G325
1b Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to the concept of narrative.
1 (b) In this essay I am going to discuss the key elements and the concept of narrative for my A2 media production. I will achieve this by using genuine evidence and valid reasoning. I will use examples and quotes from theorists to support my points.
Starting with ‘Todorov’ who is well known for his theory of chain events in the narrative – in my music production I found his theory to contain a similar character and linked them together. His theory follows these chain of events, ‘equilibrium, disruption, possible solutions, climax, resolution.’ In my music production the music starts quite mysterious and silent, before signifying the main narrative feature. At this point, the artist is trying to establish his love for the girl he wants. However the song is disrupted as he finds she does not like him back. This is more linear narrative, as it follows chronologically. I also used inspiration from ‘Roland Barthes’ – his codes theory, in particular ‘enigma code.’ Indie music is hugely renowned for its puzzling nature in which I thought my music video could also play. My video features a lot of fast paced visual effects that are hard to concentrate on and some structural meanings are harder to interpret, making it more intriguing as it is suspicious. I am fond of the enigma style, as it’s less limiting and allows individuals to make their own judgement on what they believe the message is promoting. Roland Barthes aimed for two areas, one in which there was to be an unconventional question, and second, to give the audience a chance to anticipate the resolution. My production used similar concepts to these theorists as they fit most suitably to my music production. The narrative storyline is hard to underline but is conventional for indie music.
These ideas in play worked very well, e.g. – the strobe lighting effect signified the mood of the production which was upbeat and lively. This was also determined by the use of colours. The flashing strobe technology helped give the character the personality of the musician – also a convention of indie music. More examples consisted of close ups to the star image, trying to promote aspects of the ‘male gaze’, a form of voyeurism, the audience can connect with him and start to understand the value and message of the narrative structure. I also considered elements from ‘Levi-Strauss’ who had the theory the structure of meaning depends on binary opposition. The majority of the elements in the video are dominant and emotive, to support sympathy in response to the star icon. Levi-Strauss used conventions such as good -> evil, strong ->weak. I thought this was an interesting technique and considered adapting this to my production e.g. an example of youth could be determined through camera movement, as it’s constantly moving it has connotations of young vibe. This is also supported by the fact the members are young. The music gives a fresh feel and contains many elements supporting Levi-Strauss’s theory. The binary opposition strategy is useful for a band such as Indie; as the messages are always envisaged in a way, that the ideology is twisted and turned against the consumer. With other videos your
ideology is maintained safely, but ‘indie’ is unique in assuring that is hard for you to follow.
In conclusion, narrative is a factor that is hard to achieve in indie productions as it’s not entirely defined. It is always trying to put the consumer off their original thoughts. It’s conventional to use this approach but it’s a clever marketing feet to pull the consumer in. I enjoyed building the narrative to this production as it was challenging, however it bought new opportunities to try new ideas as I had taken into account these theorist’s approaches. It was hard to define what fits to my narrative beat, but I was able to counter act this concept. Narrative is one of the key motivations in the music video and it was essential that we interpreted this to the audience in an accurate manner.
This response attempts to apply the concept of narrative through reference to Todorov, Levi-Strauss and Barthes. It offers some contrast in theoretical positions and makes an effort to show the relevance of each to the production, but does not offer enough specific textual evidence to justify level 4. There is some good understanding shown, but not quite enough application.
Overall a good level 3
1 (b) 1b Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to the concept of narrative.
My Foundation Portfolio was a title and opening sequence for a film and as such the narrative was very important as it would set the genre and characterisation of the film.
My sequence was of a teenage girl who escapes the boring monotony of her life by writing. I came up with this via behavioural insight i.e. watching teenagers when confronting problems or ideas. I handed out questionnaires to assess what they wanted in life; the majority said they wanted money, fame, to be the best in their field of expertise. Very few, if any, were happy with what they were. I reflected this in my narrative. Another question was regarding emotion and the emotion they disliked most was loneliness, again I used this to construct my piece. I decided to use minimal human contact between the protagonist, a teenage girl and the rest of the actors / characters to infuse the piece with loneliness, to do this I decided to include no diegetic sound, no dialogue or other noise then overlaid it with a voice-over, a convention of teenage confessional.
As narrative was so important I decided to include music as I could not find a minor melody which suited my means. I composed my own using a quartet of violins to convey the sadness and negativity that teenagers feel. French film critic Benayoun described all the qualities of teenage confessional films: “normal qualities of youth, naïveté, idealism, humour, hatred of tradition, erotomania? and a sense of injustice.”
Artard, a drama practitioner, invented the theatre of cruelty which focused on hidden meanings and connections to different objects within drama.
