Question 1B genre

Genre theory attempts to understand how meaning is communicated through producers to audience by challenging and conforming to codes and conventions of a particular category. I will be applying a range of theories to the Indie Pop music video Please Don't Say You Love Me by artist Luna May.

Genre in its most basic definition can be explained as a style or category of art, literature, or music. 'Genre' originates from the French word for 'kind' or 'class'. Steve Neal claims that genres are 'instances of repetition and change' and are therefore fluid and active.

Please Don't Say You Love me conforms to O'sullivans genre theory that 'the same text can apply to different genres'. This particular video fits in the 'Indie Pop' genre. One way that this music video conforms to genre conventions is through its use of a combination of performance, narrative and star image (Goodwin). A mid close up, from a slight low angle of Luna on a garden swing, playing guitar reflects amplification of the lyrics. Furthermore, a mid-close up, two shot of  Luna and fictitious partner 'Cam' walking through a city park portrays and illustration of the lyrics. Amplification and illustration are two features identified by Andrew Goodwin in his music video theory and the relationship between audio and visuals. Another way that genre has been manipulated is shown in the way that the visuals semantically illustrate the lyrics as opposed to a literal representation. This is a convention of the Indie Pop genre.

Another way in which the music video conforms to the conventions of its genre is seen by its use of natural and abstract mise en scene/setting to represent the protagonist. This s exemplified by the mid shot, from a slight low angle, taken from a loose frame, showing Luna standing infront of a derelict, but scenic building with wildlife in the background. Barry Grant suggests that 'within a genre, you see familiar and recognisable characteristics'. This is reflected through this example in Please Don't Say You Love Me. It also acts as a cultural signifier (Williamson) which allows the target audience to engage with the music video, by reflecting features and characteristics which are familiar to followers of the Indie Pop genre.

However, Please Don't Say You Love Me also challengers genre conventions. Many Indie Pop music videos uses filters to represent a certain idea to the viewer, such as the age in which the video is set, or whether the video has positive or negative connotations. This is seen in many of Lana Del Ray's videos, where a filter is applied, giving it a much older feel. Buckingham suggests in his genre theory that 'genres are open to change and negotiation.' This is reflected by the absence of this convention in Please Don't Say You Love Me.

In conclusion, genre theory is particularly useful when addressing a mass audience. It allows conventions and cultural signifiers to be manipulated to allow a target audience to engage with a media product. It also gives the producers a starting point on how to build their productions using several key features of a genre, but also allows for creativity when deferring from some of the typical genre conventions.

Question 1A & 1B

Types of Research:

1. Primary = First hand E.G: Textual analysis, audience feedback, questionnaires
2. Secondary = Work on codes and conventions of text, use of theory

MAGAZINE

MUSIC VIDEO

Questions 1 a & 1b from laurenamyharriman

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Black Mirror

The series by Charlie Brooker for channel 4 is an incredibly astute insight into the realities of modern life. The episode 15 Million Merits in particular, I feel, really exhibits how the media is currently being thrown at us constantly. It is set in a world where virtuality is the new reality, everyone has a virtual self in the virtual world which they can buy new clothing, hairstyles and accessories for. People are forced to ride exercise bikes every day whilst playing virtual games in order to power some external world that is never really seen. It is their duty to do so, as well as their source of income (credits) which are charged for the most simple of tasks such as cleaning one's hands. Their rooms are cubes constructed from monitors which ceaselessly play adverts, varying from items which they can now purchase (materialism and mass marketing at its most grotesque) for their virtual self, to porn channels exploiting new young meat. Brooker’s creation is definitely worth watching and I believe illustrates Adorno’s and Baudrilard’s prophetic views that media is a malevolent controller of the masses, as well as the detrimental effects of consumerism. Full episode - Black Mirror - 15 Million Credits. The relevance of Brooker's artistic social commentary is suppported by Snipp-Walmsley's statement "Through internet chat rooms and discussion groups, we can create and remould our virtual selves, promoting an image that frequently has little basis in reality; through twenty-four hour news services we are bombarded with information to the point where the representation becomes more important than the events being represented" (Simulations and the loss of the 'real' In Waugh 2006:413).

Question 1B: Audience

"A production's success is determined by its audience"

The coursework production I have chosen to talk about is the music video 'Please Don't Say You Love Me', by fictitious artist Luna May. Our video had the dominant mode of address of a young (16-24) female audience. Our main intentions for Luna were to make her a relatable, fun loving and outgoing character with whom our audience could form a bond with.

