Archive
Target Audiences
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As my Cabinet of Curiosities differed from most and came from one source (More! Magazine), I ended up only having one target audience to analyse. However I feel even just looking at this singular audience, a lot of information can be deduced from the product itself about the type of consumers the target audience is.
Prior to this task I had heard of the categories A, B, C1, C2, D, E but was unaware of the particular traits of each. Using the website in this post’s bibliography as my guide, I was able to learn and develop my knowledge of these ‘Occupation Groupings’. I feel that the consensus for fashion/celebrity magazines, like More!, is that the consumers are of the grouping D or E. However, I think this has come about by the association of magazines with ‘Low Culture’. This has an ever-growing stigma attached to it which leads to perpetuating the portrayal of gaining status with knowledge and interest of High Culture as oppose to Low Culture. In order for the latter to exist, society must have the former – as with all opposites. From this, companies such as More! (established in 1988) have always had the opportunity to almost play up to the stereotyped ‘Low-Cultured’ market they already had been perceived to have and adjust accordingly to generate the biggest profit. After being around for a good 20 years, the target audience has been achieved as well as the possible and probable secondary audience of C2.
Within these ‘Occupation Groupings’, this magazine has polysemic age groups. According to Wikipedia (see bibliography) More!’s target audience was initially older teenage girls, but I feel that the target age range has definitely expanded into early 20’s and potentially late 20’s too. It is definitely aimed at women, however I know that it gains a secondary male audience as well (they read they friend’s/girlfriend’s). This magazine is more orientated around fashion as opposed to Celebrity Culture like similar publications, but it is still very much an integral part of this magazine genre and will continue to be with the constant demotic turn of stardom. Obviously income will be different for every Occupation Group, but it’s aimed at women who aren’t necessarily worried financially, as the magazine is £1.50 a week with typically committed readers, adding up to £72 a year.
Bibliography
Futurism and Street Art
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After attending Coventry’s recent Street Art Exibition, we were asked to look into the topic of Futurism. Using, in part, the former website in the bibliography as our inspiration, we had to create our own group Art Manifesto (see Blogroll titled ‘A3 Key Concepts’). In producing this, we discussed the Exibition in a lot of detail, constantly realising there is always more to a style or piece of art than first glance.
While reading through the existing Futuristic’s Manifesto, we opted to write notes on each of the particular topics that came up. A lot of it appeared to be about Culture in general, however when we read more into it and gradually began to interpret deeper meanings, we realised there was a lot more to it than just poetic writing. One of the main points in our Manifesto was about artists having to be brave about presenting their artwork without fear of judgement, this in turn brought on controversy – which is what the artists involved with the Futurism movement thrived on.
With this new found knowledge of ‘Street Art’ and our group Manifesto, we were asked to produce our own piece of ‘Street Art’. Initially I was sceptical as I’m not a very good artist when it comes to drawing; however when thinking back to the ‘Street Art’ Exibition, some of the pieces were in fact photos and short animations. From this I chose to use the medium of photography in order to illustrate my interpretation of ‘Street Art’. As well as drawing heavily on our group Manifesto, I decided to focus on the idea of intertextuality as I had seen in the other pieces of ‘Street Art’. The idea I had at first was to do with the film V for Vendetta. I wanted my work to be controversial and like Banksy, have some Cultural relevance – like the story behind V for Vendetta. From all the the art work I saw at the Exibition, I was particularly inspired by the juxtapositioning of certain ideas/concepts to create and portray a new slant or meaning. For example, there were a lot of art pieces where an image with stereotypical/tyical connotations had something diferent and unexpected about it, which I think worked well on an unconscience level for the audience. An example of this is Banksy’s piece ‘Virgin Mary’, where not only does it contain the debate over bottle-feeding children, but the poison symbol adds even more controversy to the image. With all this in mind, this is my final collection of images for this project:
