G325 SECTION A - Theoretical Evaluation of Production

G325: Sec A: Theoretical Evaluation of Production

 

By Elliot Hogan

Looking at my previous work on my AS blog, I can see in detail how my skills have developed even though I have only been studying media for a short amount of time – 10 weeks. When starting my AS media blog, I was unaware of the technology available to me that I could associate with blogger and this prevented me from allowing my blog to be fun and interactive for my peers and the of course the examiner.

I used to treat blogger as a place purely to write extortionate amounts of information, almost in an essay form, but blogger isn’t meant to be used for that. Blogger is for short, but interactive posts showing the examiner that you understand what is expected of you in order to get the maximum marks possible. I started to use many images and videos to back up and to also show that I’m furthering my knowledge in the specific sector of media I was studying. Due to the layout of blogger you have to plan and evaluate how the images you use are going to relate and more to the point – fit on the page you’re going to publish to show that your blog can be creative, yet clean.

Many websites and other programs became available to me after I was told about them by my teacher and I began to explore into them further, as perfectly reasonable interactive ways to show different tasks on my blog. Without the use of these websites, my blog would be relatively boring and un interactive which wouldn’t have shown my full capability of using modern technology, which is vital when trying to impress the examiner and getting full marks on each post.

The websites that I began to discover and use were, Prezi, Slideshare and Scoop.it. These websites have also introduced me to further articles that are associating with the work I’m doing, whether it’s in my AS or A2 course.

Prezi, is an interactive presentational tool that allows anyone to create an account and show their work in a fun and slick way, to impress the examiner with your knowledge of modern technology. I have only used Prezi a number of times, but it is a great way to show work, whilst making it look professional but fun. This use of digital technology is exceptionally important to show on my blog, as it allows the examiner to look through my in detail work, but in a brief way, due to the nature of presentation of Prezi.

Slideshare is very similar to Prezi as it is a presentational tool to show your work. However, the difference to Prezi is that you cannot start a new presentation via the website, you must make it prior to putting it online and then upload it directly to the website and then make as many changes as you what interactively. You must prefer the document, on Microsoft Word or Powerpoint. Although, this is quite a ‘normal’ way to present your work, on the actual Slideshare website, you can make interactive changes to the document and make it look much more attractive to the examiner.

Scoop.it is a website I have only recently discovered and it allows you to ‘scoop’ different articles onto one page that you create yourself, creating an almost ‘magazine like’ internet page that looks attractive and is an easy read for the examiner. Scoop.it is especially good because it allows you to delve in deeper to different articles that it personally recommends on the basis of what you have already scooped. This website is great way for me to discover new data and also include it on my blog, however, you only have a certain amount of scoops to use before you have to pay for the service and therefore I find that I use Slideshare and Prezi more, to get work done in an attractive way.

I have discovered many theorists during my time studying media and it has enhanced my work greatly and has given me many references to back up my work when I’ve tried to explain something but had no evidence to back it all up. Learning about theorists such as Theodore Adorno, and Richard Dyer, have allowed me especially to go further into the meaning and detail of the song we are using for our music video – Californication by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. This has been greatly helpful and shows my understanding of the lyrics and song title itself, as well as the meanings behind the song. 








SECTION A (B) ANALYSE ONE PRODUCTION IN RELATION TO GENRE 

LOOK AT YOUR OWN ANSWER TO EVALUATION Q.1 ON CODES AND CONVENTIONS

PETE FRASER :'THIS ONE INVOLVES SOME REFERENCE TO THEORY AND ONLY ONEPIECE OF WORK, ASKING YOU TO STEP BACK FROM IT AND THINK ABOUT IT ALMOST AS IF SOMEONE ELSE HAD MADE IT- WHAT IS KNOWN AS CRITICAL DISTANCE.' 

My A2 Production was a cross-media product composed of a music video of the track Californication for the American indie rock band the Red Hot Chilli Peppers to sell their album. As part of this task, I also produced a carefully tailored digipack design for the album and a magazine advert which would create awareness of the product. In short, I used codes that would maximize all parts of the production as a promotional tool to sell the album and promote the band: exactly what the music industry expects.
 

The music video will employ a variety of genre codes to spark new audience interest, reassure committed  fans and withstand repeated viewings.

My music video treatment reflects both research into genre conventions and visual codes that reflect the band's identity. For me, of overriding importance was the need to convey to audiences the band's genre: The Red Hot Chilli Peppers are an indie rock American band who are globally successful and with the song Californication they are focusing on how the public and their listeners stereotype people from California as being severely materialistic and image obsessed, due to the vast amounts of money they can squander without even thinking about it.