We created our dominant mode of address using several features of mise en scene such as stylistic choices E.G: clothing (Young & Indie) and the setting (naturalistic) we used, which linked to our chosen genre. From this we were able to create a music video specialised in addressing a particular demographic, which is proven to more effective. By reaching out to a specific audience, our music was capable of higher successes, creating the preferred response in the reader.

Morley's view of dominant, oppositional and negotiated reading was a particularly important factor to consider when looking at our audience during the production of our music video. As the producers of the video, we intended to create a preferred view of enjoyment and entertainment created by using a relatable and fun loving character. We did this by using lots of close ups of Luna with warm facial expressions & direct address by using direct eye shots, engaging the audience. The storyline/ narrative contained some emotional content, so we had to be careful that we didn't get an oppositional reading. Particularly because we had a young, vulnerable female audience, the video (a love story) could have provoked oppositional emotional responses (sadness created by the memories that may have arisen from the video). Therefore, we tried to keep the video subtle and use a 'happy ending' (genre convention) which would prevent these oppositional readings from occurring.

Our music video links most closely with Maslow's theory and the hierarchy of needs for uses and gratifications. We identified a highly active audience, mainly due to social contexts. A young, female audience would want a character that was identifiable and that they could relate to.Young females are particularly active with their use of media in the present day through platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. This is why we created Luna as we did. We wanted to create a response of diversion, identity and social interaction in our video which would allow our audience to engage with the music video. If this was successful then so would be our music video.

The enthographic model of audience interaction was also helpful in the creation of our music video. We chose to publish 'Please Don't Say You Love Me' by Luna May on YouTube. Female's are particularly active on YouTube, due to the huge scope of videos accessible from make-up tutorials to parodies surrounding the issues young girls face. By addressing the technologies our audience engaged with, this allowed us to publish our video to a format most suitable to our audiences needs, therefore increasing the potential success of our product.

In conclusion, our video focusses much more on the individual needs of our audience members as a opposed to the mass audience. We question the validity of Blumer's view. Maybe twenty years ago, aiming our product at mass audience would have been more appropriate yet due to the development of technologies, where we can now have our own handheld devices, aiming a music video at an individual audience as opposed to a mass one is much more appropriate. I do agree with the above quote, however I believe that it is not the audience who shape success but the way a production targets itself at a preferred, dominant audience which determines the successes of a production.

Photoshop Tools

Rectangular Marquee Tool (M)
Use this tool to make selections on your image, in a rectangular shape. This changes the area of your image that is affected by other tools or actions to be within the defined shape. Holding the [Shift] key while dragging your selection, restricts the shape to a perfect square. Holding the [Alt] key while dragging sets the center of the rectangle to where your cursor started.

Move Tool (V)
Use this tool to, well, move things. Usually you use it to move a Layer around after it has been placed. Hold the [Shift] key to limit the movements to vertical/horizontal.

Polygon Lasso Tool (L)
Ok, this should be the Lasso Tool, but I use the Polygon Lasso a lot more often. Use this to draw selections in whatever shape you would like. To close the selection, either click on the beginning point (you’ll see the cursor change when you’re on it), or just double-click. When holding the [Ctrl] key, you’ll see the cursor change, and the next time you click, it will close your selection.

Magic Wand Tool (W)
Use this to select a color range. It will select the block of color, or transparency, based on wherever you click. In the Options Bar at the top, you can change the Tolerance to make your selections more/less precise.

Crop Tool (C)
The Crop Tool works similarly to the Rectangular Marquee tool (see above if you have no short-term memory). The difference is when you press the [Enter/Return] key, it crops your image to the size of the box. Any information that was on the outside of the box is now gone. Not permanently, you can still undo.

Slice Tool (K)
This is used mostly for building websites, or splitting up one image into smaller ones when saving out. It’s kind of an advanced tool, and since you’re in here for the basics, we’ll kind of skip over it. Kinda makes you mad I made you read all that for nothing, huh?

Healing Brush Tool (J)
This is a really useful tool. Mildly advanced. You can use this tool to repair scratches and specs and stuff like that on images. It works like the Brush tool (see below). You choose your cursor size, then holding the [Alt] key, you select a nice/clean area of your image. Let go of the [Alt] key and paint over the bad area. It basically copies the info from the first area to the second, in the form of the Brush tool. Only, at the end, it averages the information, so it blends.

