point and click

Early computer game sectors had very little processing power so the game designers ability of the time to develop narrative was limited. Computers were more capable of running sophisticated graphics, so gameplay on them became really popular. Point and click games used a simple interface which means that designers could develop narrative much more easily without having to animate character sprites in detail.

Point and click became really popular in the adventure based genre. In 1993 'myst' became one of the best selling games of all time when it achieved sales of 6 million.

As consoles became powerful, the point and click genre became less popular with game developers and gamers, although the increasing trent towards casual gaming and the growth of a range of platforms for hand held gaming in recent years has lead to older point and click games being 'ported' for use on platforms like the nintendo DS, smartphones and tablets.

certain game developers still use the point and click concept to produce interactive gameplay which has multiple complex narrative.


Quantic dream and point and click games

Beyond two souls

Beyond two souls has a narrative which links to movies. This tells us that games in this generation are becoming more interactive and realistic. Theres not much to do in the game just small interactions with more of a narrative.

They have gone out of their way to star big hollywood celebrities in this game such as Ellen Page and Willam Dafoe.

This game even went to the level of advertising it like a movie. Why couldn't they just make it a movie?  Maybe because they wanted gamers to have that experience.

The game has an elastic narrative where it only allows you to move around only hpw the game wants you to.

I agree with the citicism to a certain extent, and i also believe that the game should have been a movie.

Applying Narrative Theories

todorov 

The movie which i have chosen to talk about is  Del Tucker vs Evil. This is a movie i have watched recently and i believe that it really gets across a narrative to the audience.

The way the film's story is told is hard to follow due to the fact that the directors made out that the evil were del and Tucker and the college students were evil and it made us have to figure out who it really was.

The narrative of the film goes through all 5 stages, which are equilibrium, disruption, recognition of disruption, attempt to repair the disruption and reinstatement of equilibrium. 

In the equilibrium stage we see the setting and the theme of the setting and we also figure out the genre of the movie in a small sense. We also hear what the characters are like and we think what the movie will be about.

The disruption starts when we see Del go over and talk to one of the college girls to have a friendly chat. This ends up being a problem due to the fact that the girls got scared and their male friend came and told Del to go away. This tells us that Del and Tucker are the evil.

In the recognition of the disruption stage the male friend builds tension between the college students and Del but Del did not mean no harm.

We recognise the attempt to repair the disruption stage because the college students want to capture their friend back from Del's holiday home. We can see them making a plan to go and attempt to get her back by killing Del and Tucker. We also see that Del and Tucker are attempting to get the girl back to their friends which signify that Del and Tucker are really not evil and the college kids are.

The final stage is reinstatement of equilibrium which is signified by Alice trying to get Del and Chad to talk to one another and sort out their problems. The problem is solved till Chad wants his revenge for Del and Alice falling in love with one another.

Propps

The characters in this film were easy to categorise using Propps theory because there was use of character typology and stereotypes because they behave in a certain way and it is also given away in the title of the movie. 

The hero was Del who was this big guy who is stereotypically seen as a hillbilly in the movie and they are seen as bad people but really and truly he was the Hero in the movie as he rescued and looked after Alice when she hit her head on the rock. I think that at the beginning of the movie this character would not appeal to the audience because he is seen as a bad person but later on he will appeal to the audience because we see his true personality.

The princess was Alice she is a college student who is really pretty and attractive. She is the princess is the movie as two of the groups try to fight for her back. the character would appeal to the audience because she does not know whats going on and they feel sympathy for her.

Another important character was Tucker because he is Del's best friend. This character was vital to the plot because without him giving the confidence to Del to speak to her, Del wouldn't have had the chance to meet her. 

Narrative game theories

The game i will be talking about is GTA5. The way the games story is told is easy to follow because it shows how one of the characters started from the bottom and reached to a higher status.

This game will not work with both theories but there are some stages which do work throughout the games for example Equilibrium. We see this throughout the game. It tells us about the location of the game and also introduces the characters to the gamers and the storyline setup!
Throughout the game there are a variety of missions you have to go through to earn money and gain respect.
Towards the end of the game you have an option to kill off 3 characters, but the story does not end there. There are many more mini stories that go on throughout the game afterwards.

Propps theory
The characters in this film were easy to categorise as it introduces you to them as soon as you start the game.

There was no hero, villain or princesses in this game as everyone is bad in their own way.

However there was a vital character throughout the game who was Franklin as he gets to choose who he kills at the end out of 3 characters
Both of the theories do not work properly in accordance to the game which means the theories work better with movies.

Stuart Halls Theory

Stuart Hall was one of the first academics to consider how audiences respond to media texts. He deeloped a theory that the meaning of a media text is negotiated between producer and consumer. He argued that there were three ways in which an audience can respond to a text:

Preferred reading is when the audiences respond to the product the way media producers want/expect them to.
When the meaning is negotiated the audience will partly agree with part of the product e.g film documentary, tv programme.
Sometimes an audience will not accept the producers representation, hall described this as oppositional reading.
The producers of early computer games were only able to produce simple graphics, so the visual representation wasn't very accurate. For example

This is the game pong it is supposed to be a representation of table tennis.
It may not look nothing like it but back then it was good.

Even so, these games makers wanted to include some sort of narrative with their games because people wanted something more advanced and started getting bored of playing the same things over and over.

They used titles and box art to suggest narrative themes and settings. 

This is the game ET that came from the movie itself.

