Starter Task 19/1/15

In today's lesson I will be:

• Finishing off the vlog 5 script
• Recording the audio for Vlog 5
• Carrying on editing Vlog 3

Starter 16/1/15

What I need to finalise to complete Unit 1
-Finish the Vlog 5 script and record it

-Finish the editing for Vlog 3

-Start and complete the editing for Vlogs 4 and 5

Starter 12/1/15

Where am I:
Mostly done on the Task 4 script,
Begun the Task 5 script,
Half edited Task 3

What do I need to complete:
Add more specific details into the Task 4 script and record it,
finish the Task 5 script to a merit level
finish editing Task 3, 4 and 5

LO4 Task 5 - Audience effects, Representation, Legal and Ethical and Regulation issues for X-Men

SCRIPT: Vlog 5 whatever, I'll just call the movie X-Men in this one, let's go. In this vlog I'll be looking at it in terms of the product's impact and effect on the audience, relevant issues of representation, relevant legal and ethical issues, and the role of relevant regulatory bodies. Let's go.

Product's impact and effect on the audience. Now there are two schools of thought when thinking about a media product's effect on the audience, active and passive. With a passive school of thought there is the hypodermic syringe theory, (Theodore Adorno 1930s) where the media has a negative impact on the audience where a mass audience believes everything they see or hear, so for example if I was to make a movie about kicking down lampposts because they have demons inside... don't ask.. then according to this theory a mass audience will actually believe lampposts need kicking down. When applying this theory X-Men there may be things that will influence people. There may be. In terms of violence, violence in the media can influence some people to actually be violent, and the people that do this are known as copycat criminals as they copy something in the media. An example of this which actually happened so I can't joke about it a lot is the Columbine High School massacre of April 20th 1999 where two students killed 13 people and then themselves as they were bullied and had serious mental issues, but they were also influenced by the demon killing game: doom as on a video tape they said the shooting will be quote on quote "like BLEEPing doom". Also the footage you are seeing right now is me playing on the custom level one of the killers made for Doom.  Anyway is there anything in X-Men that could be linked with violence and could cause some mentally ill person to replicate the actions? Well while there is nothing realistic in X-Men and the movie lacks extreme violence, violence does solve the conflict in the movie. Wolverine's the main character for one thing and he does underground fighting and his power is knives, which he does actually use to stab people, now not always for good but in the end it helps. Someone could put knives in between their fingers and pretend to be wolverine and stab someone... I mean stabbing aside the kids in Primary School always did it with pencil crayons. Cyclops has laser eyes, nobody has laser eyes but once again, violence which saves the day. Magneto uses his metal mind powers to pick up a shotgun and threaten to shoot a load of people, shotguns exist, some guy could decide to use one. And look at Sabretooth over here, always grabbing people aggressively, some could- you know you get the idea. Issues about sexual content: X-men is a move that features some really independent women who aren't sexualised, as they are part of the team and don't want to be made to pleas- Oh who left the door open, Mystique has come in again. The character of Mystique is like... naked. Don't worry you don't see anything to change the age rating as I'm not even sure she has anything like that but still she is pretty damn risky of a character in a 12 rated movie, which could have an effect on someone that age. 12 year olds shouldn't be exposed to this sort of thing, can you imagine how weird it would be if you got him the mystique toy? Oh god.. OH GOD... the world's a bit negative isn't it? How about positive role models the movie presents to the audience? Well Wolverine's not exactly Superman because he doesn't really know his side at first, does underground fighting, makes smoking look cool to do, doesn't wear a seatbelt, stabs people really quickly without taking a good look, you know he's pretty lucky Rogue can steal powers otherwise the movie would end with him a murderer, and says some taboo words. But he's not Magneto, someone who wants to kill on purpose and cause a war, and Wolverine stops Magneto so boom, he's sorta kinda positive. Well Charles Xavier then he's a great role model, the guy's isolated in a world full of people who hate him for something he cannot control, but instead of whining about it or causing Wars he creates a school for people like him to train to be peaceful, he's a rocking guy. Never uses violence either... rather mind controls which is kind of evil in a way too, taking away free will... whatever though don't think about it he's cool. Cyclops is someone I don't really like but he has good intentions and never does anything dodgy so he's there, but then the main character and selling point middle fingers him with his claw. Huh. Okay Jean Grey is a female member who has a really cool power and is a doctor and a public speaker, positive role model for women. The movie has positive role models aside from the main character of Wolverine, as he is meant to develop through the series. So if a passive school of thought is that people just see and believe what is shown, an Active school of thought is the opposite. We are able to filter and adapt to content in media (Gauntlett).  Not everyone is going to believe everything the box in the room tells them as any old thing could be made up, and instead of the media using the consumer, the consumer uses the media. Remember that Uses and Gratifications theory from Vlog 4? Works here too.

