Some media regulatory practices are more effective than others

The two regulatory practices which i will be comparing which are the most effective at regulating are film regulation and press regulation. There is a different opinion of what effective means in this question, it can mean how well the regulatory practice controls freedom of speech of the publishers and then it could be how well the regulatory practices protect the public in different ways. Media regulation is the control or guidance of mass media by governments and other bodies.  There are multiple ways of regulating an example of a few ways are classification, this is preventing people from accessing material that is deemed unsuitable for their age. Another way of regulating is censorship and this is removing material from public material altogether, there are also other ways of in which media texts can be regulated.

The first regulatory practice which i will be looking at how effective it is is press regulation. Between 1990 and 2014, the press was regulated by a non-government voluntary regulation body called the Press Complaints Commission (PCC). It had no statutory/legal powers making it a 'toothless tiger'. There was an issue with the PCC and that was that newspapers often perpetuated the practice of 'publish and demand', by knowing that they had far more money that they could use in any legal battle than the public that were suing them. The PCC was not an effective regulatory practice as we found out from the Millie Dowler Hacking incident. What happened in this incident was the News of the World began an investigation into Milly Dowler who disappeared in 21st March 2002, they deleted some of her message in her phone in the process of this, her parents noticed this and it led to false hope that she was still alive and active on her phone. The PCC got a lot of criticism for what happened with the News of the World phone hacking affair. The heavy criticism concluded in the prime minister David Cameron calling for the PCC to be replaced with a new system in July 2011. This then resulted in the Leveson Enquiry, this was a public inquiry set up to examine the practice, culture and ethics of the press, so at this point it was clear that the press regulatory practices were not very efficient and unable to properly do their job which called for an inquiry to figure out how it would be changed and made better. The PCC was widely agreed to be discontinued so that the press were no longer able to self regulate voluntarily. The government then agreed upon a new system, a Royal Charter. The Independent Press Standards Organisation (ISPO) was established on Monday 8th September 2014 this followed after the windup of the PCC. ISPO claims to be an independent regulator of the newspaper industry and exists to promote and to support members of the public in seeking redress where they believe that the Editors Code of Practice has been breached. The Editors Code deals with issues such as accuracy, invasion of privacy and intrusion into grief or shock and harassment. This was a good sign because it looked as if the the press regulatory system would be starting to work again in favour of the public by processing them better than before making them more efficient in the process. The press now seem to be much better regulated after ISPO has been introduced and it seems like the public are protected a lot more but there are still many cases in which the press have been guilty of lying, intrusion, intimidation and many more inappropriate actions which make the public not feel 100% comfortable that they will be safe from any of these actions from the press and because of the high amount of cases there have been where the press have been caught doing these inappropriate actions. An example of when the the press have been caught Intruding is with JK Rowling. It was an incident where a journalist slipped a letter into the daughters school bag addressed to JK,she said that she felt a huge sense of invasion of privacy and was very angry, this is just one of the cases of intrusion that has been reported but it is unknown how many times this may have happened with people who are not celebrities and couldn't get their word out which is why people still not feel protected by this new regulatory practice.

The second regulatory practice that i will be looking into and comparing how effective it is is film regulation. The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) is a non-governmental organisation funded by the film industry, responsible for the national classification and censorship of films in the UK. The BBFC (originally called the British Board of Film Censorship) was established in 1921. The board faced strong criticism for over censoring films however this was before the 1960's where films were censored as a means of social control. Overall the attitudes to what material is suitable for viewing by children has been changing over the years, this has been reflected by the reclassification of older films being re-released on video, this shows that the board has noticed and acknowledged where they were too strict or wrong in the past and adapting and changing to fit with modern times. There is a problem which has arised within classification of media texts in recent years and this problem is around Web 2.0 and sites like Youtube. These sites allow anybody to watch anything all unclassified and uncensored. It is also possible for children to access an Amazon account and order films of any age classification. This new wave of technology means young children can watch any type of films of media material which may be highly inappropriate for their age. It is very difficult and almost out do the control of the BBFC meaning that its becoming the parents jobs to regulated what their children watch. One of the arguments against media regulation is that it is against freedom of speech and its up to the public to decide what they want to watch for themselves. This problem with this argument is that the point of media regulation is to protect vulnerable members of society from harm and completely removing regulation would result in many more problems than keeping it. Media regulation does a very good job at being efficient within protecting people from films but it is facing problems within the new age of technology which allows people to get round these barriers, this is something which needs to be looked into explored and find a way how to regulate these methods of watching films. However this isn't done by everyone and not everyone knows how to get around the barriers and watch these censored films.