This is the game heroes of neverwinter which has more of a narrative today and better graphics .

this approach to gameplay is a very good example of how producers and consumers negotiate their reading of narrative in media texts.

blog diary for pictures

At first we looked at a few online narrative pictures on youtube which people have posted.  We looked at 2 videos. One of them was of a man who grew his beard for a whole year and took a picture of himself everyday. It showed us as the audience the different stages throughout the year, not just on his beard but also his appearance. Another video we looked at was of a woman who posted a video of narrative pictures about her worst year ever. Whilst looking at this one it showed us the contrast of the woman's facial expressions.

After looking at these two videos we were set a task to go out ourselves and make our own version of these narrative pictures, pretty simple? Of course it is, but the only problem we had was the fact that we had to do it within a space of a week. At first my idea was to make a collage of different pictures of foods that i have eaten at from different restraunts. The reason why i chose this idea was because of the time limit we had and my brain was completely empty on other ideas! After i started on this i soon began to think it would be hard to put the message across for this and it may come across kind of boring .
As the week went by i was lost as to do what to do so i teamed up with one of my classmates, Saifur. He was also quite lost on ideas so together we put both of our original ideas into one piece. We decided to stick to the idea of food being displayed but we thought lets have a plate of food and in front of the camera and take a picture of the food after we have one bite of it so that gradually it looks like a narrative timeline of pictures. After doing this we decided it looked well so we thought we'd publish it on final cut pro. The only other thing left to do was to add music to it.

After looking at different genres of music we decided to choose one that we thought we'd never choose which was classical. We decided to put one of Beethovens sympthanys on the timeline. The reason we done this is because we thought it went with the timeline correctly and it was also something different for the audience.

I believe that actually constructing a narrative using visual images is not the hardest of things but i believe that actually thinking of an idea for a narrative is harder. The only reason being is that there are so many ideas to choose from.

Without digital technology i believe that it would of taken us much longer to do the project. I mean we got the idea from youtube at first and then we went off and used different sorts of equipment to capture the pictures some used Digital SLR  cameras and some including myself used their phones. Also without the software Final Cut Pro on the Mac computers it would have been a lot harder to get the message across, so visual images are key on these circumstances. 

Diary 5 G.M. blog diary

G.M. is a 8 and a half minute short film which we watched as a class together. At first we looked at the script and the script told us a lot about the movie before the actual script started. This film was a funded movie and it took a long time for the director to get the funding.

Before the script starts in the intro it tells us alot about the movie and who are involved in the movie. It also has a section about the 'film makers vision'.  The actors in the film have no speech, it is all just based on the acting. So the script jus gives us a sort of narrative of what each character is doing.

Once we looked through the script we then went on to watch the movie. The movie itself i believe had no stroyline to it. 

Diary 7 blog diary- what we did today

In todays lesson we first looked at two different pilot episodes. One from the series of friends and one from the series of family guy. In the friends pilot we saw the setting of the scene and it described to us all of the characters and their personalities. It also showed two characters who are friends Ross and Rachel who are currently going through problems in their lives. Ross just had a recent break up wit his girlfriend and Rachel who ditched her wedding. This is effective because it makes the audience want to know what happens during the rest of the series.

The next pilot that we watched was family guy. This pilot we thought dragged a bit and made it seem more of an actual episode. Although it did show us the main characters and the main settings there was no pilot feeling to it.

We also pitched our pilots and gave  a brief summary to the class about what happens in our pilots and also our movies and how we are going to go about doing so.

We then went to go and watched a different pitch online which was then made into a movie and it showed us how a simple short pitch could be made into something really effective.

We also watched a brief documentary about a writer who tells us about his ideas on writing and what he believes would make a great script

what is a pilot

A pilot is  like a short snippet of what the movie is going to be a bout including the setting, the mood and the sound effects required to grab the audiences attention and make them want to watch the movie. You will have to think about the genre and setting the mood so the audience can feel the setting of the mood .

Also you can say that it is a short 3 minute max scene from the film for the funders to see if it is going to be successful enough to be worth funding.

It has to have an eye opening scene which will make the movie seem really interesting. For example say if in your movie someone dies, you could show that so the audience want to watch the movie and think ' what happens? how did he get killed?' 

Diary 6- noise control blog diary

Noise Control

As a class we watched a short film called 'noise control'. First of all we looked at the script to have a look on how it was laid out in terms of organisation. At first we are told before the script even starts that there was a low budget for this film.

When the script starts it starts off with a long intro about what the film is about, the budget and where it was set. It gave us all the details before the actual script started. Once the script started, it gave us an insight about what the film topic is on. It gives us instructions on the script such as (o.s) which means off set. It gives us clear instructions and the script is easy to follow. In the script they use a lot of description about how they are going to speak for example after the character name it says ( frantically) so it shows that the actor is going to speak frantically. It also has terms in the script such as (beat) which we have not seen in a another script before. This means that the actor should pause a moment on screen before continuing to speak again.

As this was a low budget movie you can already tell that the movie is not going to be as great. In fact it wasn't. the actual documentary was trying to be a comedy about the filming crew themselves. It was set in a small village in Wales. Where they went into a families house and tried making a document about what the area sound is like.

Everytime they recorded an aeroplane sound will go by. In this case they had to use sound effects for the aeroplane going past. The lighting of the film in my opinion was not too great as it was a low budget it will be expected.

Overall i believe this movie was a failed short comedy movie.

info on simplyscripts.com 

Diary 4- The Darjeeling Limited

As a class we watched the movie 'The Darjeeling Limited', but first of all we had a look at the script. This was the first script we looked at and it was very straight forward. It told us what was happening and where it was set and it was very easy to read. It set the scene for the movie and also gave us an insight to the characters too.

Throughout watching the movie, we as a class noticed that there was differences from the script and the movie itself. Some of the dialogue and actions that were recorded on the script weren't shown in the movie.

In terms of music i found that the music really went well with the actual screenplay and how it was interpreted in the script. 

