Sunday 14 April 2013

Media Evaluation


Evaluation - Rohit Kahlon
The first task required me to produce opening scenes of any form of broadcast by the company Silver Lining Productions. My group and I saw a gap in the market for a reality dating show. We then decided on the genre which would be comedy and also the target audience of mainstreamers between the ages 16-25. While researching we decided to include a secondary audience consisting of educated, middle class demographic (ABC1), the aim for us was to produce opening scenes which would hook the audience straight away and urge them to carry on watching. The opening scenes show the first of many dates for a woman who is aiming to find love and become a Wag which will be shown on E4. The second task then required me to produce a souvenir magazine cover and a double page spread which would feature inside of it. For this I appealed to a female audience aged between 16-35.
The first thing we did was research other reality show openings - we watched shows such as "The Year of Making Love" and "Snog Marry and Avoid". We analysed the codes and conventions of these shows and saw that there was range of different camera shots in the first few minutes, we then decided that we would use a range of shots such as; 'Close ups and medium shots' to hook the audience. We also saw that there was music in the opening scenes so my group and I decided to also add music, and if we picked a song on the recent music charts, this could appeal to our audience of 16-35 year olds and as the aim was to entertain the audience, it could help audiences escape from their everyday lives for the duration of the show. We also decided that the characters had to be young so all of our characters were under 25. Furthermore we decided to use  Todorovs theory of structure of the narrative of equilibrium, disequilibrium and new equilibrium for our show as even though it is a fly on the wall reality show, we decided that we can use Todorovs theory and structure the narrative.
We then went on to carefully choose our target audience, as a group we decided that our primary audience would be 16 - 25 year olds who are mainly women, this is because we realised that a dating show would appeal more to a woman than a man. They would tend to be ABC1, people who enjoyed watching TV more than working, we also decided to target strivers who attach importance to their image and status. The problem with deciding on what target audience arose when we realised that the show must be shown during the 'watershed period', it meant that we would have to make sure that there were no swear words and no violence shown, after filming we found that we did this very well and the opening sequence did not feature any swearwords or violence. So it stayed in the guidelines of the brief and the 'watershed period'. We also went through the OFCOM website and double checked if we had gone against anything in OFCOM but we realised that everything was in the guidelines.
After this we finally began to film, during filming we decided to use a range of settings, one of our settings was Arsenals Emirates stadium where we filmed a scene of the Wag, the Wag would walk up the stairs up to the stadium and when she walks into the stadium she realises that it is shut, instead of it being Saturday like she thought, it's actually Wednesday, she then begins to complain and say's how she came to see Ronaldo play when truly Ronaldo plays for a different team, the interviewer then corrects her and points out her mistake. We used a variety of shots in this scene such as; close up, long shot and a tracking shot. All these shots pointed out her emotions and feelings towards being in the right place at the wrong time. The problem we faced here was that we were not actually allowed to film at Emirates stadium due to the fact that we did not have a press pass, so then secretly filmed very quickly and finished without the security finding out. Another key moment was when we filmed in Southall, we decided to film on a very sunny day, this ending up being problematic as the scene we were filming was another character walking towards the camera, he then stops and introduces himself, while talking to the interviewer, his phone begins to ring and it is his mother ringing, he then lies and says he is filming for a Hollywood movie which turns out to be a lie. The problem we had with this shoot was that the camera would not set with the light and it was either very dark or very light, we then covered the top of the camera and filmed where we found the quality was much better. We also filmed a scene in a fast food restaurant called 'Roosters' this was a scene where the Wag would come and meet her first date. She walks in and introduces herself to him, they sit down to talk and she tells him about the problems about her journey there and how she was expecting the place to be