*Fox Theme Tune Hits* New Item For Catalogue!!!!

Yes, you read that right... I actually have a new item to include in my catalogue... Don't be too shocked here!

I was surfing on Youtube, and I found a very interesting video... It was Called "The Donna Read Image of Women" (Youtube link). It basically outlines how women tend to be represented in most American sitcoms. The "Donna Read Image" is seen to be very common in sitcoms. The image basically shows women as stay at home housewives while the father goes to work and makes a living. Also, the women that are shown to be like this are never seen to be out of the house, and most of the time have no friends. The video claims this image of women to be outdated, therefore a bit of a biased video, but in some cases very true. It does however mention some sitcoms like the US version of "The Office", where women are shown in a workplace, and there is even a married couple in the workplace, who met there (How often does that happen!?). This is a more positive and "In-date" representation of women, and according to the video: "Should be used more often".

This video is useful to use, because seeing this video now gives me an idea for my practical production.

Yes, you are getting two updates in one blog post, how lucky are you people today!?

Anyway, as I mentioned, the video gave me a good idea for what I want to do for my practical piece. I have decided I am going to make a moving image sitcom, which will involve the roles reversing: A Stay at home father, whilst the mother goes out to work with a full time job. Sound good? Well, heres more. It will be a brand new sitcom, I will shoot a short clip of it (Possibly an entire first half, which is about 10 mins), and this will introduce the narrative, theme and characters of the sitcom - I will post more when I actually have the full narrative! :)

In the mean time folks, have fun, keep moving onwards and upwards, and most importantly, work hard! Exams are fast looming on us...

Ok, here is some work that we have been doing today in Media. This is just some group work that we have been doing today to help with our coursework. Now, a lot of people though that doing this was pointless, but personally, and no, I'm NOT just saying this, but I think it comes in kind of handy, because, although for my practical piece, I'm not doing still image, it still helps me find out what I need to include... YEAH, I said it!

Lust and Love - Billboard Poster

There is a clear font and colour - Basically, it is easy to see because there colours are clear, and there is a nice bold font which makes it a lot easier to see from a distance. The colour goes with the background, as there is a clear contrast between the colour of the font and the colour of the black and white background.

The girl is looking directly at the camera, which means that she is directly communicating with the audience, and also she is shown to be sexy, which goes with the theme - sex and love, but she is also shown to be a vampire, which appeals to todays audience, as a lot of people are now into the sort of vampire and horror theme.

Positioning however is rather poor. A lot of it kind of looks like it has been thrown together. For example, the teeth in the picture has been photoshopped when they clearly didn't need to be. Not a lot of attention has been paid to detail - Like the blood does not look real at all, and the lips look like they have been painted. Since most of the words have been capitalized on the piece, maybe every word should have been capitalized, as it would make more sense and look better. It is just mainly technical errors with this piece, mainly going a bit over the top with the photoshopping.

We have also looked at the branding - A lot of TV has been branded now, each programme to its own - Which this piece fails to include.

Final grade that was given to this piece was either a high D or a Low C - Purely because there is an understanding there, and easily made into a higher grade.

Blues and Twos DVD Cover (The better one of the piece)

Images and fonts all relate to the genre. There are a lot of images of the Police, which DO relate to the genre, but there are a lot of pictures of the police, and it is unclear to see who the characters actually are.

The editing is very good - The colours mix in very well with the text that is used. They have also used the conventions of a DVD cover. There is a synopsis of the TV show at the back (And it has not been copy and pasted something that didn't match the show at all, like Chris told us about), there is an age rating, the DVD logo and everything that needs to be on a professional DVD cover (Including the barcode). Things like this show the attention to detail that the student has.

The group that did this DVD cover have decided that the DVD cover looks a bit too similar to popular ITV1 show "The Bill" (Now axed). This is true in the way that there is a lot of Police, and it sounds a bit similar to "The Bill", but the angle that I think the student was trying to take was the fact that, unlike "The Bill", the show is more character driven, and shows a different representation of the Police.

In terms of the detail, there is a few things missing, like the running time and also there is some information missing about the DVD itself - Like the running time and information about the series.

Final mark given to the piece was 31!

Magazine Front Cover - TV Choice

The images used on it appeal to the Target Audience. You can see different images relating to different programs, which make people will want to read it.