They have a mainstream appeal based on lyrics that are easy to follow, as the majority of their songs tell a story, with this mainly being about, the materialism that is associated with Californians and there ways of life. Therefore, our treatment reflected this because we try to make our music video follow like a story, and reflect upon the materialism that is portrayed in the original music video by the Chilli Peppers. Here, we use the lyrics of the song, to create our story, ‘pay your surgeons very well, to break the spell of aging’. For example, for this line, we have the image of a young girl playing around with her face, as she dreams and hopes for one day she will be able to have plastic surgery.      

This is a clear example of the convention of illustrating the lyrics with the visuals.  

The song 'Californication' focuses on the darker side of Hollywood. The song focuses on the deterioration of society and how 'plastic' and 'fake' the world is, much like Hollywood - according to the Peppers. The RHCP's started their band together in Hollywood and therefore have a strong understanding of the people and culture's in Hollywood.

Many of the lyrics continue to explain about the plastic unrealistic image that Hollywood portrays and the young forever image it sells to young people. 

For example:
"Little girls from Sweden dream of silver screen quotations." - Becoming famous.

"Pay your surgeon very well to break the spell of aging" - The Hollywood 'young' image.

"And buy me a star on the boulevard, It's Californication." - Dreaming of endless possibilities.

"Space may be the final frontier but it's made in a Hollywood basement." - The image that Hollywood sells is manufactured and fake. 

Theodore Adorno shares the same views as the song Californication about the manufacturing of cultures and the inappropriate images and promises it expresses. Adorno said that the culture industries produce 'unsophisticated' products that replace critical art forms which then makes people forget about the important things such as the question of social life and the meaning of it altogether. He also said that people are too materialistic and like things purely because of how much they cost, or if everyone else has one.

Andrew Goodwin observes ('Dancing In The Distraction Factory') that the visuals may provide illustration or amplification of the lyrics, or there may be disjuncture. As our band is indie rock, we wanted the video to be mainstream, and for the lyrics to relate to what was on screen. Although, the lyrics don’t reflect the visuals precisely  every time, they do have some correlation to what’s on screen and this allowed us to make what we wanted out of our video, which was to create a story that the viewers could follow, whilst enjoying the song, as well as understanding the deeper meanings to the song.

We included both front stage and backstage footage: we observed the convention of polished public stage performance, complete with close-ups on the guitarists and lead vocalist, which is essential in building the brand and promoting the star (Richard Dyer), providing authentication of skill through lip synching and the chance for keen fans to see their stars in close-up, building relationships, and allowing them to engage with their heroes. In these scenes, we followed genre conventions of bright stage lights, some canted angles to suggest movement and dynamism, and a lot of cutting between performers to convey exuberance and cohesion: the band as a successful group.

However, we also intercut the performance shots with the back stage story (Erving Goffman's) where we see the band and the stories associating with the members of the band, such as the different places where they all hang out and socialise with each other, as well as the different fashion senses that they all portray. This was shown in our stop motion animation part of our music video, which shows a different snapback hat on each person at a different angle, to reflect the different angles in which each band member views life, and this is further pushed upon the audience with the environment set around them.

Therefore, this narrative was very different - if you can call it narrative, because I would support Heidi Peeters' view that narrative in music video is much more about building the emotional environment surrounding the band or star and thereby making connections with the audience than about plot or interpreting lyrics. For Peeters, this ability to connect the band to the audience is the KEY GENRE CONVENTION: 'One would be surprised at how the majority of theorists still consider music videos to be visualizations of a song. While they may seem discontinuous .., the shots (in music videos)are highly connected through the image of the star.” “The star promotes the phenomenon of identification, a process by which viewers become attached to a star, ranging fromemotional affinity limited to the context of the movie theatre to projection, by which fans try to become their idols through imitating speech, movements and consumer patterns.' 

To conclude, I made a conventional treatment. That is, I showed both the public and private face of the band to be one seamless whole. Both narrative treatment and cinematography show this:  I created a Utopian world of which the star seems to be the instigator, as claimed by Richard Dyer'sEntertainment and Utopia.  The world of the band, the place where they hang out, practise, play and chill out, is depicted as a video diary of friends enjoying working and playing together. I agree with Peeters that “Narrativity does not seem to be an absolute necessity within the medium. The fact that music videos in this sense are primarily poetic does not mean that clips never contain narrativity. Most music videos do develop a storyline, embedded within its poetic structure and some clips even contain introductory story sequences or non-musical narrative sequences inserted within the video number but "outside" its musical score. Narrative in clips becomes a device to structure the poetic clip world and make it more accessible and recognizable to the viewer.”