Week 7 Individual task November 20, 2009

 

This week’s lectures and seminars have all been about Genre and my task this week is to look into a particular genre and conduct some interviews to find out what the audience likes and dislikes about the Genre I choose.

 

I decided to look into Animated Comedy; I decided to look at Family Guy, American Dad and Simpsons.

 

All Animated Comedies have certain elements that are the same, these include:
The way all the programmes I’m looking at all follow families in everyday life, How these 3 programmes follow everyday issues, many Animated comedies include many sexist jokes, also they are all animated, also with the 3 programmes I’m looking at you have a full family with a child of each sex and a mother and father. In many animated comedies you have the father as the main character and they are nearly always stupid or obsessive.

 

Each object have certain elements that make it different from the rest;
Family guy – Each episode is focused on a particular character, The family have a talking dog who is rather entertaining and is obsessed wit the mother of the house. The baby of the family is obsessed with world domination and killing his mother as he is certain that he is going to be put back in his mothers womb, the daughter of the family is always shown like an outcast and everyone always thinks that she is a guy or completely ugly, even her own father thinks she is his son.
American Dad – the family have an alien that acts like a son to the family and the whole show is focused on the father figure and the rest of the episodes are just evolved around him.
Simpsons – this programme focuses on school, work and pubs within the family life. you have a younger sibling who is really smart which makes the older child bad as he caves attention, Simpsons is the one animated comedy that most resembles real life.

 

With every Genre the audience will get a different perspective to other people within the audience. This usually depends on the gender, age and class. In my opinion I think Males aged 15 – 25 would enjoy animated comedies more than females overall. This is because I think guys will appreciate the sexist jokes and innuendoes quite funny whereas women may just find them offensive. I also think some people can find animated comedies like a stress relief but quite immature.

 

There are many pleasures that an audience will get from different genres, in animated comedies give the audience laughter, stress relief, amusement and in some ways make them feel young again as they are animated.

 

I asked a few people what they liked about animated comedies and what they disliked.
Like – They are funny, animated, the people in them can get away with things that we would get away with in real life, makes me laugh, little adventures that happen within the episodes, the way children want world domination and how the main father figures in the programmes are just brilliant.
Dislike – They can be too childish, they use unfunny subjects, all the families in animated comedies tend to turn towards religion, especially the ones created in the USA, they all include blokeish humour, some have speaking animals and human-animal relationships which is just disturbing.

 

Activity Week November 20, 2009

This week we have been given the challenge of creating  media artifact in just 72 hours. within our group we started to thnk of some ideas, and ended up with this one.

Week 5 individual task November 3, 2009

The object within my cabinet of curiosities that I am going to use this week is a filmed called Green Street. Green Street is a film about firms and football, but it also shows brotherhood and unity.

This week we have been looking at the hypothermic needle and how films can actually manipulate people’s minds. I believe Green Street could influence vulnerable minds within the audience, there are a lot of gangs and people fighting in respect to their home football team, I believe this film would be easier to influence male rather than female. It could also teach the audience the value of friendship and how we should treat people from different backgrounds. During to film there is an American teenage boy that becomes friends with an English firm, he learns how to fight and the firm learns that just because he is American doesn’t mean he is any different. I think if people watched the film from this perspective there would be a lot less violence and racism around.This film however is possible to create many negative effects, it could lead too more violence within the UK, if people watched this film and then decided to create firms, it could cause a lot of hassle for the police. There is already some chaos caused from Teenage lads and football teams, some kids within schools get bullied for supporting the wrong team, therefore after watching this film if the decided to go out and create a firm then these kids who are currently getting bullied could become more at risk.

 

I think if a parent watched this film, they would find it unsuitable for their children until they were at least 15, this way they are protecting their children from actually wanting to copy the film and being a victim of the hypodermic needle theory. On the other hand, the Hypothermic Needle is just a theory and therefore everything we know about it could be rubbish.

 

Week 4 Individual task October 31, 2009

There are many ways advertisers and producers find out their target audiences, most commonly they use Age, Gender, and Income. However many producers and advertisers use groups A, B, C1, C2, D, E, each of these letters represent a particular audience. They go from the top of the ladder at professional employment all the way down to unemployed.

A is the upper middle class people; these are the people that will tend to have an occupation in administration or higher management.

B is the middle class people, these people ted to be in intermediate administration or lower management jobs.

C1 is the Lower middle classed people; these people will be in junior management, administrative, or even supervisory or clerical jobs.

