Case Studies

The films and tv programmes i will be looking into as Case Studies for collective identity are:-

Atonement
This is England
Control
White Girl
Skins
Coronation Street

Collective Identity Notes

How do the contemporary media represent nations, regions and ethnic/social/collective groups of people in different ways?

To what extent is human identity increasingly 'mediated'?

• International cinema
• TV drama and documentaries
• Child as symbol of collecitve identity specifically when a country or culture is in conflict
• gender
• ethnicity

Ideas for TV case studies

• childhood and adolescence
• World's strictest parents
• Bratcamp
• Appropriate soap operas (Eastenders, Coronation Street)
• Appropriate TV dramas (White girl, Skins)
• Teenage mums
• Panorama: Social services and more...
• Underage and pregnant

Focus on representation of ideology through construction of specific social groups. Investigate the directors politics. Close reference to mise-en-scene.

Investigate directors ideology for British texts, ask yourself what it means to be British, how does the text represent Britishness? British texts tend to focus on social class.

Terraced house - a convention of British social realism.

How do you construct your collective identity?

• family
• peers
• social class
• religion
• ethnicity
• community
• school
• social groups
• clubs
• e-community
• online gaming sites
• music taste
• clothing
• gender
• job
• popular culture

Think about how media communicates idealised images (magazines, tv programmes). Celebrity obsession offers idealised images. Think about who we identify with. An example of explicit collective identity is at football/rugby/cricket matches/olympics.

WHITE GIRL

social class -> demographic D -> region -> northern -> Bradford

British values that keep being pushed

• family
• community
• aspirations
• education
• religion/spirituality
• respect

Focus on the British working class and how the representation of the British working class has changed during the last 50 years

• Saturday Night Sunday Morning - what is important to Arthur Seaton? - work, women, family, pub, friendship
• Films from about 1990 onwards tend to focus on a crisis in male identity/masculinity (The Full Monty) - The closure of the manufacturing industry in the 1980's by the Thatcher government has put 1000's of blue collar workers out of a job. Through a job was how men established their identity, without it their identity is lost.

EASTENDERS - How Britishness is represented

• Queen Vic
• Cafe
• Argi Bargi
• Minute Mart
• Allotments
• Terraced houses
• "Underworld" - factory
• Community -> reminiscent of 1950's community -> everybody knows everybody -> no longer exists -> audience appeal -> nostalgia

White Girl, This is England, Sommerstown -> no community -> face of contemporary Britain -> characturs find their identity through old fashioned values/aspirations/sense of community loyalty. White girl = religion. This is England = social group (skinheads). Sommerstown = friendship.

In British social realist films the stealing of a book is a convention. It indicates the protagonists hinger for knowledge. Note White Girl, Kes, Billy Elliot.

Defining Target Audience

On brainstorming in my own time without influence of any other input these are the kind of traits i imagined the target audience for my artist would have:-



This is only a rough idea of what my audience profile would be, but i can clearly take from this that my target audience is mainly female orientated, this is something to take in to consideration.

In creating this brainstorm i have no concrete information to go on to say that this audience profile could possibly exist. Therefore through the use of http://www.findyourtribe.co.uk/ I took the survey putting myself in the place of my imagined target audience taking into account the traits that I established in my mind map above.

Upon taking the survey 'FindYourTribe' calculated me as a 'Rah'. A brief video summing up the 'Rah' tribe is shown here:


The FindYourTribe survey is a great way of separating people into labels or 'tribes' which is helpful in detailing my audience profile, but the only problem is they are not completely accurate and some aspects of the tribes don't necessarilly fit in with what I feel would be my target audience. So on http://www.uktribes.com/ I decided to look further into what classifies a person as a 'Rah' and as I suspected it did have some very similar, in fact identical characteristics to what I had jotted on my mind map, but I also felt it was slightly too stereotypical and narrow-minded especially with the idea of Rah's being aristocratic and those attending grammar schools.

I feel Ruth Bewsey is an artist that admittedly would appeal mainly to the type of audience described in the 'Rah' category but i also feel she is slightly more widely accessible than that to people who aren't so into high society and social events, and not necessarily middle to upper class. Therefore on the home page of http://www.uktribes.com/ I used the 'Roll over a tribe to explore box'.