In my opinion i believe that the press regulation is more effective than media regulation. Press regulation has gone through its criticisms and its changes to make it better, it may not be 100% right but it does work more in the favour of the public now, it may have been very in effective and wrong but its changes has helped it protect the public in a number of ways. Although press regulation is not fully effective i believe that it is much more effective at what its trying to achieve than media regulation right now. Media regulation is not effective at all with the new wave of technology and the amount of young people which use this technology results in media regulation having nearly zero effect on young people. Media regulation works is people try to see a film in the cinema but that is not the most popular way of watching a film anymore, the most popular way is on your laptop through a streaming service. On these streaming services right now there is no way for the BBFC to regulate properly what people are viewing, some sites may ask you to confirm your age but it is easy to lie about this and get through anyway. Right now media regulation is not as effective in what its hoping to achieve as press regulation because there are so many easy ways to get around it. However there is the argument that media regulation doesn't need to be as strict as press regulation because the consequences of media regulation not working are not as serious as press regulation failing. For example if false information is reported onto a newspaper this could ruin someones career and life resulting in long term consequences but if media regulation doesn't work well and someone watches a film that they shouldn't be watching they aren't as permanently effected by it than if false information was reported about them. Taking into account this point i still believe press regulation is moe effective because it does what it is trying to do better than media regulation and cant be cut around as easily.

Final Cut

This is a link to the final version of my video. The big change compared to the previous rough cuts is that this version has a different version of the song used, this version has the vocals and is the final version of the song. Im happy with how the video turned out and when put next to and compared to other music videos in the same genre it fits well when watching it in between other videos which is what i was aiming for.

Rough Cut 4

In this rough cut there is only one change to the edit which i made. The change is quite a big one however and does change the tone of the video. The edit i made was to put the whole video in black and white. The video does still look good in black and white however i do not prefer it to the coloured version. The reason for this is i think there are many nice shots which include nice colours which aren't shown in this version and it feels like it is missing something when watching it. You watch the video thinking that some of the shots would look good in colour which isn't the effect you want to give off with a black and white video. If i chose to use my black and white magazine poster and digipak then maybe it would have been a good idea to use this version of the video for the final one. But i decided to choose the other designs for the ancillary products which means that this video wouldn't have any strong links to them making it feel a bit out of place. I am happy that i tried out this version so i could make a clear decision on it and rule it out of my options.

Evaluation Question 3

'What have you learnt from your audience feedback'

It was important for me to get feedback on my main video and ancillary products because this helped me develop and create better products because i learnt what worked well and what could be done better and changed through feedback from my target audience. I created a questionnaire which i sent to people i know who fit into my target audience. By doing this it resulted in me gaining 13 responses which i am able to analyse.

 The first question that i asked was 'What is your gender?' I asked this question to understand the demographics of the people who answered my questionnaire and to see if they fit my target audience. When i was researching into a similar artist to my own (Ben Howard) i looked at their target audience and what type of people listened to his music. I found that the people who listen to his type of music (acoustic) were female. Looking at my results which is 53% male and 46% female my results are not an accurate reflection of the target audience of the artist, however i still have managed to gain a fair amount of female responses.  The research said that 25% men listen to him this means that the responses can still be used properly and still give a representative response. If i was to carry out my questionnaire again i would aim to get more female responses so that the overall responses were more similar to my research.

 The second question which i asked was 'What is your age?' again this is another question to understand the demographics of the people who i asked and to see if they fit my target audience. When i researched Ben Howard i found that his audiences age was young and the majority is based in the 18-24 bracket. This is why i put the 18-24 bracket in my questionnaire to get a clear indicator of the age rathe than it being a larger bracket which wouldn't be as clear. My results found that everyone who answered was in this age bracket which means my results do directly represent the target audience for the artist. This is good because the answers i will receive in the rest of the questions will be valid and important rather than if someone in the age bracket of 65-74 answering which wouldn't have been as important because this isn't close to the primary target audience.




