Keynote presentation for Week One of Theory and Practice

1. THEORY AND PRACTICE
Week One - 28th September 2011
Justine Mortimer
&
Paul Carter

2. Who are you?

3. Why are you here?

5. Quick Exercise

6. Quick Exercise
Get into pairs

7. Quick Exercise
Get into pairs
Tell each other ONE thing you have learned in the last week

8. Quick Exercise
Get into pairs
Tell each other ONE thing you have learned in the last week
Now question your partner

9. Quick Exercise
Get into pairs
Tell each other ONE thing you have learned in the last week
Now question your partner
How did they learn that thing?

10. Quick Exercise
Get into pairs
Tell each other ONE thing you have learned in the last week
Now question your partner
How did they learn that thing?
Where?

11. Quick Exercise
Get into pairs
Tell each other ONE thing you have learned in the last week
Now question your partner
How did they learn that thing?
Where?
What was important about it?

12. Quick Exercise
Get into pairs
Tell each other ONE thing you have learned in the last week
Now question your partner
How did they learn that thing?
Where?
What was important about it?
What are you going to do with what you have learned?

13. LEARNING OUTCOMES
• An understanding of a range of critical approaches to the
study of media
•Adeveloping understanding of the relationship between
media texts and their cultural and historical contexts
•A developing understanding of the relationship between
theory and practice
• Developing skills in textual analysis and an awareness of
institutional context

14. LEARNING OUTCOMES
These aren’t just any outcomes. . . these are Media
Production outcomes
We use these to develop your assessment criteria (More
later . . .)

15. WHY THEORY?
(It all looked like fun on the open day!)

16. WHAT WILL THEORY DO FOR
(TO) ME
• Gives you a framework for your production work
• Helps you understand the industry and its practices
• Provides a shared language
• Improves your ability to judge your own work
• Stops you appearing silly
• (Impresses parents)

17. BUT IT’S JUST READING
(ISN’T IT?)

18. BUT IT’S JUST READING
(ISN’T IT?)
NO

19. THEORY IS:
• Talking
• Thinking
• Analysing
• Doing
• Creating
• Understanding
• (...and reading)

21. ‘GRADUATENESS’

22. THEORY IS NOT:
• Unnecessary
• Waffle
• Boring
• Big words
• Funny (dead French) people

24. WHY STUDY THE MEDIA?

25. WHY STUDY THE MEDIA?
• Interesting • Ubiquitous
• Novelty? • Constantly Changing
• Need • Economy - Numbers involved
• Growing Industry • Political significance - POWER

26. WHAT IS ‘THE MEDIA’?

27. WHAT IS ‘THE MEDIA’?
• Advertising • Posters
• Images? • Newspapers
• Communication? • Television
• Film • Telecoms
• Radio • Animation
• Websites • Music
• Magazines • PR

28. WHAT IS NOT ‘THE MEDIA’?
• Notcovered on the
programme:
• Journalism
• Art of photography
• Celebrity
• Games
• Music Production

29. MEDIA TEXTS
• What is a text?
• Analysis vs Consumption
• All media texts are constructions
• You cannot analyse a text too deeply

30. TOOLS FOR ANALYSIS
• Why do we need tools?
• Objectivity vs Subjectivity

31. AESTHETICS
Analysis, context & media literacy

32. AESTHETICS
• Branch of Philosophy dealing with beauty and the ‘nature’ of
art, particularly universal features or commonalities
• Study beginning with the Ancient Greeks:
• Plato - proportion and harmony
• Aristotle - order and symmetry

33. MODERN AESTHETICS
• Immanuel Kant
“Our faculty of judgment that enables us to have
experience of beauty and grasp those experiences as
part of an ordered, natural world with purpose” (IEP)
• Friedrich Schiller
“Aesthetic education is necessary, he argued, not only
for the proper balance of the individual soul, but for the
harmonious development of society.” (Taylor 2003)

