Lessons to learn from AS: Genre

Sky: The colour of the sky is very dark and dreary. This is an explicit genre signifier of an urban area, for example the suburbs of London are always presented with surrounding grey skies.

Chain Fence: The chain fence segregates the model from the readers. This gives the effect that they are not interested in the reader and there is a sense that they are more important.

Font: Despite the urban genre, the font I used was very plain and unresponsive. It doesn't have any major connotations, this was based on the fact that it was a free magazine and I intended it to have a simplified look.

Facial Expressions (Yellow): From the stern facial expressions it is clear that the model seems unimpressed, referring back to the chain fence where the model is seen as more important.

Hand Gestures (Non-verbal Communication): The model's hand gestures are the most explicit example of a genre signifier. The gesture is seen as rude and excludes audiences such as the older generation.

Clothing (Mise en Scene): The clothing of the model is very lacklustre in terms of staying true to the genre. This was the result from lack of planning and is a key factor that would need to be changed for A2.

'Reefers' (Trade term for referring captions): These captions are similar to the font in the way that they are not specifically related to genre. Both these and the font are more serious and sensible which broadens the audience slightly, making the magazine more likely to be picked up or read from a more mature audience.

Revisiting Representation at AS

Looking back at my Foundation Production, I didn't talk about representation or unconscious bias. Although it wasn't mentioned, I have unconsciously chosen specific mise en scene to suit my character's image. Looking at both the cover page and the contents page the backgrounds chosen are urban and worn-down to suits the characters urban genre.

Ident Ideas

For my Ident, as my television genre is based on basketball, I have some initial ideas based on the real media examples I have previously looked at. Although I have not done much analysis on the idents from 'Sky Sports' and 'ESPN', I have gained inspiration from some of their idents.

The initial ideas for my ident would include:

1. A slow motion close-up focused on a basketball net, with the ball going through the net. This is a typical trope of a sport ident but would be a fiitng choice.
2. A close-up or mid-shot of a basketball rolling down the street - this would give an urban theme to basketball which is not fiitng within the conventions of basketball.
3. Slow motion pan of an empty court, possibly with balls on the floor/rolling.
4. Snapshot of a coach talking tactics with his team, including a shot of the whiteboard and the coach talking to the players.

Clarifying My Target Audience Based On Competitors

As I have chosen my television channel to be based around basketball, this means I will have a specific target audience to adhere to. To discover this audience, I decided to research into the target audience of my main sporting competitor, ESPN. Here is a link to the marketing statistics for ESPN, although these statistics are based on the US audience they are mostly given as percentages so they can be reinterpreted to fit the UK audience.

Another main competitor in sports is Sky Sports, who are based in England therefore are a stronger competitor than ESPN. The target audience for both channels is predominantly men, although sport is becoming increasingly popular with women. This means that for my main and ancillary tasks I cannot exlude the female market as I will lose a large chunk of my audience.

Real Media Conventions of Idents

I have found a useful website that shows ident's for popular channels including all channels on BBC, ITV and Sky. The link to the website can be found here. From this website I managed to gain information on the real media conventions of idents.

Here is a link to my slideshare presentation about the real media conventions of idents. This has helped me as I have gained the key features of idents which has prepared me to create my own. I have also included a conclusion and 'lessons that I have learnt' that will enable me to create a successful ident permitting that I keep to these lessons learnt.

Idents Real Media from ollyquilt

ITV & BBC Idents

At 6am on Monday 14th January 2013, ITV unveiled its new identity across all its outlets including broadcast, online, its studios and distribution. At its heart is a new logo designed in-house by ITV Creative in collaboration with design specialist Matt Rudd, and type specialists Fontsmith.

For its flagship channel, the most noticeable change is its renaming back to just 'ITV' - dropping the '1' introduced back on 11th August 2001. Its idents convey scenes of day-to-day life of the British public, and they are overlaid with the new logo which magnifies the predominant colour of the area behind each of its sections to create an ever changing image. It is aimed to have a broad, ever increasing range of idents to reflect the mood of the day, the season or time of the year.

At Christmas 2013, Mums on the Run, Night Cyclists, Log Fire and Ice Scraper returned to supplement the Christmas idents, with the rest of the set airing again from 2nd January 2014. For 2014, all the first set of idents have been edited so that the ITV logo appears sooner, and stays on throughout - in the manner of the second, third and fourth sets of idents.

For the launch of BBC ONE HD on 3rd November 2010, the current set of idents received a further update. The swirl over the logo form-up is now solid red and the logo itself is better defined for HD. Unlike ITV1 HD - which has idents that include HD in the logo - BBC ONE HD's presentation is up scaled from the SD channel and no HD identifier is used.