This idea of iconography is heavily used within teenage confessional narrative so I decided to link this to her notebook which features pictures and ideas that inspire her.
All teenage confessional movies, such as ‘Another Cinderella Story’ feature close up of faces and hands as well as the use of ‘stock characters’ such as the nerd, the jock or the bookworm and reflects the typical image of American high school.
The idea of school is heavily featured within teenage confessional movies as it’s the place most teenagers spend most of their time. As such the majority of the opening sequence was filmed at a school, helping to portray teenage life to help the target audience (teenage girls) relate to the protagonist’s emotions.
I received audience feedback at a lot of points throughout the making of the piece and advice varied from comments on volume and image effects to narrative.
The protagonist is at the bottom of the school hierarchy and to do and show this I used a lot of high shots and extreme close ups to show her vulnerability.
The music and storyline is simple meaning there are no hidden messages to confuse the audience. Narrative was an important concept in relation to my AS coursework production and I made sure to develop it to create a good story and make the genre clear upon watching.
A clear introductory paragraph, followed by some good references to both the text and to examples that influenced it, but much is still at the level of ‘what I did’ rather than ‘distanced’ analysis. Not a huge amount addressing narrative, despite some interesting and unusual theoretical references. Overall level 2
1b Explain how meaning is constructed by the use of media language in ONE of your coursework productions.
For our AS production, my group and I produced an opening sequence for our sci-fi/action/drama film ‘Mute’, set in a dystopian future where- due to the overuse of technology and evolution- the human race had developed to not have voiceboxes. As a film opening, it needed to draw in audiences to make them want to carry on watching the film, showing and introducing the main themes, genres and setting. Therefore we needed to do this to create an effective opening, and we did this via media language- the way a producer conveys messages to the audience through the use of camerawork, editing, sound and mise-en-scene.
As our film was predominantly sci-fi, we needed to convey this message to our target audience. From viewing previous sci-fi films such as ‘I am Number four’ (2011), we saw that a main convention of sci-fis was that a lot of the shots were tinted blue. We wanted to recreate this, so when editing our footage in the program Adobe Premiere Pro, we used the ProcAmp and three way colour correct tools to create this blue tint. We decided our tint would look effective if it was a duller blue-grey tint, to connote two meanings- the first that it is a sci-fi and secondly that this world is dull and a dystopia, ruled under an oppressive government. The blue also connotes a technological vibe, which was a key idea in our film. To further these technological connotations, we used the program LiveType for the opening titles. We created a digital-clock look for our titles, with the fonts flicking first then showing the real titles. As we used this digital font and flicking effect- inspired by the trailer for the upcoming film ‘In Time’ (2011)- it helped again convey this sci-fi theme and a world where technology takes over.
This exploitation of technology in our film plot follows Fiske’s theory, that genre conventions ‘embody the crucial ideological concerns of the time that they are popular’. At the moment everyone uses technology and many people prefer to text and e-mail rather than talk face-to-face. We wanted to develop this idea and create a film which wonders ‘what if technology takes over?’. To emphasise the use of technology in our film, the beginning of the sequence shows a montage of close-ups of people’s phones, showing their thumbs typing away. We then cross- cut these shots with close-ups of people’s mouths pressed into a firm line, again emphasizing our plot on how people don’t speak but use technology instead.
Throughout our sequence, we see many of these shots of people typing, which is most obvious when our main protagonist Ava returns home. We see her brother send her a message in one hand, while simultaneously playing Xbox with his other hand. This raises questions in the audience’s minds, such as ‘why did her brother text her, surely it would have been much easier to talk to her?’ This follows Barthes’ enigma code, where media provokes audiences to ask questions.
The answer to their questions are only revealed at the very end of the sequence, where we show a slow zoom of a laptop screen which shows a news article stating ‘scientists claim voiceboxes still exist’. The fact that we used a slow zoom and a drone sound effect in the background shows that this is an important part
of the sequence, making audiences concentrate and read the text. The use of the drone and then cut to black also acts like a cliffhanger, making the audiences want to carry on watching the film.
In retrospect, viewing and evaluating a film opening, we could easily see how Levi-Strauss’s theory of binary opposites can be applied. This is shown when Ava returns home and takes her earphones out of her ears. So far from the beginning to this point in the sequence, Ava is listening to loud music and this is what the audience hears. So when she takes out her earphones, the audience hears the diegetic sounds of her world- silence. As we cut the sound so abruptly, we hear the binary opposites of sound/silence, which is obvious to the audiences. This almost deafening silence emphasizes the fact that this world is full of a lot of silence, as people do not have the ability to speak.