Keeping with the film intertexuality, I decided to choose another film with a similar genre that I had seen. After looking for inspiration in a Fancy Dress shop, I came across claws that imitated those of the character Freddie Krueger from The Nightmare On Elm Street films. I had a feeling that I could make something quite controversial with the ‘claws’, so first I researched the films as thoroughly as I could. As with all types of Media, I find underlying themes very interesting but in particular the contents of films that aren’t obvious to their stereotypical audience. In most, ideologies are subliminally portrayed and this is no different. There are many rumours about the underlying meaning to this film, one of which (as it seems with most horror films) is that if teenage women are sexually promiscuous, they will invariably be gruesomely murdered – sometimes known as morality play. Another reading is that it shows the growing trend of families moving to American suburbs as they’re percieved as the most innocent ‘ideal’. This shows in the film where the parent’s burn Krueger alive and try to hide his existence from their children to keep them safe. However, despite them trying to protect their children in whatever way they can, it shows that no matter what children can not be sheltered/shielded from everything even if you go to these extremes. From this, I thought I could use the character of Freddie Krueger (represented by the claws) to portray all of these signified connotations. I knew that however I did this, not everyone who saw it would understand. However a lot of the Street Art in the Exibition was either ambiguous or a meaning that would only be understood if the audience knew the references or the Artists beliefs. With this in mind, I continued to create my image. As other Artists did/do, I chose a ‘normal’ location (bus stop) and wanted a variety of characters in the image – like at a typical bus stop. I then thought about linking back to the potential underlying readings of Nightmare on Elmstreet and how children (in particular girls) cannot get away from the ‘bad things’ in the world. From this I decided that putting a Prostitute and a School Girl together, who are (supposedly) opposite ends of the spectrum, would cause (if not controversy) a thought-provoking image. After taking the images, I felt Photoshop would help make it look more interesting for audiences at an Art Exibition. I then used a lot of effects, but couldn’t decide which looked better, but with my knowledge of Andy Warhol I thought I could use more than one in my own interpretation of Pop Art.
Bibliography
http://www.unknown.nu/futurism/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0b90YppquE
Media Diary
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Throughout daily life, I know I use/view a lot more media than I would be able to recollect. In this technological climate it just seems like second nature now, and we all take it for granted to the point where we don’t even realise how much we do use. We were asked to keep a Diary for 3 days, highlighting all the media we use. To do so, I represented my findings in a table.
From looking at my media consumption over the past three days, I feel it is a fair representation and there isn’t anything in particular that surprises me. I know I use my phone a lot more than shown, but I wasn’t sure how to show it because I use it so much I completely forgot to actually keep track of texts/phonecalls I was making. This, I feel, may be the same for other people though, as mobile phones seem more of a necessity than ever before. I know that since I have moved away from home and now have no television, I’ve gone from watching some programmes to none at all. As well as this, I use to read a lot more in the way of newspapers when I had more free time in the summer holidays earlier this year. However, as my week is more full I now seem to spend this time going out or just working. Looking at my Media Diary, I don’t feel it shows me to be a very cultured or generally interesting person. Earlier on in the week I could’ve put that I read a magazine, but still, it doesn’t seem like I have much of a variety in the media I use. On the other hand, using less media may be a better thing as I’m less dependant on it than others.
Observing my findings, it is obvious that when using these media products daily, media consumers are rarely aware of it. If people were asked to perform a Media Diary, I think most would be surprised with the sheer amount of media that is and still continues to seep into everyday life. With the constant technological advances, media consumer’s have so many ways to interact with all types of media, as well as the advances giving the media more ways to reach the consumer’s. In particular, I think mobile phones are the most likely to go un-noticed, as practically everyone seems to have one yet no-one questions why. Of course people want to contact other people somehow, but then why don’t we all have the same basic phone? Just like the advertising is subliminal, us as media consumer’s have a very low awareness about the extent of how much media we use everyday. Advertisers create false needs for their audience, for products we have been and could easily live without. Maybe all these products initiated as an aid to an everyday task, however it seems the media have relentlessly continued to make our wants become needs so we see all these products as necessities rather than luxuries. However, due to the nature of ‘Perceived Obsolescene’ that practically every company use, consumer’s will keep buying into every ‘latest’ and ‘best’ product on the market until… until the next best product is advertised.
‘Lost in Coventry’ Project
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In our first lecture we were put into groups and I am part of a group named BMB (an acronym unknown to myself). The only guidance we were given was to make a audio/visual product linked to the title ‘Lost in Coventry’, as well as being told to make it as original and creative as possible. As vague as a title that was, we didn’t realise our lecturers had done it numerous years before, so being original was going to be difficult. We were then informed we had less than one and a half days to complete it, so we began to panic. We thought of many ideas, but everytime we came up with something we had to ask ourselves “is it original?” and “would it of been done before?”. Coincidently, the majority of the ideas we came up with were scrapped.