 This question is asking how well they thought all the products worked together. I wanted to see if the audience felt like they all matched and could see them as a whole package rather then seeing themas separate products which don't have any correlation. It was very important that they all the products matched together because if they didnt this would make the all of them feel unprofessional and sloppy. As you can see with the results i got 100% of responses believed that the products had a strong continuity or above meaning that none of them thought the products didn't work well together, i am happy with the results i got from this question. It wasn't too difficult making all the products match.  The reason for this was because while i was filming for the video i was also focused on what would look good for my ancillary products, this is why as i was filming i was also taking lots of photos. Doing this meant i had lots of photos which were taken at the same time and place as the video therefore the video would definitely match my other products and the digipak and magazine advert would also directly match. As i can see form my audience feedback this tactic worked and they believed that all my products link together well.

For my video i was aiming to follow the conventions of the acoustic music videos, so asking this question it was important that i got the responses which i wished for because otherwise i wouldn't have been successful. 76% of my responses agreed fully that the video follows the conventions ann the rest said in parts, none of my responses said no which i believe is successful. I was hoping if i got any no responses this would point out any parts of they video that completely went against conventions which i didn't notice but there are none meaning that there was nothing i missed out or didn't spot in my video.

 Another quick question i asked was if the audience thought that the video fit the song. This question was asked simply to find out if the video actually worked and that it didn't look out of place or that it should be a video for a different song. The response was 100% positive therefore everyone thought that the video was good for the song and worked well with it which means that the overall video is successful in my opinion. Because a music video is made to work well together with the song and if this doesn't work then it doesn't matter about any of the other aspects because it didn't complete the main one. I am happy with the results of this question because it mean that the video was successful overall.

 I asked the question how professional does digipak and magazine cover look. I asked this because throughout the process of creating my digipak and magazine cover i was aiming to make them look as professional as possible rather them obviously looking like they were an A-level media product created by and A-level student. 66% of the responses said that they thought the products looked professional and the other 33% were halfway between not at all and very. I am happy with this outcome because it shows that some people believed we did a good job with out products. I can understand the other responses for them not thinking the score deserved to be higher. When shooting the photographs for the ancillary products i was doing this at the same time as the filming so i was switching between the different modes and i was focused more on getting the good shots rather than the photographs. I think this was a mistake of mine. If i had done the filming and then took photographs separately i would have got more professional photos because my concentration would have solely been focused on them. I could have also allocated a completely separate day to shoot for the ancillary products which again would have resulted all my attention being on making the photos look as professional as possible, so if i was to do this again i would have chosen one of these options which would have hopefully make the other 33% tick the higher categories.

I asked this question so i could see what people liked about the video and if there was anything i could improve about what they liked and also what i didn't have to alter and what else to focus on. 5 responses just said that they liked it without leaving a response which is good because it is all positive feedback.
The other 8 responses left a comment. The two of the comments were about how they liked that the video and song fit together and felt connected. Because i didn't have a narrative in my video i though it would be quite difficult to get the video and song to feel like they worked together. I used a number of different ways to do this such as transitions, making the shots change at the same time as the beat. I am happy that this worked to make the viewer think that they felt connected. Another response was that they liked how i included the artist performing, i did this because it follows conventions to include the artist in the video especially playing an instrument, its good that the response was that they liked a feature i included to follow conventions.

 This question was to counter the previous one, it was to see if the audience had any recommendations or if they wanted any changes to be made in the video which they would think would add to it and make it better. The responses which i got from the questionnaire were at different times so some of the things which were said have already been fixed or added when i got to analysing the data. An example of this is two people said the thought the video needed colour correcting, these respondents must have seen an older rough cut rather than one of the recent ones when they answered. One other response was that they thought when there is a shot of the artist and you can hear him singing it isn't clear if you can see him singing, i tried to avoid this by shooting behind the artist so you cant see his mouth, this was successful in the second part of the video but not too much in first half. This is something i would find quite difficult to fit because it means reshooting and after getting this response everything has been finalised, but they mentioned that you can only notice this error if you are trying to look out for mistakes so it isn't that much of a big deal.

