#mediacultures

 Select THREE music videos, and link to or embed these in your blog. Explain your selection (how are your videos related?) and conduct a comparative analysis of these in terms of gender performance.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5VVzbVHA7U – Chris Brown feat. Tyga – Bitches and Marijuana

In this first music video, I chose this because it is an easy choice for the discrimination of woman, and portraying them as objects and slaves. For example all the rappers are treated as royalty covered in these girls only wearing bikinis and dancing around them while they sit or stand above the rest of them. Further into the video it shows these woman managing caring for the marijuana implying that these rappers have countless girls they can choose from whenever they want. Even the lyrics themselves talk about how they have different woman and can have their way with them, while their physical actions imply they have the woman do everything for them and treat them as if they’re kings.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF8aaTu2kg0 – Kendrick Lamar – Bitch, don’t kill my vibe

This video is a lot more interesting than the first as it being held in a church. While everyone seems very formal at the beginning, the woman are still sexualized as the young attractive ones still have short dresses on, whilst partying on their way to the funeral, this is interesting though as they aren’t mourning the death they’re celebrating life, so while this is a serious event that has happened, they’re still partying together. While the woman do play a sexual role they aren’t being degraded like the first video where they’re objects to the rapper. In this video they are friends, family, wives to all the males in this video. One noticeable trait in this video is that is shows a few parents and elderly who are dressed appropriately, I feel as though that both genders are equally represented in this video.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGLx4zzMdRA – Iggy Azalea feat. Jennifer Hudson – Trouble

With a female rapper as my third choice, this music video, has woman still sexualized but in less of an inappropriate way compared to the first video. This video shows more of a woman’s independence view however as Jennifer Hudson is the chief of police, and all the guards in the prison are females while all the males are tattooed and in the prison. However the woman are still watching the males working out, this still has the sexual marketing in it as the other videos do. This video shows the woman in more of a dominant role as Iggy Azalea gets away with the bank robbery, but also shows that she is also influenced by the male’s bad behaviour and breaks him out of jail. All of the woman in this video are generally young and attractive.

Majority of the world population has heard of Lady Gaga. Popular since 2008, her weird style of dress made statements and her music videos held key messages about gender representation. The two together formed Lady Gaga, the androgynous woman who has used her talent, power and fame to wage a subtle war against female representation through her use of media.  In three music videos over Lady Gaga’s career, her approach to tackling the sexual exploits of women have become more mature, which shows that the problem has continued to exist from 2008 and requires more hard-hitting attention instead of flashy, almost ironic messages, which Lady Gaga gives over her career. Starting off in Paparazzi (2009), leading into Telephone (2009) and ending in the recently released Til It Happens To You (2015) shows a clear growth in the battle Gaga fights in against the sexually exploited and violent representations of women.

Lady Gaga herself dresses in a particular style throughout her videos to show the sexualisation of women in terms of relationships with men. In Paparazzi, she is dressed sexily in a white corset and jewels to represent her innocence, wealth and fame. She is a fantasy woman, and when she doesn’t give her man what he wants (sex), there is an act of violence where Gaga finds herself horribly injured. The male in the video appreciated her body, but not her voice, and this is a clear message about how women overall. Throughout the video, there are shots of more near naked “fantasy women” that have been murdered. However, this is where Lady Gaga lacks a vital aspect of representing women-not all women look the same, with perfect bodies and pretty faces. This gets better in her video for Telephone where she explores all different body types of women, and nails it in Til It Happens To You, showing maturity through her career. "Whether it is physical violence or sexual exploitation, these videos offer vivid depictions of male power over women's bodies” (Fogel &  Quinlan, 2011), which is a reoccuring theme throughout all videos.