We all continued to have different notions, but as Coventry’s Cathedral is so close to our University, I thought we should make the most of it and ask to film inside. Luckily this linked in with an idea we previously had so we decided to bring them together to make, what is hopefully, an even better concept. Below is the video we created, and underneath I have explained the meaning of it for you to read after you’ve made your own judgement for what it is about.
The basic storyline is that the main character has sinned (we’re not sure how, although I think she must’ve killed someone) therefore she is wearing a red top. She is lost and wants to seek redemption, so finds herself confused and dazed but in the Cathedral looking for help. Everyone she tries to talk to or make contact with know she’s done wrong so they ignore her as they know she is still a sinner. All of them are wearing black tops, which helps isolate her from the ‘Cult’ as it were and shows how she is different to all of them. She then starts to fully understand what she has done and how much she wants to repent and redeem herself, so they help convert her and she starts to become part of their ‘Cult’ (hence the colour change of her top).
Summer Project – Cabinet of Curiosities & ‘Letter to Self’
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For my course (Advertising and Media) we were set two tasks to complete for the first lecture. The first called ‘The Cabinet of Curiosities’ (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_curiosities). After creating numerous mind maps, I decided to create a collage and present it alongside a speech. Unaware of it having to be put on this Blog, I thought this method would work well. However, I have instead took photos of the double-sided A3 collage (in the form of a slide show) and written the speech as more of a description (below).
Within the Media Landscape, I am particularly interested in fashion. Despite this, I know it is just yet another way to exploit media consumer’s potential and likely (if not already) low self-esteem. For my Cabinet of Curiosities, I chose to represent this with a magazine collage. I know it just looks like a collection of celebrities and models; and at first it was. However, I then thought about all the techniques used to advertise to the magazine’s audience so I began selecting and cutting relevant images and texts. From this, I decided to create my own pastiche of the magazines and the Media in general by taking texts out of context and putting them with other texts/images to imply and construct my own preferred reading; just like the Media does. In doing this, I was able to carry out my own process of mediation and gatekeeping
I feel the juxtaposition of bringing these otherwise disparate magazine clippings together for my Cabinet of Curiosities shows as Peter Thomas stated, ‘a form of propaganda’. It is also intended to be a ‘retreat for contemplation’ because when not seen together in this format, consumers may not realise how much their self-esteem is affected by these well thought out photos and texts.
As you can probably tell, all these clippings are from magazines targeted at women, hence, I would assume, the general consensus that women are more likely (and probably do) have lower self-confidence and have more self-esteem issues.
However, a particular weekly women’s magazine called More! have a section whereby they ask 40 men one particular question. The one used in my collage I selected as it demonstrates men having insecurities too. As well as this, I cut out facts about men also proving their (perhaps hidden) self-esteem issues and therefore media consumption (e.g. beauty products).
Clearly this is not the only reason for these issues, but I think this highlights the impact and the power the Media has on society and I feel this work furthers the controversial and thought-provoking nature that a Cabinet of Curiosities has always had.
Letter To Self
Starting your second year must seem a lot less daunting than your first year, I should know. However as the second year is even more important than the first, I hope you’re okay but I expect you are not. I can only presume you’re still still the same type of person to irrationally panic about everything and to interpret set tasks or projects the wrong way like I feel I have with my ‘Summer Project’. If you remember that that is, I mean, it was a year ago and you’re memory is shocking. Oh, and you probably still have the issue with going off on tangents and unintentionally going off topic and avoiding the task at hand…
So yes, I hope you have done well in your first first year and have learnt as much as possible, got at least one amazing piece of work and not made any regrettable decisions within your course. I want you to have a lot to show for your time at Coventry so far, hopefully some good audio/visual products as well as some amazing structured writing to go with in. I think by this point, you should’ve got to the end of that fascinating but extremely long Media Student’s Book as well as reading that Affluenza book you started and only half read which is now gathering dust since you moved in.
I hope that your ambition and drive have only increased and you are more driven than ever to achieve and continue to aspire to the job you have wanted for years.
Jocelyn's Blog 