Representation.

You know who I miss? Good old Stuart Hall as here's some more theory from him, once again from 1980. All representations are mediated. Now does X-Men have stereotypes? Well before I get into that, more theory. Tessa Perkins said in 1979 that not all stereotypes are negative, so what good and bad stereotypes are in X-Men? For good stereotypes we have the character of Cyclops, who is a very generic morally sound male who wants to be heroic and saving the day. These are not bad qualities to have so yeah I'd say he's a good Stereotype. For a less positive stereotype we have Rogue who is essentially pretty weak and needs saving like a stereotypical woman for a film. Now alongside Stereotypes, we also have countertypes that.. obviously when hearing the name, are people that challenge the stereotype. X-Men has this with the female characters in the movie, as they're... pretty basic word.. cool, unlike the stereotype that women can be known as weaker than males. Like Telepathy is really cool with how Jean Grey is all picking stuff up, picking people up and almost having the same mind reading powers, and Storm's powers are also really cool like "Hey Lizard-Man, KAPOW" and then he's gone. The females are a part of the team making them much more than Damsels in distress or a forced love interest. Well aside from Rogue but you can understand her since her power is the central part of the film's plot, if Rogue was male and had the same power he'd still be kidnapped. Also while actual superheroes don't exist, the character of Wolverine is a countertype of a Super Hero who wants to only do good and nothing else but good, as he does all the bad stuff I mentioned earlier but especially that scene where he questions what side is right. Says a lot about his character unlike someone like Superman being all morally perfect all the time.  Now the plot of X-Men is about discrimination of mutant people from the normal people, which could possibly link with people who are actually discriminated in the real world, like a race, religion, sexual orientation, ability etc. Edward Said (1978) said these discriminated people are known as ‘The Other’, as they are not like the majority of people in their area, and the mutants in X-Men could link to this. The movie demonstrates how bad humans can be with the discrimination of mutants, but then it also shows how much worse the other people can be when reacting to this discrimination. However the main characters are mutants and most of the mutants are good people, just the bad ones are powerful enough to outshine the good ones, which I suppose you could link to things like the media’s portrayal of a religion like Islam where the vast majority of Muslims are generally good people, but because of some extremists the media can convince some, or even a lot of people to believe there’s a lot more bad about Muslims than good, and the movie captures that well with how most normal people don’t want to associate with the mutants. What I don’t like about this possible metaphor though is this poster. I will get more into it soon but it says "Trust a few, fear the rest" which doesn’t make sense as there’s only a few villains in this movie and quite a lot of good mutants, I mean there’s a whole school full of them. Really it should be ‘Fear a few, trust the rest’. I don’t know, I feel the advertisers should have paid more attention to the message of the movie.

