Define postmodern media with examples.

Postmodern media is quite simply the rejection of the idea of modern media; postmodern media has no rules and no boundaries. Unlike modern media which claims originality and follows set rules and conventions, postmodern media turns these ideas upside down. Everything is effectively a remix as Kirby Fergusson said and that everything is connected through the ability to copy transform and combine. Postmodernism exists in all aspects of media though, with different music artists sampling music from other artists and using it in their own work, and directors of films, purposefully creating scenes that look similar to scenes from another film.

Firstly in music sampling has taken place for a long time now, with artists creating huge songs by simply stealing bits of songs from other artists. However this can be looked at in a variety of ways, as you look deeper into the vast maze of what is postmodernism you can become lost in whether the meaning of something is actually what it may connote to another reader. For example the song flight of the Valkyries, originally composed by Wagner for the film the birth of a nation, a film about the Klu Klux Klan ‘protecting’ their town from black migrants. It was later used in the film apocalypse now, but used in a very influential scene of the Americans taking to the sky in their helicopters preparing for an attack on a Vietnamese village. Both of these seem to glorify Americans as hero’s despite what now may look as them being villains, but more recently British gas made a television advert using the same theme tune. Obviously they did not intend on making themselves look like racists, this is an example of bricolage (Levi Strauss) bricolage is the idea taking an existing item (flight of the Valkyries) and putting it into a new context (British gas advert) and creating a new meaning. The meaning British gas wanted to create was the already installed idea of heroism from the song, but not with connotations of killing thousands of innocent people. This is an example of music being postmodern, what may seem on the surface like a song chosen because the person creating the advert might have simply liked it, can actually be broken down to have a much deeper meaning, but it is elements of postmodernism such as bricolage which just make it work.

Secondly postmodernism is a huge element in film, and has even led to directors known for being postmodern. Possibly the most postmodern director there is is Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino is the person behind films such as kill bill and Inglorious Basterds, these two films are incredibly postmodern as is the rest of Tarantino’s work, he uses the idea of intertextual references (Julia kristeva) in his work, this is when he uses references from other people’s films in his own. Kill bill for example is a martial arts film, and she wears what seems like an iconic yellow jumpsuit, which it was when Bruce Bee first war it in his martial arts films. In the war film Inglorious Basterds there is a never ending amount of intertextual references that keep the audience on their feet. The trick with intertextual references however is to make sure the target audience will understand them, in the film scott pilgrim (directed by Edgar Wright) the intertextual reference come thick and fast throughout the film but are simply too dated for the target audience to understand. Along with intertextual references come the theories of homage and parody. Paying homage to people work is very respectful and great films are made paying homage to other great films or events in time, on the hand a parody is not such a good film, hobo with a shot gun for example is an appalling film, but it has been made to look bad as it is a parody to violent films.

So as a whole postmodern media is a type of media that does not claim originality or indeed try to be original, but it thrives off of preexisting work and transforming it into something new. It can be criticized as Jameson did and call it vacuous and trapped in circular references, but from the eye of a postmodernism he would probably be seen as correct to say that, but not as a criticism but as a way of positively describing the ideology. Postmodern media creates new texts from preexisting texts.

Music and postmodernism - the vaccines

“Analyse one of your coursework productions in the relation to genre”

The coursework production I have chosen to analyse is my A2 music video, my music video is in an indie rock performance video. The song choice is ‘last nite’ by The Strokes. The simple performance video is set in a dark empty room on a small stage.

The indie rock genre can be seen as a large genre and can be interpreted differently by different bands across a spectrum ranging from the rock end of the scale with bands such as Kasabian to the more indie pop end of the scale with bands like The Wombats. Genre is a huge part of any media text, whether it is a music video, magazine, television programme or even a full length film. Genre outlines what the media text will be like and who will enjoy it. People will always enjoy particular genres, the people that enjoy the desired genre therefore become your target audience, so in my case I was aiming my indie rock genre at an indie rock audience.

