RESEARCH: Youth subcultures

Youth subcultures

In society, there are many groups of different people. Dwelling inside the realms of society are groups of individuals known as youth subcultures. These are youth-based subcultures that display unique interests, styles and hobbies. They are a way of forming an social identity outside of institutions such as school, home and work, but subcultures are not exactly a way of deviating from society. Only countercultures are the social cultures that behave against the guidelines of the dominant culture.

Many music subcultures are connected with many other youth subcultures because of their ways of behaviour, clothing and interests. For example, goths may dye their hair black and wear dark clothing in affiliation with their primary style, which is monotone black and white, and they may or may not be wearing piercings. Gothic events are held to attract hundreds of thousands of attendees annually. Siouxsie and the Banshees are one example of a gothic post-punk group.

In the case of sociology, sociologists study symbolism represented by the clothing, music, behaviour and language of youth subcultures. Such factions are also known as modes of lifestyle that distinguish how they act in relation to the wider society around them.

Examples of youth subcultures include:

            •           Bronies, a “fandom” dedicated to Hasbro’s normally girly animated TV series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. A portmanteau of “bro” and “pony”.

            •           Cybergoth, a subculture dedicated to 90’s electronic trance music (called “future pop” by Ronan Harris of VNV Nation) and techno music. Synthetic dreadlocks, hair extensions and cybernetic patterns are generally worn by members of the cybergoth society.

            •           Emo - a subculture based on post-hardcore and hardcore punk music. Hair is usually thin, flat and straight. The emo subculture associates stereotypes of negative feelings, self-harm and suicide.

            •           Grunge - a culture that involved alternative rock, garage rock, noise rock and heavy metal. Originating in the mid-1980s, grunge music is mostly affiliated with bands such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam.

            •           Hippie - Originating from the 1960s, hippies are affiliated with psychedelia, plants, and promoting peace.

            •           Zazou - This particular subculture is, in fact, an unknown subculture that only existed in France during the era of WWII.  Usually stereotypes people as wearing oversized clothing and wielding umbrellas as their key item. Men wore large lumber jackets, and women wore short skirts and heavy boots to display their culture.

GENERIC RESEARCH - FLATPLAN research

A flatplan is a basic mock-up of a media publication, such as a magazine, that shows how the articles, masthead and main image will be laid out on the final front cover page.

Here is an example of an amateur flatplan:

Credit goes to Omrick's A2 Media Blog for this simple layout.

GENERIC RESEARCH

ANALYSIS: What I have learned from assembling a Sixth Form Magazine Presentation

By creating three PowerPoint presentations on three different sixth form magazines and combining them into one presentation, I have learned that most sixth form magazine cover pages use the following terminology: top lines, main images, date line (not always), masthead, original typography, strap lines and main cover lines, just like other forms of magazine that are sold in stores everywhere. The lack of barcodes and prices signify the inability of the magazines to be purchasable; they can only be sold from their respective sixth forms. The main cover lines represent the main articles inside the magazine, which further attracts pupils and teachers who want to read it and become fascinated by the amount of content that arises within the portmanteau of pages. However, the lack of exciting tags and selling lines on some cover pages may make them too serious and flat for others. In order to compensate the problem, very colourful main images (such as the painted owl on the ONE Magazine) are added to enrich the cover page with colour and vibrancy.
Sixth form magazines sometimes credit various people - some cover models, and others the ones responsible for editing, writing and contributing to the contents of the plethora of pages to read. If there are a lack of pictures in a front cover or contents page then that must mean that the school the same magazine comes from is made in a cheap way - it may suggest that the publishers of the magazine are unmotivated and lazy. However, the prominence of art students in a publishing team may portray them as creative and ambitious, able to excite students by adding colourful features in a magazine that easily catch one's eye. An original piece of art located anywhere in the magazine issue (this includes the front page and the contents) may signify that the editing team are a group of professional publishers that are also responsible for original content that does not stem from already-existing source material. Crediting their names in the contents page (as seen in the UPDATE Sixth Form Magazine) and their inspirational message to students makes the magazine seem light-hearted to read and become interested in - a major contribution to the sixth form's success in media publishing.
From what I can learn in the presentation, the target audience intended to read these sixth form magazines are mostly sixth form students aged 16 to 18 due to the teen-oriented photographs that they insert into the front pages that appeal to them (the image of Rebecca Thackaray on the ONE Magazine is one example of this). The contemporary fonts, layout and topics that are defined as sophisticated all apply to the reading desires of students interested in learning more about the activities of the school they are in.