Legal and ethical

Alright on this one we're going a bit Saul Goodman, a bit lawyer-like. Legal issues with the movie, isn't this fun. With this section I need to discuss copyright, on both the side of the consumer and the side of content creators. On the consumers side you cannot make a copy of a home media version of X-Men and sell it, put it out for download or give it for free since illegal downloading is one of the biggest, if not the biggest worry in the film industry; and you cannot show the movie publicly or charge for that without consent of the owner. However without consent, consumers can use the work for private and research study purposes, make a copy or lend for educational purposes,  copies and lending by librarians, format shifting or back up of a work for personal use, acts for the purposes of royal commissions, statutory enquiries, judicial proceedings and parliamentary purposes, recordings of broadcasts for the purposes of listening to or viewing at a more convenient time (known as time shifting), and producing a back up for personal use of a computer program. For content creators, they can play sound recording for a non profit making organisation, club or society.  Criticism and news reporting, incidental inclusion which means if X-Men was on a TV for a small amount of time in the background of another movie or TV show, and caricature, parody or pastiche. On the ethical side of the spectrum, does X-men have anything offensive or had anything censored? Well there's some more taboo stuff than the kids who watched the cartoon would be used to like the Wolverine against Cyclops thing, but overall the movie doesn't go too far there and nothing's really censored, well they could have gone a lot worse with Mystique but still. What about sensationalism? Well X-Men sensationalises that if people like Magneto existed and had these crazy powers, then there wouldn't be much regular humans could do at all to stop them.

The role of Regulatory Bodies

Now let's talk about the regulatory bodies, who decide what a product is suitable for. Now I'm sure you have seen a lot of age ratings on your DVD and Blu-ray covers, before your films begin in the cinema, and all that, but do you know who decide what those ratings should be? You bloody better considering they are plastered all over the age ratings like look at the 15 rating, it has the BBFC logo plastered 34 times on it, if you don't know its them that do it then I don't know what to say. But yes the BBFC, British Board of Film Classification, who decide what's appropriate for an age. Now how do they decide on that? Well I'll just tediously read out what factors decide an age rating for each age, because these vlogs need to be a bit more boring to be completely educational. For U, the lowest of the low on ages on the BBFC site, the film cannot have much bad language aside from very mild works like "damn" or "hell"; the most sexual stuff you will see if kissing and cuddling and some references, just no focus on innuendos, language or behaviour, same goes for sexuality, can't focus on it too much. Violence is only very very light with a mild fight or something that's solved quickly, only  baddie characters may carry or use weapons, but there will be no emphasis on these. Child or ‘hero’ characters are unlikely to use any kind of weapon outside, for example, historical settings. Hm.. blablabla can't influence kids to be mean, have positive messages, don't be discriminating unless there's a message about how discrimination is bad, can't put in illegal drugs or a misuse of drugs unless there's a message about how bad they are, etc. God I'm boring myself explaining all of this. PG movies don't go on about inappropriate themes for a child like drug dealing or whatever, you can have some more raunchy language like "shit" or "son-of-a-bitch" as long as the delivery is relevant, very mild sex stuff, slightly more violent stuff but still not a lot, don't influence bad things still and it allows for more drug references and such. 12 and 12A, the difference between them is that people under 12 can watch a 12A movie as long a parent is present, but with a 12 you have to be 12 or over.  So with the 12 rating you can have a darker tone, use the F word.. not sure why shit is uncensored on this site but fuck isn't, a bit more discrimination here and there but not strongly unless condemned, sex can be briefly portrayed and joked about infrequently alongside some nudity when not in a sexual context for very long, violence can go a bit further but not to detailed and such with no glamorising easily accessible weapons like knives and stuff, and drugs and antisocial behaviour can stay. So bla bla 15 has more sex, violence,  drugs, discrimination and swearing, 18 has even more of that, and R18 the restricted one goes even further. As in it's porn. Anyway thank god we have that clarified, and X-Men goes into 12 because of some bad language here and there and non-glorified language, alongside mild themes of discrimination with how the mutants are looked down upon. The rating never changed over here. In America the movie is rated PG-13 which is only a year difference.