34. CRITIQUED BY
• e.g. TerryEagleton - in the late twentieth century, notions of
‘universality’ are questioned
• Aesthetics seen as intertwined with politics and ethics

35. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
• Renewed interest in ‘screen aesthetics’
• Implicit focus on ‘artistic merit’
• Inorder to illuminate ways in which audiovisual work may be
effective, affective or thoughtful
• Also how film expresses philosophical ideas

36. ALL OF THIS IS
CONSTRUCTED - NOT
ACCIDENTAL -
AND ANALYSTS ARE
CONCERNED WITH
CONTEXT

37. WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

38. MEDIA LITERACY
• ‘the
ability to access, understand and create communications in
a variety of contexts.’
• ‘Ata more advanced level it moves from recognising and
comprehending information to the higher order critical
thinking skills such as questioning, analysing and evaluating that
information.’
Ofcom (2010)

39. In explaining visual literacy, Messaris (1994) listed four specific
benefits that apply equally to media literacy:
(a) It is a prerequisite for the comprehension of how the world is
structured for the screen,
(b) the cognitive skills that are brought into play in the interpretation
of television may be applicable to other intellectual tasks,
(c) it will help to make the viewer aware of how meaning is created in
media presentations, and . . .
(d) it provides the basis for aesthetic appreciation(Zettl 1998, 83)

40. HOW THINGS LOOK AND
SOUND INFLUENCE HOW WE
RESPOND TO THEM

41. PRODUCTION AS
‘AESTHETIC VARIABLE’
Silverblatt (1995) list[s] four major “keys” that provide
insight into interpreting media messages: process,
context, structure, and production values. He is one
of the few people who lists aesthetic variables (i.e.,
production values) as one of the primary keys for
analysis. (Zettl, 1998, p 81)

42. End Point (Meta Cognition)
Starting Point

43. THE ROLE OF INFLUENCES

44. WHERE DO PRODUCERS
DRAW THEIR INFLUENCES
FROM?

45. WHAT DREAMS MAY COME

46. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztOiZl2ZHck&feature=related

47. From Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1
"To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that
sleep of death what dreams may come When we have
shuffled off this mortal coil . . . “

48. OTHER LITERARY ALLUSIONS
THE DIVINE COMEDY (DANTE ALIGHIERI)
GREEK MYTH (ORPHEUS & EURYDICE)

49. ARTISTIC
INFLUENCES
CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH
CLAUDE MONET
VINCENT VAN GOGH
HIERONYMUS BOSCH
SALVADOR DALI

50. Landscape with Solitary Tree, 1822, Caspar
David Friedrich

51. Wanderer Above
the Sea of Fog,
1818, Caspar
David Friedrich

52. Der Morgen, 1820-21,
Caspar David Friedrich

53. Rocky Ravine,
1822-33,
Caspar David
Friedrich

54. The Poppy Field near Argenteuil, 1873, Claude Monet

55. Path at Giverny, 1885, Claude Monet

56. Irises, 1889, Vincent Van Gogh

57. Christ in Limbo, circa 1575, ‘Follower of Hieronymus Bosch’

58. The Garden of Earthly Delights, circa 1510, Hieronymus Bosch

59. La Cara de la Guerra, 1940, Salvador Dali

60. Metamorphosis of Narcissus, 1937, Salvador Dali

61. SO, WHICH MOVIE SCENE
DREW INSPIRATION FROM
THIS?

62. Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, 1944,
Francis Bacon

63. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuapyExYJBI

65. WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

67. BREADTH
PRODUCERS MUST BE
INTERESTED IN MORE
THAN JUST
TECHNOLOGY

68. A MAJOR ROLE OF
EDUCATION IS THE
ACQUISITION OF
CULTURAL CAPITAL

69. FOR NEXT WEEK . . .
• Pleaseensure you have read the first chapter of Long & Wall -
on ‘rhetoric’
• Read the module handbook
• Complete the first online assignment ‘Working in the Media’