Top Ten of 2011

Top 10's of 2011










Which were the highest grossing Films, most downloaded Singles, highest circulation figures for Magazines and Newspapers and highest audience figures for TV?


Film

Source: Wikipedia




Newspapers

Source: The Guardian




Magazines

• Asda Magazine : 1,980,740 ; 1.7%
• Tesco Magazine : 1,928,687 ; -3.5%
• TV Choice : 1,354,761 ; 3.5%
• What's on TV : 1,274,035 ; 5.4%
• Tesco Real Food : 1,216,875 ; -2.7%
• Morrisons Magazine : 1,137,383 ; 10.4%
• Radio Times : 901,036 ; -4.9%
• Sense Magazine : 834,954 ; -5.4%
• Take a Break : 803,555 ; -6.1%
• The Economist - Worldwide Sales Excl. The Americas : 626,291 ; 3.7%

Source: The Press Gazette

Television

To be announced

Music - based on sales and press coverage
10. Britney Spears – “Till the World Ends”
9. Lady Gaga – “Edge of Glory”
8. Frank Ocean – “Novacane”
7. LMFAO feat. Goonrock & Lauren Bennett – “Party Rock Anthem”
6. Beyoncé – “Countdown”
5. Chris Brown feat. Lil Wayne & Busta Rhymes – “Look At Me Now”
4. Foster the People – “Pumped Up Kicks”
3. Jay-Z & Kanye West – “Niggas in Paris”
2. Adele – “Rolling in the Deep”
1. Nicki Minaj – “Super Bass”


Source: Popdust.com

Sophisticated Advertising Campaign from Mercedes Benz

Escape the Map

The new Mercedes Benz campaign launched on Friday (11/11/11). It consists of an interactive web video in which audiences must help Marie escape the map. The campaign very cleverly integrates Google Map technology and their recognisable icons to tell the story. When the user has completed the mission they are telephoned almost immediately by an unknown number. The voice of Marie is then heard on the phone congratulating you on completing the tasks set.

This is an excellent example of an elaborate multi-media campaign using impressive software to create the moving image piece and making full use of all platforms to reach a high audience number. Added to that, the element of competition, with the prize of a new Mercedes C-Class,  rewards the user even further. The advert will be promoted over coming weeks through social networking, television and film. 

Chrome Applications - interactive and multi-person creative tools

Chrome Experiments Check out some of the tools available and free on Google Chrome

 

                                       

                                          Text Particles                     

                                          Crazy Tentacles

                                         Sketch

                                         Typographic Effects

                                          Neon Flame

                                         Plink

                                         Ginger Facial Rigging

Google Chrome Sketchpad - Amazing design capability

'Sketchpad', an app on Google Chrome allows for fantastic design opportunities. The user has hundreds of backgrounds and patterns to choose from, stamps of a huge variety, text options and exciting colour palettes. All you need to invest is a little time to master some of the techniques and then save your files (like the mocked up band advert above) to your computer.

Bin Weevils...Old Fashioned Advertising Delivered Through Complex Marketing Strategies?

Bin Weevils, the new 'social' gaming phenomenon aimed at primary/early secondary school children. A free online game (FOG), the site offers really dedicated and enthusiastic players to become members at a cost of £4.95 per month. These membership cards are currently being sold in a range of nationwide stores (Wilkinsons, Sainsburys etc.).
Sounds harmless enough, until you take a closer look at what young children are exposed to whilst playing the game. Heavily sponsored by Innocent Smoothie, players see the logo in a number of places. They are also invited to enter the Innocent Smoothie kitchen on successful completion of a crossword. And it's not just Innocent. Children are also shown images of the Skylanders logo - a new video game. If players find this or Innocent characters they are rewarded with points for their game. In addition, the cinema advertises Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. 

Information in the 'About Us' section on the site proudly claims 'At Bin Weevils kids will never be exposed to advertising of brands who promote unhealthy lifestyle – we make sure our advertising solutions will have educational benefit for children. This is why we teamed with campaigns like “Catch it, Kill it, Bin it” (NHS), Road Safety (TFL) or Online Safety campaign (COI).'


Worthy indeed and interesting that the statement does not dismiss the 'exposing' of children to the 'advertising of brands' - the claim is just that those brands will be healthy! In addition, there is a strong suggestion that this 'exposure' is of educational campaigning rather than simple product placement. Advertising is advertising, however it is presented. Innocent is still a competitive company, promoting it's products to young children largely unaware that they are being advertised to.  

Another example of how subtle and complex the world of advertising has become and how the audience are delivered to advertisers through vehicles such as Bin Weevils.

