Song Choice

We have decided to do a music video for our coursework, because we believe it is the choice that we can have fun with. We also have managed to think up a lot of ideas in a short space of time, which shows that we are very enthused with the concept of a music video- making us less likely to run out of ideas when it comes to post-production.

We are going to make a music video (as well as posters and a CD cover) for Kate Nash's song Pumpkin Soup from the album Made of Bricks. We chose this song because we thought it had a fun narrative, and a lot to play with in regards to creating a music video. I'm looking forward to starting production as now we have chosen our song choice, we can start to assess out target audience and start story-boarding.

The Culmination Theory

Because of the difficulty of proving the effects of individual media texts on their audience a theory. According to this, while any one media text does not have too much effect, years and years of watching more violence will make you less sensitive to violence, years and years of watching women being mistreated in soaps will make you less bothered about it in real life.

One difficulty with both of these ways of looking at the media is that they are very difficult to prove either way. Many people have a general sense that the media do affect our behaviour and advertisers certainly justify their fees by working on this assumption, but it can be extraordinarily difficult to actually prove how much effect if any a text might have on an audience. In fact researchers have spent enormous amounts of time and effort trying to prove the validity of the culmination theory with no success- this of course does not mean that there is no truth in it as an idea.

http://www.northallertoncoll.org.uk/media/audience.htm

The Hyperdermic Syringe

This theory implies that the media has a direct impact on the audience:

- A child will play a arcade fighter video game, then attack his friend at school the next day.
- A man will see a woman washing up, and will assume that it is a woman's job to do the cleaning.

The Hyperdermic Syringe is thought of as quite a basic way to distinguish the distrubution of ideologies- but on a large scale, it seems to come together. For example; after the release of the uncut version of Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, in the years 1972-73 p,olice had linked several cases to the film that had been committed by teenagers after one of the ascused admitted to reading the book. As a result of this, Kubrick even attempted to get the film banned itself

However, the flaw in this theory is that people respond to the media in different ways. So Man A will believe that it is a woman's job to do the washing up after watching Bree Van de Kamp on an episode of Desperate Housewives- but Man B might think 'Hey, that's really awful that woman need to do all the housework- I'm going to do the ironing for my girlfriend when I get home'. The hyperdermic syringe theory sees all of the audience as a mass, and not as individuals.

The Three Choices

Short Film:
+Long duration (more 'time' to play with)
-A social message needs to conveyed.
-Hard to pull off.
-A member of the group must be competent in script writing.
-Copyrighted music is banned.

Teaser Trailer:
+Short script
+Many different genres to choose from.
-Despite only showing small sections of the film, you need to know exactly what is going to happen.
-Copyrighted music is banned.


Music Video:
+Shots can be recycled.
+The narrative is already in place from the lyrics.
+Copyrighted can be used.

It's good that our school selects Film as it's option as it plays to our strengths as a group as me and Dora are both performing art students. For the above reasons we've decided to choose the music video option, as it allows us to use our directing and creative skills within the guideline of an already set narrative.

Personal Targets

From my AS year, I have learnt that I need to improve my time management skills. Even though everything worked out in the end, and I achieved a good grade and create successful product- everything seemed to be done in a mad rush before hand in day. To counteract this, this year, I'm going to make sure I plan everything I do- and aim for 10 blog entries every month to suggest consistent progress though out the course.

I had a little trouble using iMovie and generally issues with technology were my main problem. However, this year we're using Adobe PremierPro which I have experience of using from GCSE, where I achieved an A* grade because I felt at ease with the programs we were using in the editing process. Although I have used APP before, I'm going to do some extra reading on the program so I can make full use the effects available to us. I'm also going to take a camera out on every 'shoot' so we can document the creation of our project as it happens.

Hand in date is probably going to be at the beginning of May- so we have nearly the whole year to create an amazing end project and a detailed production process.