better. he then proposes to her and she rejects him and walks out. We used many different shots here such as close up, medium shot and even a tracking shot, we also used action shots here to vary our range of shots. In this scene we also used Barthes theory of enigma, we did this by finishing on the Wag walking out the restaurant and her date running after her, we finished the scene on this so it would leave the audience thinking, did he go after her or does she just leave. We then moved onto editing our opening sequence. For this we used Adobe Premiere Pro, the software helped us with many scenes, as one of scenes had problems with lights we were able to make it more lighter, it let us add more things into the scene, such as music. We also added a voice over which made our opening sequence seem more professional.
After finishing filming I moved onto my print work, this was my magazine cover and the double page spread which would feature inside of it. To produce both I used Adobe Photoshop, for my magazine cover, I had to make a souvenir magazine cover, and I decided to use the picture of the protagonist on the front, the magazine cover was aimed at mainly women from the age of 16 to 35, mainly because I believed that women would mainly buy a magazine about a dating show, on the front cover I tell the audience what will be featured on this inside and what people can read about the protagonist, the colour scheme I used was blue and pink, this is because I also believed that these colours are more feminine and would appeal to my target audience. The double page spread then also appealed to my primary target audience of women from the age of 16 - 35, the double page spread featured pictures of the protagonist, it also featured an interview which let the audience in on an exclusive about her personal life. I also used a quote on the top of the double page spread so it catches the readers eye and engages the audience. In both the front cover and the double page spread, we see the protagonists pictures on them, and the picture were  specifically taken  and chosen, the outfits were also chosen for the different pictures so we could make the character look like a Wag and be in character. So the audience can believe this is what she is like at home and on TV.
In our short sequence all of the characters shown are all Asian, so we specifically chose Asian people and we represented them in two ways, in one way we reinforced the stereotype of how all illegal men in West London just want to get married to get a passport for only comedic purposes but then we subverted the stereotype held  by some people who see Asian girls as very intelligent and not very out - going and we completely subverted this stereotype and showed an Asian girl as very outgoing and actually instead of having a traditional arranged marriage, she is on a dating show looking for love. This may have been offensive to some audience members as they would not want to see an Asian girl on TV looking for love she should be domestic and stay at home. This would have been a stereotype seen by our secondary audience who were men and over 30, we would not expect our younger generation to have this view but the majority of the older generation would.
The third brief would have been an e-media marketing campaign which could have helped me address my target audience, as it would have targeted an audience on many social networking websites such as "twitter and facebook",   this could have been helpful as we would have been able to appeal to a wider audience. I would have created a home page, and two other pages consisting of many interactive things such as online exclusive interviews and games. It would also have an active section where you would be able to see what people are tweeting about our show 'Our Lives'. We would have also featured things such as competitions and websites where you could ask questions for the characters and leave feedback of the show and what they would like for a second series. I would have also added music onto the webpage so people could have listened while surfing the website. Also links to the twitter pages and facebook pages.
Overall, I think that my group and I did well to meet the original brief as we thoroughly went through the brief and the OFCOM website, so we made sure we could not show any violence that could enforce the younger audience to carry out actions such as those shown on the show, and as the show would be shown during the watershed period, we also did not have any swearwords. I also think that our product would be successful in the media marketplace as we found a gap in the market, and this gap could be filled successfully by us, as the first show would draw in a lot of the Asian community, so they can laugh at the comedic features of the show and once hooked, it could be a good way to get word of mouth around.
WORD COUNT - 1802