Visual Narrative

Today we learned about visual narrative which you have to figure out the narrative through the images shown and what it symbolises. When you go through certain images there are many theories you may come across until you actually research what the image is about. We looked through pre historic art in France and Mexico. We also looked at images from Native American Art Colorado, Mesopotamia from 3000BC, Native American Art 17th century and Egyptian Heiroglyphics. Once it got to the Egyptian Heiroglyphics we figured out that people use visual symbols to represent language. 

Diary 3 - A space odessy blog

We as a class watched the 1968 movie 'A space oddysey' which i think was a very dragged movie. What i mean by this is i believe everything was happening too slowly and could easily bore the audience. Maybe it wasn't the sort of movie i'd watch? The movie did have its pros and cons.

First of all we had a look at the script. In terms of organisation the script was very detailed with timings of when what happened in each chapter of it. With all the organisation i still found the script a slight bit confusing.

The sound effects of the movie were good to a certain level. Sometimes i believe some of the sounds were too exaggerated for my liking and also for the scene itself. There were some fight scenes between the apes. Before they begun there would be a tense sound effect like a drum effect to create the suspence for the audience which i believe was good for the movie.

I believe the acting in the movie was quite poor, but i have to bare in mind the fact that this is a 60's movie. I have not watched the whole movie so i have not seen most of the acting yet as most of the scenes we watched were mainly based around sound effects.

One of the main things in which i noticed the cast have spent their time on was the settings of the scenes and how they would go about fittin it in. Before we started watching the movie clip our teacher Miss Paradise asked us where we think it will be set with our understanding of the script. I thought to myself that ot was going to be set in a dessert like place. This is because in the script they talked about how the setting was in caves, this made me think that it will be set in a dessert like scene.

In terms of filmaking and the shooting of  certain shots i believe they done a good job due to the fact that there were certain shots such as the sunset in the beginning was really effective as it tells the audience what kind of settin they are falling into.

Overall i think this was a poor movie in terms of acting but in terms of sound effects i believe that it was reasonable, but theovoe did excel in terms of filmaling and certain shots.

computer game story development

What is your average gamer?
Well according to studies an average gamer is a 35 year old who earns around £23,000 a year and plays for a couple of hours a day.  It also says that the average gamer is married and spends two and a hald hours a day, five days a week playing games and also stays up to 11pm. We are also told that both male and female gamers spend as long as each other gaming.

Gamers also own two different consoles and on averge own 18 games each! Gaming can also cause arguments? apparently the average gamer argues with their partner twice a week all over gaming! The most popular consoles among respondants are ps3, Wii and Xbox 360.
This research gathered is from a gaming network names 'Pixwoo'.

Ref:  www.businessinsider.com


Pro Gamer- For some people gaming is a dream, especially pro gamers. Some people earn a living just through gaming. People enter tournaments all over the world and win up to prizes such as £300,000. There are pro gamers all around the world who spend most of their days gaming as a living.

Newbie- A newbie could be said to someone who is new to a game, a concept or a forum. In this case it is someone who is new to a game and does not know what it is about. It is a slang term used mainly with teenage crowds.

Casual Gamer- A casual gamer is someone who limits their time playing video games. Casual gamers also like to play games that are easy to play. The casual gamer is usually older and also female. A casual gamer might not also own a certain type of console or video game to play their game.

Retrogamer- A retrogamer is a gamer who prefers to play and collect retro games which usually consist of older video games or computer games. They are also referred to 'old school gamers' or 'classic gamers'. These terms are more common in the United States.

Consumption

My least favourite game genres are action adventure games such as legend of zelda series. The reason for this is maybe because  i do not have the creative mind as some others have, whereas i like more realistic games. I also find the process of keeping up with a lot of series of games timewasting. I also do not like games such as certain war games as i find them hard to control. 

I think my favourite game of all time is Grand Theft Auto. The reason being is it is such a life like game! you can do pretty much everything that you can do in real life which makes it more relaistic and fun to play. Realistic meaning from driving a car to jumping off a building!

I think the most offensive computer game i have come across is called 'Muslim Massacre' online. The game gas its title offensively suggests you to massacre as many Muslims as possible. The producer of the game has made it so that you are controlling an American Hero who wipes out as many Muslims with armament weapons. This is the reason as to why i find this game highly offensive. 

I believe that games should have age rated content on them as nowadays kids are picking up bad habbits from games and this causes to take on these bad habbits in reality. If there was no age rated content, the youth of today would all be brainwashed by what they see on video games.

Pre Production

Types of Pre Production: Pre Production is a vital stage of any creative production process. It's a fairly loose term which refers to the tasks that are undertaken before any production. For a small video company, pre-production may refer to everything that happens before shooting begins, for example, meeting with the client, research, storyboarding, location planning, etc. For feature films, pre-production is more specific and only begins when other milestones have been met such as financing, screenplay, casting and major staffing. 

Finance: An important stage of the pre production is the finance planning.You need to figure out what finances you need for things such as advertising, sponsorship, hiring prices, cover price, sales and also rental charges. Also there is expendature with costs of crew, personall, facility hire and also legal costs. 


Timing/Schedules: Timing and schedules need to be planned and organised very precisely. This is important because crew members need to know where to go on what days and also you need to know when certain facilities are open for hire. Making a time schedule would be very beneficial to all the members that are working on the project on certain days.

Facilities: Any media production will involve the use of production equipment and facilities to capture, record, edit and manipulate the raw material into the finished product. You need to make sure facilities that you need are booked which comes with organisation. Moving image, photographic products will need equipment and studios to capture sounds and images that you will need. 

