Claudia Wingrove A2 Portfolio

Blumer and Katz
The theorists Blumer and Katz use the 'Gratifications Theory' to explore how media has an effect over their audiences, because the audience has control over media consumption. This theory is relevant to my own work, because as a producer, I want my work to be received positively and to later be acted upon. My narrative follows a boy struggling with mental health, this is a topic that is scarcely addressed within the media, and through expressing a level of support and movement towards the lack of emotional awareness to men, I intend to bring this situation into the wider society of media and audience consumption. Media consumption is important for my style of media product, music videos become popular and can be distributed on Youtube, Facebook  and on the artists website. Music videos project a visual image which enables an audience to become more engaged and to remember the running message and themes of the video.

Levi Strauss
Levi Strauss is a theorist that believed that the only way we understand certain words is through understanding the difference between the word and its 'opposite' or, most commonly called 'a binary opposite'. The representation of opposition and contradicting the 'norm' is a theme I use within the narrative of my music video and the editing. I present the emotional side to a man, this representation o a man is not popularity addressed within media and films. Men are traditionally seen as both the hero and villain, where in both roles, they are not weak. The portrayal of emotions is expressed as a more 'feminine' act, I used the theory of binary opposites when presenting the power of genre within my music video. Opposing this theory, Jacques Derrida argued that binary opposites are never equal and audiences are positioned to favour one over another.

Stuart Hall
The theorist Stuart Hall focus his theory around Reception and Mediation. This is a process where all media products are read by an audience. Hall says that there are three ways the audience receives media: 

1. The audience fully accepts the preferred meaning, showing they agree with dominant values.
2. The audience takes a negotiated position, meaning that they only agree with some-not all of the preferred meaning.
3. The audience takes an oppositional position, whereby they understand the preferred meaning but decide to reject this and make their own interpretation
4. An extension of this is a fourth reading called the aberrant reading, where a completely unintentional meaning is taken away by audiences.

To receive feedback for my final advert poster design, I printed out a hard copy and handed it out to four people. I voice recorded their responses and asked some questions along side this, this is their responses:

These images were developments of my final idea, I wanted to expand on the design to compare and receive a visual response. These variations are too harsh and high in contrast to the point where the colour distracts from the actual design behind the image. I inverted the background colours and the shadowing of my character to experiment with the title fonts and how they change when the colour of the background and the foregrounding silhouette of a man swap over.

The picture above is a photo I took when on set filming for my music video. I chose to use this snapshot which is set in the same area as one of the shots that feature in my music video because of the symbolistic attributes that come from this image. The closed body position suggests, in the case of my music video, the separation the character feels from society. The journey of the music video follows a man who struggles with portraying his emotions and therefor feels separated from reality and other people. He lives a lonesome life and every daily occurrence is a repetition of the day before, this is shown through the fast sped-up and slowed down clips and the change in opacity and over-laying of clips, these attributes re-enforce the mental state of the character and is a notion that hopefully a male audience can relate to through the oppression media and society has on the men not being able to express their emotions.

This shot captures the meaning behind the music video very clearly. Changing the shot to black and white and over contrasting it on Photoshop, I was able to create a powerful image by enhancing the silhouette of the man so that he can stand for the generation of men who feel unable to express their emotions because of the fear of loosing respect or the general sense of 'manliness'. The basic colours of black and white will enable me to use different coloured of font that will contrast and stand out from the background (i.e. red, white, black and grey).

The surrounding area behind the character, because of the contrast, is mostly white which will enable me to overlay text that will be visibly clearer to see and read. The varying amount of black lines across the white background reinforce that the character is standing in front of water, something that is mentioned throughout the song 'Bruises', contextually bounding the image to the song and album. The black lines showing the rippling of the water enable the background to become textured by adding in more dimension and patterns, this foregrounds the man standing in front of the water which enables the man to become more of a dramatic and meaningful symbolism for men.

Throughout designing my Ancillary 2 album poster I used a varying amount of different fonts, colours and sizes. The bottom left screen shot shows the information of the details that make up the size and design of the title of the poster advertising the album. The grey title is also edited to have lower opacity levels so that when it's overlaid over the background the tones of the grey change due to the black and white it overlaps.

I chose the colour grey for the title because it is a mid tone between white and black and in itself would stand out from the background. I used white font for the name of the artist and the advertisement of two of the songs that will be found on the album; 'INCLUDES NO.1 HIT SINGLE/ RUSH/ AND THE NEW SINGLE FADE'. The title of the two singles are written in a bigger and bolder font than the one used to introduce the singles. Inspired by the magazine adverts that I have analysed, I experimented with the size and style of fonts until I found one that worked well with the layout of my poster.

'ALBUM AVAILABLE NOW' and the link to the artists website are written in red. I chose to use this colour because it highlights the information that will increase the popularity of the artist and the amount of albums sold. The colour red will influence the public into wanting to buy the album because the colour connotes urgency. using red to highlight the artists website will enable the public to research and visit the website that could potentially have links for the audience to buy the music online or to merchandise. Overall I chose the colours carefully depending on the type of information I wanted the audience to receive first.