Tuesday 26 March 2013

Easter Revision List

What do others know that you do not ?


  • Blumler and Katz Theory
  • Barthes theory of signs
  • Geo-demographic
  • Aspects of the actual media text
  • Physcographics -Young and rubicans. 
What were your EBI's ?

Proof read over work when you have finished, write more about theories such as Bulmer and Katz and Barthes. Talk more about physco graphics and demographics. Refer back to the text more and demonstrate a better understanding of the actual text. 

Thursday 21 March 2013

Mest 1 Exam

Question 1: How does the text both subvert and reinforce the typical conventions for a newspaper front page? (12 marks)

The front cover for the 'i' magazine both subverts and reinforces the typical conventions for a newspaper front page by visualing image ratio, giving us information that assumes significant cultural and social knowledge and also by encoding institutional messages through word choices, we see many different codes and conventions on the front cover, the masthead is on the left of the page, and very big so it could show that i magazine is not as well known as other newspapers such as 'The Sun', the theme of the magazine is to celebrate the Queens diamond Jubilee, so the colours chosen by the editors are the same as the colours from the Union Jack, we see right in the middle of the front cover it says "A RIGHT ROYAL PARTY". By saying this the audience can tell that the aim of this edition is to promote the Diamond Jubilee and letting its audience know that it is the week of the Diamond Jubilee, the colours of "ROYAL" also fit in with the theme of Royalty as they are the colour of the Union Jack. From Barthes theory of sign, we can also tell that the three colours of Red Blue and White connote the celebrations taking place around the Country for the Diamond Jubilee. So this edition of i newspaper reinforcing the typical conventions of a front page. 

Furthermore, we see what will be on the inside of the magazine on the front cover too, so its encoding institutional messages through word choice, it has sections of sport and gossip which will attract other reads towards the magazine. We also see at the top of the magazine it says 'News Paper' of the year, so its trying to attract other audiences to it, saying that event though it is not as popular as other magazines such as '|The Sun', it was still voted as newspaper of the year. 


 Media Institutions
Why might the ‘i’ newspaper have been successful in a newspaper industry that has generally been in decline?(12 marks)

We see that the 'i' newspaper has been successful in the newspaper industry that has been generally in decline, this could be due to the fact that the newspaper has been much cheaper now as they are selling it for 20p instead of 50p+ like how other magazines would, it has become as cheap as 'The Sun' but 'The Sun' has been changing its prices over the years unlike 'i' newspaper which dropped its price recently and it has kept at that price, we also see that on weekends their is only a 10p rise so its audience is not majorly effected its audience, we see that its primary audience would be the older generation so people over the age of 30 as we see the 'i' newspaper is more sophisticated than others. Furthermore on the front cover of the magazine, their price is at the top so it tells people that this newspaper is very cheap, we do not see any current affairs on the front page except for the Diamond Jubilee, it is not gossiping about celebrities so people could see it as a more sophisticated newspaper. 


Media Audiences
What would you expect the ‘i’ newspaper’s target audience to be based on this front page? (12 marks)

We would expect the target audience of 'i' newspaper to be more sophisticated than those of 'The Sun', 'i' newspaper talks about current affairs which do not involve celebrity gossip, so the psychographics of the audience would be rich,sophisticated businessman who work in a place like canary wharf , so our expectations of this audience would be very high, the demographics of the audience would generally be succeeders who buy the newspaper to check stock prices rather than gossip about celebrities. Using Katz and Blumers theory of uses and gratifications, the audience is more likely to read this newspaper are the older generation who are 30+. Also tourists may buy this newspaper as it is cheap, being so cheap and it is also a Diamond Jubilee edition so being so cheap many tourists might buy it to see current affairs about Britain.
The crosswords on the front also appeal to people travelling to work, so the magazine could be for people travelling to work too so enforcing the stereotype that the newspaper is for businessmen.  


Media Representations
How is Britain represented in this text? (12 marks)

The front cover of the magazine is based on the Diamond Jubilee so as expected there is pictures of the Queen and the concert. The images are of Buckingham Palace and she is sort of smiling, it shows that the people of Britain are patriotic, the fact that they are printing of editions to celebrate their Queen. The Queen is also shown as smiling so she is portrayed as happy. She is representing Britain to the world and showing that it is still a good country no matter what has happened in previous times.It also shows that many people would read this edition of 'i' due to the fact that Britain has been represented in a positive way. The stereotype that British people are very good in enforced so it shows how 'i' newspaper may have shown Britain in a certain way to enforce this stereotype. From Barthes theory of sign, we can also tell that the three colours of Red Blue and White connote the celebrations taking place around the Country for the Diamond Jubilee. So this edition of i newspaper reinforcing the typical conventions of a front page.