Tuesday, 23 March 2010

Moday 15th- 18th March

After presenting the presentations we ctreated in groups last week, and making notes about how people are influenced to join groups, where others have no control over what they say. We then focused on how we will present our evaluations for the final productions.
We were given certain questions which we should answer in our evaluations, and obviously add more to make it more in depth. We also looked on the chief examiners blog -> petes100blog.blogspot.com
This helped me get an insight into other students blogs about Media. Some of these examples helped me gain ideas baout how I shall present my evaluation.

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We focused on trying to finish editing our productions during these double lessons. As the dealine is getting closer we are hoping to get the editing completed by the end of next week so we can then focus on trying to complete our subsidary tasks. I think it is very possible we will get our editing completed by next week as we only have the ending of the song left.

Monday, 15 March 2010

Monday 8th- 11th March

During Monday's lesson we carried on focusing on 'moral panics' i know understand fully what a moral panic is and how the media plays a big role when exaggerating the problem. Collective identity and stereotypes also play a role in this too, these groups of people become a 'base' of moral panics, which could be seen as threatening by society.
The first 'moral panic' within society was the Waltz dance. This was because it was the first dance in which males and females had to touch eachother. This illustrates that most/some moral panics either just pass or deteriorate. However if some moral panics are 'dangerous' enough this could create new laws/ change legal policies.

During Tuesday and Wednesdays hours of media we got into groups and were set a task to complete. My group had to create a FACEBOOK group about Media A Level Student help, add friends, and then create a presentation on how we will protect the page from any rude/ un-needed comments. We will present this presenation sometime next week.
Here is the link to our group we created..
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=364133583480&ref=mf

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Our production lesson this week was a very important one in which we had to work well toegther in order to get it done quicker. We carried on with our editing of our film and so far we have the first verse and courus completed. I and other members of my group will try to use all free periods so that the video is completed and of a high standard. I am now quite confident we will finish this video on time.

Sunday, 7 March 2010

Homework- Summary on hompages and the construction of identities on the web.

Personal home pages are constructed to reflect the makers’ identity, it gives the opportunity to present ones self to the ‘virtual world’. Home pages are not really created/ used to give information but are used to construct a certain identity. The virtual environment offers the user a context which can be used to experiment and shape a personal identity.

Home pages can be used to ‘promote’ a person in a way they want to be known as, however comparisons of home pages with face-to-face interaction can be different and often misleading. Some users do not show information that may make consumers not want to know more about them, they would rather feel accepted in the online world. As home pages just show texts, images and graphics and in person, body language, facial expressions and gestures are shown, this can portray a different sort of person than which is online. Users make sure they keep some information ‘a secret’ to consumers as the internet/ World Wide Web has mass consumers as well as mass producers. I think that the way in which you can tell a persons personality just by looking at their home page is by looking at the language they use.

The way in which individual users differentiate themselves online involves bricolage (a term referring to the construction or creation of work from a range of things which happen to be available) in this case it is the use of graphics, sounds, text etc. Confusing layout and mulitimedia is a way in which people can make themselves different to others in a way to make a ‘personal statement’. An online commentator stated that “Most people do not get the chance to write a book or get published anywhere. The net gives everyone a chance to say something before they die.” This is one of the main positive points for producers online as they are able to express their thoughts and feelings to other users at their own leisure.

Another positive aspect of having a home page is that it is easier to ‘reveal yourself’ or parts of your personality to people. An example of this is shown in the report by Daniel Chandler. It shows that James, a gay British internet user, said it was easier for him to ‘come out’ on his homepage compared to real life and when people asked he was able to say ‘Oh didn’t you know?’. This is a good example of showing how the construction and information on a web page/ home page makes it easier to show ones identity as they do not need to face any consequences or embarrassment face to face.

With advantages of having homepages and identities on the web, come some disadvantages. One disadvantage is that some fear that young people will be dependent on using the virtual world to retreat from everyday life, as these are the digital natives (people growing up knowing about the web). This means that young people’s identities are being shown on the web without knowing the receiver. This proves that ‘virtual homes provide no shelter for anyone’, and therefore we should make sure that some of our important information on our constructed homepage is kept to ourselves.

1st-4th March

During Mondays lesson we all read a condensed report by Daniel Chandler which explains 'Personal Home Pages and the Construction of Identities on the Web.'
I made noted on this and we all need to write a summary of 500 words by next Monday.

