the inception of digital media
on the world wide web. While the changes are significant there are also
continuities.
Media in the Online Age
• How have online media developed?
• What has been the impact of the internet on media
production?
• How is consumer behaviour and audience response
transformed by online media.
• To what extent has convergence transformed the media?
Candidates might
explore combinations of any two media,
considering how each (or the two in converged forms) can be analysed from the
above prompts. Examples might be music
downloading and
distribution, the film industry and the internet, online television, online
gaming and virtual worlds, online news provision, various forms of online media
production by the public or a range of other online / social media forms.
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Music Industry
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News Industry
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1
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Music
owned by the Record Labels – which were majors like Universal, Sony &
Warners or independents like Mute, Real World & 4AD.
THE
GATEKEEPERS
In 1999
with Napster (Shawn Fanning) and the mp3 (Karlheinz Bradenburg) music
ownership became free. A whole generation of consumers (millenials have grown
up wanting media for nothing).
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1. From print
to online- Independent
newspaper online: In June 2015, it had
an average daily circulation of just below 58,000, 85 per cent down from its
1990 peak, while the Sunday edition had a circulation of just over 97,000.
The last print edition of The Independent on Sunday was
published on 20 March 2016, with the main paper ceasing print publication the
following Saturday, leaving only its digital editions. In March 2016, there
were 85 journalists working on the Independent when it stopped printing and currently
there are 110 journalists. This is a result on moving online, now their
readership is greater than 3million. The readership is in North America,
Holland, and Singapore- global liberalism.
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2
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2005:
YouTube. (Google) Because it was able
to make available the music promos created by the Record Labels since the
early 1980s. wikinomics uploaded their videos to YT and money made by
advertising revenue from traffic. 2008 Doug Morris CEO of Universal arranged
that Google needed to pay Record Label and Artists. Find out how many plays
on YT an artist needs to earn £100. 1000 views realizes £2-50. Hany disputes this figure.
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2. Growth of fake news because the
delivery system of news comes through social media – Facebook, Twitter and
YouTube. With traditional media there are GATEKEEPERS – they are editors and
journalists who fact check their ‘information’ before publication where as on
social media sites so called ‘information’ can function as click bait
generating what is called churnalism. This is not reliable news!
In May
2017, Jimmy Wales (the founder of Wikipedia) has set up Wikitribune, which is
establish evidence based journalism. Appointed 10 trained journalists to work
with citizen journalists to produce reliable journalism.
Mark
Zuckerberg (Facebook CEO) has trouble moderating their own content – live
streaming.
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3
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1% of artists in
2016 generate more than 90% of revenue. This contradicts the optimism of
Chris Anderson when he argued that the www provides a platform for
publication, which previously was dominated by the Mayor Record Labels. Ok so
today emergent artists can publish their music on YT or Soundcloud but unless
you are Chance the Rapper you are going to be lost in the Long Tail. Andrew Keen argues that fewer and fewer
creators are able to live from their creativity. These are the musicians, novelists and
filmmakers etc. This is due to the
fact that the public is not willing to pay for products. This means that the companies which are
supplying the equipment to create these products are the ones making big
revenue(wikinomics)
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3. Predictive searching – algorithms; if we actually use the internet for our news we are in a filter bubble. Our view
of the world just gets fed back to us and we don’t get to see other peoples
points of view. This is a function of being online for most users and it has
an impact on news distribution. The metropolitan elite were very surprised by
the Brexit vote of June 2016 because of being influenced by what others look
for.
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4
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The
interface between artists and consumers is enlarged or enriched. Previously
Record Labels controlled the marketing of artists now the digital landscape
enables it to be more varied and complex. Arianators, Swifties through social
media.
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4. A Newspaper has a commercial side that
deals with advertising and the other side is the editorial side. These are NOT supposed to mix. Before internet, expensive to advertise in
Daily Telegraph. Now, since moving
onto the internet, advertising has become much cheaper as the number of
online newspapers has increased.