Twitter Facts

• Over 60% of all users are from the US with only approximately 7% of users from the UK
• Fox News tweets more often than any other individual or organisation on the site
• The majority of the most active twitter users (top 5%) are male. Although females make up the greater proportion of all users
• 88% of the most active Twitter users post every day
• New York is the most heavily populated Twitter City in the world
• 21% of people who have a Twitter account have never Tweeted
• Tuesday and Wednesday have the highest amount of traffic on the site
• The hours between 12-2pm have the highest amount of traffic
• The highest % of users are aged between 20-29yrs

Source: 

Sysomos Twitter Data 

How do Music artists make money in the digital age?

There is still touring, interviews, appearances and so on, but record sales used to be the bread and butter salary for many recording artists. Today it is more common for people to rip music from youtube or similar sources or simply free stream the latest CD from their favourite band through Last FM or Spotify.  New media technology offers an unparalleled opportunity for artists to reach a vast audience. This sounds good for the artists, but what does it mean in hard cash sales? 
An article on the wonderful site Information is Beautiful shows what those streams and downloads mean for today's musicians. For example, for an artist to earn the minimum wage (equivalent in US Dollars, he or she would have to have a monthly stream of 4,053,110 plays. 
 How Much do Music Artists Earn Online?

Are these about the most fun you can have with an internet application?

Have some fun with these internet applications 'Tone Matrix' and 'Pulsate' from Lab Andre Michelle. They prove that there doesn't have to always be a point to things, sometimes you can just enjoy them for the sake of it. 

Tone Matrix and Pulsate

A New Era in Gaming?

Warco is a new type of FPS game. Set in a war-torn city. Nothing new there...? Told from a Western perspective. Not so surprising either...? What is ground-breaking is that rather than playing the role of a soldier shooting Insurgent forces, you play the role of a War Photojournalist shooting footage to be edited and broadcast on the news.


Warco is just one example of a number of games that invite players to engage on an intellectual level, considering the ethical and moral dilemmas that the game raises. other examples include Sweatshop (Channel4) - where you take on the role of a trainee manager and need to maximise output and the efficiency of the workers, September 12th (Newsgaming) - set in a crowded market town where you aim to spot terrorists and make choices about how you respond. The game is prefaced by some chilling instructions 'It has no beginning. It has already begun. The rules are deadly simple. You can shoot. Or not.'

Read a full article on the new wave or gaming in  The Observer Gaming

Need Some Material for A2 Coursework Theoretical Research?

University of Aberystwyth site which contains links to some fantastic articles you could use as material for your Critical  Investigation research.


Theoretical Articles for A2

KEY TERMS

Amazing web based glossary of key terms from the University of  Chicago's Media programme. A fantastic resource for AS and A2 Theory.


University of Chicago Key Terms

Why do television producers have responsibility to public participants?

              

Illustration Courtesy of Cambridge Tab

Susan Boyle, Gamu Nhengu, Ceri Rees and endless children on Britain's Got Talent - humiliated, rejected, laughed at and jeered. Who says that television producers should protect those public participants? They willingly sign up for it right? In any other genre of television, we would see the disclaimer that 'no animals were harmed in the making of this programme'. For X Factor and the like, that should read 'No man, woman or child has been harmed...' There has been fresh public outcry over the treatment of Ceri Rees in this year's X Factor. Ms Rees is a lady with reported mental health issues and has been shown in the televised auditions stage for 4 years running. It is a public contest, Ms Rees has a right to audition and the judges have always said 'No'. However, to be shown on television each year, when you take into consideration the very high volume of auditionees, shows a high degree of deliberate manipulation. And it is this 'mediation' that raises a number of important questions. 

Curiouser and Curiouser?

Media Guardian: Has Dr Who got too complicated?


In the panic of dumbed down, low-brow, mass-culture media,  an interesting phenomenon in recent times is that of dense, convoluted plotlines. Think Torchwood. Think Heroes, 24, Flash Forward and Lost. Why?
A simple answer could be that these kind of shows reward loyal audiences. The prize you get for turning up every week is a sense of self-satisfaction, that you are 'in' on the story and that you 'get it'. Loyal fans are good business for advertisers too - although this isn't the case for BBC broadcasts. Or is this part of a bigger cultural shift? That we have become adept at processing bite-sized chunks of multiple narratives, that we no longer want the over-arching 'grand narrative' as Lyotard states -  the simple love story, the simple 'hero saves the day.'
Either way, complex stories seem to do the programme producers no harm. Doctor Who is currently the 6th most watched programme on BBC, beaten only by Eastenders and Strictly, and Torchwood claimed nearly 20% of the 9pm viewers. (Metro article) 

TYPOGRAPHY: New Media Art and Online Tools

Tagxedo and Wordle are both examples of online Word Cloud generators. Tagxedo allows you to upload a picture from the web and input words which will be arranged in the image. Or use a pre-existing shape, like the heart above and enter a web address. The software takes words from that site and arranges them, like above taken from media-radar.
There is also a link to the best online tools for Fonts and Typography including a Font matcher, which allows you to upload a picture with a font on it and it will be matched to an exact or very close font type! 