Brush Tool (B)
This is one of the first tools ever. It’s what Photoshop is based off of. Well, not really, but it’s pretty basic. It paints one your image, in whatever color you have selected, and whatever size you have selected. There’s a lot of options for it, but this is basic, so you don’t get to learn them. Ha.

Clone Stamp Tool (S)
This is very similar to the Healing Brush Tool (see above). You use it the exact same way, except this tool doesn’t blend at the end. It’s a direct copy of the information from the first selected area to the second. When you learn to use both of these tools together in perfect harmony, you will be a Photoshop MASTA! Not really, it’s just less irritating.

History Brush Tool (H)
This tool works just like the Brush Tool (see above) except the information that it paints with is from the original state of your image. If you go Window>History, you can see the History Palette. The History Brush tool paints with the information from whatever History state is selected.

Eraser Tool (E)
This is the anti-Brush tool. It works like an eraser (duh) and erases whatever information wherever you click and drag it. If you’re on a Layer, it will erase the information transparent. If you are on the background layer, it erases with whatever secondary color you have selected.

Gradient Tool (G)
You can use this to make a gradiation of colors. Gradiation doesn’t appear to be a word, but it makes sense anyway. It creates a blending of your foreground color and background color when you click and drag it. Like a gradient.

Blur Tool (R)
The Blur tool is cool. It makes things blurry. Click and drag to make things blurry. The more you click and drag, the blurrier things get.

Dodge Tool (O)
This tool isn’t as crappy as the car brand. It’s actually used to lighten whatever area you use it on. As long as it is not absolute black. Absolute black won’t lighten.

Path Selection Tool (A)
You use this tool when working with paths. Since this is all about the basics, I won’t go into details. It’s related to the Pen Tool (see below) though.

Horizontal Type Tool (T)
It makes type. Or text. Or whatever you want to call it. You can click a single point, and start typing right away. Or you can click and drag to make a bounding box of where your text/type goes. There’s a lot of options for the Type Tool. Just play around, it’s fairly straight-forward.

Pen Tool (P)
I mentioned this tool above. It’s for creating paths, in which you would use the Path Selection Tool to select the path. Paths can be used in a few different ways, mostly to create clipping paths, or to create selections. You use the tool by clicking to add a point. If you click and drag, it will change the shape of your path, allowing you to bend and shape the path for accurate selections and such.

Rectangle Tool (U)
By default it draws a Shape Layer in the form of a rectangle. It fills the rectangle with whatever foreground color you have selected. It’s pretty complicated, don’t hurt yourself with this one.

Notes Tool (N)
Like post-it notes, but digital. You can use this tool to add small little note boxes to your image. These are useful if you’re very forgetful or if you’re sharing your Photoshop file with someone else. I’m pretty sure it only works with .PSD files.

Eyedropper Tool (I)
This tool works by changing your foreground color to whatever color you click on. Holding the [Alt] key will change your background color.

Hand Tool (T)
You can really make short work of your job with the Hand Tool. It’s for moving your entire image within a window. So if you’re zoomed in and your image area is larger than the window, you can use the Hand Tool to navigate around your image. Just click and drag. You can get to this tool at any time when using any other tool by pressing and holding the [Spacebar].

Zoom Tool (Z)
Pretty obvious what this tool does. It allows you to zoom into your image. Don’t be dumb, it doesn’t actually change the size of your image. Hold the [Alt] key to zoom out. Holding the [Shift] key will zoom all of the windows you have open at the same time. Double-click on the Zoom Tool in the palette to go back to 100% view.

BONUS!!
These are your color boxes. Foreground (in the front) and Background (in the back). Click on either one to bring up the color select dialog box.

Post Modern Music

Miley Cyrus

Miley Cyrus is an American singer song writer who has been in the public eye since a young age.

Born in Nashville, Tennessee, the daughter of a famous country musician, Miley incorporates music from her roots with a combination of Pop on many of her albums, two genres of music which do not conventionally fit.  

Cyrus became an icon for young girls around the globe after the success of her well known teen sitcom, however many were surprised to see a drastic change in her appearance and persona, starting with the release of her 2010 album 'can't be tamed'. From here on out, Cyrus created increasing controversy in the public eye surrounding her appearance and edgy behaviour. 