The next lesson we watched a film called 'Saturday night, Sunday morning' which was released in November 1960. The tag line for this film is "Saturday night you have you fling at life, Sunday morning you face up to it!" this tag line shows it is mainly about youth because this is mainly what 'youth' care about, just going out, drinking and socialising. The youths in this film are portrayed to be care free and enjoy going out every night even if they have work in the morning, this relates to youths this present day. They are also shown to be rude to elder more authorotive people. This is shown in the film when the main character bumps into a woman in an expensive coat, and spills his drink down her. But without caring he just walks away as if it didnt happen.
Thsi film showed me how youth is portrayed in the same way within films over many years.

I also learnt about 'moral panics' this week. Mass media has been created and used to influence what people think, and have now been tapped into public fears. An example of this are 'Mods and Rockers' and youths.
Stanley Cohen who wrote 'Folk Devils and Moral Panics' in 1987 mainly focused on mods and rockers and thereofre this influenced how people saw mods and rockers to be even if it isnt true in reality. Another example of moral panic would be the trailer we have previously watched called 'Reefer Madness' which shows youths and drug abuse. Because these moral panics started years previous, moral panics do not stem from 'new' threats, such as youths for example.

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We carried on filming during this double production lesson. This week we created signs which said 'Lonely' and 'Afraid' etc, then asked students around the school who would suit the part to hold the signs. We also filmed peoples lips saying certain words/ lines from the song so we can cut and edit them so there will be a different persons lips for each part of the line. I think this suits the video as it is trying to show we are all beautiful in our own way, thereofre by doing this its as if we are bringing everyone together.

22nd-25th February

During monday and tuesdays lessons we watched a programme named 'Virtual Revolution' which is a documentary exploring the way 20 years of internet has changed people lives. This documentary included showing the views of Sir Tim Berners-Lee (Inventor of the World Wide Web) Chris Hughes (co-funder of FACEBOOK)and Bill Gates (from Microsoft).

I found this very interesting as it gave me a knowledge into how much the internet has had an impact on people. Now a quarter of the world uses the web regularly and over 35 million people will log onto the web per day. 350 million people have and use FACEBOOK accounts, with 1 in 3 people in the UK using FACEBOOK daily it questions do we have an internet addiction?
In Korea some used the internet for 18 hours per day and 20% of these were addmitted to hospital.

I tried the test on the website for virtual revolution to see my 'web behaviour' the website for this is www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution.
I discovered that I am a 'web octopus' which shows i am fast moving on the web, independent, therefore i do not rely on social networking sites when searching for information, and adaptable, which means i am able to multitask without it affecting my performance.


During Wednesdays lesson we revised over uses and gratifications including Blumer and Katz, and Denis McQuail theories. Which includes why we use the media. There are four main reasons we use the media, they are:
- Diversion or relaxing/ escaping
- Personal relationships (sense of belonging)
- Personal identity, our own values, models of behaviour
- Surveillance/ information (finding out about relevant events and surroundings, seeking advice etc.)

Theories are just ideas that explain certain aspects of behaviour.

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This week in our production lesson we carried on filming our new music video and added new ideas to the lyrics we printed. This works as a storyboard for us as we know which scene will fit with which line in the song, therefore when it comes to editing we will know which order the clips we filmed go in. I felt we had a productive lesson as we now know the details of each clip we shall be filming.

HALF TERM

During the week of half term my group worked on our production so that we was in a stable place to be when we went back to school. One member of our group could not attend some sessions of prodcution we arranged which made the work harder for me and Beckie.
During the half term we came to the conclusion that the song we had chosen was a little fast and the setting of the scenes may be difficult. Therefore we decided to change the song to another Christina Aguilera one, named 'Beautiful'. We chose this song as we thought we could fit a meaningful story with it, such as people being bullied or sad with the way they look.

We brainstormed what could be included in the film and put some of the ideas with the lyrics which we printed out. We watched the music video for this song many times on youtube.com so we ould have a good sense of which scenes and camera angles work well with the song.

Me and Beckie also started filming a few shots during this week, after overcoming some problems with the video camera. I now feel confident this is the right song and should be sucessful if everyone in the group works together and attends production lessons.