From viewing all our camera, editing, sound and mise-en-scene decisions, it is easy to see how media can convey a message through media language. This follows Stuart Hall’s theory of decoding/encoding- how producers decode a message and want audiences to encode it. Furthermore, theorist David Bordwell stated that in film, ‘every gesture and every camera movement is designed to shape our uptake’. I believe that in making these important creative decisions we conveyed meaning well, and this was backed up with the audience feedback received. The majority of our audience understood our plot, and this was due to the fact that we could construct meaning by the use of media language and not even by any speech.
COMMENTS
This response starts well, with a strong definition of media language in the final line of the first paragraph. It is clear about the project to be used. The second paragraph relates the candidate’s own film to real examples of the genre and how these use media language. Though there is some overlap in the third paragraph with q.1, it does go on to be very specific about how an effect was created and the meaning attached to it. This is taken further with the references to LiveType and in the fourth and fifth paragraph there is some good textual analysis with references to particular theorists. In paragraph 6, the impact of camerawork upon meaning is well explained and paragraph 7 makes good use of theory in relation to sound. Though the final paragraph throws in two more theorists, it does show understanding of them and brings us back once again to the question set and to her opening paragraph to demonstrate how she has answered the question.
Overall, this a very high level 4 response, very lengthy again, with lots of textual detail, reference to theory to support points and a clear relationship to the question set, covering sound, camerawork, editing and mise-en-scene.
1b Explain how meaning is constructed by the use of media language in ONE of your coursework productions.
The coursework production I have chosen to talk about is the music video made as my advanced portfolio for the fictitious band, The Storm performing the song ‘Witchcraft’. The construction of meaning in a music video is fundamental to its success due to the lack of dialogue to portray emotion and explain the narrative. Meaning is constructed through the editing, mise-en-scene and also the mode of address of the characters featured.
Vernallis is a media theorist who presented the idea that while films should be linear and constructed naturally, music videos should be disjoined and juxta. Our music video conforms to this idea with sections repeated and others completely missed out before being returned to. This non-linear convention of editing of the narrative and cross-cutting between narrative and performance meant that meaning had to be constructed clearly to keep the audience engaged. We did this through colour correction, making performance sections an orange hue to contrast starkly with the blue colour correction of the narrative.
The genre of music was drum n’bass and when creating our video we knew we had to use media language to connect to our intended audience. Research into the genre showed us that fans of the drum n bass scene are predominantly associated with drugs parties and clubs. The mise-en-scene of the performance section was claustrophobic, being filmed in a tight space. The intended effect on the audience was to make them feel like they were in a club atmosphere. We also included drink and cigarettes in the narrative section, in the hope that this would endear our target market to the protagonist.
Looking at the ending of our music video, you often see the protagonist in close- ups, full focus and in the centre of the frame. By contrast, the supernatural girl chasing him is often out of focus, distant and covered by her hair. Applying Levi- Strausses theory of binary opposites, stating that conflict is most greatly connoted through characters that are opposite in every way, we can see the message we attempted to portray. The emotional protagonist relates well to the moody teenage audience we were trying to connect with and the emotionless antagonist opposite in every way provides the audience with a clear sense of who the enemy is.
We also deliberately left many questions unanswered, for example, it’s never fully explained if the girl is a figment of the bassist’s imagination or a real phantom. Applying Barthes’ enigma code we see that the video deliberately avoids constructing meaning in some places in order to create suspense and keep the audience guessing. One example of enigma is when the bassist is cornered, about to be grabbed and after the suspense has built, the shot goes out of focus and she disappears. Whether the audience chooses to believe the lack of focus represented the phantom transversing to the other side or representing the bassist’s mind clearing and focusing on reality is up to them.
Media language was used in numerous ways to construct meaning in our music video, due to format, but most importantly it was used to keep the audience enthralled and I think resulted in a professional and entertaining video.
COMMENTS
The first paragraph gives a clear introduction on the project to be discussed and on the interpretation of the question as being about meaning-making. In the second paragraph, there is reference to theory which is explained in relation to the task undertaken. There are some refrences to different elements of media language and their interaction. The third paragraph constantly relates back to the audience and in both third and fourth paragraph, there is very specific reference to the text and analysis thereof. The fourth and fifth paragraphs both touch upon theoretical references to support points. The last paragraph is a good summary.
Overall, this is a very well structured response, which makes good use of theory, albeit only briefly applied. There is very good reference to the candidate’s own text and a consistent attempt to relate back to media language and how meaning is made for the audience. Overall a low level 4.