For ASA.. hang on I need to make sure you're not asleep from my explanation of BBFC (buzzer sound effect, explosions, barking dog, carnival music with a clown on a unicycle all play on the screen at the same time to wake up the viewers).  Alright. I'll get you a cup of coffee in a sec. So the ASA is the Advertising Standards Agency, as they moderate advertising, with these codes. These long. Long codes. No no don't fall asleep again you're coffee is ready. I will just talk about harm and offense, children, and but since it's still a lot to talk about I'll put on a silly voice for entertainment purposes. For harm and offence, marketers are required to  keep out things that may create serious or widespread offense such as gender, sexual preference, religion, race, disability or age; they cannot cause fear or distress to people without a justifiable reason; references to the dead must be handled with care to avoid distress or offense; they can't condone anti social behaviour or violence; don't condone or encourage anything dangerous especially to children; don't encourage drinking and driving or that the effects of drinking can be masked, don't give people seizures must contain nothing that is likely to result in their physical, mental or moral harm; children must not be encouraged to enter strange places or talk to strangers; children can't be in dangerous situations or shown on their own on streets if they can't look after themselves; children can't be shown using or around dangerous equipment or substances without an adult around them; they can't copy actions that may be unsafe to them; distance selling marketers must take care when using youth media not to promote products that are unsuitable for children; advertisements must not exploit children's credulity, loyalty, vulnerability or lack of experience; you can't make a child feel unpopular or inferior for not paying for the advertised product; children must not be made to feel that they are lacking in courage, duty or loyalty if they do not buy or do not encourage others to buy a product, etc. That's all of the rules I can bear for today or I would have to hang myself with a rope tied to a speeding train. How does this apply to this X-Men poster? [http://cdn.bleedingcool.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/x-men-1-poster.jpg] It's just a letter X so it doesn't. I'll get one with people in it. [http://www.massappealdesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/xmen_ver2.jpg] Ah that's better.  Anyway there's nothing offensive to anyone in this poster directly though the "Trust a few, fear the rest" could possibly be mistaken for being offensive to any particular group despite the fact it's referring the mutants who without debate should have a few trusted because there's bad mutants out there; the fact it says "fear the rest" could possibly create fear to the select few who think the movie is real or something daft like that, but otherwise it seems fine. There's no children shown so all the rules about that can't apply, and it doesn't show any violence aside from maybe the fact wolverine's claws are shown, and while Mystique is shown who could be considered a sexualised character, she doesn't really have anything taboo stuff shown here so there's no sexual content in this poster.

So there we go. The final Vlog done. It's been a fun ride at Extreme Education of Death for Kids but like all things, it has to end. Good bye all, I hope I taught well.

Task 5 Starter

List of what I already know about representation
- Representation is how something is presented to an audience.
-An example of good and bad representation is like good female representation is having the females as capable interesting character, while bad female representation has the females making sandwiches and being 1 dimensional throughout.

Age, gender, lifestyle, ethnicity, culture, class, communities, sub-cultures, violence, ideal lifestyle, ideal partners can be represented by the media.

Ideology means a belief system.

a) active and Passive

Two schools of thought. 1. Hypodermic syringe (Theodore Adorno, 1930s)- media has a negative impact. Mass audience believe everything they see/hear.
Issues about violence?
X-Men features super people using their super powers against super villains, usually with violence like Wolverine's claws, Cyclops' lasers, Storm's storms, Magneto flying people around and holding a shotgun, Toad with the tongue etc.

Issues about sexual content?
Mystique is sexualised (wears no clothes but she's got mutated skin so it didn't change age rating or anything).

Issues about representation

Positive impact/role models?

Copycat violence, copy what is seen in the media

Active and passive

2. Other school of thought - we are able to filter and adapt to content in media (Gauntlett).  We have uses and gratifications theory - people use media for their own purposes?

Moral Panic (Stanley Cohen 1972).

1993 copycat crime Child's Play 3, 1999 copycat crime Columbine Doom.

Movies, TV, Vidya games and Music are said to influence copycat criminals? 




B) Representation. All representations are mediated (Stuart Hall 1980)

Is there use of stereotypes/countertypes (Perkins, 1979). Not all stereotypes are negative.

[Stereotypes are simplified generalisations]

Countertype counters a stereotype (for example Independence Day with Will Smith being a black hero)

Alvarado (1987)- "Ethnicity exotic, dangerous, humorous, pitied"

C) Legal and ethical

Legal - Copyright infringement? - main worry in film industry illegal downloading? Mention copyrighted material the company needs to take note of and piracy. Digital Economy Bill 2014.

Ethical - offensive material? Sensationalism? Censorship - has the film been censored?

Sensationalism


Ethical - offensive material? Sensationalism? Censorship - has the film been censored?