Basic magazine conventions are used - There is an issue number, barcode and price shown on there, which makes it seem more professional. However, representations of the women on the front cover could be argued.

The design looks kind of plain and very bland. It also looks very untidy and thrown together, which doesn't look very good. If I picked it up, I would put it back. It would be hard to see from a distance as well, which means the font needs to be bigger. One big issue though, the goober who made it actually made spelling mistakes (Thats basic English, come on!).

There is no consistency in the design. This makes it look messy, as the fonts are all different, and so are the colours. No one would buy it.

All of this put together just shows us that the student just threw this together at the last minute. There was no planning, and no preparation, and no listening to the advice! These are basic things that need to be done to get a higher grade. Terrible right?

Now, for these reasons, this piece has been given roughly 18 marks, thats an E man, come on! I don't ever wanna see this piece again!

Anyway, i'm going for a break now, see ya!

Here We Are!

For those of you that have been keeping up to date with my blog, first thing I need to say is sorry I haven't been keeping you up to date a lot lately. For first time readers, I am not sorry!

Anyway, I have now finished the catalogue for now! Woo! Now all I need to do is actually start the essay. But for today's update, I thought that I would post the catalogue on here so that anyone can see what mine looks like, and you can all also leave some comments and let me know what you think of my catalogue. Anyway, here it is, and while you read it, I will be stealing money from your wallets and purses as a uh... small fee for reading my blog... Anyway, here it is, and this is me signing off. Goodbye for now...

Television

Item 1

Fawlty Towers (Series 1 and 2) (1974 – 1978)

- This is a good sitcom to use because there is a good representation of women in this sitcom. We have the hard working woman, who is trying to keep her husband in place, which is one of the many representations that we saw in the 70’s.

Item 2

Gavin and Stacey (Series 1 – 3) (2007 – 2010)

- This sitcom would be good to use because it shows the more modern representation of women compared with the women in the older, more traditional sitcoms, such as Fawlty Towers.

Item 3

Absolutely Fabulous (1992 – 1996, 2001 – 2004)

- This is a secondary source that I will be using, and is useful, because, compared with the other 2 sitcoms, women are shown in a completely different light to most other sitcoms that we have.

Item 4

Gimme’ Gimme’ Gimme’ (A Man After Midnight) (1999 – 2001)

- This is a secondary source. I have chosen to use this, as this also shows women in a different light compared with the rest of the sitcoms, moving away from the typical couple living together, and instead having a woman living in a flat with homosexual housemate. This is good because it moves away from the stereotypes, and instead shows different representatrions that you wouldn’t normally expect.

Item 5

The Inbetweeners (2008)

- This would be a good sitcom to use for my research because even know the sitcom is about a bunch of sixth form guys, there are also the modern day teenage girls shown in the program, and most of them are shown as stereotypes, which means this would be good to use in my essay.

Films

Item 6

Lesbian Vampire Killers (2009)

- This film is different to most films that you would find in British cinema. Rather than using the stereotypical British Female, it uses the more typical American Females. This will support my claims with my focus texts.

Books

Item 7

The Television Genre Book

- I found this book to be very interesting with the section entitled “Unruly Women in Sitcoms” This section is particularly helpful for my research because it talks a lot about how women are represented differently from the norm in various sitcoms, like Rosanne for example. It gives a lot of information about different women.

Item 8

The Media Students Book

- This was also interesting as there are many different articles in this magazine, about Representations, and also has a lot about theories that you can hang off of your research, which would be good to include in my essay

Item 9

Media Know All (http://www.mediaknowall.com/as_alevel/alevel.php?pageID=gender)

- This website has a lot about representations of different genders included on it. It talks a lot about the different theories that could be hung off the essay and also talks about how women can be represented as feminine, but also talks about the fact that some people are shown as role models in the media these days.

Item 10

Emag (http://www.emag.com)

This item talks about representation of women in all different types of TV. For example, it talks about sitcoms, such as Friends, and the true representation of women in that sitcom, and also talks about CSI and even Law and Order.

Item 11

Gender Roles on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_role)

Although a secondary source for information, this article on Wikipedia has a lot of information about the gender roles in the past, and how women have come a long way from what they have in the past, and are now shown to be just as equal as men.