Impact on my own production:
This passage of information shows that idents, logos and even the channel name can be slightly altered and the channel will still be highly popular. This means when creating my ident video I can have several drafts that don't make the final cut, and then possibly add them in later to the channel for a fresh look which would keep the audience from getting bored of the idents and the channel overall.

Aptitude - Creativity Website

Aptitude are a company that work with creativity, here is a link to their website. They mainly work in website design which takes advantage of their creative skillset.

This could be useful to me as one of their focuses is website design. However, their key focus involves responsive website design.

"The increase of mobile technology has transformed the way we now browse the web. Smartphones and tablets are increasingly becoming the norm, and it is important that your website not only looks great, but also works well on all screen sizes; big or small.
Here at Aptitude we develop all our websites to be responsive, which means they will automatically adapt and respond to accommodate any device - whether that be a smartphone, a tablet, a desktop or even a TV.
Our experienced team of web designers don't use templates, and as a result each and every website we design is original and bespoke. As an accredited and certified web design agency, we understand that a great looking website is only the start.
User experience is now a top priority for any serious site owner, which is why we take the time to understand your wants and needs for your website, enabling us to create a unique and innovative design that ticks all the boxes."

Here's what they say about website design:

"The increase of mobile technology has transformed the way we now browse the web. Smartphones and tablets are increasingly becoming the norm, and it is important that your website not only looks great, but also works well on all screen sizes; big or small.
Here at Aptitude we develop all our websites to be responsive, which means they will automatically adapt and respond to accommodate any device - whether that be a smartphone, a tablet, a desktop or even a TV.
Our experienced team of web designers don't use templates, and as a result each and every website we design is original and bespoke. As an accredited and certified web design agency, we understand that a great looking website is only the start.
User experience is now a top priority for any serious site owner, which is why we take the time to understand your wants and needs for your website, enabling us to create a unique and innovative design that ticks all the boxes."

Impact on my own production:
From this quote I can take away some key factors that I will make sure to incorporate into my website. For example, user experience is considered a ' top priority' which means I need to make sure that my website is very user friendly and easy to use. Another area I could make sure to incorporate into my website would be to make my website responsive, meaning it can adapt to any screen size whether it be iPhone, iPad or Android smartphone.

Deciding a TV Genre

In the UK, there are some sports that aren't available to watch as they are not considered popular enough. A prime example of this would be basketball, which is aired in most countries and is most popular in the United States. This means there is a niche in the UK television market for a basketball sports channel that aires live basketball and I have decided to base my TV Website, Double Page Spread and Ident Video on basketball.

Real Media: Genre Work

As we can refer to real media examples that we have been involved in in the exam, we have been asked to shoot the cover photo for the 6TH form school prospectus. Firstly, we did some research to find out the genre identifiers of the covers. The main identifiers were:

• A group of mixed gender and sometimes different ethnic backgrounds
• Students smiling and laughing
• Students often have a pen and paper in front of them
• Some gathered round a table
• If only single model, mostly female
• Models are sometimes standing with books

Once this research was carried out, we went around the school to take pictures that fit in with the genre identifiers. The next stage, after taking the pictures, was to go through all the pictures and make a group decision of which ones to keep and which ones to get rid of. 

Finally, we narrowed the choice down to two. This was carried out by looking for inferred or extra meanings within the pictures and which ones had the best narrative, which enabled us to see which pictures would and would not suit a school prospectus.

The two that were chosen both followed some of the genre identifiers such as the single student in one was female and both were shown with student(s) smiling and laughing with school work in front of them.

 

Impact on my own production:

 

This can be linked to the Advanced Production Coursework as it has enhanced my knowledge of how to spot genre identifiers. This is helpful to me as I am now able to categorise the narrative of different TV websites which will be useful and easier for me when creating my own TV website.

 

 

Mission Statement & Brief

For my Advanced Production I have decided to go with:

Option (9) A website for a new TV channel (to include a minimum of three hyperlinked pages with original images, audio and video extract), together with two of the following three options:

• A newspaper advertisement for the channel;
• A double page spread for a listings magazine, focused on the channels launch;   (Task 1)
• An animated ident sequence for the channel   (Task 2)

     = Chosen options.

Pitfalls to Avoid:

• Make sure the website is live by the deadline
• Make sure any media I upload is available
• Don't overcrowd my piece with too much text

I decided to choose these tasks because the final pieces differed from the AS print pieces. This means I will get to use new digital technology and other software that I am not used to, which will improve my overall skills as a media student. For example, in AS I never used any technology involving film, therefore it will be my first time using software like 'iMovie' when it comes to making my ident video.