When I touched the mouse over the 'Rah' tribe it linked to 'Townies' and 'Indie Kids', this shows that Rah's have the closest links with these two tribes. Upon looking into further detail about these other two tribes I did find some characteristics that I felt fit much more comfortably in to my potential target audience showing that my artist isn't restricted to only one demographic.

Rahs

View more presentations from amynolan.

On the UKTribes website is a detailed description of the Rah's

http://www.uktribes.com/?p=tribe&id=17&article=1

Townies

View more presentations from amynolan.

Like with the Rah page, UKTribes has a page describing the Townie styles and trends

http://www.uktribes.com/?p=tribe&id=15

Indie Kids

View more presentations from amynolan.

There is also a page dedicated to the Indie Kids and their lifestlyes

http://www.uktribes.com/?p=tribe&id=15

Target Audience Profile

View more presentations from amynolan.

Question 4: How Did You Use New Media Technologies in the Construction and Research, Planning and Evaluation Stages

All stages of the creation of my final media products in both AS and A2 media have been published online on blogger.com, which is a part of the Google enterprise. The advantage of using an online blog to publish all my work including research, planning, development of the construction process and evaluation is that my work is part of the web 2.0 community meaning that I have the possibility for the online community to access my work and I can achieve instant feedback and have a closer producer/audience relationship. This way I am constantly learning how my target audience perceive my work and constructive feedback/comments gives me the chance to take on their criticisms in order to go back and edit/update my blog posts. This is another advantage as by having all my work documented online I can access it from any computer anywhere in the world and be able to work on my posts without limitation; also the quality of the work doesn’t get damaged or lost as easily as it would if documented all on paper for example.

Other online sites I have used in publishing my work are YouTube and SlideShare. Through YouTube once again I am able to publish my finished product online for the YouTube community to be able to view from anywhere in the world with the chance to comment on my video, again giving me instant feedback and insight into my target audience. I can also embed my YouTube videos onto my blog making all my work centred in one place creating one whole package for the online community to view without having to travel around the internet through different links to find different parts of my work. With SlideShare I am able to upload Powerpoint presentations onto the internet and once again embed the presentation on to my blog; this gives variance to the way I am presenting my information, instead of always being simply typed essays on to my blog. It also makes the blog a more interactive experience for the users.

In the construction of my ancillary texts I used Dafont.com and Sxc.hu which are websites that contain unrestricted un-copyrighted high quality fonts, images and flourishes for me and anybody with access to the internet to download for our own personal use. Once downloaded I am free to edit the fonts, images however I like as the fact that they are unrestricted gives me the freedom to do whatever I wish with them. This is a fantastic way of creating a high quality amateur production that rivals the quality of expensive professional productions, although this does bring up the problem of no cost, no profit free content. Through the use of new media technologies and the accessibility of amateur productions, the future of professional productions could be threatened. If people can get similar products to what the professionals are making for free they aren’t going to be as willing to pay for the professional products that aren’t.

Whilst on the subject of high quality amateur productions there were a range of other new technologies that helped me to create my high quality main product and ancillary texts. For my ancillary texts the use of a 10mp digital SLR camera (Canon EOS 500D) gave me very high quality images that I could then go on to edit in Adobe Photoshop, an editing programme with an infinite amount of tools that can be used to create any image desired. I used tools such as layering, the magic brush tool, opacity alteration, the free transform tool, the eyedropper and paint bucket tool, the brightness/contrast tool, different filter tools and many more. The opacity tool helped me to create the sandy texture that every panel on my digipak has. Through the use of the eyedropper and paint bucket tools I have managed to keep the quality of my digipak to a high standard as they helped me keep the colour scheme constant throughout making sure the exact same shade of blue/yellow/brown was used on each panel. The free transform tool helped me to alter my flourishes so that they all looked unique and I avoided using the same ones over and over, this once again adds to the quality of the overall package and prevents the flourishes looking boring and over used.

