1940s Youth

Background:

• Britain were caught up in the Second World War, facing bombings across the UK
• Before the 1944 Education Act when teenagers went to work early instead of going to school
• Families could afford to live on only one salary
• Teenagers would go from being children to going to work (when they were early teens)
• They began to bring in an income like their parents
• Couples typically stayed together

Island People (1941):

• Teenagers are seen working in a range of different jobs including farming, silk weaving and working in markets
• Teenagers enjoyed the summer pastimes of swimming, football, bowls and cricket
• Seen to be an active member during the family time on weekends
• Dinner time was the centre of family life on the weekends
• Children were taught generosity, consideration for others and to appreciate family life

Section 2: Collective Identity

Analyse the way in which media represents different groups of people.

Looking at:

• Representations of young people in the media
• How people are mediated
• How people read the media
• How people construct their own identity

For example:
You interpret/read certain media's, such as music, differently based on your upbringing and social status

Must include:

• Lots of representations from British media of youth from the last five years (film, music, print/magazine) e.g. Ill Manners
• Historical context of British youth
• Theories
• Your own analysis

From:

• Cinema
• TV Representations
• Magazines and gender
• Representation of youth and youth cultures

Need to incorporate critics and writers who have developed ideas about representation and identity.

Last Paragraph: How do you think youth will be reflected in future years?

Audience Essay

The audience of any media product is extremely important as the audience is essentially responsible for the success of any media product. In our case, the media product I will be analysing is my music video which formed a large part of my Advanced Portfolio in Media this year. Whilst filming and editing our music video we made sure to be very conscious of our target audience and the way in which are target audience would consume our product so that we could ensure we were appealing to the appropriate demographic for our artist, Ivory.

The first stage of ensuring we had our target audience’s needs and uses in mind was to analyse the genre of the music video, which in our case was Indie/Pop/Electro-Pop. We chose the song Gasoline by the artist Halsey because it has not got a music video and, at the time, Halsey was relatively unknown and so this was a good choice for our group. We realised very early on that the performance and setting of our music video would be two of the biggest ‘pull’ factors for our target audience of teenagers and young adults between the ages of 18 and 30. This was because the song and lyrics could easily be interpreted as angry or unhinged and so we instantly began to orientate our performance around this idea thus conforming to the preconceived idea of our song. This crazy and unpredictable music video would appeal to teenagers and young adults who listen to this genre of music because it is a similar idea to that of other artists from the same genre.

When analysing the target audience further we used psycho graphic categorisation and looked into the socio economic background of our audience which was typically C1, C2 and D. These were very useful tools as they allowed us to further understand our audience and how they would consume, use and get gratification from our music video and product as a whole. We found that our target audience was comprised of predominantly college and university students who enjoy the Indie/Pop/Electro-Pop genre and who don’t really follow the masses and mainstream ideals. They will be typically female as our artist is female but she also appeals to men.

Looking at Blumler and Katz’ Uses and Gratifications theory whilst filming and editing allowed us to understand our audience’s wants and needs. Their theories of diversion and escapism were provided to our audience through our music video because Ivory’s wild, crazy life acted as a form of escapism for our audience as it explored mental health and the perils of the human mind. Furthermore, our music video provided our audience with a form of diversion as we were able to combine our music video, digipak and website to allow our audience to follow the life of another person and divert their attention away from their own lives to someone else’s. The website which included the news, gallery and merchandise pages was an ancillary task which formed a part of our final cross-media task for Media A-Level. The News page on the website also conformed to Blumler and Katz’ theory of information because we provided Ivory’s target audience with regular updates and news headlines involving her so they can keep up to date and stay ‘informed’ about all things Ivory. This is a similar idea which we explored through our social media pages on popular sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Social media was crucial for attracting our target audience of teenagers and young adults as these are the people who most use sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and so these were great platforms to attract new fans as well as inform our artist’s original fan base. For our social media sites we kept in mind the Cultivation theory as we wanted to make sure that by constantly updating our Twitter feeds and Facebook page we were increasing our artist’s fan base as well as still attracting her original target audience. This proved to be very effective as we attracted a wide and diverse audience which we would not have been able to access had we not had access to these social sites. The cultivation theory improved our understanding of our target audience as it helped us to realise that social media sites were extremely useful and successful for appealing to that key demographic of teenagers and young adults between the ages of 18-30.

Similarly, we used Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to ensure we were able to provide certain levels to our target audience thus increasing their love of our artist which would translate into them consistently buying her music. Through our website, digipak, music video and social media sites we were able to provide love and belonging because every element of our cross-media task allowed our audience to be a part of her fan club and feel like they belonged somewhere. As well as this, Ivory consistently promoted love and acceptance through her social media sites and through the positive news stories and messages she posts on her website. We were also able to provide esteem because Ivory is a strong, independent woman who teenage girls and young adults can model themselves thus improving and boosting their self-esteem.

In conclusion, audience feedback and understanding our target audience played a huge part in the creation and promotion of our Advanced Media Portfolio. Through psychographic categorisation, analysing socioeconomic backgrounds and implementing key audience theories such as the Cultivation, Uses and Gratifications and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs we were able to correctly identify our target audience, ensure we had their needs and uses in mind and provide our audience with some of these key ideals and ways of using, consuming and gaining pleasure from our Indie artist’s music video, digipak and website.

Audience

Here are the key theories for the audience question in Section 1:

Essay Plan- Narrative

Theorists used: Levi Strauss, Todorov, Propp, Barthes

Paragraph 1/Introduction:
Narrative- telling a story, plot and character
Start by giving a brief summary of our film opening and its plot

Paragraph 2: Levi Strauss
To make a narrative interesting you need binary opposites e.g: indoors/outdoors, young/old
For our film opening we will use the binary opposites: children/teenagers, conflicting personalities, indoors/outdoors, our group/other teenagers, boys/girls
Showing how we applied this theory to our narrative

Paragraph 3: Todorov
Equilibrium- which we apply to our narrative
Four friends start high school (all is good), then they start to drift apart as some become more popular and forget about the club and their friends (disruption), struggle to stay friends, then something happens and they realise the importance of true friendship (all id good again).
Showing how we applied this theory to our narrative- development of the equilibrium

Paragraph 4: Barthes
Codes- action, symbolic, enigma
Action: us walking into the school, us playing games together
Enigma: what will happen? will they stay friends?
Symbolic: link between the name of the film and the game we play (connect four), everything in the background is symbolic to ourselves- games, movies, toys etc
Showing how we applied this theory to our narrative

Conclusion:
Explain how we benefitted from knowing about these theorists and how they aided and made our narrative more interesting

Anagrams for Section 1: DRPUC and NGRAM

DRPUC is an anagram to help us remember the key topics that could come up in Section 1a of our exam:

Digital Technology
Research and Planning
Post Production
Understanding forms and conventions
Creativity

NGRAM is to help us with Section 1b of our exam:

Narrative
Genre
Representation
Audience
Media Language