Sixth form magazine presentation

(Only view the Suffolk One sixth form magazine analysis and not the other presentations above)

GENERIC RESEARCH: MAGAZINE CONVENTIONS AND TERMINOLOGY

Here is the most recent cover of EMPIRE Magazine, dedicated to films and other media.

Film shown: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens - VILLAIN COVER

Characters: (from left to right) Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie), Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), and General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson)
You can find these elements on the front cover of a magazine:

• Top line ("MASSIVE WINTER PREVIEW...")
• Main image (see characters mentioned above)
• Date line
• Price
• Issue number
• Top third
• Masthead, original typography
• Strap line
• Website
• Main cover line
• Middle third
• Tag
• Cover lines
• Bottom third
• Left third
• Right third
• Barcode

However, not all magazines may have some of these features present on their front covers.

TERMINOLOGY

Apart from the masthead, which is primarily the logo of the magazine or brand it is sold by, there are more features that describe the terminology of a media magazine:

• Selling line (a snappy tagline!)
• Dateline (showing the date of when it is intended to be out)
• Main image
• Model credit
• Cover lines
• Additional cover line
• Bar code
• Main cover line

TYPOGRAPHY: Font used.

MASTHEAD: Title of the magazine. Also known as title block, which is the one used by known publishers to make readers aware of what they are reading.

MAIN IMAGE: The primary image shown to promote a person(s)/object directly associated with the main subject/article.

SELLING LINE/STRAPLINE: An introductory headline below the mastline describing the magazine. Can also be seen as a catchy tagline.

PUG: Nicknamed "the ears" of the magazine. Situated at either the top left or top right corners of the front cover. Situated there may be the magazine price, logo and/or promotion, or even a surprise freebie to attract a buyer's attention.

TAG: Words or phrases used to capture the attention and interest of a reader and lets them engage in the following story by categorisation. Examples are "exhilarating", "sensational" or "EXCLUSIVE!" showing the special compliments of the magazine.

COVERLINES: Main (essential) articles stated inside the magazine stated through short articles, primarily seen at the right hand side of the cover.

PUFFS: The mode of address is continued through the usage of less prominent articles or images on the front cover.

About Me

Genre - Looking at the images on the collage: action (shown by Call of Duty, Transformers' Ironhide and Pacific Rim's Gipsy Danger); sci-fi (The Martian's Matt Damon in a spacesuit and an X-wing Starfighter from Star Wars); rock (the logo of Linkin Park and the album cover of That's the Spirit by British rock band Bring Me the Horizon); creativity (Emmet from the LEGO Movie, schoolwork and Taco Bell, one of my favourite fast food chains).

Language - The background used in this collage is a fading sky blue to an offshoot of white as this represents the morning sky, and blue as my favourite colour. The text representing my name is dark red but has an added effect of chiselling to show the idea of creativity besides making a collage.

Audience - The images of Emmet and schoolwork would appeal to a creative audience who have an interest in creativity and work; rock bands Linkin Park and Bring Me the Horizon appeal to a hardcore rock audience; The Martian and Star Wars are aimed towards science fiction geeks interested in futuristic mixed media; Pacific Rim, Transformers and Call of Duty are mostly aimed at male audiences who are in their teens who like playing video games based on action and violence, and also are interested in action films.

Representation - This finished collage shows my hobbies, interests and what I like; it clearly shows that I like creativity, an action and sci-fi fanatic and a person with good music taste judging from the carefully chosen pictures and album art.

Narrative - No real narrative is shown, apart from the pictures in the collage telling others of my hobbies and interests going on in my mind.

Taking good photos in Media Studies

In this guide to taking photos, there are several techniques on how to carefully master shots. Here are a few tips to capturing the intended photographs that you really want:

• The compose and expose rule.

COMPOSE: As a photographer of your own accord, you can be really ambitious and do whatever you want in your own shots as you are responsible for them. Elements of the picture can be arranged and edited within the viewfinder frame to create a really effective image.

EXPOSE: Different to the COMPOSE rule, in which you have to become scientific and mechanical and expose your film to additional light. The amount of light captured and how long a film is exposed depends on how you set up the camera, producing different effects (or filters, for those who use Instagram) on the image.

