JANUARY 2018
This month was my first time in Media Studies. The first thing we did was go through a test that everyone did before the break, so now I know how we're supposed to write the analysis. Here is my take on the hardest question of the paper:
(q 04 3) Explain how advertisements reflect the historical context in which they were created. Answer with reference to the OMO advertisement in Figure 3.
Advertisements were made to reflect the historical context because they were targeting people living in those times. As this is a washing powder, the largest market at that time would be housewives, whose lives stereotypically revolve around cleaning. OMO plays to these stereotypes by advertising that "OMO adds Brightness to Whiteness" which would attract their interest. Furthermore, they chose to use a caucasian lady in their advertising, as this was a time when other races were not really represented in media. She has a short haircut and makeup which was considered attractive at the time, but is dressed like she's doing housework. They did this to appeal to their target audience as they would be able to relate to her as they are also caucasian housewives, but also because she is stylish and it would make using OMO seem trendy. Another way it reflected the historical context was the design choices. This advertisement used a lot of bright colours, bubble lettering and exclamation marks. While this might have been appealing at the time, nowadays advertisements tend to be more streamlined and prefer using natural colour palettes to make it look more realistic, so such a thing would feel cheesy or cheap.
This month was my first time in Media Studies. The first thing we did was go through a test that everyone did before the break, so now I know how we're supposed to write the analysis. Here is my take on the hardest question of the paper:
(q 04 3) Explain how advertisements reflect the historical context in which they were created. Answer with reference to the OMO advertisement in Figure 3.
Advertisements were made to reflect the historical context because they were targeting people living in those times. As this is a washing powder, the largest market at that time would be housewives, whose lives stereotypically revolve around cleaning. OMO plays to these stereotypes by advertising that "OMO adds Brightness to Whiteness" which would attract their interest. Furthermore, they chose to use a caucasian lady in their advertising, as this was a time when other races were not really represented in media. She has a short haircut and makeup which was considered attractive at the time, but is dressed like she's doing housework. They did this to appeal to their target audience as they would be able to relate to her as they are also caucasian housewives, but also because she is stylish and it would make using OMO seem trendy. Another way it reflected the historical context was the design choices. This advertisement used a lot of bright colours, bubble lettering and exclamation marks. While this might have been appealing at the time, nowadays advertisements tend to be more streamlined and prefer using natural colour palettes to make it look more realistic, so such a thing would feel cheesy or cheap.
FEBRUARY 2018
This month we started learning about film and focusing specifically on the industry. Rather than looking at the types of shots and angles like we did in the past, we concentrated on how the films were produced and marketed. I learned a lot about how different genres of film would be marketed in different ways in order to appeal to different target audiences. In the future to help me understand better, I should research more about the funding of films, as I don't know that much about that yet |
MARCH 2018
This month we started on television shows. We began studying Doctor Who and how it has changed over the years to reflect society and technology, from the original series to the modern reboot (2005 - present) I learned about the context and events at the time making doctor who popular. We also studied different narrative theories like Propp's theory or Todorov's theory that we can now apply to add depth when writing analyses on media. In the future, I should try to finish my analysis on my blog |
APRIL 2018
This month was shorter as half of it was spring break. However, we still managed to accomplish quite a lot. We continued studying Doctor Who, but at greater depth. We watched the first episode - An Unearthly Child. We analyzed how the theories (todorov, propp etc.) applied to it, and studied the stereotypes and iconography. We learned about the science fiction genre and the how the BBC works. We finished our Doctor Who CSP analysis. I set up a theory tab on my blog. Currently, we are working on analyzing the Doctor Who spinoff series Class (2016). I think we may be moving on to the next topic soon. Before then, I need to finish up the incomplete analysis on my blog, and fix the backgrounds etc. so it looks nice