C2 is the skilled working class; this includes people that are skilled in what the do with their job, otherwise known as skilled manual workers.

D is the working class people; these are the people that are semi skilled or completely unskilled in what they do for a living.

F is the people at the lowest level of subsistence; these are basically the people that are unemployed, pensioners and people who are casual workers.

The above information can be found at http://www.businessballs.com/demographicsclassifications.htm

I am going to use the above information to arrive at a conclusion for 3 pieces of media artifacts, the first is The Sun. I believe that The Sun is aimed at people within the D and F groups. The reason I believe this is because The Sun is written in a way to grab the attention of people that are interested in celebrities and also the cheap headlines are meant to draw in people that are not in the higher class. They tend to attract people with the big colourful headlines and the main story on the front page being something that will catch the audience’s hearts.

The second media artifact I am going to use is BBC news, I believe that the news is aimed at everyone in al the groups, however I also believe that A and B groups are the most likely to watch it, this is because of the way the present the news and how people who have better jobs and better lifestyles are more likely interested in what is happening around them and in the rest of the world.

The last media artifact I am going to talk about is Green Street, this is a film, I believe that it is aimed at the group C1 to F this is because it can be used for light entertainment, but also its a film that people can enjoy to help pass the time, the film has many points of views in it that will help attract many different people and groups.

Eastenders – Week 2 Individual Task October 26, 2009

I have been given the task of choosing soemthing from my media diary and collect some research on it.

I choose Eastenders from my media dairy, I started by creating a mindmap on what i alread knew about Eastenders and the company that owns it, i then went on to research some more into eastenders and the BBC. Below is the diagram of my midmap followed by my research.

Mindmap of what i know about eastenders

 Eastenders is produced by the Bristish Broadcasting Corperation (BBC), the BBC is a major company that is the largest and longest running media company in the United Kingdom. The BBC is not owned by one person, it is owned and run by a board of people and the Director-General, who is also the Editor-in-chief, is the person that makes all the main decisions and acts like the person who owns the company. Every 1o years a new person s elected to be the new director, Mark Thompson is currently the Director of BBC, this will be changed on 31st december 2016.

The BBC have 9 main media artifacts; BBC  One, BBC Two, BBC 3, BBC Radio 1, 2, 3, four and Five live, They also used to own BBC Jam, however this was suspended i response to mant complaints. As well as TV and Radio, the BBC have a website, this is used to catch up on TV and Radio shows you have missed as well as general news.

The BBC collect alot of money from different sources; these are Licence Fees, Commercial business, Goverment grants and other income such as concert tickets. Based on a 2008 – 2009 report they BBC get £3, 368.8 Million for the TV Licence, £719.6 Million from Commercial business, £283.6 Million from Goverment grants and £42.8 Million from other income. As you can see their main source of income is from the audience paying a TV licence, in order for them to collect the TV licence they must provide television that Entertains, Educates and Informs the audience.

Eastenders was made because of a guy named David Reid, in 1983 he was keen for a new soap opera to be shown, so he wrote up a play based on real families within the area, the board of directors really liked what they saw and then eastenders was shot.

3 Day Media Diary Reflection October 15, 2009

After completing my 3 day diary I have started to make some observations of my use of the media, I managed to have a total of 18 hours and 10 minutes in just three days; to me I think that this is quite excessive. I think that this is quite obsessive as it’s nearly a whole days worth of just media.

As I looked over some other media dairies of people on my course, I realised that the amount of media that I have been exposed to in 3 days is not that much at all, I found that as media students we are all exposed to a lot of media, some people had up to 26 hours worth in just 3 days. I found that it depends on the person’s interests and what they do on a day to day basis, on how much media they specifically are exposed to. I believe being a media student I will be exposed to more media that someone that maybe studies Drama, this is because my course means I am studying the media on a day to day basis, whereas a drama student wouldn’t have to.

I found that I mostly spent my time listening to music, I believe that I rely on music so much, I have found that I tend to listen to music when doing work, reading, during bible study and when I’m walking from place to place. I noticed how I rely on media as a whole quite a bit, I tend to talk to friends and family online more than in person, or on the phone, I find that a relationship between two people can work just as well through phone calls and on msn as it does face to face. If I socialise on the internet and on the phone, I find that I am getting to know someone just as much as I would face to face, this also applies for online shopping, people find it easier and more time efficient to buy online and get things delivered, this is because it takes time travelling where if they do it online they have that extra time to do more in a day.