BBFC - Who are they? What is the age range? Did the age range get changed at any time? Is it different to US? How does the film keep to the guidelines it has set for the film.

ASA - who are they? CAP codes regulate print material? Show the codes in your vlog - how does your marketing in posters etc adhere to rules set?

Advertising and Distribution recap

For Vlog 4 to be finished I need to do some more research on specific details on X-Men's success outside of the theatrical release, record the finished script for the vlog and download enough images (And edit them into a video) to create a fully edited vlog

LO3 Task 4 - Advertising and Distribution of X-Men

SCRIPT: Extreme Education of Death for Kidz is back! With more of this stupid super hero movie X-Men. Oh yeah I need a new name for the movie.. uh.. X-friends go to the Zoo. I'm sorry but why isn't deadpool in this movie? He's actually a fun character... well he's a bit of an annoying meme now but whatever! Any the lesson for this vlog is about Technological convergence. So you know blah blah blah looking it into categories of distribution, promotion and.. wait.. huh that's it. I suppose I'll go into a lot of detail about them then! Can't make a non-ridiculously long vlog can I?... though maybe it's not needed. Maybe the explosions, montages, long explanation, pointless intro speeches aren't necessary for my grade- I mean to educate, and are just simple ways to entertain myself and nobody else? Tss I don't care it's fun, I'll do what I want!

Distribution: So first what does technological convergence mean? Well sit down as it's a long story.... When technologies come together and this provides new services for the audience. That's all. So like a camera and a flashlight and a computer work together and boom a smartphone. Video games, movie streaming and other media playback and boom a modern game console. This is because convergence as a word just means coming together. You remember the whole joint venture thing from vlog 1, well that's like two companies coming together, meaning Institutional convergence. So what does this whole technological convergence mean for X-friends go to the zoo? Well how you get to watch it. Introducing the 8 ways to watch a movie: 1, the Cinema, classic popcorn munch watch on a big screen with friends or alone I suppose despite that being a little bit awkward. The cinema is still popular as it is a social event despite you don't talk to people in a cinema, and movies come first to the cinema. 2. DVD or Blu-Ray or VHS. Physical media bought once or rented that you put into a media machine to watch. This links to technological convergence as originally you may have to own a DVD or VHS or Laserdisc player or whatever but now you can use a computer or a games console which are both technologically converged products. 3. Netflix and other pay per view online streaming services. Watching things stream straight from the internet that you have to constantly pay for. Also technologically converged because Netflix is pretty much on everything. 4, television broadcast. Things are at a schedule of what shows and movies play at specific times and channels which people aren't always a fan of since you might want to watch the new Game of thrones episode at any time you can, and why should people have to wait past the watershed to watch SpongeBob? This is leading to the death of the schedule and audience fragmentation (Sonia Livingstone 2002) which means people and families aren't really watching TV together rather they watch things on their own devices.  5. Paid download on the internet like iTunes, games consoles, Amazon etc. So this is like digital streaming but on download and usually the movie is paid for to watch as long as the audience wishes. Again leading to technological convergence since these services are found on a range of devices. 6, On demand, which is also pay per view but this time over the TV services like Virgin and Sky rather than the Internet, especially leading to the death of the schedule as this is actually on TV. TV is going against itself! And 7 and 8, illegal free streaming of the movie as found on a website such as Putlocker and illegal downloading which you would use a torrent and website like the Pirate Bay as long as it doesn't get taken down again. So don't pirate kids with torrenting and streaming, because tell me.. would you steal a car? I mean if you could download a car with very, very little risk of getting caught then yeah you probably would, I would but still, you would be stealing a movie from Fox if you pirated. So anyway, how does X-Friends go to the Zoo link to this? Well it's just how you watch the movie. The movie first released in Australian cinemas on the 1th of July in the year 2000 (18th of August in the UK), the VHS was released on the 21st November in the same year with the DVD release on the 7th of February 2006 and the Blu Ray release on the 21st of April 2009.  On Netflix the movie was added on the 1st of June 2011 and currently the movie is available on NowTV which is a Sky Pay per view service. You know what owns Sky? Fox. Horizontal Integration! On television while there is no date, the movie has been on Film 4 on Channels 315 on Sky, 429 on Virgin, 15 on Youview, 15 on Freeview and 300 on Freesat. When it comes to digital download the movie is available to purchase on iTunes for a whopping nine pounds- no wonder people pirate. On demand the movie is available through Sky as X-Men and Sky are both 21st Century Fox property once again being a part of Horizontal Integration. As for the illegal stuff, you could find this movie on any streaming site like putlocker and any piracy site like pirate bay or kick ass torrents.