Through the constant proliferation of digital software and hardware such as Photoshop and digital SLR cameras new products are coming out all the time making older yet perfectly proficient models very cheap and easily accessible once again adding to the idea that unprofessional productions can be of such a high quality. It also means anybody that wants to make an amateur video or image with access to the technology can easily come to grips with the software/hardware and grow in creativity and skill once again threatening the need for professional productions and people who work within this sector. To further back up this statement I can prove this through the technologies I used to create my thriller product and music video. For these I used a digital video camera (Canon MiniDv) that captures high quality moving images. It is lightweight with a relatively long battery life and is easy to carry around from location to location. Also I used the non-linear editing software Adobe Premier Elements, which much like Adobe Photoshop has a fantastic range of editing tools that with sufficient knowledge and practice can be used to make almost any effect desired. I used a wide range tools in the editing stage of my music video and although it took a long time and a lot of trial and error I managed to learn new skills and more about the software throughout the process. Tools I used included: the time stretch tool, resizing, the brightness/saturation tool, cross fades, advanced effects, the crop tool, titles and a lot more. Desired effects that I managed to create through these tools were the idea of panelling. With the use of the resizing tool and layering I could show three different sets of moving image in one frame which created this panelling effect. Another example is that through the use of time stretch I could make one clip fit into a desired time slot for instance the clip of the hand travelling down the banister would have been far too short to suffice on its own alongside a lyric unless I used the time stretch tool to slow it down to half speed. It also helped with speeding up the packing scene as without the time stretch tool this clip would have been far too long to use in the video and would have had to have been scrapped.

Finally, linking back to web 2.0 and the online community, through the fantastic reputation MySpace has built up for it’s unsigned band community I knew exactly where to go when I was told I needed to find an unsigned band to use for my music video. It’s not hard to know where to start when looking for unsigned bands on MySpace, on a famous bands page such as Jason Mraz there are plenty of similar unsigned bands in the comment section of the page often saying take a listen to our new track etc. And once again with the constant proliferation of new technologies these bands, even though being unsigned and unfunded, have access to the technologies that let them create high quality music tracks meaning it wasn’t hard at all for me to find an artist with music of a professional quality. Through the use of online network site MySpace I have managed to keep in touch with my artist giving her constant feedback on the work I am doing with her music, this once again shows how the online community brings together and personalises the producer/audience relationship and how much more personal online communities have made artist/audience relationships.
Although on the surface having access to these sites like Myspace and YouTube to create, produce and publish content seems like a great way to create cheap high quality products, we as a producer are not gaining the financial rewards that we could had we made the product from scratch. Effectively, Myspace is part of a conglomorate owned by Rupert Murdoch alongside media products: Fox TV, Sky TV, The Times and many others. (Equally, YouTube and blogger are the same, they are part of a conglomorate run by the owners of Google). Myspace is a new technology that creates a framework for the online public to take and build their content on, as we publish our new product onto the website it becomes a 'money maker' for them, the more popular the product gets the more 'hits' the site gets and the more hits the site gets the more money goes into the conglomorate's pocket. Originally in order for amateur filmmakers/musicians/etc to create the content they had to create the online vehicle but with Myspace and Youtube creating the vehicle for us they have made the process more accessible for amateurs making us feel more empowered as a producer to create high quality, high standard products that reach a large audience, this is clever as although it makes us feel more empowered in financial terms we are not. As Myspace and YouTube are simply websites that hold a framework and the users are making the content, the websites are very low maintanence therefore low cost to run as unlike 'The Times' they don't constantly have to update the website with new content, in a way we are the equivalent of the reporters and columnists of a newspaper, we are doing the graft and coming up with the stories but at the end of the month we aint getting no pay check!!
Why did Murdoch risk billions on buying these innovative new style sites when they didn't know whether the product would succeed or not?
Myspace was originally marketed as the main place for new unsigned bands, this attracted a young, creative and technologically savvy middle class demographic, and with the web 2.0 technology users could comment on each others products saying what they do and don't like about them, this gave a strong basis for the makers to learn who their target audience are and they immediately know where to market to and they can maintain the assurance that they are always targeting the right audience as trends change as they are constantly monitoring media consumption habits. The up to date interactive technology makes this an easy problem to tackle. Myspace's success and popularity has come from it's successful marketing to the right people which has led to them essentially monopolising the unsigned new music market, so although initially Myspace was a huge risk the pinpoint market focus has paid off and the popularity has led to them raking in the profits. Myspace was one of the first of these style websites to take the risk and in showing how successful it has been with the online community there has been a boom in online interactive networking sites and frameworks such as Bebo, Facebook, Twitter etc.

Final Pieces: Music Video and Ancillary Texts

MAGAZINE ADVERT

OUTSIDE RIGHT PANEL (FRONT COVER)

OUTSIDE CENTRE PANEL (TRACK LISTING)


OUTSIDE LEFT PANEL (THANK YOU's)

INSIDE RIGHT PANEL

INSIDE CENTRE PANEL

INSIDE LEFT PANEL

VIDEO OF ANCILLARY TEXTS

MUSIC VIDEO

Ancillary Texts - Work In Progress

These are the original images for my ancillary texts.