Structured Reality and Faked Reality: Why is Reality so important?

TOWIE  (The Only Way Is Essex) and Made in Chelsea are fine examples of a new breed of Reality TV - Structured Reality. TOWIE first aired in October 2010 and I'm sure many people hoped it would fade away and disappear. However, the show has now enjoyed 2 series, with a 3rd on the way next month, a Christmas special and the audience award BAFTA earlier on this year. Viewing figures have been growing steadily and have gone from around 1 million to 1.8 million - significant figures for an ITV2 show.
After TOWIE came Made in Chelsea. First shown in May this year on E4, the series follows a group of young people at the other end of the social spectrum. Though not as successful as TOWIE, audience figures climbed steadily throughout Series 1. Filming has already begun on Series 2.

So what is it making these programmes so strangely compelling? A review in the Telegraph suggests it is the 'instant TV guilty pleasure' they give to people. The ability to immerse yourself in someone else's (real) life, to be a voyeur and see the (structured and manipulated) events unfold before us. Isn't that what Big Brother (real...ish) and Soap Operas (fiction) have been doing for years? These programmes could possibly fill a gap and fulfill an audience need. The reality (...) of Big Brother could be, even with the best selection and mediation in the world, sometimes downright boring, sometimes uncomfortable to watch, sometimes unnerving (how much were we, as viewers, and the contestants being manipulated?). Not only that, sometimes we had a little too much power - always getting rid of the most fun people to watch just because they had too much 'personality'. Soap Operas at the other end of the spectrum can be, even with the best writers and actors in the world, sometimes downright boring, sometimes uncomfortable to watch and so on. Perhaps the problem with the Soap Opera is that we are knowlingly manipulated and have no power or control. We can't change storylines, we can't evict characters we dislike and we can't make them sit up and listen however much we shout at the TV!
So, that leaves Structured Reality. What is interesting is that the producers often protest at great length the 'reality' of these programmes. But maybe it is the mix of the 'unreal posing as real' that makes them so appealing. So wonderfully and painfully staged all at the same time. As unknown, 'wannabe' actors the 'stars' are vulnerable and audiences get some of their power  back especially through the Social Media sites which gives these shows the status they have.

This phenomenon is also becoming increasingly popular in Film with, what are commonly believed to be the 'Faked Documentaries'  Catfish, Exit Through the Gift Shop and I'm Still Here. These films, released last year have all been surrounded by speculation as to their authenticity. However, whereas the TV shows seem to enjoy utilising the codes and conventions of fictional drama (non-diegetic soundtrack, dramatic pauses, close-ups etc.) their film counterparts work hard to use the language of 'reality' (shaky hand-cam, narrative voiceovers and to-camera interview footage).


What can we conclude? Baudrillard would argue that any discussion of 'reality' is futile as the process to create and present the 'reality' for the audience makes the concept immediately void. It is still worth trying to answer the question: Why is it so important that these types of films and television programmes are 'perceived' as real? Why do the makers of TOWIE and Made in Chelsea spend time defending the authenticity of the cast and situations and why do layers of 'truths', half-truths and rumours surround the documentary films? Would our engagement with the texts alter if believed we were watching pure fiction?  

The Telegraph review Made in Chelsea 
 Radio 4 Today Programme 'The only way is...Structured Reality' 

Child Models....?

10 year old Thylane Blondeau, model daughter of a French Football player and TV presenter, recently appeared in the French edition of Vogue. This has caused outrage amongst parents and politicians. In February this year, David Cameron recenty called for tighter restrictions on the representation of children, calling it the 'inappropriate commercialisation of children'.
From a media point of view there are a few things to consider. Vogue is a mature and highly established publication. They would be fully aware of the potential implications of publishing this fashion shoot. What would they hope to gain from it? Do you agree with the concept that 'no publicity is bad publicity'? What are the potential implications of these and similar images of young children, in terms of their representation? Is this merely a moral panic? What responsibilities do advertisers and publications have to their audiences?

Read more on these stories here:
The Independent
 The Sun

Olly Moss Illustrations

Those of you who know Empire magazine will already know Olly Moss' work as an illustrator and poster designer. Take a look at the added slideshow of his work. It may give you inspiration for your own practical productions or make you consider it as an area for investigation.