Diary 2- Planet of the apes

For this lesson we had to watch the 1960s version of the movie Planet of the apes. The sound and music that was used in this movie was very interesting and put together well even though i had less interest in this movie. They only put in music when it was really necessary. There was a lot of basic instruments used such as basic drums to create a sense of tense moments during the movie.


































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8 questions

High definition uses more data to create pictures rather than standard definition. high definition is around five times more of the data rather than standard definition which is lower. With the fact that there is more data in high definition means there are more pixels to create a much better image!

In Europe 16:9 aspect ratios were introduced in the early 1990s. HD televisions are always 16:9 but there is no standard for 4:3 ratio when using high definition.

Standard definition resolutions are: 720x576 with 4:3 aspect ratio or 16:9 aspect ratio.

High definition signals are: 1920x1080 pixels with 16:9 aspect ratio.


Aspect ratio is an image projection that describes the relationship between the width and height of an image. For example there are movies which are shot with wide angle lenses with the aspect ratio of 16:9. This means the width of the image area will be twice the size of its height. 4:3 ratio means that the image is 4 units by 3 units high.

PAL is short for phase alternating line. It is a video format used in television transmission used in most of Europe except for France, Bulgaria, Russia and some other countries. NTSC is short for National television standard commitee. It sets the standard for analog televisions in the United States. It has been used in other countries as well as Japan. SECAM is short for sequential colour with memory and it is a analog television system.

In motion pictures, television and in video game displays, frame rate is the number of frames or images that are displayed per second.

A tape drive is the thing that drives the tape around originally with a hard disk. Nowadays the drive is built in so a hard disk drive is referring to the disk and the drive. The main difference is the fact that hard drive has more capacity to store more data in it.

Digital broadcasting is standard broadcasting which was produced since two years ago, 10 years ago it was for satellite and cable.

Video editing software is where  people can upload videos onto their computer and edit them with softwares such as final cut pro or windows movie maker.

Diary 1- Snowy and the seven gangsters

We as a class just watched the year 13's movie which was named 'Snowy and the seven gangsters' and i believe it was very successful. The movie had a clear narrative storyline and we can tell that the group had done their research on the genre of the movie that they have based it on.

The main actress in the movie had a big role and i could tell that throughout the movie acting wasn't her strong point but i can also see that she has done her research within the acting side on things and has done a good job with that. She also had to do the narrating throughout the movie telling her story to the viewers. The rest of the characters all had one scene to do each which all turned out great! It showed each of the characters personalities and got the message across to the viewers.

One flaw that i can pick out from the movie is some of the sounding that was carried out. I found that when the actress was narrating the sound levels were a bit high which brought down the quality level of the work. The other sounds such as the music were really effective, i found that the music they chose went really well with the theme off their movie and the scenes they added it onto including the way it matched with their moves.

The shots they chose were really good and were done with success. The estate buildings and the park settings went well with the theme and showed the viewers how it really is in these areas. There was also a sense of comedy in the movie when there was a scene of the news about the girl 'Snowy' going missing which twisted the mood of the movie but bought a bit of humour to it which was healthy for the viewers.

Overall i believe that year 13 done a great job on their movie which was really successful and they deserved the grades that they have achieved for it. Their video has helped me develop some idea in terms of angle shots and lighting for my video and how i will go on about doing it. 

Super mario

New Super Mario Bros

This was the final game that i chose to do and i did it because it brings back childhood memories off when i used to play it myself. The sounds for this game were really cool to be done and was a lot off fun doing so!

Collecting Coins sound: for the coins sound what me and my classmate saifur did was we got some coins in our pocket and shook it to get the coins colliding together. This was effective as it made the sort off sense that the coins were rustling with one another.

Bouncing sound: With the bouncing sound what we did was we used the piano which is situated in the schools music department. We simply picked a key which was not too high pitched and not too low so it made it perfect for the game and sounded like the one in reality.

Background sound:  The background sound was really effective for my game as i had my friend who knew how to play the mario theme tune on the piano to record it onto the mic. 

Fight night

Fight Night Champion

We had four sports games to choose from and with this i chose fight night champion with it being something different from the rest. Creating the sounds for fight night was easy but a challenge at the same time.

Boxing Bell: the sound for the boxing bell was hard. I could not just use any bell due to the fact that it will not be the correct pitch and tone off it. So what i had to do was go to a shop where they sell these bells and luckily enough i had found one which did i simply just recorded the sound and embeded it onto the game which made it really effective. 

Boxing Cheering: I think that the cheering sound that i did was really successful because i was in a live boxing match of one off my friends, The sound that was coming into the mic was really loud but with the pitch levels on logic pro it was easy for me to lower that and make the sound effective.

Boxing Breathing: The breathing which i had done was simply me breathing onto the mic, but it was not just simple breathing i had to throw punches at the same time to get the correct sort off breathing in place for the sound to be effective for the game. 

skyrim

Skyrim

We had the choice off picking from 4 adventure games and mostly everyone and myself chose the game 'Skyrim' simply because it had a lot more to it and it seemed the most coolest one to do at the time not thinking about how tricky it would be to get most off the sounds and being creative with how we are going to make it.

Hold on speech: Skyrim had a lot off speech to the game, this was the fun part off putting on a crazy accent and saying what was said in the video. So for this we had one off our friends from college to speak the part with a accent on which helped due to the fact that it was a girl speaking in the video aswell. 

Dragon Flap: For the dragon flap we had a lot off ideas in our head. In the end we came up with a decision that we are going to get a laminated piece off paper and flap it near the sound recorder , to get more off the windy affect we done it outside where there was most wind.

Wind: The wind noise was created outside in the playground off the school. 