I chose to make my music video a performance video and this meant my whole video be filmed in one place on stage simply filming the band perform the song. Before filming however I had to plan how I would film it and edit it once filmed in relation the genre. Things I would have to take into consideration are the mise en scene, narratives, characters and representation. Along with these are the conventions of a video, the main convention I needed to follow were the convention of movement and fast paced edits. I achieved this well, not one shot was any longer than five seconds, and the achieve an added element of movement and speed in my video I used the ken burns cropping tool on the editing programme (iMovie) that I used. Back to my previous points of mise en scene, narratives, characters and representations these aspects are also equally important in attracting the target audience and creating something that fits in the intended genre. Firstly the mise en scene, The indie rock genre can be seen to challenge the conventions of  pop music, with high budget videos which is why my video, is in a shabby worn down practice room to show the band is about the music and not commercial value. Secondly the narrative, my video does not particularly have a narrative being a performance, the closest I could get to relating it to a narrative would be todorov’s theory that my video starts with an equilibrium as the singer walks on stage, disequilibrium when the performance gets faster and the microphone stand gets thrown on the floor, and then equilibrium is restored again as the singer walks off. Thirdly the characters are an important part in relation to genre; although they are real people as soon as they are on camera they become characters, it was important to get my character to look right for my genre. In the indie rock genre artists like to perceive themselves as ‘working class heroes’ and nothing out of the ordinary, despite the somewhat cocky attitudes, which is why the dress sense was very casual, I went for a britrock vintage look with brands such as Adidas originals and Fred Perry and Puma classics, which can be seen worn by bands such as the enemy and oasis. Finally is the representation part, within my video we see the male gaze (laura mulvey) represented along with star image theory (Andrew Goodwin) towards the lead singer, the use of extreme close ups and bright colored jacket to help him stand out on stage are all to help with the preferred reading of the video. This preferred reading is that the lead singer along with the band have made a success from doing something they love and that people now see him as a role model. This is evident when you look at any bands really, The Gallagher brothers from oasis are probably most famous for this but any artists are going to be promoting a star image.

I didn’t actually challenge any of the conventions of my genre, the benefit of genres is that it means that there is a preexisting audience out there that will be ready to consume to production, whereas if genre conventions begin to be challenged audiences differ and may not be as strong. My target audience was indie scensters and hipster, I came to this conclusion using UK tribes a website that shows what different groups of people like, so my aim was to feed the audience what they already like.

Overall as a music video for a specific genre I succeeded in fulfilling the required genre conventions. I had to follow the conventions to successfully achieve the preferred reading the target audience would enjoy watching. The lyrics to visuals and charismatic speed of the video helped concrete the genre conventions into this video. 

Describe how you developed your skills in the use of digital technology for media production and evaluate how these skills contribute to your creative decision making, refer to e.g’s.

From the start of my coursework in my AS music magazine to the end of my A2 music video I found my skills ever advancing as I used different digital technologies. Having a wider knowledge of skills to use was important in the production of media texts, especially in the production of my music video. As my skills developed I could create more vivid ideas, and pay attention to more intricate details.

When I set about making my AS music magazine, I started by making a prelim, this gave me the chance to enhance my Photoshop skills, it was incredibly useful doing this because quite frankly my prelim magazine was appalling, but having had a go with Photoshop, I continued to practice and develop my skills on the programme. Once my skills were at a good enough standard it allowed me to create ideas based around my capabilities on the programme, whilst previously I had only a brief understanding of photoshop, my ideas were very limited. When making my prelim I was also very naive to the idea of media theorists, but soon applied Goodwin’s star image theory to my final magazine and of course used it in my music video.

In my video, like with my magazine, I was thrown in at the deep end with the lack of knowledge I had on the computer using iMovie. But after making an animatic storyboard and my first draft, I rapidly enhanced my skills with the digital technology, after my first draft of my music video I was lacking a lot of movement in my video. This is a key convention in the indie rock genre I was using. So after playing around on iMovie I came across the ken burns cropping tool, this adding added movement to each of my shots which hadn’t been captured simply on camera. If I hadn’t developed my draft video into my final video I would have firstly had a much different video, and secondly a much different mark. It also made filming easier, when I refilmed I did not have time to wave the camera around to get an extra element of movement so having the ken burns tool on the iMac when I uploaded my footage made making the video a great deal easier. Being able to zoom in, also allowed me to focus on the front man, again making use of Andrew Goodwin’s star image theory. When I filmed my footage I also made sure that I captured a variety of different camera angles, because when my video was finished it was meant to be a fast paced indie rock video, and fast pace cuts to different angles were key for this.

Developing my skills with digital technology helped me with no end of decisions in the production and creation of all of my media products. I was effectively limited in my decision making by what I was capable of doing on the computer, and my whole spectrum of ideas increased as my capabilities using different media technologies increased. At first I had no idea how to use photoshop in the slightest, but after picking it up, became much more comfortable using the programme, and felt like I would not struggle putting any of my ideas into action.