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5
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The
increase in live performance through music festivals. Because many musicians
can no longer make the money they might have made from vinyl (niche market)
and CDs. In 2017 Amazon (Jeff
Bezos) is moving into the Live Music Industry in Britain through the Blondie
Tour.
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A dozen
national titles. The Times, The Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, the Sun, The
Daily Mail and Mirror.
News
Values. Law. Fact checking.
Facebook
claims it’s a technology company when it’s really a news aggregating
service…..
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6
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In 2016
there was a 60% growth in subscription streaming of music, which is driving the music industry into
further profit having lost money from 2000-2014. £12.2 billion pounds –global figures.
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7
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June 2011 (and not since then). Are they
frightened of asking candidates about the concept
of audience?
1(_b_)requires a
more distanced textual analysis of one production outcome as a_media text to demonstrate the ability to
apply a theoretical concept– in this case audience to the text
Successful
responses demonstrated understanding of the concept of audience (which_ can be easily done by referencing
particular audience theories and relating them to a_product)the best answers
making use of more contemporary theory (such as_Gauntlett, Jenkins or Hills).There were relatively_few high scoring responses
for this question as most candidates_adopted the same_ approach as for
1(a) writing about their_own_decision
making rather_than analysing a finished product as a text from_a critical distance.
The majority of candidates reduced ‘the
concept of audience’ to some very basic ideas about ‘target audience’
and there was too much reliance on Todorov, Hypodermic Needle & Hall which did
not enable candidates to stretch their discussions and subsequently these responses
were fairly one dimensional.
1b. Analyse one of your coursework
productions in relation to the concept of audience.
[25]
How do audiences live in relation to media
content and how can this be explained through my TV documentary ‘Lifestyle
Guardian’?
To explain my understanding of the concept
of audience I am going to be using the arguments of Henry Jenkins in his book Convergence Culture and elaborated in
interviews since its publication. I will be analysing the key points he makes
about contemporary audience in relation to my TV documentary ‘Lifestyle
Guardian’.
The first point concerns convergence and not just technological
convergence but cultural convergence. My TV documentary is contextualized by appearing on a TV Channel. (Tuesday at 8.30 pm). Channel 4’s ethos is to
appeal to a demographic, which seeks alternatives to the mainstream. Most TV
viewers will be watching soap operas on mainstream channels at 8.30 so my
audience will be actively seeking an alternative with my subject matter of
alternative housing fitting this bill.
I also expect my audience to watch the TV documentary on the catch-up service 4OD
because the audience is digitally
informed and chooses to consume its media when it suits them rather than
being directed by a published schedule.
Channel 4 website provides the audience with opportunities to post
their comments on my TV documentary because they are part of Jenkins’ participatory culture. It is not enough
for them simply to sit back and consume the content of the documentary they will
also publish their thoughts and feelings even while the programme is being
broadcast. As producers of the TV documentary we built in moments where we
consciously communicated to our prosuming
audience. In the first scene where
the main presenter is speaking to the documentary’s subject they share views on
how long the pub’s sign has read ‘HE CLIPPE’ (THE CLIPPER). The subject claims that
for the seven months he has lived there that it has always said ‘HE CLIPPE”. As
a link to the next narrative episode we used After Effects to create a floating
T and R to fly into place to complete the original name of the pub. We did this
not to imply a change of genre from documentary to sci-fi but in the knowledge
that our audience would understand the digital trickery and how it
expresses the commercial purpose and history of the building – now a temporary
home.
The subject of my TV documentary is not a
celebrity or someone with a special skill rather he is a representative of a social reality in modern Britain and especially
modern London. Participatory culture enables Nick Garcia (the TV Doc’s subject)
a 30 year old with unexceptional resources to tell his lifestyle story. In
effect my audience appears reflected through Nick Garcia because the millennial generation are struggling with
the topic of my TV documentary – how to manage independent living without being
exploited by high rents when there is no bank of mum and dad.
We also inscribed our audience into the content of our documentary by
including a chance meeting on the street between Nick Garcia and a neighbour
(Omar). Although the introduction of a
passing neighbour interrupted the planned interview we decided to include it
because it as an example of a representative strategy of verisimilitude but
also because Omar’s conversation with Nick represented the dialogism of our audience (Bahktin) who are discussing the
documentary’s content on their social media while watching the programme, especially
given the urgency and relevance of their social convergence.
