La Roux

Name of Artist: La Roux

Album: La Roux

Recent Release: In For the Kill (reached no. 2 in the top 40)

Record label: Polydor

Subsidary label: Universal Music Group

Audience demographic: genre is electro pop. Aimed towards a female generation aged between 14-25 and aimed at those who are into Klaxons, Hot Chip and The Knife. Likely to be played in nightclubs or house parties. Aimed towards a passive audience who like to be told what to listen to e.g Radio one promotion of song or being in the charts.

How the track is distributed: Free streaming from My Space. Free download deal off website. Promoted on Radio 1 as track of the week, Track of the day on Qmusic.com, headliner on latest NME tour, Support band for Lily Allens recent tour of her new album ‘It’s Not You It’s Me’. Official website promoting people to be able to buy the single right now off Amazon. Available to download legally from Itunes.

Promotion from music video: Similiarities in the way she is the focus of the video. Promoting classic 80’s music and style in the colouring and effects.

Reviews:

NME (Skream remix)
“Oh no, not another girl with a keyboard…” we hear you bleat. Imagine! A woman! Playing a musical instrument invented after the Middle Ages! It must be a sick trend… well, shut your sexist traps and listen to the sound of the thrill of the chase made pop genius and thrown into a dark dubstep well. It makes us so excited about her debut that we can’t eat any of our sacrificial goats this week.

BBC Radio 1
So, even though La Roux is not attempting to do anything funny for money (on this song at any rate, for all I know she may have spent yesterday sitting in a bath of cold beans and clutching a sponsorship form), her music - which could not be more '80s if was covered in hairspray and smelled of Um Bongo (they drink it in the Congo) - is entirely appropriate to the strange sights which are dancing before my very eyes.
In a way, it seems a shame that electropop like this will always conjure up mental images of the 'early '80s. At the time, it was the Sound Of The Future, now it is the Sound Of The Past (even though the people making it are essentially trying to recreate that forward-looking robo-joy), which means it has never quite managed to be the Sound Of The Now.

Preliminary Task

Evaluation of Monica's Last Song

Evaluation of Monica’s Last Song

1)In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Before the production of our thriller we researched into many different thriller films to find ideas on what would be needed to make it specific to the thriller genre. Our main character Monica in our thriller is our Femme Fatal and is seen wearing black stilettos and a black coat making her appear mysterious, this idea was inspired by Helena Bonham Carter’s character as Marla Singer in Fight Club. The black used in her costume makes her appear sinister and evil. We also liked how Marla is associated with smoking which is a generic convention that defines Marla’s level of deviance and her rejection of rules, particularly to a contemporary audience. Therefore having our main character smoking makes the film fit with the Thriller genre and also adds mischief to her character. Smoking inter-textually links our thriller to the classic heroines of film noir where the cigarette was a symbol of sophistication and heightened sexuality connoted in the close shot up of Mara with the camera focusing on her lips.
In ‘The Third Man’ the character Harry Lime often holds a cigarette and therefore indicates to the audience his superior mischievous role and contempt for authority.
For the two gangsters we used in our thriller we planned the generic costume of a black suit and tie iconically used in Quentin Tarantino’s film Pulp Fiction. Our original idea was to base our gangsters on Pulp Fiction’s Vincent and Jules but the two actors we had caste were unavailable and therefore we had to compromise costume with the two actors we worked with. We used the coats they were wearing and put their hoods to make them appear more threatening whilst making the mise-en-scene more contemporary so the audience could engage more closely with the action.
The idea for the soundtrack was inspired by Peter Jackson’s use of The Intermezzo from Madam Butterfly in the climax of his film Heavenly Creatures. The classical ambience contrasts with the grittiness of the mise-en-scene in the close up shots of the victim lying presumably dead in the muddy gravel. The soundtrack makes the scene feel more emotive and powerful. The music continues as the Femme Fatal goes home to wash the blood off her hands and seems to awaken in her a comprehension of her actions connoted by the cross dissolves suggesting a close relationship with the victim. Peter Jackson’s film uses a similar technique. Before the two girls Pauline and Juliet are about to walk into the woods and murder Pauline’s mother the music from Madam Butterfly adds poignancy and stresses the tragedy, thus injecting the mise-en-scene with an apocalyptic sense of violence and sacrifice of the death of an innocent woman.