Marketing: X-friends go to the zoo at the time would have had quite a few ways of marketing. The movie had positive film reviews from and previews in magazines like empire would get the movie known to an audience such as the four star review and this cover [http://thumbs4.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/mqd9HmPOPusRF9gtE8xYytg.jpg], since this is based off the comic then the comics could have advertisements for the movie for example, the Ultimate X-Men series where the characters were based off of their movie form (though this was released the year after the movie so this could be more geared towards Home media sales), and... TV adverts in between programmes such as this one [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMlC8hFmeFY], Posters such as these [google image page of X-Men posters], Cinema advertising through trailers, VHS/DVD/Blu-Ray advertisements through trailers, Merchandise like those pesky toys, interviews on TV programmes such as this one [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJFS1OYMnU8] the news adverts and previews such as the coverage in the WENN, and possibly radio adverts but there are none archived. However, if the film would be released now then things get a little bit crazier, thanks to the internet. You see back in the year 2000 when things were radical, those One Direction kids weren't born yet and I was still enjoying life as it was pretty much still the 90s (sarcastically smug) and trust me, I was a 90s kid, that was the best decade because I say so, the internet wasn't quite as crazy as it is now as the rise of web 2.0 (David Gauntlett 2002) wasn't there yet, so the web was a lot more static. This means instead of YouTube advertisements, website banners, social media advertising and ads on Skype and hell game consoles of all things, we had sites with black backgrounds, pictures and coloured text that didn't do anything aside from the occasional gif if you're lucky, and awful Newgrounds flash animations rather than these beautiful YouTube cartoons. Since the web is a lot different now, film companies can use social media like Twitter and Facebook and (snickers) Google Plus to create trends like #YouAttractedToBluePeople or #HowWouldYouPunchCyclops which without the consumer really knowing, making them advertise the movie. People are now advertisers without getting paid, which is kind of scary thinking about it. Also come on you can't forget about those pesky YouTube adverts coming up to tell us about the new Adam Sandler or whatever movie out soon, always telling me to not skip yet I always do, you know. Also banner ads are a lot more common these days. Now the Internet isn't just a happy magical place for advertising, because of UGC. United Garlic Corporation. I mean User Generated Content. Web 2.0 (David Gauntlett 2002.. again) allows users to participate and say whatever they want about a movie. Before all the Web 2.0 stuff, the only ways you could find out if a movie is good or not is by the film companies who would obviously make out everything they produce is great, the reviewers in magazines and TV which for all the consumers know could have been paid for by Fox, and general word of mouth by people who already paid to watch the movie. Now just average consumers like you or me can use a site like Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic to say if a movie is good or bad which the film companies can't do anything about. In fact instead of Consumer, I should say Prosumer. Should I trust this high paid review of X-Men in the Sun, a 21st Century Fox newspaper or should I trust NeckBeardFred82, someone just like me? Exactly. 

The rise of Web 2.0 has directly influenced the way movies are marketed and distributed, which can be in good and bad ways for both consumers and the companies. Companies can conveniently sell their movies in a number of ways to consumers which should benefit both the consumer and company, but then internet piracy exists which is very easy to do. Companies can advertise their movies in a number of ways, even in things that you wouldn't expect to try to sell you things like now an Xbox wants to sell you a movie, but then Consumers have the power to tell people how a movie really is thanks to rotten tomatoes and metacritic. But then hashtags, a company can use hashtags to get people to advertise a movie or TV show for free.

Anyway I'm sick of X-Friends go to the zoo (picks up disc in a case that's obviously X-Men, throws it to the sky). Ahh. (Looks to case, it was The Shawshank Redemption the entire time, one tear slows falls out of my eye)