Music Videos introduction

Music videos

Titanium – David Guetta

Stop where you are – Corrine Bailey Rae

Camera analysis:

FAM – frame, angle movement.

Mise en scene – CLAMPS – costume, lighting, actor, makeup, props, setting

This is America video analysis:

Significant shots:

Juxtaposition – dancing and violence.

Track out – empty cars – black men killed by traffic stops.

Police car burning – police brutality needs to stop

long shot of glover shooting someone.

Close – up eye-level tracking shot of glover running away from white people. – Get Out – intertextuality.

Shooting the choir – Charleston, south Carolina massacre.

Dancing with school children – he is their role model.

The gun is treated with more respect than the black people

Distinct:

Themes – violence, white supremacy

History of racism in US.

The role of Glover – he is representing America

He is promoting 'black lives matter.'

·      Videos are used to promote artists – their music and fan base. This increases sales.

·      Can usually show the development of the artist.

·      Artists given the most screen time.

·      Performance and storyline so the audience will watch over again.

·      Artists act as performer and narrator to make it more authentic.

Shelter essay

Analyse how social and cultural contexts can influence advertising. Use fig 3 to support your answer.

In your answer you should – analyse how social and cultural contexts influence advertising, and make judgements and reach a conclusion on why they advertised in this way.

Social and cultural contexts influence advertising in different ways. Figure 3 is an advertisement about homelessness, from the company Shelter. There are normal people being represented with one man and two women to show equality. This will give people confidence that no matter who they are or what they look like, they can get help from Shelter. Each one is in the same situation but have different circumstances. The women on the left advert has lost her job, the man in the middle had problems with his landlord, and the woman on the right is in debt. They have purposely used the same close up camera angle and the same font and colour to show that anyone can be homeless, and it isn’t just the stereotypical people involved with drugs and alcohol who are homeless. They have used the close-up camera angle to clearly show their facial expressions, with all of them looking exhausted. They look like this to show people that they should get help if they are at risk of going homeless. The font is bold and red, with it being slightly translucent so the red goes into their eyes. This shows the pain they are in from their situation, and Shelter have done this to try and persuade people to donate by feeling sympathetic for the people represented in the adverts.

The social stereotypes of homelessness are normally it is the persons’ fault. This is due to the general consensus of people being involved with drugs and gangs end up being homeless. This advertising campaign by Shelter is trying to show the opposite, by using normal people to show that anyone can go homeless, and this is backed up by the typography showing that it can happen for a number of reasons which can be out of our control, so it is important to not judge people who are homeless as it probably won’t be their fault, and it is the negative stereotype associated with homelessness which makes people reluctant to get help, which is Shelter’s main aim of this campaign.  

Another motivation for Shelter’s campaign was the fact that so many of the homeless are unaccounted for. A lot of these cases are due to soaring rent prices which people struggle to pay monthly, especially when they have a family to look after. Also, cuts in household benefits, so people who need to look after children who cannot go to work are struggling to pay the bills too.

Overall, social and cultural contexts can influence advertising heavily, and the Shelter campaign has taking into account these contexts and stereotypes, and they have tried to show the opposite, so instead of presenting a stereotypical person on the street with gangs, they have shown that more people need help with potentially going homeless than we think, so they have presented three normal people, and shown a few different ways in which people go homeless, none of those were drugs or gang related. So, in this case, the social and cultural contexts have influenced advertising in a positive way, as it has sent a new message which should make more people aware about the causes of homelessness.

Charity Adverts

Advertising

Lucozade advert

Old Spice advert

The Big Issue cover analysis

The Big Issue

General facts:

• started in 1991
• niche magazine
• slogan 'a hand up not a hand out'
• seller makes £1.25 per sale
• 100,000 copies sold each week
• 2000 Big Issue venders in the UK
• hybrid genre - entertainment and social issues
• similar papers in more than 120 countries
• 100 people approach the big issue foundation every week

Big Issue aims:

• help homeless people (financial)
• gives them confidence
• gives them experience and training
• allows them to have a real job instead of beg and steal.
• improves public problems.
• 'ethical capitalism' - John Bird - making money the right way.

Analysing a Big Issue front cover:

• Masthead - the title of the magazine.
• plug - text that 'plugs a feature that will appear inside the magazine.
• puff - main story on the front cover
• cover star
• anchorage text - text that anchors the main image and gives it meaning.
• banner - text that runs across the bottom of the cover.
• skyline - text that runs across the top of the cover.
• CLAMPS
• CLIFT
• DRCAGES (representation)
• social, cultural, political

Minecraft class presentation

Minecraft construction task

Minecraft essay

Minecraft essay

Minecraft is an open world sandbox game created by Markus ‘Notch’ Persson in 2009. A sandbox game is one where it is completely open and there are unlimited possibilities. These include exploring, building, and playing with friends. The structures you can build are made out of 3D cubes with different textures, for example grass, dirt, water and more. There are other aspects and game modes, for example creative mode and survival mode. In creative mode the resources are unlimited and there is little combat, and in survival mode you begin with nothing and you have to collect materials in order to craft weapons, armour and other structures. One of the reasons Minecraft is and has been so popular is due to the flexibility of the gameplay, so casual players who want to create structures and build can play creative mode, and players who want a challenge and more intense gameplay can play survival mode, so they have to try harder to gain the same amount of possibilities as creative mode, as they have to explore and collect all of the materials they need to build and craft.

Minecraft has been a huge commercial success, getting bought by Microsoft for $2.5 billion, and having over 90 million players every month, which is an increase of 20 million from the previous year. One of the reasons of the huge success and continuous player base is the variety of platforms it is available on. At first, it was only available on the PC, but over the years, as more consoles came out the game was adapted and made so that these new consoles can support them. The game is now available on PC, Xbox 360 and Xbox one, PS3 and 4, Nintendo Switch, PS Vita, iPhone, androids, tablets and Macs. Therefore, due to the amount of devices it is now playable on, that means that almost everyone has access to it, so their audience keeps increasing year by year, due to the vast availability of the game.

Other ways it has grown in popularity is social media presence. For example, many big YouTubers including Ali-A have played the game and uploaded it to their channels, which makes people watching want to play it and learn more about the game and how to play it and get better at it. This influence of social media has allowed the community to grow, with people creating famous buildings and sharing them with others, for example someone recreated the entire Stranger Things town.

Another way it has grown has been the conventions that started back in 2011. Minecon is 90 minutes long and is streamed on YouTube and Twitch. There is information, Q&A panels, and the community generally comes together to celebrate Minecraft, with a lot of fans dressing up, and bringing props such as a foam pick-axe, and cardboard box helmets.

Minecraft has also been a huge critical success, being the second most successful game of all time, having a 93% score on Metacritic and a 9/10 score on IGN. The reason it has been popular with the critics, is because it doesn’t have a specific genre, so is tailored for anyone to play, no matter what they are into. For example, Minecraft is a survival, building/construction and an action and adventure game. This means it is difficult to write bad reviews about it, as it doesn’t have to do just one thing to a high standard, as it does so many different things to a high standard.