MEST 1 Case Study: Documentaries and Hybrid Forms

You will be sitting your MEST1 exam on 13th May and need to start preparing! Here's what you need to know:

Investigating Media

•     Two hour exam – marked out of 80. If you have something to watch then there will be an added 15 minutes.

 

Read this earlier blog post for the exam breakdown. Click me!

You will be doing two case studies for Section B.

• Music with Miss Campbell
• Documentaries with Miss Hederer

So what is a documentary?

A movie or a television or radio programme that provides a factual record or report.

What does hybrid mean?

A thing made by combining two different elements; a mixture.

How else can documentaries be explained?

• They aim to document reality, attempting truthfulness in their depiction of people, places and events.
•  However, the process of mediationmeans that it is impossible to re-present reality without constructing a narrative that may be fictional in places.
• Any images that are edited cannot claim to be wholly factual, they are the result of choices made by the photographer on the other end of the lens.
• Despite this, it is widely accepted that categories of media texts can be classed as non-fiction, that their aim is to reveal a version of reality that is less filtered and reconstructed than in a fiction text.
• Fiction texts = completely made up and scripted e.g. Eastenders.
• Documentaries are often constructed from a particular moral or political perspective, and cannot therefore claim to be objective.
• Other documentaries claim simply to record an event, although decisions made in post-production mean that actuality is edited, re-sequenced and artificially framed.

• The documentary genre has a range of purposes, from the simple selection and recording of events (a snapshot or unedited holiday video) to a polemic text that attempts to persuade the audience into a specific set of opinions (Bowling For Columbine). Audiences must identify that purpose early on and will therefore decode documentary texts differently to fictional narratives.

Codes and conventions of documentary

Voiceover
Interviews
Real footage of events
Technicality of realism (natural sound and lighting)
Archive footage/stills
Use of text/titles/date to anchor meanings
Non-diegetic sound
Set ups or reconstructions of events
Visual coding (mise en scene and props)
"Chill footage" - Following the subject around
Process footage - Filming the making of the documentary

In his 2001 book, Introduction to Documentary(Indiana University Press), Bill Nichols defines the following six modes of documentary:

 

The Poetic Mode	'reassembling fragments of the world', a transformation of historical material into a more abstract, lyrical form, usually associated with 1920s and modernist ideas
The Expository Mode	'direct address', social issues assembled into an argumentative frame, mediated by a voice-of-God narration, associated with 1920s-1930s, and some of the rhetoric and polemic surrounding World War Two
The Observational Mode	as technology advanced by the 1960s and cameras became smaller and lighter, able to document life in a less intrusive manner, there is less control required over lighting etc, leaving the social actors free to act and the documentarists free to record without interacting with each other
The Participatory Mode	the encounter between film-maker and subject is recorded, as the film-maker actively engages with the situation they are documenting, asking questions of their subjects, sharing experiences with them. Heavily reliant on the honesty of witnesses
The Reflexive Mode	demonstrates consciousness of the process of reading documentary, and engages actively with the issues of realism and representation, acknowledging the presence of the viewer and the modality judgements they arrive at. Corresponds to critical theory of the 1980s
The Performative Mode	acknowledges the emotional and subjective aspects of documentary, and presents ideas as part of a context, having different meanings for different people, often autobiographical in nature

See if you recognise any of these modes in documentaries you have seen! More on these modes later...

 

The best case studies will include:

 

1. A range of different media products from a range of media platforms

2. Detailed examples from particular media products.

3. Evidence of research into media debates and issues and relevant wider contexts.

4. Theory used to explain and support answers

 

Now to the fun bit... homework!

 

Choose a TV documentary to watch and answer/make notes on the following things:

 

Type of programme:

 

Channel it is broadcast on:

 

Topic of documentary:

 

Voiceover: Male or female? Regional accent or standard English? Famous person or celebrity/actor?

 

Talking to camera: Who talks directly to camera and why?

 

Talking off camera: Are questions asked by someone off camera? Does the person being questioned answer to the person off camera?

 

Vox pop: Does the programme include street interviews to get 'ordinary people's views'?

 

Interview: Is the person interviewed in a special setting? Are they filmed with dramatic lighting? Are their identities kept secret?

 

Literisation: Are words used on screen to give further information e.g. sub-titles, translations, dates, times, place names.