Other Media

Item 12

BBC Radio 4 Programme: Whatever Happened to Sisterhood? (Available to listen to at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00v1nlk/Analysis_Whatever_Happened_to_the_Sisterhood/)

This is very useful because it talks a lot about how women are seen today, and how women think they should be acting today. It also talks about how women were in the past and what was “Socially acceptable” back in the day.

Update for 29 September 2010

So today! Yeah, what to say about today...

Well, today is Wednesday, I started at 8.30am, and I am rather tired... But still, I got some work done :).

Ok, seriously though, I have been watching a few clips, trying to find out what sitcoms would be best for me to use for my project... This was actually decided on Friday, but I thought it'd be an idea to make sure that they are suitable. Anyways, the sitcoms I am using for my project are...

Drumroll Please............

...... Primarily.......

I will be using.... The following sitcoms.....

....

From the 1970's, Fawlty Towers, and from the 2000's, Gavin and Stacey... But also, I will be using 2 secondary sitcoms, which are Absolutely Fabulous and Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! These are all unique in their own way, and all show completely different representations! These are all added to the catalogue...Which is just about complete! Woo!

Anyway, I am done for today... Peace out! Keep checking in this blog for more of... Teh Ipster!

The Update for Monday 27 September 2010

Today has been a really weird day... I accidently missed my lessons, due to difficulties getting into college. But whilst I missed my lessons, I have been doing work on my Media catalogue, which is now totalling up to 10 items - Most of which I have found today, and also written about (These will be shown tomorrow or Wednesday)...

Here are some of the things that I have found:

Over the weekend, I went into the library in Southampton, and I found a very interesting book called "The Television Genre Book". In this book, there was a section about "Unruly Women in sitcoms", which I found very interesting because it talks a lot about how women are represented differently in certain sitcoms than you would normally expect them to be like. For example, the book gives an example of Rosanne - She is like the head of a family, always keeping the family in order, keeping her husband in order, and they are trying to be a normal "Nuclear family", but however, something always gets in the way. Rosanne is also seen to be different to typical woman because of the way that she is shown to be: Hard working, and she shouts a lot. However, a British example is also given. There is the example of Absolutely Fabulous, which represents woman not stereotypically, but they are shown to be contempary women, and show that they can do the same things that men can do: Smoke, Drink and do whatever they want, and this is not what you'd expect in a typical sitcom, where you'd either see a typical family (Mum, Dad, 2.5 kids), or a very hot woman that every man has a crush on, and who uses her femininity to get what she wants.

I also looked on a website called "Emag" which has an article on it talking about the representation of women in all different TV. For example, it talks about Friends, where women seem to be shown in a positive light, but there is more that meets the eye where it talks about Monica being a chef (Typically, a man's job - But also maybe representing women who belong in the kitchen - No sexism intended at all), Phoebe giving birth, and Rachel being a typical woman who loves shopping (Giving off the typical "Daddy's spoilt little girl" representation), but then soon realising she can stand on her own two feet, when she gives birth, eventually gets in a steady relationship, and realising what being a mum is all about.

However, it does show another representation of women. For example, women can be shown as equal to men in certain TV shows, where we see Women in the office, doing exactly what men do. This is also the same for shows like "Law and Order", or "CSI", where we see women actually investigating murders etc. Much like the UK's "The Bill" where we often see Women police officers.

Many of these representations can be seen in various different British Sitcoms. For example, Are You Being Served shows several different representations of Women. There is the older, more hard working women, like the one that owns the shop (I don't know much about Are You Being Served, but I have studied it before), and then there is the more younger assistant, who represents the sexy feminine type of woman. This gives the audience several different representations of women, which can be clearly seen.

Again, I wasn't in lesson today, but this is what I got up to so far. There are 10 items in my catalogue, which I will write about another time... So Long Bloggers!

Update on My Media Stuff - 22/09/2010

Ok, once in a while, I will be coming onto this blog and posting an update on where I am with my stuff - My research, coursework and exam practice, and things like that.

At home, I have been watching season 2 of Scrubs, to try and find a good episode that will help me find the appropriate representation of women. Also, it is just something good to watch whilst I am trying to fall asleep :)

In class, I have been just looking at various websites that shows representations of various different genders, especially The Simpsons as it is a postmodern text!

Thats all really... Not much more to say, but there will be another update soon!

Update on My Media Stuff - 22/09.