Telephone is a 10-minute music video following Paparazzi, depiciting Lady Gaga in jail after killing the man that almost killed her in the first video. Here is where Gaga’s representation of women is more variable, as she is escorted by two ladies that are anything but “fantasy women”, and could be described as ‘Butch’. They are wearing hardly any clothing to show that they aren’t conforming to the gender standards that society has set due to media, instead of sexually exploiting their bodies. In the beginning of Telephone, we start to see Gaga’s blossoming maturity towards all genders, as she wears thick chains around her body, chaining her into a society-approved sexuality, and glasses made of lit cigarettes, the “smoking glasses becoming a cloudy veil that obstructs her view of reality, allowing her to base her feelings on senses alone, blurring the genders of the women around her” (Zafar, 2010). This shows that gender itself shouldn’t matter, but the person themselves. This hits home with Gaga, as she has faced rumours about her own gender before, and this is made clear in Telephone after the guards strip her naked and say “See, I told you she didn’t have a dick”. She soon sheds the chains and shows the fact that you can be whoever you want to be, and society shouldn’t define you. Telephone and Paparazzi do a great job of empowering women to show who they really are by showing Gaga absolutely kick male butt (She ends up killing an entire diner at the end of Telephone) but these earlier videos from her lack realism, and buy into the pop hype of colour, upbeat music, and flashy costumes. However, the most recent Lady Gaga video shows just how far she has come.

Til It Happens To You carries the same theme of violence happening to women, but this video is drastically different. Gaga herself doesn’t even star in it, and there is an absence of revealing clothes, dance numbers, or colour. Filmed entirely in black and white, it shows the raw truth about women of all shapes, sizes, ethnicities and sexualities. The lyrics “what the hell do you know” and “til it happens to you, you don’t know how it feels/it won’t be real” are filled with true emotion, instead of lyrics from Paparazzi or Telephone. The audience can see close up the affects of rape on women and this was done purposely to show that this is a real thing that happens every day to women, even those that may identify as male. The effects aren’t Gaga in a surprisingly symbolic form of dress, but literal depictions of real women and how they are represented in real life- as normal, and then how there is still male dominance over them. The same theme from Lady Gaga’s earlier videos are there, just refined and more effective. This shows Gaga’s deepening understanding of gender representation and overall growth of maturity to produce a music video such as this.

All three of these videos show Lady Gaga’s war against the sexualisation of women clearly, as well as showing her clear development in the subject from 2009-2015. Her videos are made to empower women in all areas of life- media included, and she has a succeeded. The war will continue to rage at this mature, raw and emotional pace.

References:

Fogel, C., & Quinlan, A. (2011). "Lady Gaga and Feminism: A Critical Debate". Cross-Culture Communication. Retrieved September 26, 2015.

Zafar, A. (2010). Deconstructing Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” Video. The Atlantic. Retrieved September 27, 2015.

Links to Videos:

Paparazzi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2smz_1L2_0

Telephone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVBsypHzF3U

Copyright Law exists to protect the exploitation of someones intellectual property and creativity. In New Zealand, we have the Copyright Act of 1994 which does the above for New Zealanders, but since creativity and intellectual property is all over the world, we also have to adher to at least three other international Copyright agreements, with the foremost being the Universal Copyright Convention passed in 1952. Copyright laws and agreements are vital to the creative outlets of New Zealand and the rest of the world.

Copyright Laws protect the creative practices of music, films, TV shows, novels and poems. Without Copyright, the public can have full use of all literary and artistic works to do with as they please-which may sound like a good idea, but in reality, is really not.  If all literary and artistic works were free to do with as we liked, there would be multiple copies of the same song, movie, TV shows, books etc with little or no change, all in an effort for people to make money off of it. And the original creator, the one that came up with the popular idea for such works? They get nothing. Their work is essentially stolen from them and exploited for the gain of people who didn’t nearly work as hard. In July of 1989, there was the case of Green vs Broadcasting Corporation of New Zealand that displays this. Green had “developed the program ‘Opportunity Knocks’ on British television. He claimed copyright in the general structure or format of a similar television programme in New Zealand” (Swarb, 2015, para. 1). The New Zealand show had many similar elements, including the title! Green had clearly worked hard for the success of his TV show in Britian, only for someone here in New Zealand to exploit his hard work.