This month was shorter as half of it was spring break. However, we still managed to accomplish quite a lot. We continued studying Doctor Who, but at greater depth. We watched the first episode - An Unearthly Child. We analyzed how the theories (todorov, propp etc.) applied to it, and studied the stereotypes and iconography. We learned about the science fiction genre and the how the BBC works. We finished our Doctor Who CSP analysis. I set up a theory tab on my blog. Currently, we are working on analyzing the Doctor Who spinoff series Class (2016). I think we may be moving on to the next topic soon. Before then, I need to finish up the incomplete analysis on my blog, and fix the backgrounds etc. so it looks nice
MAY 2018
This month we finished the CLASS CSP and we did a mini test on television and genres, mainly on Doctor Who and Class because they were our CSPs. We didn't have any notice and we didn't revise because it was just to test how much we already know. Then we started the online social and participatory media unit by looking at Zoella. We investigated what made her so influential and different from other youtubers, by spreading out from just youtube and creating merchandise and her own branding. This also led us to better understand how media has changed from hollywood movies, to acknowledging youtubers. I had never realised before how profitable youtube was, and I learned that most vlogs are actually scripted, which was surprising to me since I thought vlogs were supposed to be honest and "raw". This unit was a bit harder than some of the others I think, because I feel like I'm behind on more things and I'm not sure if it's because it was interrupted by exams etc. or something else. Now in Media we are starting to create our own vlogs which have to be funny. Which is going to be difficult because wow I'm not funny, so yes that's our next project for June. For photography / photoshop we completed our pieces on "other worlds". I did a piece on another world through my shadow. It is the first piece I have completed in this school for photography class, and it was actually pretty fun and turned out okay even though I had trouble thinking of ideas to begin with.
This month we finished the CLASS CSP and we did a mini test on television and genres, mainly on Doctor Who and Class because they were our CSPs. We didn't have any notice and we didn't revise because it was just to test how much we already know. Then we started the online social and participatory media unit by looking at Zoella. We investigated what made her so influential and different from other youtubers, by spreading out from just youtube and creating merchandise and her own branding. This also led us to better understand how media has changed from hollywood movies, to acknowledging youtubers. I had never realised before how profitable youtube was, and I learned that most vlogs are actually scripted, which was surprising to me since I thought vlogs were supposed to be honest and "raw". This unit was a bit harder than some of the others I think, because I feel like I'm behind on more things and I'm not sure if it's because it was interrupted by exams etc. or something else. Now in Media we are starting to create our own vlogs which have to be funny. Which is going to be difficult because wow I'm not funny, so yes that's our next project for June. For photography / photoshop we completed our pieces on "other worlds". I did a piece on another world through my shadow. It is the first piece I have completed in this school for photography class, and it was actually pretty fun and turned out okay even though I had trouble thinking of ideas to begin with.
JUNE 2018
This month we finished our vlogs. I'm not entirely satisfied with my vlog, but I do think it was a learning experience and I learned better video editing skills like how to add text anywhere in my video etc. Before, I had never realised how much effort goes into making and editing videos, even short ones. So now I have greater respect for youtubers and videomakers. We also began our next topic - Radio - because it's kind of linked to Online, Social and Participatory Media, in the sense that people could call in and interact with people on the Radio shows similar to how people now comment on youtube / other social media and interact with the creators. Our CSP is on the Radio 1 Launch Day, so we learned a lot about the beginning of Radio, the popularity of Pirate Radio and how it was linked to the beginning of teenage culture, and how it has affected modern Radio. I found the parts about Pirate Radio kind of thrilling, I hadn't known anything about any of this before, nor do I listen to the Radio very much, but maybe after this I will try it. For photography / photoshop this month, we started a new project which is making a magazine cover, but it has to be about something typically "boring" to make it more challenging. However, we didn't manage to get very far along on that and I don't think we have any more lessons for this year. Overall I'm quite happy with my progress in Media. I think I learned a lot and now when analysing media I know what to look for etc.