Need For Speed

Need For Speed 

One off the games that was given to us to edit was Need for speed. I chose this game simply because i loved it but i knew it would be a challenge to get the correct sounds for it and to make it as effective as possible. I will be talking step by step on which sounds i have chosen and how i have gone about doing them.

Car Noise: Getting the car noise was a massive challenge for me because i needed to get the right sort off sound for the actual car that is playing in the game. So for this i could not just get any car that was driving past. I had to really think about grabbing the right pitch level off the sound. I was out recording sounds for another game when i was walking past a garage which had the exact same car which was in the game inside the garage. i was lucky enough that the car was on its way out so i grabbed most off the sound that i could and it went perfectly for my game. the car was a Nissan Skyline R34 Gtr.

Background sound: The background sound for this game was pretty simple. All i had to do was to record out a car window whilst it was driving just to pick up the breeze and the sound off the surrounding to make it more realistic when i embed it onto the game.

Police Sirens: Police sirens was tricky. We tried walking into the police station and asking one off the officers if they could simply turn on the siren for us to record. It was not as easy as we thought and for legal reason they could not do so. In this case we had to find the perfect opportunity for a police car to go past, so whenever we were out and about with our recorder we were on the hunt!

Proposal for advertisement

Topic: McVities

Unique selling point: a brand which was been recognised since the 1830's a british brand.

Persuasive techniques to be used: humour

Target audience. Family members

Description of what will happen in advertisement: In the advert there will be 6 people  and maybe a few more, the advert includes two gangs approaching each other while one gang is trying to sell his biscuit which is in a brief case but the viewers do not know what is inside the brief case. As one of the gang members hand over the brief case, the gang member says the list of description of what the biscut contains. When the gang leave with the product, the product is still not shown to to the camera leaving the people 'Audience' not knowing what we are trying to sell. When they get in the car the procut is shown to the camera and the other gang members who then go 'ahhhh' and from that then the advert ends.

Music or sound: Mafia wars 2 Boom boom

Locations for filming:  Tobacco docks.

Types Off Research

Why do we need research? We need research due to the fact we want to know about something, there may be a point where we would have to write about something or find something out and in order for that we need to do our research. There are many advantages from doing your research, one off them being you will gain more knowledge about something and also you will understand the subject even more if you have done your research properly.

How will research improve a computer game company? Well first of all if the company do their research it will benefit them and make their gaming that slight bit better. First off all if a company does their research they could work out who their target audience are for the game so they will know how to advertise the game to its appropriate target audience. Another way that it will benefit a company is that they will know what price range they are going for to sell the game, they could work this out by looking at other games within the same genre and see how much they are going for. 

There are various different types off research such as: 
Qualitative
Quantitative 
Primary
Secondary 

Qualitative Research: Qualitative research gathers information which isn't in any sort off numerical form. The research could be from diary entries, open ended questionnaires, unstructured interviews and also unstructured observations. Qualitative data is harder to analyse rather than quantitative data. For example qualitative data can be carried out through unstructured interviews from newspaper companies to gather information from people. 

Example: 

Quantitative Research: Quantitative research gathers research which is in numerical form which then can be plotted onto bar graphs and charts to make the research more easier to pick and collect data more easier too. An example could be from reviews online or open ended questionnaires so people can then go onto show this information that was carried out in a form of a bar graph or even a pie chart. 

Example: 

Primary Research: Primary research is new research, carried out to answer specific issues or questions. It can involve questionnaires, surveys or interviews with individuals or small groups. Primary research can also be carried out in the media industry. Lets take for example a newspaper company want to find out something from a celeb for an article, they could have a face to face interview to gather their primary information together. 

Example: 

Secondary Research: Secondary research includes published research reports in a library, surveys or the Internet. It can also include scientific reports produced by medical councils, universities or government. Not only that but secondary research can be obtained from media companies, for example you could be carrying out some research about sci fi and gather information from a scientific documentary which may have been seen on television before. 

Example: 

There are 3 main research purposes in media which are :

Market Research

Production Research 

Audience Research

Market Research: 

Market research is about finding out what customers and consumers think, want or need. For example, market research helps businesses decide on what new products or services they will offer for example its about knowing who you target audience is. You could be making a music album and you will need to know at what price it will sell for and who your intended target audience are, this is where market research steps in. 

Example: 

Audience research: Audience research is all about your target audience! if you do not have the correct target audience your media business can be going downhill before you know it. You need to know your intended audience for the game that you are producing to make it more effective and also an advantage is to increase sales within the game! 

For example the game Grand Theft Auto is aimed at people aged 18 or over due to the things that go on in the game. This is why the game is very popular to its age group.

Production Research: When developing a new game you would need to carry out Production Research. This research will allow you to identify what resources you will need to launch the end product and whether your game would be profitable within the current market.

Overall we can see that research is really important in the media industry to make a game or a film as effective as possible. It is important that research is taken out during the media industry due to the fact that there is a lot of limelight upon it so you have to make it as accurate as possible for it to appeal to the customers.

Analaysing video concepts.

Cassidy ft R kelly- Hotel 

Creative concepts- The creative concept of this video/ the ideas are to show the audience the personality of the artists in the video. What we know already are that they are two r&b/ hip-hop artists, now when we talk about hip hop and r&b artists we know that they fimiluarise themselves with money and most importantly girls. This is one of the main messages they are trying to get through to the audience and the idea behind the directors eyes is to show what they do with the girls and most importantly where they go.. which in this case is the 'hotel'.

Performer's image- In this video the artists are dressed in their expensive clothing which they wear to a club which reflects their personalities. Bearing in mind this video is a few years old the dress sense is not what they will wear now, but for that time was very fashionable. They also had the baggy jeans and the fresh white trainers. 