Altogether i am very happy with the audience feedback that i received for my music video and my ancillary products. I have learned that is important to get audience feedback throughout the process constantly so you can keep changing and adapting while in the process rather than at the end when it is finalised. If i was to complete my research again i would focus on getting more female responses to match my target audience more but this wasn't much of a problem because of the age bracket of the responses i got. I would also try to get the responses form my secondary target audience to see what they thought

Evaluation Question 1

Question 1 : "In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?"

Transcript

For my A2 media coursework i have had to create a main products which is a music video. This video is made for a song which i also had a hand in creating, this meant that i did not have to face any copyright issues or have to struggle when trying to get permission to use the song because i am also close friends with the artist. The song which the video was made for is called 'Hiding' by Josh Beattie and it is an acoustic singer songwriter track. I then also had to create a two side ancillary products which matched and linked with the music video so that they look like they come as a complete package which could be sold together. These two products were a digipak which is a type of packaging for CDs or DVDs and a magazine poster. The video fits into the genre conventions of 'Acoustic' and 'singer songwriter' as seen through the specific shot types and editing of the video using Premier Pro.

To create a group of products which look professional and work together well i had to carry out some external research into the forms and conventions of each individual product, music video, digipak and magazine advert. Iv studied multiple music videos which are categorised in the same genre as mine to analyse and understand the conventions which are used and to help me get a better understanding of what is done when creating acoustic music videos. When looking into the acoustic music videos i have noticed a couple of themes and styles which follow across them. One style is the slow editing and longer shots, rather than the video being cut a lot and the shots changing dramatically and quickly constantly throughout the video, the clips are edited more so that they last longer on the screen and the audience has time to study and appreciate the shot. The reason for this is that it matches the music a lot better than if there was fast editing and a heavy change in shots it wouldn't fit well with the songs because they are all much slower and peaceful rather than hectic.  As well as following the forms and conventions of slow editing i also followed some other conventions which involved the editing. What i am focusing on is the transitions between shots. One video which i studied which was Lewis Watsons Hello Hello not all the shots were straight cuts but they used a cross fade to fade between them gradually, this would help link to the previous point with the slow editing. In another music video which i studied called Holocene by Bon Iver when some of the clips change they change on the beat or match part of the song was they change. This isnt done for every shot but is done when appropriate, i noticed this in my research and took from it in my own video. However I challenged conventions in my music video by including the artist performing with their instrument in the video. In most acoustic music videos the artist is usually included which i have done however they are very rarely seen actually playing any instrument instead they are just lip syncing. I decided to challenge this by featuring the artist performing the song with the instrument but no vocal lip syncing

To expand and further my knowledge with the conventions of Digipaks and magazine adverts i researched into similar products to find out what would help me to create the most professional and appropriate products. I continued to look at the typical conventions for digipaks throughout the design process for example, including the artists name in a appropriate size and font being easy to notice and read, a reasonable tracklist which is also clear for someone to understand and also publishing and copyright information, the logo of the record label which the artist is signed to. The artist which i used isnt signed to a label so to fill this gap i researched another artist which is similar to him and found out which label they are signed to and used their logo. As well as following the conventions i also had to make sure that the products matched, one way in which i did this was with a similar colour scheme which was used in all the products, this colour scheme links the products simply but with a strong effect.

Similarly to my digipak research i also looked into the codes and conventions which are included in magazine adverts. I created my magazine advert and tried to follow the conventions for the genre i was following throughout the process. These conventions include the appropriate titles and font sizes, relevant images which are clear and bold, in the image i also included the artist, reviews from reliable and relevant sources for this i used NME magazine and Fader magazine, information of where to get additional information, link to official website. As well as this i also looked at other magazine posters from different genres to widen my knowledge about magazine adverts and see what was done in different genres to see if anything crosses over.

In conclusion i believe that my products conform, challenge and develop the conventions of real media products but are also fitting to what i believed was appropriate based off external research.

