Head Essay

Representation

I have decided to discuss my A2 Music video when talking about representation. Representation is how a band, or person chooses to portray him or herself or something else as. 
For example, Guantlett believes the theory that we can play with our identity, and play with our representation. In my A2 music video this applies to the band we used. They were representing a band, however, were not an actual band, and do not usually perform together. We chose to represent the performers as an unified band, to fit with our conventions and stereotypes. 
Which brings me on to the next point which Walter Lipton believes. He believes in a media text there are always opposite stereotypes. This applies to the music video, as we have the bad stereotype of gambling, and the good stereotype of the Church, and hope.  We chose to do this as they are binary opposites, and we wanted a form of conflict in the music video.

Baudrillard believes a hyper real theory, that many things are represented as hyper real. He believes representations can be false, and unreal. In the music video, there is a shot when the protagonist is looking into the mirror, and it flashes to a tired/run down version of himself.  We decided to use this shot, as it shows how the protagonist is mentally unstable. This is hyper real, as this would not happen in reality. There is another hyper real part of the music video when the protagonist is playing poker against himself. He there is a shot reverse shot of a poker game, and you cannot see he is playing himself till the end. We used this style of shot as it created suspense, and represents the two personas of the protagonist, the good guy and the bad guy. 

Judith Butler believes that gender is a performance and that there are stereotypes such as men are masculine. These gender traits can be seen in my A2 music video when the protagonist are playing poker, as this is stereotypically a masculine thing to do. Also in the band, there are only males. This is another stereotypical trait for only males to be in rock bands.

Tim O'Sullivan male is masculine, however is not seen as the bread winner, as he has an addiction and loses his job.

Audience

When talking about audience relating to one of my chosen texts, I have decided to relate it to my A2 music video. An audience is a group of people who interpret your media text. Audiences can interpret Media texts differently. This relates to theory by David Morely, where he believes a mass audience of different social classes can watch a media text, and have different meanings for it. This can apply to my A2 music video, as it does not have a fixed meaning. Audiences may have many inerpretations to why the protagonist throws the gambling money in the water. He may be doing it to show his done with gambling, or the audience may see it as a metaphor for purity. 

Narrative coherence 
the audience may not understand the narrative, but it does not matter, as it might be on purpose for them to watch the video again. As long as it is aesthetically pleasing. 
Post modern theories and observations say that the post modern audience only have an attantion span of 3 minutes. For this reason, media texts are becoming faster paced and the editing is fast paced. In my music video we made sure that the editing was fast, as post modern audiences may not be interested in it, if it doe

Hartley believes you should know your audience so that you can target them effectively. In my a2 music video we made sure we researched into the audience of the band, and so that we knew the style of MES to use in our music video.

Narrative

A narrative is a series of events in a media text. It tells the story, and

In a media text, Claude Levi-Strauss believes that in all media texts there are binary opposites or a form of conflict. In my A2 music video, there is a binary opposite of man vs women, when the protagonist is arguing with his partner. This can also be seen as strong vs weak, as she has no power in the argument. This can be seen in the shot when the protagonist slams the door, and we can no longer see the woman, and the women is alienated. I used this shot so that the audience can see how the protagonist feels, and so women can relate to the wife/partner in the music video. The audience can also see the stress that an addiction can put onto the protagonists relationship.

Tim O’Sullivan argues that all media texts tell us some kind of story, and the story they tell represent us as a culture. The story that my A2 music video tells can warn people that something you love can be addictive. This can reflect our culture of us getting addicted to something that could not be good for our relationships. I decided to represent the narrative this way as it could portray and warn of a negative future if you were not to make a change.
Pam Cook 1985 had the theory that hollywood narratives often have a begginning, middle, and end (linary), which where something happens (cause and effect), causeing a serioes of problems (enigmas) and in the end, all is solved (resolution). In my a2 music video, the narrative sticks to the linary structure. The cause and effect of the theory is when the protagonist loses his job, the enigmas are when he resorts to more gambling, and argues with his wife, and it is resolved when he realsies that he is hurting people, and turns to religion. Todorov also has a similar theory that at the beginning there is an equilibrium  and then a problem arrises and it becomes a disequilibrium, and towards the end, when the problem is resolved, a new equilibrium starts.

Genre

Genre is the type of style of a media text or literature given to the text based on common elements. It can have sub-genres that are similar to the main genre, but slightly different. All genres have sub-genres.  For my A2 Music video, there can be described to have many genres. 
Jacques Derrida states, “a text cannot belong to no genre, it cannot be without... a genre”.  The band Forerunner was labelled as the Indie/Alternative genre. This is a mixture of two genres. The album that the band owns has many different styles of song on, the song we chose to put our music video to was a song, which sounded more rock. We therefore styled the band to be more of a rock/Alternative genre. This choice meant that we had to colour grade the footage to suit the genre. Relating to the choice we made, the theorist 

Nicholas Abercrombie states, “Genres are shifting and becoming more permeable”. This means that media producers are using conventions to create familiar products in order for the band to sell better.

We chose a genre that would be appealing to many audiences. Having a mixture of two different genres means that audiences interesting in both rock and alternative music might be attracted to this band, depending on how we marketed them. 

 “Genre is … an intertexual concept”, this is a quote from Katie Wales. She believes that what makes a genre of a media text is the intertextual references that it refers to. In my A2 music video there were many references we used. We used a shot for shot scene from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Linkin Park’s Numb music video. These are two different media texts, with different genres, so I disagree to this statement in this case, however it may apply to other music videos. 


Rick Altman argues that the genre offers the audience 'a set of pleasures". There are two pleasures. The Emotional pleasure is when the video generages a response from the audience emotionally. This applies to the stage of the music video when the protagonist loses his job. This may provoke a reastion from the audience sympathising with him, and feeling sorry for him. And also towards the end when he sorts out his inner problems with gambling, and he finds hope in religion. The audience may feel delight for him, and feel happy for him. 
The other pleasure that Altman believes is that the audience may have 'Gut' response. This gut response could apply to when they see the protagonist has gambling problems. They may be saddened by this and sympathise with the protagonists family