Narrative- The main story that is told in the lyrics in this video is about what the artist does in his spare time and calls over the girl to the hotel.

Pace- There is a medium pace throughout the song. 

Mood- The mood of the song is very relaxed and puts people in a relaxed mood, there is not really any adrenaline to the song. 

Intended Audience- The intended audience for this song are mainly their fans but if we're talking about age groups i would say the age groups are within the region of 18- 25. The reason why i chose this age group is because these are the ages where people want to do these sort of things and look up to artists such as a Cassidy and R Kelly. 

50 Cent ft Kendrick Lemar

Creative Concepts- The main ideas of this video is to show the audience the status of the the rappers and where they have come in life with their fame in the music industry. We may think they're bragging in the video but the true meaning behind it is showing how hard it was for them to get here and showing to the audience that anyone could do it.

Performers Image- In this video they are showing in the penthouse on the top of the building living the luxury life with an amazing view and also the clothing that they are wearing are expensive as we can tell which comes with the wealth and the lifestyle. 

Narrative- There really isn't a narrative behind this song but we can tell in the lyrics that there is a meaning behind it about what they're talking about. 

Pace- In this song there is also a medium pace throughout the song. 

Mood- There is a very calm mood throughout this song.

Intended Audience- The audience behind this music video are the fans that get inspired by the artists music and also the people who they know that took the wrong path in life which can make them think to themselves if they worked as hard as the artists did they could have been in a similar position.

Rihanna- We Found Love

Creative Concept- The idea of the music video is to get across the stages she goes through in her relationship with someone. The ups and downs.

Performers Image- The performers image in this video is showing the artist and actors in the video of how they look in their everyday lives taking out all the expensive clothing they usually wear in their normal videos, so this is video is showing them relaxed and how relaxed they are in a relationship.

Narrative- The only narrative in the music video is when Rihanna was saying a short speech in the beginning but other than that the main narrative is shown in the rest of the music video with the way they are acting.

Pace- The pace of this song is very upbeat to display to the viewers that they are happy with what they are doing and to make feel the audience feel comfortable and happy too.

Mood- The mood of the song is very happy but also has a twist to it in the video as they have an argument which sets the mood down to get their story across.

Intended Audience- The main intended audience for this music video are couples who are in healthy relationships and can relate to the music video in a sense of having their ups and downs and when there are fallouts in the relationship it isn't the end of the world there are ways of picking the mood back up. 

Six questions

Sound designers are responsible for providing any required sounds for any screen actions. Most sound designers are experienced supervising sound editors who carry out managerial roles. Sound effects are added on after filming. Depending on the movies budget the sound designers usually start the work at the same time as the sound editors. The sound designer is responsible for everything the audience hears. What it requires can vary depending on the type of show, the performers in the show and the performance venue.  There is not a single job description that surrounds everything that the sound designer does as they can adapt in what they do depending on a specific production. Many sound designers have physical work which they have to do wuch as going out and recording the sounds themselves. This means they have to come up with a way of getting each specific sounds. The kind of sounds a sound designer may be asked to record are specific gun shots for a movie or a game. This means they have to go out and ensure that they have special microphone equipment to surrounding the surface they will be shooting the gun sounds and also so that they can pick up the best sounds.

A sound effect library is a collection of sounds that have already been recorded that people can use to add to their media project. It could be online or on a cd.  The disadvantage of the sound effects are the fact that most of the websites are free so the market for the sound effects are decreasing. Why would someone pay when they could get it for free? The websites where you can get them for free are http://www.freesfx.co.uk/ and http://www.audionetwork.com/sound-effects. You can purchase sound effects from itunes. Each sound effect from itunes can cost from 79 pence and the whole playlist coming at prices from £2.49pence. There are also different genres such as 'Essential weather sound'. There are software programmes which you will find on apple mac computers called Garageband and Logic pro. These programmes have sections on where you can see they have sound effect libraries which will give you sounds that you search for. There are certain companies which sell sound effects under personal use which they expect you to use for your own personal use in your own small projects.  Another thing about personal use is that you can use the sound effects and display them on sites such as facebook and youtube which are your self made videos and the company may ask you to add their company name onto the sound effect or on your link as a referance. There are also other companies where you will need a commercial license which means you can purchase their sounds and use them in movies with no cost. It also means that it is free to use for non commercial usage.

Mp3 stands for Mpeg-1 audio layer. The Mpeg process compresses a sound sequence into a small file while keeping its original quality. You may be wondering how it does this . It selects and eliminates certain sound frequences that cant be heard. The format then compresses file to half the size of the original file, making it quicker to download. WAV is more of an older music format which was designed by microsoft to play short snippets of sound on any audio- enabled computer. Since windows 3.1 WAV has been the format for sound within the windows environment. Almost every browser has built in WAV playback support. Both formats sound fine, the differences are that the two file formats are quite profound. WAV's are much bulkier than MP3's but they do not require any specific software to play. MP3's require special programmes to play them such as Napster or WinAmp.


Mono sound is where all the audio signals are mixed together and placed together through a single audio channel. Mono systems can have multiple separated speakers. Stereo sound systems have two independant audio signal channels and the signals that are reproduced have a specific level and phase. Surround sound is used to describe a type of audio output in which the sound appears to sort of surround the listener by 360 degrees. Surround sound use 3 or more channels and speakers in front and behind the listener to create a surrounding envelope of sound. If you want to put it in more simpler terms we could just easily say that mono is one speaker on your tv which is in use. Stereo is where all the speakers on tv are in use and surround sound is separate speakers in use such as theatres. You have to purchase surround sound separately but most people use stereo sound.