 

Music: Is music used to dramatise segments of the programme? To create suspense? A sense of tragedy? Humour? To fit a particular image?

 

Camera techniques: Fly on the wall? Hand-held? Following people around?

Copy and paste above, add your notes and post on the blog as a comment please! Due on Wednesday 6th.

 

Diet Coke and the 'Gaze'

The Male Gaze seems to be the default position of advertising - watch television for more than ten minutes and you can guarantee that a scantily clad woman will be used to sell you a car, beer or even trainers. The Reebok EasyTone advert (click here to see on youtube) is a perfect example of the way women are objectified and sexualised in the media. Although the male gaze is clearly in effect here, the advert is actually aimed at women and therefore plays on the fact that if you buy these trainers, you will become instantly attractive. It could be argued that Reebok are trying to create insecurities within women in order to sell their products. By making the viewer believe they do not fit the 'correct' body type, this perpetuates the myth that a woman is only attractive if she is a particular size. The advert says you can “discover up to 28% more of a workout for your butt…so 88% of men will be speechless, 76% of women jealous." The suggestion here is that women should work out purely to look good for men and be better than other women.

Despite this, most advertisers consider the demographics of their audience, and when the product is pointedly aimed at women, the female gaze does occasionally get a look-in. Diet Coke is one of the brands that picked up on this with their famous 'Diet Coke break' campaign which featured a series of attractive men being watched by a group of career women. In 1994 the first 'hunk' advert was broadcast and a man was viewed purely as an object. In 2007, the campaign changed but now it's back! Re-branding themselves for their 30th anniversary, Diet Coke have introduced a new 'hunk' with a trailer which features the strapline: “He’s back. 11:30 am. 28.01.13.” The teaser for the advert was posted on both the Facebook and Youtube pages for the brand and was circulated quickly, showing the power of social media.

There's no doubt that this campaign will be very successful, but what is your opinion of the 'female gaze?' Does it really exist throughout advertising and media? Or does the popularity of this single campaign suggest that the female gaze is still not widely acknowledged? As mentioned earlier, the male gaze still seems to be the 'default'. Why is this?

"It is not about the Diet Coke man being an object, it is not a voyeur thing, it is about cultural change, women being equal to men and you can see that," said Olivier Geyer, Diet Coke director for north-west Europe and the nordic region.

"We wanted to celebrate not just the brand, but also the women who have been with us for 30 years. We have tried to make sure it is not the past but a very contemporary execution. [It] showcases female empowerment and camaraderie."

What are your thoughts?*

*If you're unsure of exactly what the Male Gaze is, or who Laura Mulvey is, then have a read of this blog and it should refresh your memory!

A2 Issues and Debates: News Values - Snow!

It’s snowing!!!

How many times have you seen that on Facebook these past few weeks? While you’ve probably focused all of your energy into getting excited about the possibility of school being closed (us too), I hope you’ve taken a little time to think, like the constantly critical Media students that you are, about the media coverage of the white stuff and its trail of chaos.

When the snow became particularly heavy I arrived home to find Sky News covering the Algerian hostage story. I was shocked. It was snowing for goodness sake! Where were the live reports from gritting depots, the images of children frolicking in snow, the frozen reporters standing on the side of an airport runway shouting about ‘TRAVEL CHAOS!’ in a very serious voice?

Well, that came shortly after wards. BBC1 devoted a whole half hour news show to snow as well as large sections of The One Show all week, including a piece where adults admitted on camera that they skiving off work. 24 hour news channels pulled out all the stops, with endless footage of live reporters all over the country, looking absolutely freezing and generally disgruntled as they told us what we already knew: it’s snowing and as a result the country has, basically, broken.

Charlie Brooker, as always, has summed the coverage up nicely. Sorry about the language. Try not to laugh too much at the people falling over:

So here’s the media bit…why? Why do a few snowflakes send the media into such a frenzy? Some misinformed people who don’t do media studies might think the news is there to tell us about important things going on in the world. How wrong they are. Snow is a Godsend for any 24 hour news channel with airtime to fill. Snow provides a pretty much constant source of material – images of cars getting stuck on hills, pensioners sliding around on pavements, planes being grounded, children playing in it, as well as constant weather reports and little discussion pieces where people rant about how Britain is so useless .Most of the coverage is negative, which fits with the theory that negative stories are more likely to reported than positive ones (news value - negativity). It also has a predictability factor -  we know when snow’s coming, so the news teams can get ready. Conflict will be created – lazy teachers vs parents with childcare issues, drivers vs incompetent gritting lorries – and this always makes a good story. It doesn’t happen very often, so there’s a novelty factor (unexpectedness). 