Henry Jenkins argues that convergence
culture pre-dates Web 2.0 by a year or two. Web 2.0 is the business model
constructed to capture the huge
audiences converging through the internet. So as audiences were
participating through their media productions (photos, music, video, blog
entries) they were becoming part of the wikinomics of the massive platforms
created by Facebook, Google and Amazon. These platforms are designed to make
huge sums of money. Huge sums of money is exactly what London landlords make
from their tenants so our representative
audience figure Nick Garcia is standing up for ways of not being exploited
by big business.
Contemporary audiences possess the tools on
their smart phones to make mash-ups and parodies of what they encounter in
their media landscapes
1b GENRE (2014)
1b In one sense (engagement with media
theories), this was the strongest
session so far for this question. However, the key-determining factor in
allocating marks was the ability to relate specific
elements of genre theory (from Neale across forms) to the text in question with conviction and precision. Acceptable, but lower range answers accounted for codes and conventions,
cinematography and mise en scene. Higher level answers discussed genre as a concept, rather than a ‘given’.
1b Apply the concept of genre to one of your coursework productions.
For
my TV doc extract ‘London’s Bus Breh’ to stand out and be noticed against all
the other media texts jostling for attention in the current media landscape it needs
to foreground or deviate from other texts, but not so
deviant that it is unrecognisable. ‘Foregrounding’ Mukarovsky (2000) explains
is making things stand out from their surroundings and deviation is a
difference from the norm. One such norm is genre.
Theo Van Leeuven (2005) in Introducing
Social Semiotics argues that genre is something like a ‘template’ for the
content, form and function of text: in my case a TV documentary. I am going to
use Theo Van Leeuven’s account of documentary together with John Frow’s (2006) Genre and apply their insights to my TV
doc extract.
Both
Van Leeuven and Frow argue that understanding genre entails noticing that it:
·
shapes
the audiences’ (and producers’) EXPECTATIONS of what a TV doc should LOOK LIKE;
·
circumscribes
what TOPICS they should be about;
·
WHO
they should ADDRESS and HOW;
·
what
BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE is required to understand the genre (TV doc.)
·
their
PURPOSE – what are they designed to do
·
WHERE
might we ENCOUNTER them.
I
will now illustrate how these six points
analyse GENRE through my TV doc ‘The London Bus Breh’. In an age of clickbait
news and listicles TV documentaries provide audiences and producers with the
opportunity to cover a topic in detail.
In May 2017 the BBC aired a TV doc entitled ‘OJ Simpson Made in America’; an
investigation into race and celebrity,
which ran for 7.5 hours. Audiences’ expectation of the genre is that it should
be well researched and entertaining. ‘The London Bus Breh’ carries this same genre characteristic. The first graphic
of my TV doc announces that everyday London’s buses transport more than 6.5
million passengers. This is a significant statistic and introduces the subject
of my TV doc. The look of my documentary is an important GENRE feature because
in the opening 45 seconds it shifts from
the PUBLIC to the PRIVATE because the doc becomes the showing of a PERSONAL
passion about a PUBLIC service.
The topic of the psycho geography of London -as inscribed by
its bus routes- is both serious, familiar but also new. This illustrates Steve
Neale’s point about repetition and
difference. Repetition because there have been TV DOCS before about
London’s buses and how they serve changing communities but not one where a
black urban teenager shares his insights and serves the public interest through
his dissemination of commuter information. This is showing an evolution in
genre through difference.
Because
our subject is an expert it is HE who
addresses the camera and does so in standard English because standard English is the language of
documentary. At one point as he addresses the camera he says, ‘I am Isaiah
Egwuagu, I go by the alias ‘The London Bus Breh’, I have a passion for London’s
buses -hence the name……’ His voice is authoritative, informative and carefully
paced so that his mass audience can assimilate his content. As he speaks he
uses phrases which are not over long and builds into his discourse a backwards
referencing phrase –‘hence the name’ to ensure comprehension. This emphasis on
clarity is a key GENERIC feature of TV docs.