Overall I found that I rely on the media in everyday life, and I believe that the society keeps the media business alive so much, if no one relied on the media then the media wouldn’t be as successful as it is now. I also noticed that I would be rather bored during the day if there was no media, if the internet and everything never existed; I’m not too sure what I would have done with my day.

Media Diary October 15, 2009

Within my first week at unversity I was asked to keep a Media Diary for 3 days, I decided to do this for a Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, this was because I knew that everyday was going to be different. Below is my Media Diary for these 3 days.

Wednesday 7th October 2009:
Media Studies; Texts, Production and Context by Paul Long and Tim Wall – Read the introduction, 30 Minutes
Bad Connection by Melody Carlson – Started to read the novel, 20 Minutes
Listened to Music – While Surfing the Net, 1 Hour
Surfed the Net – Went on Facebook and Msn to catch up with people, 1 Hour
Read a passage in the bible and prayed – 20 Minutes
Advertisments – On billboards and posters on way to club – 20 Minutes
Listened to Music – In the club – 3 Hours

Thursday 8th October 2009:
Media Studies; Texts, Production and Context by Paul Long and Tim Wall – Started to read chapter one, 30 Minutes
Bad Connection by Melody Carlson – Read some more of the book, 20 Minutes
Advertisments – On way to Lectures and back, 20 Minutes
Listened to music – On way to ecture and back, 20 Minutes
Bible – Bible study, 2 Hours
Listened to music – During Bible study, 2 Hours
Advertisments – On way to bible study and back, 40 Minutes

Friday 9th October 2009:
Listened to music – On way to Town and back, 30 minutes
Advertisements – On way to town and back, 30 Minutes
Surfed the net – Went on facebook and msn, 2 Hours
Read Bible – 10 Minutes
Watched TV – Watched some BBC1, 3 Hours

Total consumption:
Music – 6 Hours and 50 Minutes
Books – 4 Hours and 10 Minutes
TV/Film – 3 Hours
Adverts – 1 Hour and 50 Minutes
Internet – 3 Hours

What is Media? October 15, 2009

Within my group we were given four questions to discuss and analyse, these were what the media is? Why is it important to study the media?, How do we study the media? And how do we talk about the media? I’m Going to be sharing with you the results of our discussion, I will do each question individually.

First off, what is Media? Media is pretty much anything that sends or conveys a message to a number of people, this could include facts, figures and opinions. Media is projected to the audience through Newspapers, Magazines, Television and the Internet, as well as providing many facts and figures, there are a lot of articles and bulletins that contain useless information, for example, within The Sun newspaper (31st August 2009,), there is an interview with Pixie Lott, and she admits she doesn’t brush her hair, this is something that is useless to know and would not really benefit anyone in any way. Also the media can be used to inform people about what is going on within the society and local area. Society is always being exposed to the media, from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep, they see billboards and adverts on their way to work, watching TV, Media is anything from paper based to electronic devices, even the cinema is a way of getting the media out to the society, Social networking sites such as facebook and MySpace are even filled with the media, society nowadays are obsessed with the media, and the media helps people become famous. (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/2615407/Pixie-Lott-admits-she-doesnt-wash-her-hair.html)

Why is it important to study the media? The media is very influential so it is important for the society to understand the reasons behind everything in the media; the media tends to relate to your everyday life, and educates the society about culture and the world. Many people study the media so that they can be aware of what is going on in the areas surrounding them, the media can have good and bad effects to the society. Some of the bad effects include turning society against certain celebrities, whereas the good can be stories of missing children being found. Some people study the media for the sense of escapism, this could be watching a film to escape things like violence within their life, however it doesn’t have to be an escape of violence, and it could be the sense of escaping from being lonely.

The most common way of studying the media is by analysing the media artifacts, whether they are good or bad. Media artifacts can be anything from books and newspapers to films and documentaries. Just by sitting down and watching the news in the evening is a way of studying the media, everyday the society studies some sort of media artifact without even realising it. The society tends to study the media through media, what we mean by this is the fact if someone wants to find something out about a specific person they tend to read books and search the net, these are media artifacts, therefore we are studying the media through media.

The world is constantly talking about the media, it doesn’t matter what we are talking about it always relates to the media. Other ways we talk about the media is through blogs, documentaries and advertising, when you come out of the cinema you tend to talk to the person you with about what you just saw, what you thought of it, this is discussing the media, even if you don’t realise it.