The first two images were taken up against the wall in the bedroom that was used in the bedroom scene within the music video. By using the same location for the music video and ancillary texts I am ensuring continuity, also this means there will be very similar lighting maintaining the same warm lighting effects in both the music video and ancillary texts. With this first image i flipped it vertically so that she was looking up to the left and used it as the right panel on the inside cover if the digipak.

The second image is located on the left hand panel for the inside cover. These would work as the two girls that frame the 'doodles' as shown in the planning/sketched ideas for the digipak. In order to strengthen these images i played with the brightness, saturation and contrast of the two images. To smooth the facial detail and make it almost seem as though the image has been sketched i used the 'dust and scratches' filter with a raduis of 14 pixels. But so as to avoid losing the detail on the eyes, earrings and lips i used a combination of the selection tool and layering to copy the original versions of these areas of the image to an above layer so that they weren't affected by the 'dust and scratches' filter. Then to ensure good quality i used the eraser tool on different strengths to tidy up any visible changes in texture between the two sets of images. To further perfect the images and to make the girl look more 'perfect' i used the clone stamp tool to copy clear areas of skin over blemishes and the bags under her eyes. Finally in order to follow the plan I initially created I cropped the images slightly

so just over half her face was visible on each image.

The following two images were for use on the outside panels of the digipak. This image is the image to be used on the front cover. I have pulled away from the original plan for my front cover and back panel as I thought it would be a better idea to keep the locations the same as the locations in the video for continuity and to strengthen the Ruth Bewsey 'brand'.

Therefor I took this image with the the front cover of Tristan Prettyman's album 'Hello...x' in mind. I liked the idea of personalising the album to the audience through the simple placemement of artist

name and album title in the direction of the artists mouth. So i took this image ensuring that the main detail was on the right third so that there would be room to place the artist name and title along the left and centre thirds. In order to smooth the image and increase the quality i once again played with brightness, contrast and saturation and used the clone stamp tool to perfect the skin quality. I also used a light filter to bring out the detail on the artists hair and face and to also dim the background so that the artists face was a strong centre of focus.

The image with the inclusion of the guitar, amp and suitcase follows the initial sketch/plan. I wanted to include props used in the video so as to increase continuity, also the guitar is an iconic image that the target audience aspire to.

The lighting in the drama studio was fantastic and made the quality of this image really good. The only problem i encountered was that by taking the image side on the dimensions did not fit the required dimensions of the 12.4x12.4cm panel and i really needed the main detail to be on the right third of the image so that the 'thank you speech' could be shaped around the left of the image. Therefore to fix this issue i had to use the clone stamp tool to draw the background across to the left, this was tricky as I had to draw in some of the suitcase and there was a huge risk of this looking badly photoshopped and clearly not real, so it took a lot of time and effort but with a lot of tweaking i managed to make the canvas fit the dimensions without stretching the image or damaging the quality. In order to make sure that the shading and warmth of the image was the same as that of the front cover i once again had to alter brightness contrast and saturation slightly.

These images are scans of the original hand drawn images that were to be used on the CD and in the inside centre panel. Once scanned in i opened the images up in photoshop and cut out each individual picture into a new layer. Once each in a new layer i took a sample of the yellowish background colour from the right panel with the eyedropper tool and with the paint bucket tool i filled in the white areas with this, i left some areas white as it gave the images a varying texture. Once i had done this with each image i could copy the layers on to the blank canvas that i had for the centre third and through the use of the 'free transform' tool i could resize and play with the angle/perspective of each image until they were framed on the page in a way i liked. This was probably the most time consuming part of the digipak making process but when it was done i think it worked perfectly.

I also used the flower flourishes across each of the outside panels, i altered the colour/opacity of them to fit each panel as
i wanted. This created an ongoing theme to the digipak.
Finally on every panel i used a sandy texture and altered the opacity of the image and placed it on the top layer on each photoshop file for each panel. This gave the digipak an earthy texture and also emphasised the natural/beach theme created throughout.