The
background knowledge needed to
understand my TV doc includes knowledge about London as a global city and mass
transit systems and that these massive civic structures are a feature of the
modern world. Viewers would also have to understand English and that London is
an English-speaking city. This background knowledge is assumed for TV
programmes being broadcast on terrestrial channels during prime time. Another
feature of BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE is that the genre of documentary deals with
FACTS not FICTION.
The
purpose of my TV doc is to inform
and entertain the audience not just about the mapping of personal experience
against named London bus routes BUT also about informing a UK audience -which
is 86% white- that male, black urban youth can be expert, socially responsible
and highly organised. This final point is a subliminal message but it is not unintentional.
The
final element of genre theory I want to analyse is where audiences encounter
TV docs. Before the proliferation of texts through the internet audiences
encountered the genre of TV doc through public
service TV channels which have a responsibility to inform the British
public of current and important matters concerning civic life. Other points of encounter include short film
festivals and streaming services (YouTube and Vimeo) which is where my practice
TV documentary is actually published.
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Concept
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Theories
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1
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Genre
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(A)Van
Leeuven (2005) in Introducing Social
Semiotics.
(B)
Frow’s (2006) Genre
The six elements of GENRE.
(C)
Steve Neale Genre (1990)
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2
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Audience
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(A)Henry
Jenkins: Convergence Culture.
(2006) and since.
(B)
David Gauntlett Audiences are Makers-connecting
Participatory culture. Consumers as Prosumers
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3
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Narrative
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9A)
Gérard Genette’s Introduction
to Narrative Discourse (1980)
The three levels of narrative:
· narrative statement (its form)
· succession of events
· acts of narration.
·
You might also
refer to the combination axis (syntagm) and the selection axis (paradigm) if
you choose.
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4
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Media
Language
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(A)
Jonathan
Bignell’s Media Semiotics (2002)
draws on work from Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Pierce. Signifers +
signified = sign (meaning) And these signs are:
· iconic
· symbolic
· indexical
Connotation
and Myth.
The
multi-modal nature of TV
documentaries using:
· video (shot types and
transitions)
· spoken language in voice
over or address to camera.
· non-diegetic sound (music
for mood/atmos)
· graphics and After
Effects for information and emphasis.
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5
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Representation
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Of
human subjects and/or issues.
Hegemony.
Henry Widdowson,,,’On representation
and the interpretation of texts (2006) for TV doc.
Andrew Goodwin for music videos
The Male Gaze (L. Mulvey) not a
given condition BUT socially constructed. Consider the Female Gaze’.
Demography
(age, gender, race, social class……)
Stylistic
choices of filmic presentation. Who is going to speak? Who has authority?
Stereotyping
Counter-typing
Mise-en-scene
and settings.
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This
is what the Principal Examiner has
to say about YOU
· not being able to change from
answering 1a questions
· to 1b
questions.
firstly,
candidates need to ‘switch’ register’ from 1(a)
to 1(b) to move from talking about what they DID to how the
text can be analysed. Still only a small number of candidates manage to do this
with the majority writing about how they applied the theory, as opposed
· to how the theory can be applied to the text
(TV doc).
Answering 1A:
Describe the most important
post-production decisions you made for your different media productions and
explain why these decisions were significant. Refer to a range of examples in
your answer to show how your skills in post-production developed over
time. [25]
My
main tasks in my ‘A’ level course have been a local radio news bulletin and an extract from a TV documentary. While these tasks
have been produced in different media, necessitating learning how to edit with
different software applications, there have also been continuities too.
There
were three important post-production decisions I had to make
in the construction of the local radio news bulletin. My total production
project comprised 53 separate audio files multi-tracked across seven audio
tracks. Many of these separate audio files were recorded in different
conditions (studio and OBs) with different voices. Once I had them assembled on
my tracks I had to use the FOUR different tools within the Audacity software:
(1) the fade-in/fade-out tool, (2) the amplification tool and (3) the envelope
tool and (4) the dB- scale to apply to selected audio files to ensure that as
the audio head ran from file to file that the dynamic range was not too great
so that listeners would be able to process the sound through their volume
control and hear all the audio files equally well. Checking the dB meter I made
sure that the average range of the audio files was near to -12 dB and peaked at
-6 dB. This was significant because the listening experience for my target
audience needed to be unfussy so that the audio content could be assimilated
immediately.
