First Experience of Editing - 15/07/2011

This is 'The Notebook' trailer our group had to edit:

In class today, me and three other people worked together to edit the trailer for 'The Notebook'. This was the first ever trailer that I had edited, and I found it very difficult and limiting to work with. Clips were too short and the sound/dialogue was hard to change. We found it hard to change this drama/romance genre trailer into something completely different - we planned on turning it into a horror trailer, but the limited clips made this quite difficult. I believe that I was unsuccessful in altering our trailer to a professional standard but hopefully, with practice, I should be more successful in the months to come when I edit my own trailer.  

Uses and Gratification Theory by Blumler and Katz - 13/07/2011

The uses and gratification theory poses the question: what do people do with media? The ways in which people gratify their needs through media can be divided into five categories...

• Cognitive needs - aquiring information, knowledge and understanding

E.g. Movies based on true stories such as World Trade Centre

• Affective needs - for emotion and pleasure

E.g. One Day movie

• Personal Integrative needs - for reassuring status, gaining credibility and stability

E.g. This Is England movie

• Social Integrative needs - so people can socialise with family and friends

E.g. Family may all enjoy watching the Shrek movie

• Tension Free needs - Escaping from work and relieving tension

E.g. Romantic comedies such as The Break-Up movie



Judith Butler's Queer Theory - 13/07/2011

The queer theory is a field of gender studies that emerged in the early 1990's out of the gay/lesbian studies and femminist studies. Although many believe that the queer theory is only about homosexual representations in literature, it also explores categories of gender as well as sexual orientation. It is not only concerned with sexuality but also with identity.

It sees gender as constructed socially to some extent through out association with the media. For example, gender stereotypes are conveyed clearly through the cartoon programme Scooby Doo:





Dpahne wears make-up and feminime colours like purple, and all these features represent a strongly feminime girly-woman

 

On  the other hand, Velma's square glasses, feckles, unstyled haircut and oversized/unfashionable orange jumper make her appear less feminime and attractive than Daphne. Could Velma be a stereotype of a cartoon lesbian? 

 

Fred is tall, well-muscled and well-dressed. He is typically handsome with a groomed haircut and clean-looking haircut. Fred is the typically attractive man that the typically attractive woman (like Daphne) would be paired with

Vladimir Propp Theory - 13/07/2011

In Propp's theory, he examined hundreds of folk tales and concluded that a formula was commonplace, including:

• 8 character roles or spheres of action (character and action being inseperable)
• 31 functions, always highly predictable such as villain being punished at end of story

Character Roles

1. The villain - represents evil and struggles against the hero (e.g. the Joker in The Dark Knight)
2. The dispatcher - character who makes the problem in the narrative known and sends the hero on his way (e.g. Commissioner Gordon in The Dark Knight)  
3. The helper - helps the hero in his quest (e.g. Alfred in The Dark Knight)
4. The princess/heroine - the hero deserves her throughout the story but is unable to marry her because of an unfair evil, usually because of the villain. The hero's journey is often ended when he marries the princess, thereby beating the villain (e.g. Rachel in The Dark Knight) 
5. Her father - often rewards the hero with the princess/heroine (e.g. The Sultan in Aladdin) 
6. The donor - prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object to help him in his quest (e.g. Lucius Fox in The Dark Knight) 
7. The hero - the centrail protagonist who leads the way in the narrative (e.g. Bruce Wayne/Batman in The Dark Knight)  
8. False hero - takes credit for the hero’s actions, is usually good looking and is often actually a coward (e.g. Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight)

Claude Levi-Strauss Theory - 13/07/2011

Strauss argues that meaning in narratives is based upon binary opposites (conflicts). He was less interested in the arrangement (or syntagmatic)  of the narrative (or order) and more in the deeper meaning (or paradigmatic) of the themes.

Examples of Binary Opposition
man vs. woman
science vs. nature
good vs. evil
earth vs. space

Roland Barthes Theory - 05/07/2011

Barthes is famous in media for suggesting that narratives work with five codes:

• Action or proairetic
• Enigma or Hermeneutic
• Semic
• Symbolic
• Cultural or referential

The enigma code is the most famous as we use this to make guesses as to how the narrative of a film will finish, therefire providing pleasure for the audience.

Hermeneutic Code
This is when parts of the story are not fully explained. They exist as enigmas or questions that the audience wishes to be resolved. Detective stories (e.g. Sherlock Holmes) have narratives that complies with this code - a criminal act is shown and the remainder of the narrative is devoted to answering questions raised by the initial event.

In order to maintain interest, the final truth is not revealled until the end and some devices are used to conceal it:

• The snare - deliberate avoidence of the truth. A tease or implication that sends the audience down the wrong path e.g. Snape from the Harry Potter films - is he really a villain or are we just being mislead?
• Partial answers - revealling some final truths - this is used to increase suspense
• Equivocation - mixture of truth and snare - usually makes the story even more mysterious and confusing
• Jamming - suggests that a problem may be unsolvable - further incerases suspense

Proairetic Code
The proarietic code is a series of actions that imply further action/reaction. For example, a character may have an argument and the audience wonders what the resolution or outcome of this argument will be. This creates suspense and tension as the audience wonders what the outcome will be and begin to make their own guesses.

Richard Dyer's Star Theory - 05/07/2011

Richard Dyer has written extensivley about the role of stas within film, TV and music. Dyer states that irrespective of the medium, stars have some key features in common:

• A star is an image, not a real person, that is constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) out of a range of materials e.g. advertising, magazines as well as films
• Stars are commodities produced and consumed on the strength of their meanings

Stars depened on a range of subsidory media - magazines, TV, radio, the internet - in order to construct an image for themselves which can be marketed to their target audiences. The star image is made up of a range of meanings which are attractive to the target audience. Fundamentally, the star image is incoherent, that is incomplete and 'open'. Dyer says that this is because it is based on two key paradoxes...

Paradox 1
The star must be simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary for the consumer - somebody people can aspire to be like

Paradox 2
The star must be simultaneously present and absent from the consumer - leading us to want to know more about them

The Star Image
The incoherence of the star image ensures that audiences continually strive to 'complete' or 'to make sense of' the image. This is achieved by continued consumption of the star through his or her products.

In the music industry, performance seems to promise the completion of the image, but it is always ultimately unsatisfying. This means that fans will fo away determined to continue consuming the star in order to carry on attempting to complete their image.