NEGUS THEORY OF ORGANIC AND SYNTHETIC IDEOLOGY

The Start Of A2

We have officiallly started our A2 course for Media Studies. We have been introduced to the music industry and this is going to be the focus of our second year coursework. 
At the moment my favourite music video is Daft Punk ft. Pharrell 'Get Lucky'. This is also one of my favourite songs at the moment and I think It is going to be my summer song. I love all types of music- R&B, pop, dance and alternative. 

This is the music video for 'Get Lucky'

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=daft+punk+get+lucky+&oq=daft+ou&gs_l=youtube.3.0.0i10l10.697.2041.0.3450.7.6.0.1.1.0.76.398.6.6.0...0.0...1ac.1.11.youtube.rtiS-GKcvpc



I also really like Ben Howard and this is one of his songs called 'Only Love'


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7sVoZcSKdc



We have been starting to study a series of artists like Kylie Minogue and Amy Mcdonald. We have learnt about two major theorists called Negus and Richard Dyer.
Negus believes that artists can either be synthetic or organic , and that the industry categorise different artists. Synthetic means that they have an image that is chosen for them and they are not raw artists,whereas organic is when an artist has an image that looks like they havent changed from the moment they first stepped foot in the studio on the first day and they are raw artists.

Richard Dyer suggests that artists have an image which represents their target audience and they have a team of stylists around them at all times, however this is not them and not real.

For example --- Beyonce

• She DOESN'T walk around her house with dark smokey eyes every day
• She DOESN'T walk around her house with massive hoops on
• She DOESN'T walk around with a leather dress on
• She DOESN'T walk around with her hair perfectly made up

• She DOES walk around her house with a messy bun on her head
• She DOES walk around the house with minimal makeup on
• She DOES walk around the house in a plain t-shrit
• She DOES walk around the house with her baby being 'mummy'

Task 7-Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you fell you have learnt in the progression from it to the product?

The pre-lim that my group made has been uploaded in the blog below this one, so take a look!! 

The camera work in my pre-lim is very basic. This is because we had just started to use the camera, and it was the first task we were given. It was more of a task for us to feel comfortable in front of the camera and to get to know how to use it. The camera work in our thriller is a lot more advanced and complicated which shows my development in understanding how to use the camera. We have also learnt a lot more camera shots since the pre-lim and we learnt how they can be effective, so we had a lot more of an idea of what we were doing while thinking about the shots and which ones we wanted. Obviously we still used the simple shots in our thriller, but we also included some effective and eye catching shots. 

An example of a simple shot would be an ECU: (this is a screen grab from the preliminary task)

In our preliminary task we did not use any mis-en-scene, but in the thriller, mis-en-scene was used quite a lot. We thought about our casting for a long time, because we wanted our piece to be as realistic as it could be. While shooting the thriller in the pub, we used two lights, so we had to work on that for a while, setting them up etc, but the lighting didn’t have any meaning to it, it was just lighting to make the faces brighter. But in the pre-lim the lighting was very basic. 

We only used one prop in the pre-lim, we used a spray paint can. Whereas in the thriller we had quite a few props, to make the story line clearer and to add effect to the opening title sequence. 
Locations was very important for the thriller, but for the pre-lim we just used a set that was built in the studio, but it worked fantastically! For the thriller we used a restaurant, a car park, a cafe, and a kitchen, so it was a lot more complicated and professional than the pre-lim.

The editing in the pre-lim, is again very simple. I was just getting used to the editing program ‘final cut pro’ so i hadnt had any experience with it, and i wasnt really too sure what I was doing. In the other hand the editing in my thriller is alot more experienced, and effective. The pre-lim was just simple editing, whereas the thriller is a lot more complicated and has sections cut out, and boxes opening and closing the screens and it is alot more visual and interesting to watch. 

Again the sound in the pre-lim is very boring, it is just speaking because we were given a script to work off. Where as in the thriller we didn’t have a script to work off, and if we wanted speaking we had to make our own script. We could include anything we wanted. If we didn’t want sound we didn’t have to have it we could choose music instead. We didn’t include any speaking, we just use music and sounds of cars moving around etc. So it is a lot more active. 

We didn’t use any make up in our piece, it is all very raw and natural. With the costumes, we told the people what sort of character they were playing and we gave them some kind of idea what we wanted them to wear. For example, Theo was playing a pass over person, so we just told him to wear some clothes that might make him look a bit dodgy. This is sort of thing that he wore --


These are some of the photo of us filming our thriller at the cafe. 
We all did some filming each
so we all got a chance to use
the camera. We as in the pre-lim i was acting so i didn’t get the opportunity to use the camera, so it was my first time using it, and i really enjoyed it and picked it all up quickly. 

Preparation and organisation for our pre-lim was very minimal. We didn’t do much in advance, Alexandra and I just learnt our lines so we didn’t mess it up on the day, but that was all the ‘planning’ we did. Whereas for our thriller, months of planning went into it, we made 3 story boards, made a shooting schedule, sent out emails to get our cast sorted and a lot more. So this really taught my group and I how to organise it all and keep it up to date because we were really excited about our idea for the thriller so we wanted it to be as exciting and perfect as possible. I think that organisation is really really important because the more organised you are the less stressed you are and the more smoothly your shooting day is going to go. If you are un-organsied it will make you behind your shooting schedule and you might not be able to finish shooting in one day, which would be a big problem because each group only got a day to shoot. I feel that organisation is key to a good media project.              