By using the element of creativity, you can be ambitious and have control over your photos.
To be ambitious, you can:

• Move or rotate people in the shot. You can stretch and change their shape and size, or even apply additional people or objects into the edited photo using Adobe Photoshop!
• Move yourself. Good ambitious photos are often taken from an unusual angle despite their brightness, giving them a sense of flair.
• Close ups of people, places and animals are a decent idea as well.
• Crop everything that is irrelevant in the shot and only include points of interest, that is, to say, siblings, best friends, interesting buildings and landmarks, et cetera.

Other methods of photo editing include:

• Turning a close up shot into a colourless shot by stripping all colour from the original image and editing it to show only the colours of black and white.

However, you don't want any blurry shots. They will be badly composed and will disorientate the viewer if you do so! The main focus of the photo will be terribly obscured when it comes to photography. Even if it is a bad photo, you can still enhance it by photoshopping the shot and making it non-blurry just to make it a definitive photographic shot.

• Fill the frame, move closer.
• If you keep on forgetting to do it at the time, you can manually crop selected photos on your computer or when you put filters during editing.

How you automate a camera is up to you. You can...

• Automate the camera manually, where you have to set up all of its controls

Or...

• Make the camera fully automated so it can speak for itself instead of the photographer having to adjust all the controls.

Camera modes

Using a handheld camera such as a Nikon DLSR will get the photographer used to four default controls accessed by turning a dial to an intended camera mode near the picture button. These four modes are:

• Manual, M: The photographer does all the automation by manually setting up the shutter and camera aperture.
• Aperture priority, A: Set the aperture and the camera will convert to the corresponding shutter speed.
• Shutter priority, S: Same with aperture priority, only the roles of the aperture and the shutter have switched (set the shutter speed and the camera will convert to the corresponding aperture).
• Program, P: For this final option, the photographer points the camera; said object will then choose a suitable shutter and aperture combination.

The following options only appear when the camera is in 'program mode' according to subject type:

• Action mode
• Landscape mode
• Portrait mode
• Close-up mode
• Fill-in flash mode
• Night mode.

Aperture priority: Shutter speed is automatically chosen depending on what aperture is chosen on the camera. It is shown on a unique scale or viewfinder-only numbers printed in yellow. Change the aperture and the shutter speed corresponds.

Shutter priority: Aperture is automatically chosen depending on what shutter speed is chosen on the camera. Like aperture priority, shutter speed will illuminate as yellow numbers on the viewfinder.

Program mode: The camera speaks for itself by automatically setting its choice of shutter speed and aperture.

RESEARCH: Rule of Thirds

• The rule of thirds is a famous "rule" where three imaginary lines are drawn dividing a photo into "thirds" horizontally and vertically at the same time.
• Where those lines cross, important items are placed.

Here's where you properly place things in the shot where the rule of thirds will be:

• Third of the way up
• Third of the way in from the left.

Here's where you shouldn't place things in a shot that will serve as a basis for the rule of thirds:

• Right in the middle
• Right at the top
• Right at the bottom
• Tucked away in the corner.

Visually creative photos for everyone will be produced when using the rule of thirds. The "tiny subject surrounded by empty space" habit will be eliminated as you fill out those blank edges with objects.

Update about photos

Sorry about the inconvenience. I have just discovered a way to upload photos properly on to my blog. And that is by clicking on the "Insert Image" button directly between the Link and "Upload Video" button.

"All About Me" collage.

Technical Problems

It seems like there was a technical problem when I tried to upload the Photoshop collage of my likes and hobbies on my blog... sorry about the inconvenience.

ANALYSIS: Annotation (analysis) of Media Studies collage

Media Studies collage

This recent image collage I created using Adobe Photoshop means a lot more to others than myself as I used 10 images of my hobbies and what I like to present this collage. The intended genre I wanted to convey was science-fiction and action, perhaps adding in a light-hearted approach on the two genres (due to Emmet being in the centre of the image) because I wanted the collage to appeal to others who are interested in the same like as me while making it exciting at the same time. Most of the characters (the soldier from Call of Duty: Black Ops III and Ironhide included) look poised for battle, which conveys a powerful message to the intended audience (students, sic-fi and action geeks) telling them that the content of this collage is exciting to spot. It may even direct them to watch related films based on sci-fi and action, such as Transformers, Pacific Rim (2013) and the Star Wars franchise. The X-wing starfighter from Star Wars foreshadows the upcoming film, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the seventh instalment in the space opera franchise. By watching those films, sic-fi geeks will enjoy having their inspiration drawn from this poster, and may even anticipate for upcoming films like The Martian (starring Matt Damon) in order to fuel their interests.