In
the post-production stage of my A2 TV documentary extract, I was faced with
more challenges for example using two new editing software, Adobe Premiere Pro
and Adobe After Effects. Within Premiere Pro I had to make creative decision
about to organize my footage library. Within
the software I was able to drag all my footage in folders, which I named, based
on the days of filming, this was a decision that helped in our production, as
all our footage was well organized and easy to locate.
A
second post-production decision that I made during the video production was
whether to edit the whole documentary in Adobe Premiere or whether to take
complex elements into After Effects, doing this allowed me to include more visually
pleasing shots the TV documentary as the software After Effects has many more
features to manipulate and readjust particular shots. For example, one shot is
where we see the letters from ‘The Clipper’ edited in post, when the ‘T and the
‘R’ weren’t there in the original footage. Learning this tool really enhanced
our production quality.
A
second important post-production
decision was to place SFXs amongst the voice recordings so that they
illustrated what was being said and did not distract from the verbal content. I
used a further THREE tools within Audacity to enable me to complete these
post-production decisions: (4) the zoom tool, (5) the selection tool and (6) track
placement tool within the hierarchy of the track arrangements. Typically sound
effects are of very short duration – perhaps 0.5 to 2 seconds. One example was
where our presenter said ‘I’m Jacob Meehan and it’s now one minute past ten. I
chose to place a clock bleep sound effect to correspond to the point where he
finishes saying …’past ten’. This entailed researching and downloading a sound
effect (SFX) from a creative commons website such as Freesound.org and then
importing the selected mp3 into my audio project before using the ‘move up’
tool to place the mp3 track next to the vocal track. I then zoomed-in to place
the audio file in position and to trim its length so that it only voiced for
0.6 sec using the natural downtime between the phonemes of Jacob Meehan’s
announcement so that there was no conflict of sounds.
The
tools used in Adobe Premiere Pro enabled me to create a convincing TV
documentary. Essential tools I used were the simple shortcuts for Arrow (A) and
Cut (C), learning these features and the shortcuts, made for efficient use of
the software. Another tool within Premiere Pro is the Render Feature and its
regular use makes for swift progress. Because video files (unlike audio files)
take up lots of digital data processing them to enable construction decisions can
lead to the frustration of buffering and lack of progress. This was not a
challenge in AS where he production only
used audio files. So it was necessary to render sequences of video files (with
audio tracks) before the seeing the outcomes in real time/
A
tool that sequenced the various video files was the fade tool. This crated an effect that was dragged in
from the effects window. Using this tool
provided the choice between a simple cut or a gradual fade. I decided to use more fades over cuts to
enable the audience to think about the issues raised by the documentary
In
my AS production I had to mix my local news bulletin, making sure all the sound
levels were adjusted equally, in A2 this became much more challenging as I had
to work with visual and audio, meaning as well as mixing down my documentary audio,
I also had to make sure my documentary was colour corrected too. This meant adjusting the shots based on the
high, mid and low colour tones. Once all
the clips were corrected they had to be graded to finalize the look of the
documentary. The colour grade we had on our documentary was quite flat because
this colour grade communicated the sense of verisimilitude we wanted. Learning these new features improved my skills
with the software. [9]
A
third important post-production decision
I took was to time order the eight different news items into a running order to
reflect my radio station’s priorities and journalistic news values. The two main
new tools I used here was the (7) time shift tool and (8) the sync-lock tool
especially in conjunction with the zoom-in, zoom out and selection tools
mentioned previously. Having completed all the recordings I arranged them on
separate tracks and then imported a new master blank track. It was on this new
master track that I assembled the eight separate news items in news value order
beginning with a murder incident in West London and ending –conventionally-
with the sports/weather items. Arranging the running order of news items to a
single audio track according to news values is a relatively straightforward
task in comparison to arranging video and audio files to a timeline within
Adobe Premier to reflect the most effective organisation of the episodes of
video footage I had shot of our Lifestyle
Guardian Nick Garcia. One of my challenges was how to begin my documentary
and I chose to use footage of my documentary’s protagonist facing the camera
while standing in the abandoned garden pub exterior, this shot was chosen in
Premiere Pro as it was an interesting shot, we then took this clip into Adobe
After Effects to add some graphics. In the shot we had our subject Nick Garcia standing in front of a
Guardian sign, in the graphics we picked the same colour of the sign in the
background, being a turquoise blue to creative a introduction which looked
really visually intriguing, this shot was in a way a graphic match between
reality and the title introduction, this was a creative decision I made to
capture my viewers interest.