Not only is this ethically wrong, it’s illegal for a reason. Unfortunately, with easy Internet access, it’s even easier for the public to pirate basically any artistic work, especially films and music, without being caught. This means that artists, directors, screenwriters, actors, anyone to do with the creation of these works have done all of that hard work for nothing, because someone put a free copy up on the internet and millions of people are now watching that recently released film for free or listening to a new album with no thought to how it affects the original source- the creator.

In January 2013, the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ) fined an anonymous Telecom customer on behalf of Sony Music and Universal Music. This is because the customer was downloading illegal music-music that was protected by Copyright law.  The customer stated that “she accepts responsibility for downloading the first song, Rihanna's "Man Down" via a BitTorrent client (file sharing programme) called utorrent” (NBR, 2013, para.  5). Unfortunately, this is not a single offence. BitTorrent is a service for sharing files, “so many more people among the 700,000 or New Zealanders it alleges use file sharing software could subsequently download the songs, compounding the financial damage. With the millions using file sharing, anyone who wants to access pirate content has no shortage of illegal avenues” (NBR, 2013, para. 8). That, simply, is not fair on those who have earned the right to own and consquently live off their own creativity, especially when there are free streaming applications such as Spotify that recognise and acknowledge the artists while giving customers free access to a large range of music. There are no more excuses!

If Copyright laws weren’t in place, there would be no balance within the creative world. Multimedia needs to protect their ideas to prevent exploitations of original works. Where is the creative intergrity? If artistic and literary works were accessible for free, as many people are doing illegally, without any legal consequences, there would be no furthering of ideas. No one would use the time and brainpower to build and create something new, and would opt for just playing with whatever was already available. The quantity of content would increase due to several verisons of the same thing appearing over and over again, yet the quality would decrease drastically. Everyone would have access to everything to play with, but with Copyright, only those who have the a gift, the creative gift, could EARN their right to have full ownership of what they create. Imagine a world where all you could find on the internet was the same, remade copies of a new song, and never the original. Where ametuer actors remade your favourite movie over and over again. Where people would deface the best literary works, the original magic lost forever.

Chaos. It would be completely uncreative chaos.

References:

Swarb. (2015). Green vs Broadcasting Corporation of New Zealand. Retrieved from http://swarb.co.uk/green-v-broadcasting-corporation-of-new-zealand-pc-18-jul-1989/

 Write an argument from ONE position within the contemporary wars over copyright. Work to persuade your readers of the valiadity of the position you are taking. Explain, justify, give evidence, find supporting references and sites, and provide case studies (ideally with relevance to New Zealand

 Some example positions:

- an advocate for the existing copyright regime

- a defender of digital piracy

- other e.g. an advocate for the Creative Commons approach

  When it comes to copyright to us it doesn’t feel like it directly affects us. While those is does effect has a severe impact. Digital piracy is a growing trend. Nearly everybody with access to internet has or regularly pirates all forms of media and while this has a large impact to companies and businesses it is also heavily impacting the original owner of the property. Piracy is illegal but it is also completely accepted in society, you aren’t afraid to show your friends the latest season of your tv show, and even play the music you download. Street prices are heavily affected by the extent of illegal commercial copying. The access of inexpensive, high-quality copies reduces demand for legal copies. While the extent of unauthorized copying can be estimated with reasonable accuracy, the expectation may cause products not to be marketed at all due to the manufacture believing there would be a lack of sales to cover the cost of production and distribution. This doesn’t only affect this side, to the consumers we can also suffer as for those who support the product won’t be able to buy a physical copy, or the potential future of future development will be cancelled due to the lack of profits.