The sound designer who i will be talking about is Walter Murch who is an American film editor and also a sound designer. Walter Murch started editing and mixing sound with Francis Ford Coppola's 'The Rain People'. He also worked on the Godfather parts one and two which is a massive movie sill well known in the modern day. In 1979 he won an Oscar for the sound mix of Apocolypse now as well as a nomination for picture editing. Murch is widely acknowledged as the person who coined the term sound designer. Along with his colleagues developed the current standard film sound format the 5.1 channel array.

MIDI stands for musical instrument digital interface. It is a very compact way of reproducing music. MIDI enables electronic musical instruments such as keyboard controllers, computers and other electrical opponants to communicate and synchronize with each other for playing music. MIDI allows computers to control one another and to exchanfge system data. When you record a digital audio, the signal from an analogue sensor like microphone is sampled using high frequency and converted to digital format using an analogue and digital convertor. For playing the music the information is converted once again. The file format is very large compared to MIDI file format as it contains actual signal or voice.

advert ideas

teenagers are having a hard day at college or uni and just cannot wait to get home to eat their digestive biscuits. They all live in the same home and in order to get home first and get hold of their biscuits they tell one another they have plans to be doing something all itching to get home. Once they come home They come home to find their other friend to finish the biscuits in which point they look at one another and sigh.... goes on to seeing the person eating the biscuit with a cheesy smile on their face enjoying the      biscuit at which point the tagline comes in....

Our main idea which we have now agreed on is taking it back to the 1940's/1980's. 

Script!!!

Salman: Hello, My name is Salman and today i am with Mowafi. Today we will be talking about the codes and conventions that we find in music videos. Over the years of music video generations different styles of music videos have adapted and reformed over the years.

Mowafi: We have gathered our research together and we have seen the theories such as the Goodwin Theory which describe the genre's and the styles that are being used in music videos in the modern day.  In this video we will be showing you examples of different music videos and how the directors use the conventions into them.

salman: First of all i will be talking about genre of music videos. There are many different types of genre in the music industry and probably the most popular genre which is 'pop' which is a short term for 'popular' and is mainstream music in every single household. From one direction to Justin Beiber and the Weeknd. Some genres can be weird such as pirate metal. This is probably one of the least popular music genres due to most people have that mainstream music taste.

Narrative- Narrative is basically telling a story where almost every music video youy see. Some narratives can be sad some can be a fairy tale story. Narratives in music videos mainly happen under the category of rap genre music. By this i mean most narratives which include a sad or true story mainly take place in rap music. The most common ones would be on how a rap artist has achieved popularity from nothing to something, or how his family are suffering. One of the main singer/rapper that uses narrative in their music video is Eminem. From mockingbird, when im gone to im not afraid each having a deep message which comes from its narrative of the music video. ( play music video).

Parody- Now moving onto parody. A parody has no story at all and contains lots of random scenes which are humerous. Most of which make fun of famous scenes from almost any film or music video. It keeps the viewers amused and entertained. Here are some of the clips of parody music. we first have drake's 'Best i ever had', 'call me maybe' ' yolo' or one direction. One of the most well known parodies which was made by a American rock boyband who created the song 'All the small things' is a prime example of this type. This is because they took iconic scenes from films and made them their own by adding a humerous twist to it.

Finally editing and sound. Most artists spend thousands and thousands of pounds on editing and sound in their music videos for examples Kanye west and Jay-z with their song 'Niggas in Paris'. (expand more)

Mowafi: The first music video i will be talking about is by an artist who is known as 'usher' and the song called 'burn'. The genre of this song is R&B and also an class as ballad. This video tells us a story which makes the song extra effective and also creative in a sense! It gives the viewer a clear example of his own life experiences which is shown effectively during the video. As soon as the video starts there are a variety of close up shots that are portrayed which gives the viewer an insight into to the facial expressions of the actors in the video. We get close up shots of Usher's eyes and mouth and we also see the close up shots of the actress' mouth and eyes which sets the mood of the video. The actress in the video is playing the lover of Usher. The video goes onto show a clear image of them both separately.  Usher is shown in a way which the viewers can see he is in deep thoughts and the actress is shown in a dark room with the spotlight shining on her face with no make up on looking in distress which reflects her personality. They have used a lot of things in the video to make the actual song make a lot of sense, such as the use of fire related to the song itself 'burn'. Altogether we can see that this music video was very successful in portraying the artists views and expressions within the lyrics and video.

The second video i will be talking about is the song 'Shine Ya Light' by well known artist who has recently been well known in the pop industry Rita Ora. This video is slightly different what i mean by this is that the video starts with a mobile phone ringing with the name 'Emil Nava' who is the director of the music video which is what i mean by being different. Getting the directors name into the video is very useful for himself as it can promote him and it can show the viewers that this is what he capable of doing so it is showing off his skills. It even has text lettering of the place where the video is set which is in Pristina, Kosovo. Kosovo is Rita Ora's home country and where her family background are from. There is a scene in the beginning where she walks onto the stage with a massive crowd of fans that are watching her which shows that her home country are proud of what she is doing. The actual video starts with a mid shot of Rita Ora with the Kosovo flag masked around her face which shows the relationship between the setting of the shoot and the love she has for her home country. The main things we have picked up from this video are the types of shots that are generated throughout. They have used most of the shots from, Live Performance and close up shots are only some of the shots that have been used, there are many more.