The public were surprised by Miley's drastic change from the 'good girl' image to a 'rebellious teen'. 

Miley goes from writing innocent and relatable songs in her first albums, to ones focusing on the subject of recreational drug use, extremely controversial considering many of her fans consist of young, teenage girls.

Inter textual References

• La di da di- Slick Rick & Doug E Fresh. Cyrus' track 'we can't stop' features a sample from Slick Rick & Doug E Fresh's New School Hip Hop & Beat boxing track La di da di. This is incorporated into Cyrus' pop single. This is an example of bricolage, as Cyrus is using sample's from different genres and incorporating them into her tracks. 

• Dirty- Christina Aguilera: Christina Aguilera was cited as possible inspiration for the sexualization of Cyrus' 'We can't stop' music video. The infamous 'slut drop' has been seen in many contemporary artists work, such as Beyonce and Cyrus and is said to have gained popularity from Aguilera's 2002 single. 

• Lady GaGa- Just Dance. Cyrus' video was also cited to have similarities to Lady Gaga's 2008 single, Just Dance which follows a similar story line and also includes references to sex and recreational drug use.

• SMS- 1980's hip-hop inspired track - Inspired by female rap trip salt-n-pepa. 

Simulacrum

Miley cyrus' music hasn't just been released under one name. However, she has a variety of records branching from her TV programme Hannah Montanna. She has released albums under the names of Hannah Montana, Miley Stewart and Miley Cyrus. All three characters represent a pop artist, so who is the real Miley Cyrus? Furthermore, in recent years, Cyrus has changed her public image from that of 'disney sweetheart' to a 'teenage breakaway', we do not know if this is her real personality or whether she is simply building up a controversial character to sell her music and gain public attention.

Is this image real or is it simply a put-on performance to help her sell her albums? 

In Hannah Montanna, Cyrus plays two characters, Miley Stewart and Hannah Montanna. We do not know if Miley Stewart is a representation of the real Miley or whether Miley Stewart is actually merely a fictional character who has no resemblance to the real Miley. This is made increasingly difficult to distinguish as her real-life father, Billy Ray Cyrus also plays himself in the TV programme. We do not know whether this reflects that Miley is actually playing herself or whether Billy Ray is also playing a fictional character simply acting as his character under his real name. 

Pastiche 

Miley's Instagram account consists of a variety of strangely edited and photo shopped images which to the majority of people make no sense. However, Cyrus may actually be using this media platform to make a mockery of other artists (pastiche) or to pay reference to other artists. She also pays homage to inanimate objects such as pizza on her page as is seen in some of the images below. Most noticeably, Kanye West seems to appear in many of her photo shopped images. Kanye, a renowned Hip Hop and RnB artist may be prolific to Cyrus, seen as her latest album, Bangerz is meant to feature samples from the Hip Hop genre and is a mash up of Hip Hop, Country and Pop. Cyrus is also thought to have created a remix of Yeezus track, 'Black Skinhead' with Kanye West in recent years. This is quite a drastic change, with Miley starting her career writing and performing Pop music based on a fictional TV programme for a young, teenage audience to recording explicit Hip Hop tracks with the likes of Jay Z. It seems by the looks of these photos that she is making a mockery of the artist and Hip Hop, by the way she is combining a bricolage of Country, Hip Hop and Pop on her album. 

 Cyrus takes something innocent, E.G: Teddy Bears and turns it into something more mischievous. In several of her videos and performances we see dancing, twerking teddy bears placed around images of drug use and drinking. This is another aspect of her work which makes her ever more controversial. This idea has also been used in other forms of mainstream media, such as in the film Ted, where something that is meant to be innocent is turned into something crude and quite inappropriate. Is Cyrus trying to create a new style by doing this? 

Songs that have sampled tracks from Cyrus' album Bangerz include: 

DJ Earworm- Living the Fantasy-From both We Can't Stop & Wrecking ball

Pokemon-Medley Theme 

Vee Tha Rula, Tidal wave features Samples from Cyrus' Wrecking Ball

Cedric Gervais' remix of Adore You

Creation 

Cyrus has written her own tracks, she has also co-produced several of her songs, as well as several being written for her and herself simply performing them. 

Postmodernism and Music V3