In June of 1996, the largest ever video piracy operation in the United States was dismantled in New York.  The nationwide conterfeit business sold more than 100,000 pirated videos a week, grossing approximately $500,000.  The investigation, dubbed “Operation Copy Cat”, culminated when search warrants were executed by the New York City Police Department, assisted by the MPAA, on 17 locations, including four labs.  Authorites arrested 36 people and seized 817 VCRs, 77,641 pirated videos, $40,000 in case, 37,000 blank cassettes, more than 100,000 sleeves, lables and other sophisticated equipment used in the duplicating process.  The economic impact on MPAA member companies is estimated to be more than $87 million a year. This type of piracy causes a major loss of jobs, how would it feel to lose your job due to you being a select group of people to pirate some property that you were involved in creating because there wasn’t enough revenue made.

Certain products such as iTunes, Amazon, Spotify make it easier to purchase music than it is to steal it as the convenience of the product and the bonus advantages of using it counterbalance the piracy effectively. Today, the music industry generates $16.5 billion in revenue, roughly half the amount it did 15 years ago, and only $2.9 billion of that is from digital downloads. The music industry is not alone however, file sharing services also have an immense effect as they allow people to share larger files such as movies at an incredible rate, and an example of this was James Cameron’s 2010 film, Avatar. Over 17 million copies were pirated, and in 2012 over 4 million of Game of Thrones episodes were illegally downloaded. When content is illegally taken and distributed, income stops, jobs cannot be supported, and people are left unemployed. There is no question that content piracy has had a negative impact on everyone involved in the entertainment industry and on the overall global economy.

How obvious it may seem that this is wrong due it to it being illegal, however socially accepted, some examples that have been illegal and people don’t think are morally wrong are same-sex relationships, divorce and other practices are widely accepted when they once were outlawed. There are two rival camps that dominate the discussion around the ethics of piracy. One group are called “fundamentalist libertarians”. These people think that all ideas and creation should be completely accessible to all people. Intellectual property when copyrighted, patented, unfairly restricts people to ideas and expression. While the other group are “fundamentalist protectors”. They feel as though illegal downloading is similar to common theft. While there are two parties I feel personally that the losses from piracy are too immense to brush off, especially when considering the future of media, money does make the world go round and without the money to sustain the hefty demand for greater effects and more shows in today’s media day and age. Piracy is something than can be countered but not eliminated, if people wish to see towards the future of media these contemporary piracy wars have to be acknowledged.

  http://www.diplomaticourier.com/piracy-s-ripple-effect-on-the-global-economy/

Burnett, R. (2009). Digital piracy. ITNow, 51(5), 22-22. 

Phau, I., & Lwin, M. (2012). Digital piracy. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, 6(4) 

http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/cs181/projects/1999-00/dvd-css/piracy.htm

Apple, an organisation that everyone has heard of, produces a popular media device used by a majority of the world’s population. The iPhone, typically generation 5 and up, are a popular choice for a cell phone. Apple states that an iPhone is environmentally friendly, especially in the manufacturing of the phone, whilst other organisations such as Greenpeace claim that Apple has some work to do. So what damage (if any), are they doing to the world that we live in, and can we, as savvy media consumers, make an ethical choice when purchasing an iPhone?

It’s incredibly hard to find the environmental statistics on the Apple website when looking at iPhones. A specific search resulted in a PDF file of the environmental statistics of an iPhone 5s, a popular cell phone, from the Apple organisation themselves. Focusing on the manufacture of the phone, Apple claims that the iPhone 5s “lead the industry in material efficiency” (Apple Inc., 2014, para. 4) and this reduces the material footprint of the phone. The materials used in the manufacture of the iPhone 5s are “highly desired by recyclers” (Apple Inc., 2014, para. 4). The PDF takes great care to list all the environmentally sound elements of the iPhone, such as having a display glass that doesn’t contain Arsenic and being both BRF and PVC free.

The PDF makes no mention on any further steps it will take to create more environmentally friendly cell phones, nor does it go into as much detail on the elements of the phone that may not be so great for the environment. The air of the PDF is positive, pushing the iPhone onto any consumers that took the time to find the environmental information. Despite this, Apple Inc does state that the manufacture of iPhones is a major contribution to Greehouse Gases, which is a serious problem. It is merely skimmed over, however, showing clear bias towards the phone and company that created it is clear as the PDF is from the fact that Apple wrote it. The lack of information about most negative aspects is a clear sign of this bias.

