Analyse your film opening with regards to genre.
In relation to genre I am going to write about my media production from my first year in As media. The production I am going to talk about is a film opening. The chosen genre for the opening was horror, this allowed us to be more creative with the narrative due to the fact that there is such a wide range of sub genres within the horror market, for example: Slasher films, Comedy horror & Psychological horror ect. However this also gave us limitations because there were certain conventions that we had to follow. The conventions of a horror film are: The fear of unknown, characters are portrayed to be on edge, the setting would be located in a deserted area with no surroundings, dark lighting, fade to blacks, children characters, nursery rhymes tense/scary music and sound effects. We followed all of these conventions in order for our opening to appeal to our target audience. We also developed the convention of the use of children characters because we portrayed the children to be evil rather than following the stereotype of children being sweet and innocent, we wanted to challenge this. 
Mise-en-scene plays a key part in establishing a film genre, the location, props, make-up & costume all constitute to making the genre clear to identify, for example a chainsaw could be used in a horror film, whereas a gun would be used in a action film. The theorist, Steve Neal said that "Genre is a repetition with an underlying pattern of variations", meaning certain features have to be included and repeated in order to establish genre. His theory applies to my horror opening as continuously though the opening fade to blacks were repeatedly used and dark lighting, on edge characters and a deserted area was included to identify that the opening was of a horror genre. We had to create an enigma code within the opening in order to make the audience want to watch the whole film, therefore we had to make the opening interesting and make the audience question what will happen next & the only way they will find out is by watching the rest of the film. Steve Neal also said that "Difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre" meaning that different film genres have to follow different conventions to establish what type of genre a film is, for example in my film opening dark lighting was used, whereas in a romance the lighting would be very bright to create a happy atmosphere.
In my horror opening the main character was a female, we used a female character because stereotypically women are weaker and more venerable than men, therefore it made it easier for us to convince our audience that the women was scared and Venerable, whereas trying to show that a male character was scared would be rather hard. This relates to the common convention of the victim in horror films being weak female characters. David chandler supports this as he believes that representation always constitutes reality, therefore this relates to my opening because women are seen to be weaker in reality and I have represented the women to me weak within my media production.
Discuss the way that women are represented in the media.
Generally women are not portrayed positively through the media, they wouldn't be shown to be successful or speak about their education, it would just be about the way they look. However the media is "made by men, for men" which supports Laura Mulvey's male gaze theory, meaning that the women are just there for men to look at, they are teated like sex objects & Laura believes that the male gaze theory denies women human identity. This is supported in the Blurred lines video, in the original music video there are a number of girls wearing basically nothing and they are just shown dancing while the men watch them. Due to the fact that media is made by men they will portray women in a negative way because they will want their male group to look better and powerful, also if they women were portrayed positively they could take the mens place in making media. On the other hand everything has been constructed and put through mediation. The views of women has become a dominate ideology as the majority believe this, the cultivation theory of George Gerbner also links to this as generally society have just excepted that women are represented in a negative way. In a number of films women are portrayed to depend on a man.
In Brief Encounter the women main character is shown to be very unhappy in her marriage until she meets another man & throughout their whole affair the man is in control and then towards the end the man has to leave for a new job and the women has to just accept it. This supports the stereotype that in a relationship between a women and man, the man has control. The theorist Richard Dyer said that "how we are seen determines how we are treated, how we treat other is based on how we see them & how we view them comes from representation". This means that the way we see women represented in the media results in the way we treat them, meaning men in reality may believe that it is right to treat women like sex objects because that is how they are represented in the media. This theory links to the way women have lived in society and still live today, in many media productions women are portrayed to play a motherly role by staying at home looking after the children, cleaning and cooking. This suggest the reasons why in relationships the women today and in the past stay at home and the men go to work to provide for their family.
Self representation is becoming a huge part of the media as technology grows, it allows prosumers to make their own media products and represent themselves in a way they want to be represented rather than how they are made to be represented. There is a remake of the Blurred Lines music video which challenges the way women have originally been represented in the actual video. In the official video the women are just there for the men and its all about the way they look and being attractive to look at for the men in the video and the men who will watch the video, however in the remake the representation of women is very different. The women are shown to be dominate rather than subordinate, this is supported when one women is shown to be walking a man on a dog collar.
Henry Jenkins supports the idea of self representation due to the fact that he believes in cultural convergence, meaning when consumers are empowered to edit, annotate and create content. This means real people in society are allowed to represent themselves for what they really are. Through the media women are represented through the use of stereotypes, for example a bleach blonde women would be represented through the media as a "dumb blonde", in reality a women with bleach blonde hair could be very successful and be well educated.
Ronald Barthes theory supports this as he said that representations are myths, meaning representations are not real its a blurring between what is real and what is not, for example a celebrity image, the image will have been through mediation and the end result will look nothing like the celebrity in reality and the image itself is a myth because its an image of the celebrity its not the actual celebrity in real life.
The film Sket challenges the way women are portrayed in the media. Stereotypically women are shown as weak but this is the opposite in Sket, the women are shown to be tough and portrayed as typical gang members. However you would normally associate gangs with male characters but Sket has gone against this and used female characters as the main characters. You would normally associate violence and fear with masculine male characters but the females in Sket are portrayed as masculine & come across very violent when normally women would be sweet & innocent.
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