Half term HomeWork

1.  What does Post Modernism suggest about the value of high art (eg opera) and popular culture (eg TV)?
Post Modernism suggests that all pieces of art and all pieces of high culture are of the same worth and should be given equal opportunity to be viewed.

2.    What does Post Modernism suggest about the ideas of truth or reality - how is this linked the Media?

 It suggests that what we know as reality is really just the media's representation of reality and therefore their is no actually truths as mThe edia sits in between us and reality (mediation)

3. Who were the two big thinkers and what did their theories share?

Jean-Francois Lyotard: ‘Grand narratives’ – the idea of truth being deconstructed so we can challenge dominant ideas that people claim as truth.
Jean Baudrillard: “Truth is what we should rid ourselves as fast as possible and pass it onto somebody else. As with illnesses, it’s the only way to be cured of it. He who hands onto the truth has lost.”

6. How is our understanding of the events of 9/11 hyper-real?

Due to the fact that the 9/11 attacks were presented in a real-time montage of various camera angles, commentary and mixed political reactions, the global media event turned hyper-real. This electronic and almost filmic style of delivery ensured the deactualisation of the event, transforming it into a visual and semiotic product for consumtion. Baudrillard described the attacks as 'the absolute event'

7.    What is significant about the Matrix as an example of Baudrillards ideas of simulation & hyper-reality?The Matrix is a perfect example of Baudrillard's ideas. Not only is it's plot reflective of said ideas but it is presented in a way that harnesses and physicallises his ideas. It plays on the idea that Humans are constantly plugged into machines and depend on them to keep them in a blissful simulated reality and the 'chosen few' are ripped ungraciously from the machine's grasp to see the dark, dank and desolate existence that is 'pure' reality. This is a dystopian prediction that highlights Baudrillard's ideas of simulacra/simulacrum.8.    What are Post-modern elements of The Mighty Boosh ?

- eclectic mix of genres
- bricolage
- parody
- hyper reality
- deliberately messes with it's TV Program status

  What are Post-modern elements of Extras ?
Extras Postmodern elements:
- Self-reflective approach
- Crucially, the way they parody the conventions of genre
- Cultural awareness of genre/humor
- Deconstructs itself
-  Pastiche


10. Why is Grand Theft Auto Post-modern?
- Online experience – You have a second life and an Avatar of yourself
- Hyperreality
- Virtual reality
- Flow and Immersion
- Blurring of reality

 11. Why is the Cadburys Gorilla ad Post-modern?

The advert bears no visible connection the chocolate or sale of it but instead presents it in a hyper-real and comedic way. However some have argued that the advert is extremely clever as it shows us that guilty pleasures are a good thing (Man in a gorilla suit playing drums) as well as reminding us what sets Cadbury apart from other chocolate companies, quality and taste (Quality of the drumming and taste in music).


What does FLOW and IMMERSION mean?
 
Flow: a state whereby an activity demands incrementally harder, but increasingly pleasurable and achievable challenges, while providing regular feedback (a loop) on degrees of success.
 
Immersion: describes how the gamer invests imagination in the game and is then absorbed into the game world.



Case Study - Monty Python (and the Holy Grail.)
Monty Python is a comedy group that revolutionised the way in which we see comedy today. They were mainly about in the 70's and 80's and their comedy divided opinion as some realised the genius disguised behind the silliness whereas others scoffed at this ridiculousness of the group. Their second film and first actual feature presentation (their first being a compilation of sketches) was titled: Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This is one of the richest films in content of Postmodernism. First of all it is clearly a parody of the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. From the opening scene, we see that the film is highly referential of itself. King Arthur, supposedly the most important man in Britain, is seen air riding a pretend horse with his servant banging two coconuts together for the sound effect and showing it's B-role as this is a well known trick for any Foley department. As well as this it deconstructs itself greatly as towards the end, the knights are running away from a cartoon monster showing their eclectic mix of genres. They manage to get away from the monster as we see the artist drawing the monster have a sudden heart attack and die. The film also parodies many Grand Narrative's such as Christianity, the Black plague, the Medieval Witch hunts and the French invasion. Throughout the film we see gilmpses of the, then, modern day (1975) with scene's such as a TV Historian, looking into King Arthur and his Knights, when suddenly one of the Knights he is researching runs past and stabs him showing us the awareness the writers have of culture and genre.

Editing Evidence

To begin with I uploaded our footage onto the editing timeline program Final Cut Pro. This program allowed me to manipulate my footage into the final version that can be seen on Youtube.

One of the many techniques I used across the editing process, was a newly learned one, the art of green screening. This allowed me to project my already shot footage onto a Television within a shot.

 The Timeline editor allowed me to crop, cut and stick shots together in the way I chose and just over half to 3/4 the raw footage was edited by me as Connie did about 3/4 of the camera work.

 

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Here is an example of what the beat editing I did looks like on the time line. For these examples, each line is a shot last under half a second, and I have lined each shot to flash up in time with the a beat in the drum roll.

Another technique I used involved layering 2 of the same frames, one on top of the other and moving one slightly out of time to give this drunken movement to the piece.I did this by using the Overlay tool.

Digipak Evidence

First of all, for the 2nd inside panel of the Digipak, I took an image of Alice's eye (that we already used for another panel of our Digipak) and zoomed in on her eye.



I then took a screen capture of the Ghost's face during the cloud/mystical sequence to reference the video and to recreate the effect we had on the shoot day as the smoke machine was no longer available.

 I then cut out the ghosts face and merged the two pictures together. To do this I used Adobe Fireworks to cut out the part of the ghosts face and rotate and free transform, and finally fade the picture until it took on the effect of being a reflection in her eye.

For the CD I cut out a circle from my inside panel of my digipak so that when the CD was put in the case the images would fit together. I did this as this follows conventions of artwork for my post-hardcore Digipak.

To edit the circles I used the Ellipse tool on Adobe Photoshop.

To get the text to align around the edge of the CD I went back to Fireworks and drew my line where I wanted my text to go and used the attach to path function that can be seen here.






Some images in this post are courtesy of Google images due to the fact some screen captures I took of my work could not be uploaded due to technical difficulties.

Some i