A2; Conflicting Media Theories

I have chosen to study The Male Gaze (Mulvey) - the idea that media is shown in the eyes of a white heterosexual man. There is plenty of evidence such as through products like Coca Cola. The curves of the bottle are meant to reassemble a woman body - or at least how a man wishes a woman body to look like.
The Male Gaze is also shown in films such as James Bond where the woman is used mainly as an erotic object but has no real effect on the story line of the film itself.

However there are theories that conflict with these ideas. For example; The Female Gaze. The Female Gaze is the idea that media is shown through the eyes of a woman - something which is becoming slowly more popular. An example of this can be found in the children's animated film Madagascar 2. Gloria the hippo looks like you would expect a normal hippo too look, as do all the other female hippos. However the male hippo, Motto Motto, emerges out of the water with bushy eyebrows and a strong stomach.

http://youtu.be/_-4uV-CdT1o

Double page spread

Print; First Draft

Complete first draft of the print side of my coursework (including front cover and double page spread) made on Photoshop.

After Dark - Final Video

First draft at our completed media broadcast. This was made on Windows Movie Maker - we tried iMovie but it didn't support the format of our videos.


I did try to re-edit this however Movie Maker kept crashing when I opened it, if it would let me I would have added subtitles.


 

Potential Souvenir Magazine Cover

I used Photoshop to attempt a front cover for my souvenir magazine.

I used the burn tool too darken the sky and the landscape and the dodge tool to highlight all the characters on the cover. I researched some other souvenir magazines ( some for reality tv such as The X Factor) and found that a lot of them have "stickers" that say "first look" and "exclusive" on them so I added one too to intrigue an audience into buying it. The sticker and the triangle in the corner were both originally bright colours but I darkened them to go with the "thriller" genre of the show. As this is a new show I set the price low but it is more expensive than weekly magazines. I have also included a bar-code and both our logo for Silver Linings Productions (the company) and E4 (the channel it will air on) as they are the two institutions involved. The name of the show "After Dark" is rising upwards like the word "after" denotes and the slogan "What happens when the lights go out?" is used so an audience can recognize After Dark when they hear or see it. It can be seen as both a scary slogan as darkness connotes fear, and a comedic slogan as it sounds like a sexual innuendo. This shows both sides of the "comedy-thriller" genre.  

Photos for Print

On Wednesday, the After Dark group and I went back to our location to take photos for print. There are a few photos which I am particularly proud of:

The first is a group photo of the contestants from a high angle shot (looking down). The effect of this angle makes the contestants look smaller and more scared and to an audience it could look like the audience can easily be in control of them. The grave stones in the background help to set the scene.

The second picture is the complete opposite of the previous one. By having a low angle shot (looking up) it makes the contestants look more powerful as if they are ready to take on the challenges laid before them. It gives an audience a sense of fear and insecurity, who is psychologically dominated by the characters. This goes with the "thriller" side of our genre of  "comedy-thriller".  You can see part of the church in the background which is the location for our show. The tree also adds to the thriller side as it looks as it is looming over both the contestants and who ever is viewing the photo.

The next two pictures are similar however we have both sets of costume on as I have not decided which picture to use in my print yet however it will most likely be the first photo. By having a long shot of the hosts in the foreground and a very long shot of the contestants in the background, the audience is able to see every bit of us. It makes the hosts look more powerful and in control of the contestants who look smaller. However due to the audience being able to see our whole bodies it makes them feel like they are in control of everyone. A very long shot allows people to focus on the characters as well as to see what is in the background as well whereas the very long shot of the contestants is meant to give off a general impression of them as opposed to specific information, this could potentially leave an audience wanting to find out more. An audience will clearly be able to see the grave stones on either side and the Church in the background, allowing them to have an insight into what our reality program is about. Due to having all of this in one picture I believe it would make a good front cover picture to a magazine.

We also took some photos of the setting in case we wanted to use it as the background to our souvenir magazines. 

 

Finally we took individual pictures of characters in both their sets of costumes so you get an outline into their personalty's. Medium shots allow audiences to really focus on what is happening in the shot. I sorted out the costumes for the girls and my partner did the boy's costume. Check my post on Character Profiles (http://mediamademedoit.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/character-profiles.html) for information on each one.

Lucy Right is the fun (but sometimes annoying) character therefore she is wearing bright green trousers and has a giant cat on her t-shirt which some members of an audience could consider annoying and some could find cute and fun.

In her night clothes she looks fearless and ready to take on any challenge. 

The photo of her tripping up adds to the "comedy" side of our genre of "comedy-thriller"

Sienna Parnell is used to more of an upper-class society hence why she is in a floral buttoned blouse, simple blue skirt and has her hair tidied up into a bun. 

In her night clothes she looks as though she is above all of this, as if nothing is able to scare her, however in the show this may not actually be true.