Evaluation Question 4

Question : How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

http://slides.com/alexhey6/deck

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 2:  How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts?

For my A2 media coursework i have had to create a group of three products one main and two side products. The products which i made have been a music video which is the main product and then a digipak and magazine advert. One main focus when i was making these products was how they would link together and what was the best way for them to all look like a complete package. I individually researched each products to find out more about each products in more detail such as the conventions and the codes of each product. When i was planning the main product i was constantly thinking about how i was going to link this to two other products, the other products were always on my mind when shooting for the video because it was important that i got them to match.  The combination of the different products can be described as synergy.

Synergy is: 'the interaction or cooporation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects'

I had two ideas for how i would combine the products in a successful way. I am happy with how both the ideas turned out but there was one i preferred. Here is a quick look at my second design and how they link together.

Magazine Advert

Digipak Design

Music video Screenshot 1

Screenshot 2

As you can see all the products link, they link with different aspects such as the pictures that are used for the digipak link directly to shots which are part of the video. The dark grey gloomy colour scheme also brings all the products together to look like a complete package. The reasons i didn't use this design was that i wasn't a fan of the dark colours because it made the whole theme feel sad which wasn't the vibe i was aiming to get off my products. Also the products combined didn't follow the conventions i was aiming to follow, in this design there isnt a lot of emphasis on the artist, this design docent focus heavily on showing the artist which i didn't like too much.  

I decided to pick my second design as my final design for a few reasons but mainly because it worked together as a synergy. The way in which i applied the idea of synergy was through a few different ways such as font, colour, theme, subject. Below is my three final design products.

Digipak Design

Magazine Advert

Music Video Screenshot 1

Screenshot 2

One way in which i connected my products was with font. I used the same font for my titles in the music video as i did with the text on the magazine poster and the text on the digipak. The font which i decided to use was the serif 'Athelas Regular' font, the reason i picked this font was that it isn't a modern style font which is what i was wanting, i wanted a font to look more classic and old because i thought that it fits the style of the video much better, with a classic feeling. A modern looking font would have looked too childish for the video and wouldn't have worked together with the other products. Also a more childish looking font would have given people who look at the magazine poster without knowing anything about it the wrong idea and thought of what the music and artist was actually like. I chose for my text on all products to be white, i think white is the best option for my text because it makes it stand out the most rather than it blending in with the background making it difficult to read, it is also not too in your face or harsh to look at. Even though the i believe that the consistency of the fonts would probably go unnoticed to many it is important because people are more likely to notice if your fonts do not match up and are completely different. Below is an example of the font use across my media products.

Magazine Advert

Digipak

 

Music Video

Colouring is also another aspect of the products which remains consistent throughout all the products. Colour was an important part of combining all the products to me because colour can say and describe a lot and can create a heavy opinion. This is why i didn't choose the other designs because the colours used with them were too dark and sad which wasn't the theme i wanted to get out of the products, instead with the other design i used bright more happy colours such as orange. This colour would also catch the eye of someone looking at posters or digipaks making them look further into the product more than the grey style of the other design which wouldn't attract people into looking further into and engage them. The images which i used for my digipak and magazine cover were taken at the same time as one of the shoots for the video, this meant that there was no need to edit any images to make the colours match because they already did as i was also focusing on my ancillary product ideas while shooting the video. You can clearly see the use of the consistent colouring in all three products portrayed above.

Another way in which i have created synergy between all my products is by including repeated images and subject. I used images of the artist because the artist is important because he is a solo artist so all the attention is on him. This is why the image is dynamic striking shot with the artist directly central being the centre attention of the image. This continues within the video as the images are matched with many different shots of the same scenario. This measn that if somebody looks at the full package of products they will see the same artist throughout, this is creating a brand image and making the artist an icon and making him an important part of the brand image.

I wanted to keep my two ancillary products fairly simple but at the same time engaging with dramatic and bold imagery. I did this by not adding too much information and only the necessary stuff which is needed. This meant that the image stood out more and had greater effect, rather than the image being covered. I kept his style of simplicity consistent throughout the products. 

Overall i think that all my products work perfectly together and when they are put together they look professional and realistic making them look like a successful package