The next video which i will be talking about is One Directions Kiss you! now this video has so much to talk about they have a crazy theme and falls under the genre of pop. The video starts with mid shots and close ups of each of the artists. This is effective because it shows each artist individually and their personalities. The mood of this song is very active and energetic making the viewers more active themselves. The video brings back an 50's/60's theme. There is a scene where the whole band are in a prison scene dressed in the stereotypical black and white tee shirts and the black jackets going back to 1957 which is Elvis Presleys 'Jailhouse Rock'. (Show Screenshot). We can see in this video that the director has really focused on the theme of this video, before the video starts there is a old fashioned leader which counts in the sequence. There is another scene where the band are dressed as 50's sailors and are wearing the sailor hats which goes back to the 50's movie 'On the town'. (Show screenshot). Altogether we can see that this video has focused on their theme of the song in total and have achieved it successfully.

Saifur-We are almost coming to an end of our video as we are now going to talk about the last video. The video we will now talk about falls under the genre grime/dance and is called 'Heatwave' by artist Wiley. Misc-en-scene is used in this video by the location of the video also the ambient lighting and the props such as the pool and the bikinis. It is clear to see that the director knows what himself and the artist want for the video and their main aim for it. The target audience is to attract a younger crowd within the age groups of 16-25. They have used slow motion in the video to make the viewer see a clear detail of the activities in the video and makes it effective. Throughout the whole video we see they are trying to sell tyhe word 'fun' and also having a good time in general. They are also trying to promote the artist and the girls as there a lot of close up shots of them.

sound design article

Over the past few decades video game have been progressed since the 50's. Video games initially had no sound, a bit like movies until the 1970's when games such as pac man started coming out with monophonic sounds. Providing blips for the game music and the sound effects. In the 70's the sounds were made by the programmers , people with no musical experience so games were more limited and there wasn't access to certain props to make the sounds for certain games. Another famous game was pong. As the gaming industry started progressing into the 80's more consoles have started being made and also more games were being produced and the sales in games started increasing. Games such as Final Fantasy Fame, Mario and Zelda. Consoles such as the Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Megadrive have been produced. Sooner or later more channels of audio were produced and something resembling music can be embedded onto the games, but were still limited. When the sega megadrive came out it was more affordable and popular. It was then the sound was improved and the MIDI instruments to replace the old sounds that were being used. In modern day there are new consoles such as the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 where the games have a whole sound team who create sounds just for the game itself which means they have much bigger budgets as the gaming industry has expanded dramatically. 

Sound designers plan and provide the sound effects in the game. Certain sounds in games are created by normal voices for the scripts, but certain other sounds are to create lifelike noises by using music and using abstract sounds to create the sound for the game. Sound designers and composers start their work by studying the script first so they know exactly what sounds to put into the game to get the best sound out effect out of it. Some directors will already have very clear ideas about what the sound effects and/or music should sound like, while others may request that the sound designer/composer sit in on rehearsals to assist with developing effects and music to fit the correct context in which they'll be used. Once they know what the script is about and what they need to do the composer begins to add the musical pieces and the sound designer begins to gather and  create the necessary sounds for the game. There are many well known sound designers such as one who is called Ben Burtt. He is an american sound designer who has worked on various well known films such as the Star Wars series and also the Indiana Jones series also Wall-E and E.T. Ben is most notable for creating many of the iconic sound effects in the Star Wars series. Burtt is not only a sound designer but also a director an editor and also a film writer.

The modern movie i have chose to talk about is Transformers 3. I will be describing the processes they have used to create the sound effects throughout the movie.
Transformers have used various ways of creating their sounds. Their main objective of the sounds is to get the most organic or natural sounds as they can so they can then make them into more of the electronic sounds.
They have achieved this objective perfectly, one of the ways in which they have creating shooting sounds is that they got a electric guitar and a screwdriver and had 1 or 2 hour 
sessions just to get the perfect shooting sounds from the guitar.

They have also used the guitar sounds for the alien battleships in the movie which have big buns which lock into place and the motor sound from the gun came 100 percent from the electric guitar!

For some of their military gunshots came from shotguns which they have used in a desserted land where they have set up microphones all around the surface area they have been using so they can pick up the best sounds from each side of the area to then they can go onto editing later for the movie.
Transformers had an incredible amount of access as to what they can do with the movie. They had an amazing rocket sound which was used by a real rocket. They set up their microphones a quarter mile away from the rocket and rigged all their microphones and set the timers to the time the rocket was about to launch. When night fell the rocket was launched and the sounds were established. There is a part in the movie where all you can hear is the rocket sound which shows us that they have made use of having the advantage of using a real rocket.

They have also used a foley stage in their movie. This is where they have recorded the sounds of the alien battleships crashing. Some of the sounds which are created there have been made in the foley stage by dry ice and metal which creates a sound which is really effective.

Altogether we can see that the sound designers of the Transformers movie have really thought about what sort of sounds they will be using and they have taken the natural sounds and made it into something totally different made it really creative and they were successful in doing so. 


In the modern day we can see that gaming companies have expanded a lot more since the 50's and even the 90's. Gaming companies nowadays have their very own audio team working specifically on certain sounds that are created in the game. They have similar teams in which movie companies have. 

In some games a surround sound decoder which takes each audio information and places it into the correct channel such as the sub or the left speaker channel for example. The decoder may be added in some embodiments to convert monophonic and stereo games into surround sound. The surround sound may be made to produce certain effects, such as the tactile effect and a gradual build up of suspense and anticipation that increases the players interest, excitement and enjoyment in the game!

Altogether the things that i have gathered from this is that sound designers have an important role as their job description. We may not see it but their role is key which makes the movie or the game that they are producing as effective as we see it. This has helped me be more creative with the sounds that i use in my game and has given me an insight as to how to go about doing it. 

Bibliography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man
                    http://history1900s.about.com/od/1980s/qt/Pac-Man.htm
                    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyB8BR82Fno&safe=active
                    Btec level 3 creative media textbook

These are the links to where I got my information from for this article. We can see that the resources are from the internet and also published textbooks.