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The main character of our thriller is female. The femme fatal visually suggests the character of Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction, but unlike Mia she comes across as the independent female capable of fighting her own battles whilst Mia is dependent but also manages to come across as a victim of drug addiction. Our main female character is considered to be the villain in our short sequence and in control of a group of thugs, whilst the victim is the male and thus contrasts with the generic convention of the dominant generic male. This goes against the forms and conventions traditionally used in the cinematic preoccupation with representing woman such as Marilyn Monroe playing the ‘dumb blonde’ in Some Like it Hot. We wanted to use this idea to give the film a different viewpoint of the female character who shares characteristic with the character in Kill Bill known as ‘the bride’ seeks her revenge with not much help from anyone else.

3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Our thriller film if it were developed would like to be exhibited in an Art house cinema as it’s a low budget film (if it was to be funded by a film company) and would appeal to this particular audience better than multiplex. This is due to the way it’s been produced and would target an audience who would be more interested in the way in original ideas rather than the amount of special effects and high quality features. It would be a similar style to Working Titles earlier works and there lower budget films such as My Beautiful Laundrette. If it couldn’t get the funding needed then it could be distributed via the internet using the popular video sharing site You Tube where people would be able to watch and comment on our Thriller. It could also be placed on social networking sites such as Facebook, this particular website is known for its large fan base and therefore our thriller could be viewed by thousands as well as commented on.

4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
The target audience of our thriller would be males and females. Females would be able to respond to our femme fatal and be inspired by her independent sophisticated character. Males would be drawn to our thriller due to the high amounts of violence. When targeting an age for our thriller it would be likely to appeal to the 17-35 demographic. This is due to the characters being in the age group of 16-18 but the structure of our storyline and background of our film may appeal to the higher age group. The film would be certificate 15 due to the drug references and large amounts of violence. Our film is based around the more classic thriller such as Psycho as it doesn't use so many special effects nor CGIs. Our inspired director was Quentin Tarantino’s and the strong representation of strong independent women, thus our audience would likely to be interested in Jackie Brown and Kill Bill which isn't a thriller but follows the similar conventions.

5) How did you attract/address your audience?
It was our femme fatal we were using to attract our audience as the opening shots are quite dark in the references to drugs and harsh violence. We were trying to appeal to a male and female target audience by having the female lead appearing as the villain but also the added violence which audience research suggested was most popular with the male audience. There was also a large percentage within our demographic wanting suspense from a thriller film. Therefore we tried not to give too much away within our opening sequence to make the audience want to see more and find out more about the lead character’s purpose in hiring thugs to do her dirty work. This also links to the other high percentage of subjects in our research who claimed ambiguity adds to appeal. Our film was viewed to year 12 and 13 students so that we could gain audience feedback and what overall worked well within our film. There was a high ratio who didn’t think our soundtrack worked within our Thriller, this wasn’t surprising as we weren’t confident on our soundtrack, therefore a change in soundtrack would be considered if we where to re-edit our Thriller. It was also unclear to some her being referenced as a drug addict and that it didn’t appear relevant. However overall feedback on our camera work and editing was rated 4 out of 5 with the overall rating of our thriller being around 7 out of 10.

6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
For the construction of this thriller film I have learnt about how different camera angles can have an effect on the action. For example in The Third Man the city of Vienna is frequently shot at a canted angle making it appear surreal, we utilised this technique in our thriller when the femme fatal is washing her hands to emphasise the sense of nightmare and disorientation. It was also interesting to include strong establishing shots to immediately communicate genre and location. The medium long shot of Monica walking down a long path in what appears to be a scrap yard connotes her moral disintegration. It was interesting to see the effects sound has upon a film and what a difference it makes with music and without. We wanted to have a modern soundtrack to give the film a contemporary edge but due to new requirements from the exam board our music had to be 50 years old. Therefore we worked with this to come up with a better idea and the music ended up making the scene appear much more dramatic and emotive by using the Strauss soundtrack. Within our group the edit was found to be the hardest part. The software Adobe Premier Elements isn’t the most advanced which made it harder to add special effects and features which could have made our film better. Also certain shots wouldn’t flow into each other as easily as we imagined. For example, the scene where the Femme Fatale is applying her lipstick was shot a number of times, in the edit we had to check continuity and that she didn’t have more lipstick on at the beginning of the sequence than at the end. Another complicated edit was when the two gangsters are walking down the alley way. We had intended to have a shot of them walking into the alleyway but we couldn’t use it has they were going in from the wrong direction and due to the lack of time, we weren’t able to re-shoot the scene and it had to be cut.