In the Guide to Greener Electronics by Greenpeace, Apple products are in 6th position (from a 2012 survey), with a rating of 4.5/10. This is further ahead than some other electronic companies, yet Greenpeace only focuses on the negatives of Apple products, without balancing it out with praising the work they’ve done so far. “Apple continues to lose points for not setting a target to reduce emissions” (Greenpeace, n.d., para. 3) shows that Apple isn’t planning on making their products anymore environmentally friendly, which is justified by a lack of this in the Apple PDF. The Guide to Greener Electronics also has bias, by omitting any positive reviews about any electronic company, let alone Apple. They make it appear as if Apple alone is destroying the earth, which is the opposite bias from Apple Inc themselves.

One article found that seems to be an unbiased as one could get is iGoGreen: A Life Cycle Assessment of Apple’s iPhone. It forms a scientific, factual review of Apple’s iPhone environmental footprint by assessing five stages: “raw material acquisition, design and production, packaging and distribution, use and maintenance, and disposal” (Rodriguez, Carrasquillo, Lee, Lee, & Zhou, 2015). Focusing on the manafacturing of the device, attention was to drawn to how Apple Inc extracts raw materials for the phones with an “often inefficient process, involving the creation of chemical slurries in which only a fraction- approximately 12%- of the material is considered usable” (Rodriguez et al., 2015).  This is hard on the environment and can create further problems for the earth if this process is not altered or changed completely.

From an ethical point of view, any media device that causes any amount of damage to the earth in any way should be unethical to buy and use as we do. However, in this day and age, every one has a cellphone and there is constant pressure to upgrade and have the new “latest thing”. There is not a product out there currently that can fulfill your own needs, societies needs and is environmentally friendly enough to be considered an ethical purchase. One thing consumers can do though, is to not buy into the hype that you have to have the latest iPhone or other smartphone, and look after the phone you do have until it absolutely needs to be replaced. Prolonging the life of your phone will help reduce the amount of electronic waste and therefore further harm on the environment.

References:

Apple Inc. (2014). iPhone 5s environmental report. Retrieved from Apple website: https://www.apple.com/

Greenpeace. (2012). Guide to greener electronics. Retrieved from Greenpeace website: http://www.greenpeace.org/

I have written a comparative analysis on 3 scenes, and determined whether those who created them, have used similar techniques and camera angles to what I used in my film. I will also look at whether the scene can be identified to the original movie, and what software was used to film each scene.

The first scene I analysed was retrieved from http://thatmediabuzz.tumblr.com/. This student created a scene from the popular teen movie “Easy A”. She used similar techniques to my video such as close ups and mid shot camera angles. She also recreated the scene very similar to the original one, so that I was able to identify the movie straight away. Unlike my film, you could tell this scene was shot from a camera instead of an IPhone, which meant her scene was higher quality and could be seen across the whole screen. Her film transitioned from shot to shot very smoothly, making it look very professional.

The second scene I analysed was retrieved from http://mjc84.tumblr.com/. This student created a scene from the popular family movie “Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone”. He used a continuous close up camera angle in the entire scene, which is different from the original scene, as I used a variety of different camera angles when filming my scene. The shots between characters did not transition smoothly, as it seemed to be edited with jump cuts, which made the scene look rushed and disjointed. In my scene I used two different actors, however he used glasses to distinguish the difference between characters. However, I was able to identify the scene with the original movie, as I know Harry Potter movies well, and the dialogue in this scene reveals that Harry is a wizard, so it is very popular. This scene is similar to mine as it is low budget, as it is shot from an IPhone, in a landscape format.