Ashley Jenson is the main girl in our program. She is wearing the most short and revealing clothes and in our show is the most stupid therefore she is an archetype of blonde women in the media.

In her night clothes all she cares about is how she looks, she does not take winning very seriously as appearance is of the utmost importance to her. She is the type to get scared easily.

Our last contestant is Mason Cole. He is wearing blue which is a colour that is stereotypical as it tends to be associated with the gender of males.

He is laughing in his individual photo as his character is known for being a "class-clown". Unfortunately we had some issues with this actors costume as even though we constantly reminded him to bring different clothes to change into for the different pictures he still didn't, therefore the best we could do for the night photos was zip his coat up and try not to get his bottom half in it too much so it does not look as if he is wearing the same trousers. I am sure I can Photoshop his jacket to look darker in the second picture.

Of course I still need to Photoshop the background to look darker in all the photos where the contestants are wearing darker clothes as I have with the following pictures for the title sequence:

A before and after picture is available on this post:

 http://mediamademedoit.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/light-to-dark.html 

Of course I wont be able to include all these pictures but it's better to have taken a lot and chose from them later than not to have taken enough pictures.

Souvenir Magazine

Part of my brief is to write an article for a souvenir magazine. Recently I went to see David Tennant in a Shakespearean play called Richard II up in London and I bought a souvenir magazine for it. It cost me £4 however because our reality tv show is new and is not quite as sophisticated as a Shakespearean play, I think the price will be a little less (£2 or £3 maybe). The front of the magazine looks like this:

It consists of the title of the play, the author of the play, an image including the main character, and the two institutions involved (Barbican and RSC). The only thing missing that I would include is a bar-code label and a price, they did not include them because they sold them outside the theater by hand. 

The inside of the magazine consists of history on the play:

An interview on the play by two of the actors: 

Backstage photos:

Profiles on the cast:

And a lot more.

In my two page spread magazine I will include exclusive photos, character profiles and an interview and maybe a bit on the history of the Church - only two or three sentences though.

The magazine itself is made of card and stapled together in the middle. I might use the same material for my magazine as well. 

Diary Room

This is part of our Reality TV show that uses continuity to give the clip a more consistent flow. The non-diegetic sounds of the music are there to show the comedic side of the fight that the two contestants are having in the diary room, the non-diegetic music at the end is the theme music for our show, and there is also a non-diegetic sound of a voice over at the end. The only diegetic sounds are the voices of Ashley, Sienna and the caretaker. We were originally going to have the task (Ashley and Sienna in the woods) at the end of the diary room scene however the diary room scene did not flow as when I edited it together I had to keep cropping parts out from where the actors where laughing or had forgotten their lines therefore by adding the task scenes in between the diary room scene, it flowed a lot better and I found it made the whole scene a lot more comedic. The task scenes are in black and white as it is not happening at that present time they are talking in the diary room, it is reflecting on what will happen. Also the landscape was very bright when we filmed it and even when I turned the brightness down as low as it could on Movie Maker, it was still obvious that it was day time so using the research I had conducted a while ago about how to film in the dark, I used the black and white technique to make it imply that it is night time. The whole scene put together at the end was originally 1 and a half minutes long however the whole project is suppose to be two minutes long therefore I have cut a few lines out to make the length just 34 seconds. This worked to our advantage as we found the shorter the script was for the diary room, the more smoothly the scene went.

Diary Room and Voice Over

One of the most well-known reality TV shows is Big Brother. They have an iconic "Diary Room" which is now used in other popular reality shows such as I'm A Celebrity therefore our show will consist of one too. A place where people let out their true thoughts and feelings to the public or a place people go before they have to do a task. On Big Brother they also have a voice over as they do on many reality shows such as Come Dine With Me. We will also be including a voice over in our show.

Costume Research

I have researched the different clothes that people wear on Reality TV shows.

On the reality game show Britain's Got Talent, the hosts (Ant and Dec) they are both wearing smart casual clothes. They are not dressed to fancy which would make the audience like them more as they seem more down-to-earth however they are not scruffy which means they still look presentable to host a popular game show.

Another example of hosts wearing smart casual clothes are the two hosts on E4's Tool Academy. Both hosts look tidy however they are not over-doing it. 

Our hosts will also be wearing smart casual clothes.

We also have an archetype as one of our contestants. Ashley Jenson is a stereotypical blonde who is not very clever. 

As shown by Helen Flanagan from I'm A Celebrity, she only cares about her appearance and tends to wear very short clothes which is what we will portray in Ashley Jensons character.

Light to Dark

Using Photoshop I have edited a picture of one of our characters (Mason Cole) to make the landscape look more dark. It still needs some work in the top left hand corner and I need to blur his outline a bit to make it look more natural.