Answering 1B:
1b Apply the concept of media
language to one of your
coursework productions.
The main media theoretician I will be
drawing upon to elucidate my model of media language is Jonathan Bignell and his recent account in Media Semiotics (2002) where he reports and details the work of Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Pierce. I will illustrate and
analyse their theoretical models of media language with reference to my TV
documentary Nick Garcia: Lifestyle
Guardian.
A printed book is a medium and it uses
the media language of symbolic
signifiers (words, phrases, sentences and paragraph) and perhaps iconic signifiers (photos or drawings)
to communicate its meanings. My coursework production though -a TV documentary- is more multi-modal than a printed book because
it also uses (1) moving images with its affordances of close-ups, following
shots, screens within screens etc.; it uses (2) written language as captions,
(3) the human voice in spoken language, (4) non-diegetic sound for mood and atmosphere,
and (5) graphics with After Effects for information and emphasis. In total this
is a rich mix of multi-modal media language.
Jonathan Bignell builds on Saussure’s
analysis of meaning through signs.
Saussure’s classic position is that meaning is communicated through signifiers
(sound, images, smells, textures, tastes) and that receivers of these
signifiers interpret the signifiers through mental states called signifieds to
complete the meaning of the sign. Charles Pierce takes Saussure’s analysis and
shows that signs can be understood in terms of how they communicate so some
signifiers are iconic (photos,
video) because their images match the thing they present broadly speaking.
Other signifiers are indexical
because they present meaning more indirectly so a thermometer is an index of heat and temperature or smoke
a signifier of fire. Pierce’s final category of signifier he called the symbolic signifier. Human languages
–English, Arabic, Chinese, the language of maths are all symbolic systems of
signifiers. Symbolic signifiers only
make sense when one learns the system of meaning. So in English ‘p’ is a
meaningful sound when combined with ‘at’ to give ‘pat’ and so is ‘b’ or ‘h’ or
‘f’ or ‘c’ or ‘s’ to give ‘bat’ ……..but not ‘x’ because ‘xat’ is meaningless in
English.
Immediately after the title page of my TV
documentary I have FOUR levels of
signifiers running simultaneously to form my multi-modal media language. On level one there is a series of
slow panning shots showing the interior of a disused East End London pub (iconic). On level two is an audio bed
of non-diegetic sound of sustained orchestra strings connoting ‘seriousness’ (indexical); its volume level is
restrained because on level 3 is a voice over detailing the housing crisis
topic (symbolic). On level four
there are captions detailing the production team names (symbolic).
This mix of media language uses every type of semiotic signification
detailed by the American philosopher Charles Pierce and given that this all
happens within an 18 second sequence from my TV documentary shows how
multi-modally rich a TV documentary can be.
In the first minute of my TV
documentary I used a 12 second graphic
showing how London’s house prices had increased over the last twenty years with
figures and numbers (symbolic signifiers) appearing in a timed sequence over a
map graphic of London (iconic signifier). As each local detail appeared in the
boroughs of the London map it was accompanied by popping sound effects to emphasize the
information. This last multi-modal detail contributed indexical signifiers to
the total semiotic mix.