'Reality TV Reaching New Depths of Irresponsibility'......?

BBC's reputation is questioned again over claims that scenes from a documentary over a tribal group in the Amazon were faked to show the tribe - the Machigenga as 'savages'. the documentary was shown by BBC Knowledge and the Travel Channel. BBC state they had no knowledge of the production values of the TV company, Cicada, but that the programme has been linked to the BBC through broadcast is still damaging by association.
Aside from the BBC, the bigger worry is the representation of tribal communities through Western Media. Survival International, a human rigths organisation said it was a 'depressing example of the way tribal people are routinely portrayed'.

Read the full story here

Six Months on...Do you agree with the 2010 100 most powerful people in Media?

**Last Minute Revision Quiz**

Take the Quiz below and check the A2 page for answers

Narrative

1)            What is binary opposition and who is credited with this concept?

2)            Who developed the idea of narrative codes?

3)            What is the typical narrative pattern according to Todorov?

4)            What is an example of Propp’s Character types in a contemporary setting?

Audience

5)            What are the four main Uses and Gratifications of media according to Katz and Blumler?

6)            How are audiences traditionally categorised?

7)            Name the four types of audience?

8)            What is market segmentation?

9)            How do Opinion Leaders have influence over audience?

10)         In what way can audiences be described as being delivered to advertisers?

11)         Give an example of the subversive or resistant audience at work.

12)         What things might audiences become desensitised to over time?

Genre, Codes and Conventions

13)         What is a paradigm?

14)         What is a syntagm?

15)         What genre forms are typical of post-modern texts?

16)         How can a text be encoded to aim for a particular reading?

17)         What is the best that media text producers can hope for in the audience reading of a text?

18)         Name four technical codes that go into the construction of a media product.

19)         Name four symbolic codes that go into the construction of a media product.

20)         Name a written code that goes into the construction of a media product.

21)         As well as genre, what other factor decides the choice of codes and conventions in the construction of a media product?

22)         What is B-Roll footage?

23)         What is Anchorage?

24)         What is a montage?

Representation

25)         What is dominant ideology?

26)         What is the opposite of a stereotype?

27)         Name two elements or parts of a stereotype.

28)         Name the elements that make up a representation.

Institution

29)         What are the main differences between the types of institution?

30)         Why is it important that a PSP like the BBC continues to have strong viewing figures?

31)         Why is it important that a Commercial channel like ITV continues to have strong viewing figures?

32)         Name two effects new media technology has had on Institutions.`

33)              How can institutions raise brand awareness through a variety of platforms?

GCSE and A2 - FANTASTIC site on Television and TV Advertising

GCSE students check out the information on TV Effectiveness and TV at a Glance
A2 students a whole wealth of TV advertising resources for deconstruction as well as links to recent research into TV   http://www.thinkbox.tv/

**NEW A2 Revision Booklet

Click on the Slideshare link to download the new A2 revision booklet

ESSENTIAL THEORY TOOLKIT

Form theories - Narrative, Representation and Structure
Barthes Narrative codes including the action code and the enigma code
Todorov's Equilibrium - narrative structure which can be simply reduced to equilibrium, disequilibrium and new equilibrium
Propp's Character types - all characters can be broken down into key character functions including dispatcher, hero, villain, damsel in distress etc.
Levi-Strauss' Binary Opposition - one concept can only be understood in relation to it's opposite, so god characters are shown in conflict with bad character's etc.
Barthes Semiotics and Signs - texts are made up of a series of signs which signify meaning for the audience. Audiences can read these signs on a literal level - the denotation or a conceptual, symbolic level - the connotation.
Audience theories:
Remember key terms:
Mass or Broad audience, Niche audience
Primary and Secondary audience
Katz and Blumler's Uses and Gratifications - audience use media to reaffirm personal identity, surveillance and information, diversion and entertainment and maintaining personal relationships
Cultivation Theory - the long term effects of media on an audience that they become desensitized to media content and dominant ideologies are formed and shaped.
Hall's Reception Theory - media texts have an encoded preferred reading. What is now believed is that at best audiences 'negotiate' reading as they modify, select and discard parts of the text based upon personal experiences etc. Oppositional readings occasionally happen when the audience read a text is a way unintended and unexpected by the text producers.
Two-Step Theory - audiences are brought to texts by opinion leaders who partially shape the audience response to a text and encourage the distribution of the text.
Other useful Theories
Baudrillard's Hyperreality - where in the media saturated world, reality is a media construct and cannot be separated from what is fictional.
Postmodernism - not really a theory more of a collection of elements which mean a media text is postmodern. these include hybrid genres (mixing two or more genres together), pastiche or parody of an existing genre or story, intertextuality (weaving existing stories together to create a new, original story) blurring of boundaries between fact and fiction including use of CGI, multiple or disjointed narrative, rewriting of known narratives like historical events)
Mulvey's Male Gaze - that media is constructed through the eyes of a heterosexual male.
Hegemony - that the audience although they may not willingly accept the power of the institutions do maintain and support the power balance.
Liberal Pluralism - that society or media is made up of numerous special interest groups creating texts relevant to them and that the media simply responds to their needs.