7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Our Preliminary Task allowed good practise into getting used to the software we would have to use when it came to editing our thriller film. The software Adobe Premier Elements we used was quite complicated as none of the people in my group had ever had to edit a film before so it was good to be able to get used to that beforehand. The Preliminary task also helped us get used to the filming equipment we were provided with to use during the shoot. This allowed us to practise different shot techniques such as ‘canted’ as well as learning skills in making one shot flow into the other. For example the 180 degree rule. W e also had to be able to negotiate effectively when planning Therefore we made sure to use the information we had gained from our audience research to enable us to make the Thriller successful. We each had our own responsibility to turn up when shooting and to be available when our actors where available as well as help sort the shooting schedule. I’ve learned the importance of planning every aspect of mise-en-scene so that the shoot ran smoothly.
The audience feedback has helped us to understand and reflect on aspects of our thriller which the general public wouldn’t understand. For instance the feedback made us realise the narrative is quite hard to understand as it isn’t clear how there is a connection between our main femme fatal and the victim and how he’s being beaten up. We would also evaluate our soundtrack as a lot of people said it didn’t reflect the mood within our thriller.
Strengths in our production are that we all worked together in following the brief efficiently and including conventions of a Thriller film. We researched thriller conventions such as the Femme fatal smoking used from Marla Singer in Fight Club and the blood going into the drain which referenced the shower scene from Psycho. We gained ideas from our audience research to appeal to a wider target audience by including action and suspense. However we struggled when it came to filming due to the cast not always being available to film. Also we hit a low point when we found out we couldn’t use the soundtrack we had originally planned and found it hard to come up with a new idea, therefore none of us are too keen on the soundtrack overall. If we had more time it would be good to try and film our thriller again as this experience shows us that we are capable of producing an opening to a thriller film which includes suspense, challenges the representation of gender and utilises diegetic and non diegetic sound and titles. Evaluation of Monica’s Last Song

Warp Records

Warp Records was founded by Steve Beckett and Rob Mitchell in 1989 in Sheffield who had original experience working at a record store. They produce music for Drum and Bass, Electronic, Indie Rock, IDM and Hip Hop.

Artists on their label are:

Born Ruffians

Alexander's Annexe

Chris Clarke

Jamie Lidell

Maximo Park and many more!

The first release was by Forgemasters which was financed by an enterprise allowance and distributed in a foreign car. Their follow up was Nightmare on 'Waxes Dextrous' which sold over 30 000 copies even though there was limited promotion.

In 1992 they where called Artificial Intelligence and released singles by Aphex Twin and B12. Since then the label has evolved and in 1999 released a remix compilation spanning 6 discs featuring Acid house and Techno which helped influence the label and artists.

Then in 2000 the company moved to London to expand their buisness.

In 2004 the launched an online store known as bleep which avoids all digital rights management features in downloadable tracks. They also now have a music video compilation known as Warpvision.

Warp has now been going for 20 years

What is the balance of realism and drama in particular soaps?

In most soap there is a general 50% balance of realism and drama. Writers will try to make soap as realistic as possible so the audience can engage with the events that are occurring but an element of drama is also included to keep an audience engaged with the events and make the soap more enticing to watch.

Hollyoaks tries to tackle realistic problems that concern young teenagers for example the couple Newt and Lauren. There was a story where they where debating whether or not to have sex and showed Newt trying to make up excuses as he was worried about it but was too scared to tell Lauren this. For their age group of 15-18 year olds this is a common issue, which occurs, and therefore teenagers can relate to Newts character and compare his issues to their own. However a slightly un realistic love story of Hollyoaks is Nancy, Chris and Ravvy. Nancy and Ravvy where originally together but he’s gone behind Nancy’s back and seeing Chris who is Bi-sexual who is also seeing Nancy. They’ve now found out about what is happening and are scheduling when they can see each other. This love triangle is more un-realistic to regular life and shows Hollyoak’s making the story line into a drama. Soaps will often do something like this to regain the interest within the soap and it’s clear that Hollyoaks is losing some their viewers and are trying to spice up their storyline.

Another soap, which mixes realism and drama, is Eastenders. A recent episode showed the Trumans sitting round the table eating pancakes. This episode was aired on Pancake day so it gave the impression that the viewers where watching a live family, as it wasn’t just the Trumans on pancake day it was also showing the mum coming in stressed after work wanting a drink and the daughter trying to cheer everyone up by cooking. This episode also showed the daughter out on a date and pulling techniques, which men try to use on woman. Eastenders will often show these sorts of episodes before or after a dramatic event is about to happen. If they where to show this type of viewing every day then the attention of the audience would be lost as viewers rely on drama to make their lives appear easier to handle than the ones they are watching. Therefore the audience can see an storyline progressing in the character the daughter has gone on a date with as he asks a lot about the background of Patrick an elderly man she lives with. He’s very impersonal about what he asks and is insisting on seeing him. It is clear that a plot twist is about to occur from this. For example in past stories of Kat shouting and Zoe in the street that she was her mother. A dramatic event realised after a long period of storyline.

