Theoretical Evaluation of Production

Skill Development

When we choose to move, the action is controlled by the concious brain using a collection of learned movements.

Types of skill:

• Cognitive - or interllectual skills that require thought processes


• Perceptual - interpretation of presented information


• Motor - movement and muscle control


• Perceptual motor - involve the thought, interpretation and movement skills
  

How we teach a new skill - the teaching of a new skill can be achieved by various methods:

• Verbal instructions


• Demonstation


• Video


• Diagrams


• Photo sequences

When creating my AS Media music magazine, I had to learn a lot of skills. This was good as I could be introduced to all of these new tools that I hadn't used before. Once I had got used to these tools, I was able to use these new skills to my advantage and create my music magazine to the best of my abililty. Creating my music magazine allowed me to development my media skills and use the skills that I already had.

Digital Technology

Digital techonolgies are tools which utilize a discrete method to convey information, such as letters or numbers. Its alternative is analog which utilizes a continuous method to convey information.

While creating my music magazine, I had to get professional photographs of my models. These models were going to be acting as pop stars. To get these professional photos, I used studio lighting and an SLR camera in order to get the best possible photos. I also used green screen and an auto-que for my planning documentary which I used to introduce my documentary of my magazine.

Creativity

Creativity is the act of turning new and imaginitive ideas into reality. Creativity involves two processes - thinking, then producing. Creativity requires passion and commitment in order to get the best outcome possible.

With my music magazine, I used my creativity to make sure that the magazine looked detailed and professional. The genre of my magazine is pop so I needed to make sure all of the colours and words related to the pop theme. With the images of the models, I wanted to make sure that I used different composition to make the images more interesting.

Research and Planning

Before creating anything, it's important to plan what you're going to do. Going straight into a task without knowing exactly what you're doing means that you can't go back and check that you're doing it right. Researching allows you to get ideas from what other people have done and gives you knowledge about how to go about completing the task and learning new ways of doing it.

Before creating my music magazine, I needed decide which genre of music I wanted to base the magazine around and I also needed to research well-known magazines of that genre. I decided to have pop music as my genre as I know a lot about it. So, I researched well-known pop magazines, including 'POP' magazine, and looked to see what colours it had used, what images it had used and what text it had used. I wanted the style of my magazine to reflect the pop genre of music - so the colours had to be girlie and innocent and not at all dominating, as the readers of pop magazines are mainly girlie girls with sweet and innocent personalities.

Post Production

Post production is part of the film-making process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programmes, radio programmes, advertising, videos, audio recordings, photography, and digital art. It is the term for all stages of production occurring after the actual end of shooting and/or recording the completed work.

Using Media Convention

Relation to Real World Texts

Media Theory

McQuail's theory:
He describes three alternative models of communication...

1. The command mode - considers that there are differences in power and authority between senders and receivers, that the senders are in a dominant position.
2. The service mode - the "most frequently occurring form of relationship" between sender and receiver, where they are both united by a mutual interest within a market situation.
3. The associational mode - states that shared beliefs attach a particular group or public to a specific media source.

Todorov's theory:

He proposed the idea that a narrative has five distinct transformations through which the story proceeds...

1. The state of equilibrium - all is in order
2. A disruption (disequilibrium) of the order state by an event
3. A recognition that a disruption has taken place
4. An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption
5. A return to some kind of equilibrium

McLennan's theory:

He set out three conditions which must be fulfilled if ideas and beliefs are to be regarded as ideological...

1. The ideas concerned must be shared by a significant number of people
2. The ideas must form some sort of coherent system
3. The ideas must content in some way to the use of power in society

Media theory is not always about theorists and their theories, but also about everything that goes into making a media product. These elements are camera angles, editing, sound and mise-en-scene. These four things are what every media product has in some way, and if the audience can point them out, it means the product has been successfully made to target them.

Audience

The assembled spectators or listeners at a public event, such as a play, movie or concert.
Anything that is created in the media is for an audience, this is why they're so important. When a piece of media is created, it's all about whether it appeals to the target audience and whether the audience like it. If the audience do not like it, the piece of media is no good.

Audience is who the piece of media is directed at. Every piece of media has an audience - the audience is the people who are receiving the piece of media through one form or another, whether it be from reading a magazine, watching a television programme or listening to the radio, etc. There may be more than one audience, and these multiple audiences may be compatible, they may be at odds with each other. It can often be the case that the audience is confused or contradictory to the other; perfect material for a keen software tester.

If you know or can work out who the audience are, it makes it much easier for you to make better decisions about the piece of media.

Representation

Representation refers to the construction in any medium (especially the mass media) of aspects of ‘reality’ such as people, places, objects, events, cultural identities and other abstract concepts. Such representations may be in speech or writing as well as still or moving pictures.

The key markers of identity are:

• Class
• Age
• Gender
• Ethnicity

Representation involves not only how identities are represented (or rather constructed) within the text but also how they are constructed in the processes of production and reception by people whose identities are also differentially marked in relation to such demographic factors.

Post-modernism

A general and wide-ranging term which is applied to literature, art, philosophy, architecture, fiction, and cultural and literary criticism, among others. Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to explain reality. In essence, it stems from a recognition that reality is not simply mirrored in human understanding of it, but rather, is constructed as the mind tries to understand its own particular and personal reality.

Narrative

A narrative is a story that is created in a constructive format (as a work of speech, writing, song, film, television, video games, photography or theatre) that describes a sequence of fictional or non-fictional events.

Narrative is simply the general term for telling a story. Along with exposition, argumentation and description, narration is one of the four rhetorical modes of discourse & is the friction-writing mode whereby the narrator communicates directly to the audience.

Genre

<iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/iitwM3dxR3s" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>The term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria.
Film Genre
Refers to the method based on similarities in the narrative elements from which films are constructed. Most theories of film genre are borrowed from literary genre criticism.
Music Genre
A music genre is a categorical and typological construct that identifies musical sounds as belonging to a particular category and type of music that can be distinguished from other types of music.