Another key feature of the media
language of TV documentaries is the use
of cutaways during interviews in order to illustrate the topic of the conversation
between interviewer and interviewee. At one point out presenter, Niomie asks
Nick how long he has been living in The Clipper and he answers in spoken
language (symbolic signifiers) obviously enough. At the same time though while
maintaining the audio track from the interview I introduced a new video episode
of the cutaway to add iconic
signification to the symbolic level
of signifiers.
My final example of media language in
TV documentary is the style of hand-held
camera shooting to capture the verisimilitude of events unfolding in real
time. This happened as Niomie was being interviewed in the street and a
neighbour bumps into Nick and they start talking to one another. As I was filming I had to make a number of
adjustments to framing and focusing on the events as they were happening. These
visible changes to the visual field were indexical
signifiers of documentary technique when the camera is seeking to react to
real events unfolding in real time without the benefit of pre-planning and
editing.
Answering 1A:
Stronger
answers to 1a managed to select a range of relevant examples
of creative decision making informed by research and planning. Weaker answers
offered a basic narrative of the process. It is best practice to prepare
examples that demonstrate more or less successful decisions as this gives scope
for higher levels of critical reflection. Centres
are advised to prepare candidates to reflect on processes, logistics and the
mechanics of production – research and planning cannot be reduced entirely
to looking at real media texts or discussing audience needs. Better answers offered a broader range
of pre-production activities and decisions arising with a clear sense of how
the more ‘glamorous’ idea of creativity is often a product of serious ‘nuts and
bolts’ operational care in the process.
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 to show how your
skills developed (improved) over time.
In my ‘A’ level course I produced two main tasks both as part of
production teams of FOUR. The first was an audio production of a local radio
news broadcast and the second was a video production showing a TV documentary
extract.
One research and planning skill that
really made an impact on my AS audio production was developing the confidence
and social skills to be able to interview members of the public as part of
constructing my vox pop. Equipped with a Tascam DR-05 portable microphone and
attached headphones I set the recording levels to 60 on a recording level index
running from 0-90. I discovered that this setting gave me the clearest results
when I held the microphone about 12-15 from my interviewees’ mouths. I also
discovered that it was better to explain this to be interviewees so that he or
she was not alarmed but the equipment getting too close to his or her face.
I had to improve my planning skills to
collect video and audio footage for my TV documentary. Carrying a hand-held
microphone with headphone around my neck is one thing but transporting a heavy
tri-pod, mirrorless camera with shoulder rig and on-board sound kit requires a
team effort. Prior to organizing what became 4 days of video shooting I had to
conduct health and safety checks for the five locations especially for the
time-lapse videography of the title sequence which was shot from a roof-top
beginning at 4.15 am and running until sunrise was complete at 5.45. Getting
the equipment in place entailed climbing a ladder and ensuring that members of
the production team secured the equipment safely. This planning paid off
because we were able to collect excellent footage, which we sped up and used on
the visual base of our title – ‘The London Bus Breh’.
A second planning skill was to devise a
question or questions that my respondents would be able to answer with confidence
and personal interest. The topic of my vox pop was, ‘How far do you agree with
the British Govt’s decision to bomb Syria?’ I have learned to ask open
questions in preference to closed questions because a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answer does
not provide rich audio data whereas open questions invite more detailed answers
that can be edited in post-production.
Interviewing my TV documentary subject
was both easier and more difficult. It was easier because I had an established
relationship with him but it was also more difficult because I had to make the
interviews visually engaging. My research and planning showed me that
framing the video shots so that my subject filled either the right hand side of
the video frame with the subject looking from right to left or vive versa was
the most effective shot composition. It was also important to frame the subject
so that his physical presence in the frame filled the vertical plane but
allowed enough screen space to his left (or right) in insert graphics or a
screen within the screen. I also had to plan to shoot extra footage to enable
cutaway. When I was working just in audio I did not have to plan for these
extra considerations.