What I am representing in this collage is a few of my ideas intended for inspiration in science fiction and action, as well as my music taste (mostly rock, as told by the LP logo of American rock band LINKIN PARK, and the album cover of That's the Spirit by Bring Me the Horizon). They are all cobbled together to convey what I generally think about in my mind; overall, the meaning behind the collage is to represent myself as an action film and sci-fi geek who frequently reads books and comics too. Only 10 images made it into the final cut because it was very hard to decide which top images would fit into the collage due to my massive menagerie of ideas in my mind at the time.

However, it can be argued that this collage may have a narrative, the plot to the story. I can say that exciting ideas about my interests are being told in the picture - preferably, the best ones (Pacific Rim is one of my favourite films released in 2013, and the sudden inclusion of the food company Taco Bell is the result of me eating in there frequently) because my intention was to inform pupils that they know everything about my interests and they know that I am full of thrilling ideas and positive attitudes. I can conclude that the collage lays down the idea that I can be widely recognised  by my morals, values, ideas and interests that I think of every day. The radiance that I present would be known by peers to be positive, effectively working out what else I like that is not common in the final collage. By collaging all of this into one photo, this makes me recognised as a potential top student.

How my current photos were created

Creation of edited photos

To create my first photos, I connected to the Southend High School for Girls computer server on the iMac using a unique address which everyone can connect to. Then as everyone’s photos showed up in four group folders, I double clicked my group’s folder (named “Anna”) and found the images that I want. Regardless of the photo quality, I highlighted all of the photos taken and dragged them into Photos (since I used a new model of iMac, it wasn’t called “iPhoto” on the dashboard) to save them and take a look at them any time. The photos that I really wanted, though, were a portrait-style photo of (presumably) Anna in the background next to the school, and a landscape photo of other peers in the sports area near the field. For the first photo, I clicked on “Edit” at the top right hand corner; a respective section of options came up at the right-hand side, referring to the enhancement of the selected photo. One option was to adjust a pseudo-eraser and edit out unwanted objects in the photo. Other options were photo filters to enhance the portrait and colour enhancement. Nevertheless, I clicked on the Filters option and gave the photo a complete makeover of 1950’s black and white. Then I adjusted the colour settings a little bit to give it a proper retro-style look in order to satisfy my needs in terms of photo editing. By dragging the finished photo on to the desktop to save it there, I completed my job of attempting my first photo edit.

However, I moved on by taking the photo of my peers and performed the same editing scheme like what I had done on the portrait-style photo, only with a few changes in enhancement. I radically brightened the photo and digitally enhanced it to make it look as if it were high-definition. To finish, I dragged it on to the desktop and sent the photo and all other related photos to Dropbox (where I have an account there for cloud storage).

Editing Photos

After taking a photo of Anna viewing the back of the school, I tested my photography skills and took a slanted picture of my peers using the Canon DSLR camera. I particularly used a canted long shot to give the feeling of disorientation when one tries to view the photo at its side. For added effect, I edited the photo by clicking on the "Edit" prompt and technically using the enhancement tools to create a sense of high-definition and brightness. This, in turn, led to high key lighting as shown in the finished photo above.

Using the same Canon DSLR camera, I tilted it on to its right side and took a high angle of Anna viewing the back of SHSG. This shot is also known as a master shot and I edited the photo by clicking the Edit button and using the black and white option to transform it into a 1950's style picture. Nothing much has been altered. The shot still looks bright though; the style is intended to catch a photographer's attention.

Introduction to Media Studies

The reason why I chose Media Studies

I chose Media Studies as a subject at SHSG because I was very interested in studying mixed media, such as films and TV, and especially magazines, which created a potential spark inside of me to explore the world of media around me. Back when I used to go to various school trips in De La Salle School, the fascination of art and design in places such as the Tate Modern and the Louvre gave me many ideas about how I could broaden my ideas using mixed media. I really want to analyse behind the scenes of various American and British-made films and special effects.