This month we finished our vlogs. I'm not entirely satisfied with my vlog, but I do think it was a learning experience and I learned better video editing skills like how to add text anywhere in my video etc. Before, I had never realised how much effort goes into making and editing videos, even short ones. So now I have greater respect for youtubers and videomakers. We also began our next topic - Radio - because it's kind of linked to Online, Social and Participatory Media, in the sense that people could call in and interact with people on the Radio shows similar to how people now comment on youtube / other social media and interact with the creators. Our CSP is on the Radio 1 Launch Day, so we learned a lot about the beginning of Radio, the popularity of Pirate Radio and how it was linked to the beginning of teenage culture, and how it has affected modern Radio. I found the parts about Pirate Radio kind of thrilling, I hadn't known anything about any of this before, nor do I listen to the Radio very much, but maybe after this I will try it. For photography / photoshop this month, we started a new project which is making a magazine cover, but it has to be about something typically "boring" to make it more challenging. However, we didn't manage to get very far along on that and I don't think we have any more lessons for this year. Overall I'm quite happy with my progress in Media. I think I learned a lot and now when analysing media I know what to look for etc.
SEPTEMBER 2018
Over the summer we completed the Self-production Radio piece. I had the most fun doing that assignment I think, out of all the ones we've done before. And I had the most time to just take it slow and enjoy the process. This month was the first month back in school for Year 11 Media. It was mostly just finishing things up - fixing our blogs and adding all the missing production work and analyses. I finally went back and did the OMO and Represent CSPs from the Advertising and Marketing unit that I missed. It didn't take very long, I think because I have gotten better at analysis. We did one more Radio piece, the Beats Radio CSP which was useful as comparison with BBC Radio 1 as they were both very different (mass vs niche audience, etc.) And then we moved on to studying some theory relating to audiences. For that we took an MBTI (simplified) 16 personalities test. I got INFJ-A, which is the same as when I last took it. This helps relate to our psychometrics - for example I believe I am a succeeder most of the time (?) which matches how infjs are supposedly about 'confident individualism'. We have also starte our new topic - magazines.
Over the summer we completed the Self-production Radio piece. I had the most fun doing that assignment I think, out of all the ones we've done before. And I had the most time to just take it slow and enjoy the process. This month was the first month back in school for Year 11 Media. It was mostly just finishing things up - fixing our blogs and adding all the missing production work and analyses. I finally went back and did the OMO and Represent CSPs from the Advertising and Marketing unit that I missed. It didn't take very long, I think because I have gotten better at analysis. We did one more Radio piece, the Beats Radio CSP which was useful as comparison with BBC Radio 1 as they were both very different (mass vs niche audience, etc.) And then we moved on to studying some theory relating to audiences. For that we took an MBTI (simplified) 16 personalities test. I got INFJ-A, which is the same as when I last took it. This helps relate to our psychometrics - for example I believe I am a succeeder most of the time (?) which matches how infjs are supposedly about 'confident individualism'. We have also starte our new topic - magazines.
OCTOBER 2018
This month we finished the radio analysis that was incomplete, as well as adding detail to our Beats 1 radio audience targeting and reception part. Then we started on the magazines topic and looked at the CSPs of Tatler and Reveal magazine. There was a lot of analysis and theory work and not much else this month. For these analysis, I tried to apply my theory knowledge of audience targeting and other theories eg. Propp, or the new theory we learned this month which was Simon Sitnek's golden circle. We also began planning our new production work which was the magazine front cover and double page spread, but I really didn't know what I wanted to do for this. I added to my media language page. |
NOVEMBER 2018
This month was mainly working on magazine production like our front cover and double page spread. It's been a while since we did any photography for production work so I struggled a bit with that since I don't take photos with the DSLRs very often. I made a mistake with shutter speed / lighting with the photos so they turned out slightly blurry. Although I was able to work with the photos anyway, in the future I would use a proper tripod to keep the camera steady, and maybe shoot in the studio where the lighting and environment can be controlled very precisely. For future production pieces I may try to do something more adventurous with photoshop techniques so that my pieces look more interesting (or unconventional?) There were some holidays during this month so we missed a few classes and didn't do much other than production work. |