Two further planning skills which made
a real impact on my completed AS main task was undertaking a ‘recce’ to find members of the public who would be willing to
provide good answers. Having visited four local sites: a shopping centre, a
railway station, a local park with a large cafe and a library I chose the last
two because in the first two its users (shopper sand commuters) were less
co-operative because they had other business to do whereas in the local park
and the users of the information centre were more relaxed and open minded. I
was also able to collect a wide range of voices – male, female, young, old,
local and foreign all of which contributed to the varied vocal qualities I
needed for my vox pop.
The planning challenge for my TV documentary
entailed planning for different location
interviews at different times to show the depth of the documentary’s
investigation (a genre feature by the way). I placed my subject’s interviews in
a garden (exterior) with a shallow depth of field and also I filmed him in his
kitchen (interior shots) I also filmed him in his study and walking out of his
house about to undertake some London bus photography. I did all this to create
a varied presentation because it contributed to the visual richness of my TV documentary
and enabled me to use an informative audio track against the changing video
footage.
Answering 1B:
1b Apply the concept of representation
to one of your coursework
productions. (2018)
Literary theorists and art historians
have been engaging with issues of representation
for longer than media theorists. The influential theorist Henry Widdowson (..on
representation and interpretation of texts, 2006) argues that texts (books,
paintings, TV programmes) are either referential OR representational. He argues that non-literary, non-artistic texts
are referential whereas literary or
artistic texts are representational.
What he means by this is that non-literary texts refer readers/viewers to some
aspects of the world that they can recognise in a straightforward way.
On the other hand if you read something
as literature (or art) you are
reading it as ‘
. According to Henry Widdowson literary texts
have meaning(s) (representations)
inside their own constructed text worlds. This is a very important observation.
I will explain how this theory of representation is useful in understanding the concept while applying it to my TV
documentary extract entitled ‘The Anxiety of Anxiety’. What Widdowson makes me
think about the concept of representation and my TV documentary extract is that
I have constructed meanings (representations) about: age,
femininity, family, friendship and expertise.
It is not simply that these meanings already exist but that I am contributing
to evolving meanings about these subjects by making and distributing my TV
documentary.
In the opening shot - a teenage girl
with long hair is viewed sitting down with head bent forward, rocking
uncomfortably. What the viewer sees is a recognisable situation -in Widdowson’s
theory- the text is referential. I
would agree. But where it becomes representational
is in the addition of the heartbeat soundtrack, which constructs a special reality within the TV documentary. This
constructed representation of visual and audio tracks working together creates
the representation of distressed
youthful femininity. And this is the main point about representations - they are not innocent references to the real
world - they are constructed texts
made to communicate ideas about age, gender, race, social class, London,
notions of British-ness, foreigners or whatever the topics of the constructed
texts happen to be about.
There’s a sequence in the middle of my
TV documentary where ‘Aicha’ the subject of the documentary is on a train and
we hear her talking and getting off the train and walking down the platform on
her way to the theatre. This section of my TV documentary is referential because the audience will
recognise the ordinary world of a train interior and a station platform. There
are no issues of social power around commuting or femininity for example. But
as ‘Aicha’ begins to exit the train I faded in a non-diegetic sound track which
continues to run into the next episode of the TV documentary which shows video
and still shots from the play ‘Low Level Panic’. I timed the four still shots
to appear on screen to correspond with the strong percussive beats of the music
soundtrack. Each still image took up a proportion of screen space in the top
left hand corner, in the bottom left hand corner, in the top right hand corner
and finally in the bottom right hand corner. This is where my TV doc text
ceases being just referential and becomes representational.
It represents femininity variously
·
as being image conscious,
·
as being image careless,
·
as being loud and confident and
·
as being socially diffident.
In total this action of representation
constructs FOUR different versions of femininity and this is very revealing
about the concept of representation.
Usually representations of femininity correspond to a dominant or hegemonic
version.
Because certain representations (catwalk model body types, for example) get
repeated again and again through the mass media (stereotyping) it might be assumed that this is how young women
look or are supposed to look. But this
is a selection, a construction, a representation;
it is not a reference (referential) to the real world but a constructed version. Widdowson’s theory of representation helps me
to make this important distinction.
The final point to make is that
representations are really vehicles of opinions
and social power and not innocent references to the world.
Using Adobe Spark
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