The value of a story is shown through the order stories are reported in and the amount of time given over to coverage. Most news broadcasts did at least have the sensitivity to give the Algerian hostage situation top billing in their bulletins, but they didn’t actually spend as much time on the story. They skirted over it, and got onto the real story: it’s snowing!

This could only happen in England…

And the heading proves my point – Live Snow! There seems to be a fashion for everything going ‘live’ at the moment, from stargazing to TOWIE, and snow is obviously no different. This type of reporting is called  ‘sensationalist’ because it exaggerates. And it may seem harmless, but it’s just another lesson in how the media like to tell us what’s important through the way it reports the news. And it works – the general public became frenzied about what was, in most parts of the country, just a bit of snow after all.

MEST1 Resitters - Revision Help!

Happy new year!

It's January! Which for me means detoxing, but for you lucky people it means REVISION. And possibly also detoxing.

This post is for the Year 13s who are resitting MEST1 on January 9th (I've put it on the AS blog so we can re-use it for Year 12s in June - any Year 12s reading this, please don't panic, you don't have a Media exam to revise for yet).

If you can't read the documents on the links, you might need to send me a request! Follow the instructions.

Section A

• We know it's going to be a moving image text - so get yourself onto YouTube and practise analysing lots of TV adverts, opening sequences, trailers and general viral clips. 
• Remember you will get to watch the clip 3 times with a 5 minute note-taking interval after the first and second showing. Once the third clip ends, start writing your answer to the first question. You will be allowed to read the questions before the clip is shown.

Media Forms - 15 minutes

• Use media terminology. A revision sheet can be found by clicking this link.
•  Make sure you answer the question. You will probably be asked to explain how the media forms create a particular effect. Always explain the effect of each camera shot or use of sound you mention.

Media Institution - 15 minutes

• Here you will probably need to discuss branding or image.
• Remember to use the background information printed in the exam paper to help you answer this one.
• Make clear connections between the media language used and the institution represented.

Media Representation - 15 minutes

• Again, try to link the media language used with the resulting representation.
 

Media Audiences - 15 minutes

• Make sure you can define audiences specifically and accurately - revise the National Readership Survey classification (ABC1C2D) 
• Make connections between the media language used and the audience targeted.
• Bring in relevant audience theory if you can. 

 MEDIA LANGUAGE is key! Question 1 focuses on media language but that does not mean it isn't important in all four answers. It's just that for questions 2-4 you need to link the media language used to a specific key concept.

This Slideshare presentation has some useful revision tips.

AS MEST 1 Final Revision from Kate McCabe

SECTION B

Your answer must demonstrate lots of thorough, up to date research. It must NOT sound like something you have vaguely recalled from memory.

Remember that your research should include:

• Two institutions - suggested Radio1 and NME in the revision lesson. Make sure one of the institutions uses the print platform as you must cover all three platforms in your answer. You need to have studied a physical printed copy of a music magazine, the online version is not the same and doesn't count as a print product! Links to some of the research we did last year: Top of the Pops         Kerrang
• Two artists/bands - pick two different genres and make sure you've studied the way they are promoted across three platforms. Study their websites, videos, social media use, magazine coverage, TV and radio appearances, DVDs, YouTube, Vevo etc. Use MIGRAIN to analyse everything.
• Issues and debates - in particular debates about music piracy, representation of women in videos, sexual content of videos, commercialisation of music through X Factor etc, decline of the music press, power of major record labels vs independents...

Make very detailed notes and then reduce them down to bullet points on cue cards.

Then start to go through the past questions I gave you and make sure you've done enough to be able to answer them in detail. The topic patterns we found were:

• Synergy - use of more than one platform to promote a music product
• Change and technology - how artists and institutions are responding
• Evaluation of the success of each platform
• Uses and gratifications users get from music products
• Power of the consumer/producer - user generated content

Useful Documents
User Generated content
Should music be free?
How to get an A in Section B
MTV
Narrative Theory
Article about UK spending on digital downloads
Album Sales Slump