It is this contrast of realism and drama which makes the events that the audience relate to appear more dramatic than their own and therefore feel that their life is easier to handle and the problems which they are dealing with can now be resolved easily as they are able to gain ideas relate to experiences of characters.

Discuss the issues raised by media ownership within the industry you have studied

Discuss the issues raised by media ownership within the industry you have studied

Five major distributors dominate Media ownership of the Film Industry within the UK. They are United International Pictures, Warner Bros, Buena Vista, 20th Century Fox and Sony. These distribution companies have an alliance with larger Hollywood production companies. They help give funding towards the films, which are being distributed in the UK and allow the film to be exhibited in box office cinemas such as Vue and Odeon.
These main exhibitors will often prioritise the Hollywood films over UK due to their larger audience and higher budget. This means more of the UK produced films have to go to independent exhibitors such as Cinema City.
Working Title is a UK based film company who originally began independent. The began mainly targeting an art house audience but due to their alliance with Universal Studios, are now making mainstream films such as Burn After Reading which is considered to be an American film, this is showing how they are having to diverse into mainstream to appeal to a wider target audience. This is so that they appeal to the major exhibitors who prefer the high quality films. Their earlier works such as My Beautiful Laundrette wouldn’t be able to make it to the major exhibitors and would go straight to independent companies such as Cinema City due to the lack of budget and the audience the major exhibitors are trying to appeal to.
This highlights how the dominance of the media ownership of American based film companies and how some people are arguing that it is corrupting the traditional British quality found within a UK film such as Four Weddings and a Funeral as Working Title now need The Americans to help back their films making it seem as though they are dominating the UK Film Industry. This is known as Horizontal Integration where a company is being merged with a firm in the same industry. This helps the film company to sell their media product to numerous markets.
Working Title is keep with their British roots by starting Working Title 2 which focuses on Art-house production. In doing this they are trying to open up the UK film industry by only producing independent British films such as Billy Elliot, which tackles the controversial history of Britain.

The way Hollywood films are distributed is a method called ‘blanket release.’ This means that it is more likely for an independent film to be able to make it to the larger exhibitors but would have to compete with the major box office releases. This creates problems for independent distributors, as it is harder for them to make a profit when up against the bigger releases and therefore is less likely to succeed. The new technologies being used by the larger Hollywood produced films is also having a large effect on independent companies as they will already be at a disadvantage when up against the bigger releases before their film has been released. One of these new technologies is being able to produce more prints of the film, which allow the major companies to distribute their film to more exhibitors. This means that their film can be viewed in box office and independent cinemas allowing the major studios to be able to afford to take the risk of spending the money for the extra prints, which the independent companies cannot. The UK film council is trying to improve the situation of non-mainstream films by making audiences aware of where the films can be screened by developing an audience development scheme. This goes by the strategy that, ‘The more choice audiences have, the more likely they are to choose a non-mainstream film,’ they work to constantly improve the effects that the American industry has on the UK by developing new strategies and ideas to try and make the non-mainstream films more appealing. One of their methods is addressing the Digital Screen Network by allowing cinemas to receive the financial support they require a providing digital facilities to enable independent companies to distribute their films to more exhibitors.

A major factor today which is having an effect on the film industry is piracy. Due to un-authorised re-production and distribution of films, it is having an effect on the overall profit the films are producing meaning the distributors are not getting enough funding. Piracy is now easily available to anyone with access to the internet and means films can be downloaded within 24 hours of the film’s release. This is due to the internet becoming more developed because of the advanced software known as Broadband. Before Broadband films were still being bought illegally as ‘bootleg’ copies but now with the internet the film industry is falling as piracy’s getting bigger.
However the film industry is trying to solve this problem by embracing the new technology. The company ‘Love Film’ offers a subscription download service of films which allow the customer to download a film which they can have for a week at a low cost. This targets the main audience who would be downloading illegally which is young people and students due to them being more likely to have a low income.
There are several companies which are also beginning to offer this service such as I-tunes which originally began as music Download Company.
It is independent companies which have the worst effect from piracy as they don’t have as much distribution funding as the mainstream films to begin with therefore rely heavily on the public paying to go see their films.
The Film Industry know that legal downloads won’t combat the problem of Piracy due to the cost involved but it will hopefully decrease the amount of illegal downloads which are happening, which will keep the film industry alive.

Today the Film Industry is changing due to new alliances with different firms and audiences decreasing. However the Film is still heavily popular amongst everyone and even in the credit crunch is making a profit. Therefore even though film is different to how it used to be and may be considered to British companies an easy way to make money, the companies are trying to not let this effect the films being made and are using the new ownership required for their films to their advantage.

Evaluation of Reservoir Dogs