KOAN Sound - Mr. Brown (Found Footage Music Video)

Discuss why some people are not convinced by the idea of postmodern media.

Discuss why some people are not convinced by the idea of postmodern media.

Postmodernism is a rejection of modernism or a response to it, which already gives people a reason to criticise it. Postmodernism is a broad term to describe many forms of disciplines such as Art, Architecture, Philosophy and Music. Modernists want to look to the future and forget about the mistakes of the past in order to progress, where as Postmodernists argue that it is not possible to only look to the future and not look to the past because you would be reciting the mistakes, which then stops progression. Postmodernists tend to create texts by chance for fun rather than design them for a purpose and to serve as a use. All the text will regularly go in contradiction of media conventions, mixing genre and dismissing the traditional narrative structures, like Jean Francois Lyotard's Narratives. By using existing real media conventions from previous media texts it gives Postmodernists the ability to produce something new either to respectfully pay homage to it or to mock it for comedic value as a Pastiche. Furthermore, a criticism of their use of intertextual references is that the audience has to know the source or understand the reference given otherwise they won't understand the context of the joke. Many view it as a negative due to it replacing classical concepts especially in Art and Music. An example of a postmodernist displaying intertextual references in this way would be comedy programs like Family Guy or The Simpsons, these are constantly making intertextual references to other existing texts such as Star Wars. The criticism is that this makes it less accessible to various audiences because it won't connect to the people who don't understand the references given. This is one reason why some people are not convinced by postmodernism. Some Artists and writers etc. such as Quentin Tarantino also seem to be given this bad stereotype due to their inclusion of various different postmodern elements within their work due to being accused of “stealing” an original idea and manipulating it to then call it their own.

A further reason why some people are not convinced by the idea of postmodernism is that the use of intertextual references have reached an extent to where there are no more and therefore modernists believe that postmodernist are copying what has already been done. A reliable example of this is Kanye West’ song ‘Diamonds from Sierra Leone’, this song uses various samples from ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ by Shirley Bassey. From examples like this and many others within existing conventions some people are concerned that originality will be stretched so much that it will become completely lost and t postmodernism we will be reusing the same references and sources throughout generations over and over again.

Understanding an existing media text a post modernist will watch a film/program etc for example and pick out bits where the director has paid homage or taken inspiration from. For example if a post modernist watched a film with many intertextual references in such as ‘Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World’ they would be able to find the references and apply them to wherever they were taken from. Again, modernists disagree with this due to the fact that anyone not knowing the origin of the references is not included.

Continuously, Post modernist also like to see things for what they are, René Magritte once did a painting of a pipe and labelled it as ‘this is not a pipe’ which to someone not understanding or to someone that has a misunderstanding of post modernism would find abnormal, moreover a post modernist would make sense as it is not a pipe but a painting/image of a pipe. Some modernist’s object to the fact that some video games include postmodernism, this is because they are surreal in a sense as some are set in space etc. Some games allow us to manage a football team; others give us the ability to have numerous lives or making us invisible such as  ‘Call of Duty’, they object to these things due to the fact that these activities are literally impossible for us the achieve. 

The postmodernist game ‘Desert Bus’ is different in aspects, this is because it takes 8 hours to finish and once completed you receive only one point (unlike traditional games giving us numerous thousands of points). The game doesn’t allow you to pause at any stage just like reality, not only this but if you stop or fall in a ditch you are towed right back to the start no matter how close you are to completion, this also shares a strong link with reality. People play this game because it is one of the most accurate and realistic games that has been made. Some people would disagree due to the fact it being “pointless”, this is because the whole point of hyper-reality in games is to release yourself from reality and become someone else who can do things that a normal person can't such as a solider, a rock star or a manager of a football team.

Post modern media texts and post modernists challenge traditional texts due to what you watch, read, play or look at actually an original or a copy of something that already exists? The probability is that yes, it may well be a copy of an existing convention. In a few years time the whole meaning behind post modernism will have changed again which makes modernists think, what is the reason in learning the meaning to postmodernism?

Digital Technology Essay

Describe how you developed your skills in the use of digital technology for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to your creative decision making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time.

Digital technologies have had a massive influence on media production over the last few years, throughout the duration of both years I have learnt a massive amount about how to use them and what the benefits are of using them.  They in turn have contributed and have had a massive impact of the quality of work and the finished products that I have produced over the past two years.

One piece of digital technology was iMovie, this played a massive part and was a vital piece of digital technology in both years 12 & 13, without iMovie I would have had to use a different piece of digital technology which could’ve been a lot more complex to use and navigate around, but iMovie was beneficial to me as I found it very easy to use due to its simple structure and layout. As time went on I became much more efficient with iMovie, my AS work shown us editing a short music video for ‘Busted – What I Go To School For’ in this video there were little effects used as I didn’t have the ability to create them at this point. However, this changed as I progressed in the year and it then became apparent that I had developed my skills using this digital technology within the final version of my A2 music video. I used a varied amount of effects with the advantage of using iMovie such as slow-motion effects at points where the song escalated into a sort of “drop”. Due to the song being fairly electronic iMovie became beneficial in producing a “glitchy” type of effect this gave our music video much more of a lively effect which we were unable to create without a crowd. The finding of these skills were visible on other existing texts that I had been looking at in the research and planning process, this helped my creative decision making process as my ideas in effects were used on my own product.

Another beneficial piece of Digital Technology was Photoshop; again this was a contributing factor in both years of my work. Without Photoshop I would’ve had to use software such as Microsoft Publisher, this would have made parts of my work lack in quality, but Photoshop gave me the ability to add new key factors to my work as I had a wide selection of tools to choose from. Photoshop give me the ability to do all kinds of things to images such as manipulation and cropping etc. An example of this would be the skull replacing the ‘o’ in the title ‘Mothership’ on my final version of my Digipak & Poster. I did this as I became familiar with this particular piece of digital technology using various tools such as the magnetic lasso tool.  I could tell I had developed in the use of this tool due to looking back at my AS magazine. I saw that the cropping around the edge of certain images looked poor in parts whereas the cropping around my A2 ancillary products shown professionalism. Photoshop allowed me to expand my creative decision making process due to being able to use a wider range of tools.

Blogger was also used within the two years of both AS and A2, It was used to convey the majority of the coursework. We had very little experience of this website prior to this but had a small understanding of how it worked due to using other blogging websites such as Tumblr. At A2 we developed our skills with the use of Blogger as we found out that we could do our A2 music video group work on it (Research & Planning etc.), this enabled us all to post at the same time whilst keeping all our work together in one organised blog. As I progressed through AS I realised that tags could be added to posts, this made navigating around my blog much easier.

Overall, digital technology was a vital factor in allowing us to make good creative decisions in our A2 and AS productions as well as making our productions effective in ways that real media conventions have achieved.