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GENRE Genre is “a kind of text that derives its form from the structure of a

frequently repeated social occasion, with its characteristic participants and their purposes.” (GUNTHER KRESS)

Genre is an important concept in terms of media products as it provides key elements for an audience to recognise, meaning that they may further appreciate the originality surrounding the representation of those elements.

Genre in terms of music videos is extremely important as you need to have a genre of video to fit with the genre of music that you will be doing, e.g. popular music or punk rock. The genre of song that you use will help you as the visual director create an image in which fans of particular artists will be able to relate to.

When planning a music video, it is key to think about what genre you will be focusing on as this will help you choose what camera angles/shots/movements to use, also props and costumes, locations and so much more which will help with the success of your magazine.

NARRATIVE

A narrative is an account of connected events, presented to an audience in a sequence of written or spoken words, or in a sequence of moving pictures.

In terms of planning my music video, I will take into account the narrative of the music video as I think I am going to do a story based video rather than a performance. Therefore, narrative will play a key role as it will form a part of the story

Narrative is extremely important in terms of music with their being many outlooks on it, for example: Caroline Abbate states that “certain gestures experience in music

constitute a narrating voice” Jean-Jacques Nattiez believes that narrative is based on semiotics

and that “the narrative, strictly speaking, is not in the music, but the plot imagined and constructed by the listeners”

REPRESENTATION

Representation is the description or portrayal of something or someone in a particular way

Feminist theorists believe that all media is directed towards men. Laura Mulvey states that “the cinema positions the audience as male. The camera gazes at the female object on screen. Pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female.”

Representation is an important concept in terms of media as it is transferred to the audience in the form of signs and symbols in which they are able to interpret it in terms of what they see as a reality.

In terms of planning for my music video, I need to take in to consideration the representation through various conventions such as: camera movement; camera angles; camera shots; mise-en-scene; editing and sound.

AUDIENCE An audience is a group of people who participate in some form of medium

be it literature, art, music, video games or theatres.

The audience is a very important aspect of the media as this is where the majority of the profit made will come from. They are the people that purchase, view and critique the media

There are various forms of audience theory which have been applied by theorists in order to understand how an audience interprets and infers media information from various mediums such as:Hypodermic syringe model: the intended message is directly and wholly

received by the receiverTwo step flow: the people with most access to media, and highest media literacy

explain and diffuse the content to others. This is a modern version of the hypodermic syringe model

Uses and Gratifications: People are not helpless victims of mass media, but use the media to get specific gratifications

There are many other theories such as the reception theory, obstinate audience theory and hypermedia seduction theory

MEDIA LANGUAGE

Media Language refers to the methods of communication that exist within all media products. All media texts are rich with meaning whether it be structural, symbolic or ideological. Producers rely on a generally agreed set of interpretations of the language by the audience in order to communicate their message.

The media language can be used in terms of all the previous concepts: audience, narrative, representation and genre. It is important because it is the basis for all of the concepts and conventions within the media

Theories:Stuart Hall – Encoding and Decoding of message within mediaDe Saussure – known as the founder of semiotics – a sign =

signifier/signified and must have both of these. Example: red is the signifier but it signifies danger and love