In my pre-lim group there was me, Alexandra, Toby, Ellie and Louise. I think that we all worked well and we all did our bit in the group and no one was not doing something. Alexandra and I were acting in the pre-lim, Louise was continuity girl, Toby was filming and Ellie was doing the lighting. So everyone had a role and was happy with their role. So everything was perfect and organised and our pre-lim was shot quickly and promptly. 
For the thriller i had a different group, but i still had Toby in it. Because Toby and I worked in the pre-lim together we got on really well working in the thriller and I think that our group in the thriller worked a lot better. Maybe this is because we are also friends outside of the classroom and we get on well outside of school and we are quite close, but we all also had a role in the group and we stuck to it and we have had no problems so far! So all our communication skills and team working skills have improved since the pre-lim. 

I think that the pre-lim was a good starting point for us all because it gave us the experience that we needed for the thriller and I think it made us all more confident in using the cameras and editing. It was a really interesting and good task to start of the year. 

Task 6- Thrillers 2013 (playlist)

Evaluation task 6: 'What have you learnt about technologies from the process if constructing this product?'  We made pop ups on our thriller/opening sequence to create on the technologies that we used the construct the product.

Task 5-'How did you attract/address your audience"

Task 4- Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our perfect audience member would be young (around the ages from 14-32) and into action packed, chasing films. If I had to draw a picture of this member of audience it would be a male, with brown hair and trendy clothing. My tribe would be:

I would say that my tribe would listen too very contemporary music in the charts, but they would also fish out some hidden hits that they would bring to the surface of the music industry. They watch a lot of funny series, maybe one like ‘entourage’ which i think is aimed at the age group that i am trying to target and they would watch films very similar to Shere Vice, like ‘The tourist’ which we earlier related our film too. I think that they would also go and see films like Batman which are very action packed and thrilling. I am not saying that our film is in the same category as Batman but that they are both action packed. 

The people that will come and watch our films are very sociable, have lots of friends, maybe some of them are very clever and do well at school, where as some arent too bothered about school. Some go to work and work in banks in London and have alot of money but still enjoy going to the cinema to see a film. 

For my secondary audience  I would say that they would wait until the film comes out on DVD to watch it...some might spend an evening at the cinema, but not very often. They would be a very homely person who doesnt really like going out that often and would rather sit infront of the TV with a fire watching a film. 

I think that the secondary audience would be around the ages of (35-50) and they might be a teacher, or doctor where they dont have much time to go to the cinema. Someone i have pictured in my head, is a doctor, with a family and a stay at home wife who can buy the DVD for the family. He has a very busy schedule and works all week and wants to stay at home on the weekend and relax.

I would say that our film would either be a certificate 12 or 15. Either of these would be suitable for our film as it means that the younger generation would be able to watch it and understand it. I think that if we rate it at a 12 it would be better than 15 because we don’t want to loose some of our target audience. 

Task 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

After doing some research on production companies we decided that we wanted to use one that is based in the UK. As our film is an action thriller film we were looking at companies that base their films around that kind of criteria. We came across a company called Studio Canal, which started of as a very small company that only produced european films and then was bought by Vivendi and Universal Studios. It is a film making and distribution company. The budget that we have may be small, so according to budget it could go either way, but we feel that we have a product that would fit very well with the type of films that Studio Canal makes. 

The Tourist:

    
The tourist is a film distributed by Studio Canal. It was distributed in 2010. So it is a very recent film. Stars int he film are Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie and Paul Brettany. The budget for the film was $100,000,000. The plot is that Elise (Angelina Jolie) sits next to an American tourist, Frank (Johnny Depp), on a train going to Venice. She has chosen him as a decoy, making believe that he is her lover who is wanted by police. Not only will they need to evade the police, but also the mobster whose money her lover stole. 

One of the production comapnies that they used is Spy Glass. Spy Glass did a film called ’The Wanted’ which Angelina Jolie was also in. The budget for this film was a lot less and it was $75,000,000. These two films have the same kind of action/thriller plot which makes the films very similar and I think it is very interesting to see the difference in their budget.  Studio canal produced the film the tourist but it sent the movie of the Columbia pictures to distribute it.

Columbia Pictures is an America based film production and distribution company and it is owned by Sony pictures entertainment. So from this I think I can see that my opening title sequence Shere Vice, has the potential to be a high concept film. It has a story line that could develop into one that would fit nicely with these production and distribution companies. The only problem would be that you need a very high budget. 

We found a much small distribution company called Shadow Distribution. Shadow Distribution is a small film distribution company located in Waterville, Maine, USA, which is known for releasing unusual, specialised films. 
They released a film called ‘The Situation.’ This is a thriller about an American journalist, a CIA operative, and an Iraqi photographer against the backdrop of the bloody war in Iraq. This film is not similar to our story line for our action packed thriller but it is a low concept budget film so it shows us that is is possible to make a film on a low budget that is still good quality. Because our film could either go for a high concept distribution company or a low concept distributuon company I think that it is important to look at both and research both options. 


I think that our opening title sequence has lots of potential and it could turn into an A class, action packed, thrilling movie. I think that I would approach studio canal to produce my film, and Columbia Pictures to distribute it. This would obviously make the film a high budget film so I would need to find that budget but I think that the opening sequence is exciting and i think that people would buy into it and enjoy producing and distributing the film.