Final MEST 1 Revision

Click here
to view the latest Slideshare document for MEST 1

Great Discussion of the Impact of New Media on Newspapers

Click on the link below for some really useful thoughts on how new technology has affected the Print Industry - newspapers in particular.
Useful for GCSE, AS and A2

We Study Media Blog

** New GCSE Unit 3 Revision Booklet

Click on link on the sidebar .......

** NEW AS Revision Booklet

Full PDF here

AS Revision Booklet

View more documents from mccabekat.

What Should I Be Revising?

Go to your subject page to get activities and info on things you can do to revise. It's being added to daily, so look at what's there already and keep checking for updates!

The Walking Dead

Major New Zombie US Drama hits UK screens this month on Channel 5

'Will The Walking Dead do for Zombies what True Blood did for Vampires?' read the full Guardian Article here

The Walking Dead, based on cult Graphic Novel is yet another apocalyptic TV show, which audiences can't seem to get enough of these days.

Big Brother just will not go away!

Channel 5 get ready to sign multi-million pound deal for Big Brother. The show looks set to be  aired this Summer and will include both the celebrity show and the public show. Once again BB could be screened 5 days a week with an almost continuous run from August to January. 

Picture: Channel 4

Viral Advertising

For a fantastic example of Viral Advertising follow the links for this campaign for J J Abrams and Steven Speilberg's new film Super 8

Music Industry Panic: Death by Piracy or Old Age?

'The global recorded music industry sales fell by nearly 1 billion last year as digital piracy continues to take it's toll' a report out today reveals. Physical product sales fell by 14.2% while digital sales have been growing slowly but steadily each year.



But is Piracy to blame or is this just another media panic? New means are available to purchase music which is not counted in traditional ways. Added to this there is now a vast selection of entertainment media to purchase. Some argue that the sales fall is simply part of a natural death of a now outdated music industry.

Read the full article here

BBC reduces budget for soaps by 20%

The amount spent in 2010 was down to £102.5m for programmes including EastEnders, Casualty and Holby City, according to the NAO report.

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 22 March 2011 17.13 GMT

 

Photograph: Adam Pensotti/BBC/PA

Phonographantasmascope

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU

Convergence - Disney, Leibovitz and Celebrity

Take a look at the completed series of portraits taken by Annie Leibovitz for Disney using famous artists and actors in the slideshow side bar. A fantastic example of different media coming together, conglomerate dominance and the significance of the advertiser.

BTEC Photography Exhibition 2010-11

A HUGE well done to all those who took part!The feedback from the exhibition has been amazing. People have commented over and over how professional the photographs were and how diverse and varied the sets. Congratulations to all of you :)

Results of the combined class votes are as follows:

Best Individual Picture....
1st place - Sky 2 
2nd place - Love
3rd place - Happy Dog

Best Set of Three....
1st place - Blaize
2nd place - Kamil and Katie
3rd place - Lewis, Tara and Jess

The Ray Harryhausen Creature List

BTEC Photography Exhibition 2011

BTEC Photography Assignment Information...

How to complete your Ideas Investigation Slideshow

Go to BTEC Creative Media Production page for detailed information

AS MEST 1: Investigating Media

Excellent film trailer unseen text practice Question and Answers to help you practise Section A of MEST 1: Investigating Media.

Go to the AS Page and look at the Section A Information

Deadlines 2011

Deadlines 2011

View more presentations from mccabekat.

EASTENDERS

Happy Christmas?

Controversy has broken out over the Christmas storyline involving Ronnie Mitchell and Cat Slater and the issue of SIDS (sudden Infant Death Syndrome also known as Cot Death). This raises all sorts of media questions about responsibilities of the producers, role of the soap opera, representation of women and effects on audience 

Read the article here and the comments made by the viewing public.

Six Ads that changed the way you think

By Katie Connolly BBC News, Washington
 

'Advertisers have always sought to influence and persuade - no more so than at this time of year. But since the advent of mass communications, there has been only a handful of ads that monumentally changed the way people think about a product.'

 Read the full article here...