The third scene I analysed was retrieved from http://baileyrobertsonblog.tumblr.com/. This student created a scene from the popular action movie “Taken”. He filmed the scene in one long shot, using two different camera angles to keep the audience engaged. Having one continuous low camera angle shows how serious the scene is, and keeps the audience focused on the actor rather than having multiple shots, which is what I used when filming my scene. By zooming in on the actor, allowed us to feel the tension that was building up in the scene, along with the dark lighting that made the audience feel on edge, and in suspense waiting to see what was going to happen. The voice over at the end of the film, was exactly the same sound used from the original movie, which enabled the audience to identify the scene straight away. This scene was filmed using an IPad, which gave it low quality (similar to mine), which was quite rough, but at the same time gave it a more realistic and genuine vibe.

The first scene was more professional, and filmed with higher quality software and a variety of film techniques. It was also much clearer and easier to hear, than the other scenes I watched. The last two scenes were low quality, with not a lot of camera angles. However, I felt each scene I analysed was easy to identify with the original movie, and had at least some techniques that were similar to what I used when filming my scene.

Links:

Scene 1: http://thatmediabuzz.tumblr.com/post/126898521950/audience-response-was-easy-a-easily-identified

Scene 2: http://mjc84.tumblr.com/post/126366136801/i-chose-to-re-create-a-section-of-the-scene-from

After posting my snip-it of the titanic I have received good and bad feedback from my peers, friends and family. The feedback allowed me to take a second view at what I had made and I have made judgements on where there can be room for some improvements. These tips and feedback gave me both a sense of accomplishment and have beneficial to advancing my knowledge. Positive feedback from viewers didn’t have a very broad understanding of fragments where improvements could be made, however with their sense of humour they were simply able to just enjoy what was put in front of them. Some feedback from a person also making a video, knew the struggle of having a good camera crew and actors. They were able to compliment me on my use of angles and making due with the resources I had available, this was a good self-esteem boost being a media student from college, the bad lighting and shaking angles had been pestering me. Friends being able to find it humours which is what I wanted to accomplish from a movie that is meant to be a romantic love story, gave me the impression I had successfully captured the moment and been able to make it funny. Although the feedback seems like the video very smoothly there were problematic situations from people who didn’t exactly find the video humorous. One viewer was to focus on criticising the use of sound being uneven and distracting from the dialog. The same viewer was also bothered by the lighting and shaky angles in shots. However these are improvements I was aware of that giving the right equipment and more motivated actors and camera crew these infringements could be tackled. Another viewer didn’t quite understand the humour of the video and was more concerned as to why I am hugging a smaller male outside; this may be due to the age gap in generations humour but reminds me of the fact that it is hard to impress everyone. I didn’t disagree with any of the responses that I received, I thought that they were all well and truly applicable and have taking into consideration of their thoughts. Below I have pasted the raw thoughts and responses of both the anonymous and identified viewers.

Responses

“As a media student it does bother me with the shaky hands and the lighting is annoying but other than that I think you did really well with what you had, I think it’s actually pretty funny” – fellow media student

“bro.. have you seen Garys’ video? It’s pretty funny” – Overheard conversation in class

“What was this video for? Nicely done with the music you can tell it’s from the titanic but I can’t see why you need to hug a boy.” – Thanks Mum

I chose to recreate a scene from The Blind Side using a free application on my phone called VStudio. This specific scene is very emotional and it shows the reality of how underprivileged a lot of children are in the world. The movie is based on a true story, and I thought this scene in particular was inspiring; a rich women being charitable to a poor homeless boy, welcoming him into her home with open arms, and treating him like family. You cannot help but feel empathy for him, and feel inspired to help others who are less fortunate. I thought this scene represented the main theme of the film - giving the blind side a chance.

The techniques I used consisted of a variety of camera angles; including close ups when I wanted to focus on the powerful facial expressions of the actors, mid shots when the content was not as personal, as well as a tracking shot to show a bit of action. I made sure that the actors involved were using an indirect address, so that the audience were looking into the scene as outsiders, almost like a fourth wall. I also made sure that the background was silent, to put emphasis on the characters’ dialogue and make the film more dramatic.