For my magazine advert I used the image from the right inside panel of the digipak. In order for it to fit into A4 dimensions i cropped the image, taking away her shoulder and some of the negative space on the left third of the image. With this the girls face takes up the centre and right thirds of the image, leaving the left third to hold information. I also copied the sand texture onto the image to keep up continuity and make the advert aesthetically pleasing. On a new layer I copied the NME logo from the website and modified it to get rid of any white background around the logo using the magic selection tool. I also copied a white star off of the internet with a black outline and modified it using the paint bucket tool to make it a matching red to that of the NME logo. I then duplicated the star four times and spaced them equally apart cantred above the NME logo. Above this i placed a quote to appear as though it was from NME magazine saying 'An andgelic voice. Not to be missed' and 'OUT MARCH 10th'. For both sets of writing i used relatively plain fonts as I wanted them to appear neutral, easy to read and to not draw too much attention away from the main title. The black font colour against the sandy background popped out well and made the information very easy to read. I centred these two pieces of text to keep the layout neat and tidy. For the artist and album title i used the same font styles and colours used in the digipak. I placed them at the top of the picture and made the artist name the width of the A4 page, this way it captures the audiences attention. I then placed the album title underneath this but slightly smaller so as to avoid cramping the piece, also as it is quite a short title if i stretched it to the width of the advert it may look over stretched and unnatural. So i placed it below with the same size font as the artist name and centred it beneath so as to keep the balance even on each side and to further give an overall 'neat' feel to the advert.

Question 2: How Effective is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts

When creating my main product and ancillary tasks I wanted to be sure of creating a strong ‘brand’ image and clear genre for my target audience.

As the song ‘Sail Away’ has a folk/pop feel I wanted to follow the conventions of the folk genre in my music video taking into account artists such as Tristan Prettyman and Jason Mraz. Therefore in my music video I focussed on creating a positive representation for the female artist in the music video by avoiding voyeuristic angles and using colour schemes and outfits that give a ‘pure’ and ‘innocent’ representation which would attract an aspiring audience.

With my ancillary texts I wanted to follow the positive representation created in the music video, I also created a strong brand image by using locations, outfits and colour schemes similar to within the music video that create a strong visual link that the target audience can identify.

In my digipak I used photography that focussed on the artist. Three of the four images were close ups of the artists face, this way I am promoting the artist’s image heavily to the audience proving that image and representation is an important aspect to the target demographic. There are two sets of photographs taken in two different locations; one set in the drama studio and one set in the bedroom. These locations were both used in the video so this strengthens the visual link and continuity between the two texts. Furthermore in the studio images the artist is wearing the same outfit that she wears in the performance element of the video, and in one image she is also sitting on the amp holding the guitar and suitcase found in the music video.

In my ancillary texts I used a sandy texture to create an earthy feel and to make them more aesthetically pleasing. In combination with this I maintained a colour scheme of natural pastel blues and sandy yellows, especially with fonts and flourishes. This gives indication to the beach theme created in the lyrics of the song; also it creates a very natural style which reflects the genre.

My font choices for both the digipak and magazine advert were deliberate in creating a personal feel that the audience would appreciate as they would feel a personal connection to the artist. The fonts used are script-like to make it appear as though the artist has written them herself. On the left outside panel there is a thank you message in the script-like font, this is a technique Kt Tunstall used in her album ‘Eye to the Telescope’. By using this technique I am following the conventions of the folk/pop genre, this increases the chances of the ancillary texts appealing to the target audience as they are already proven successful techniques.

Another technique I used to further personalise the digipak was through the use of personal art presented as though it has been hand drawn by the artist. This technique has been proven successful by the album ‘We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things’ by Jason Mraz. I used drawings that once again fall into the beach category such as ice creams, seagulls and pebbles. This further reinforces continuity between the song, the video and the digipak and once again further personalises the digipak making it more appealing to the target audience.

On my magazine advert I created a comment plus five star rating from NME as NME covers a very broad range of artists and styles especially of the alternative genres. As folk is not a mainstream genre it is more likely to be recognised by an alternative ‘quirky’ music magazine. Also NME is a magazine that appeals to the target audience as they aspire to be ‘individuals’ and NME has the reputation of finding fresh new ‘individual’ artists and music styles such as Kate Nash, Friendly Fires etc.

I kept my magazine advert very minimalist by avoiding reels of text and using only one image being of the artists face. The image used is also found in the inside of the digipak; this once again increases continuity and links the three texts strongly together. I used a minimalist approach to tease the audience, it gives them little information but the aesthetically pleasing image will spur them to look further into the artist and her music.