Common: Letter to the Free

Music Video: Letter to the Free

• A targeted CSP

• Needs to be studied with a focus on media language and representation

• Assessed in Media One

Music Video: Letter to the Free

• The media context: Form and Function• Who usually funds the production of music videos?

• What are the audience expectations of music videos?

• What are music videos for/why are they made?

• How are music videos accessed by the audience?

• How has this changed over the years?

• How might the audience find out about specific music videos?

• How has this changed over the years?

Media Language

• Now– watch the video

• Make notes on any media language choices that you consider interesting/significant• Cinematography

• Editing

• Mise-en-Scene

• Lighting

• Special Effects

Media Language

• Media language choices are both deliberate and significant

• Semiotics provides a framework to discuss the relationship between the producer and the audience• The producers create and encode meaning within media products• Audiences access and decode media products

• Engaging with why the choices are made allows the student to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of semiotics

• Students need to know and be able to define and explain ideas relating to the use of media language

• Students also need to be able to apply the ideas and use them to analyse and discuss the CSP(s)

Media Language

• In depth analysis needs to engage with how the media products are produced and why these production choices have been made

• Students should look for • Connotations• Anchorage• Symbolism etc.

• For example:• Why has the video been shot in black and white?• What is the significance of the location/m-e-s?• Why are the locations depicted as abandoned/empty?• What is the significance of ’no excessive noise’?• How does the use of shadow create meaning?

Media Language - Genre

• Media language is used to create

• genre codes and conventions• Students should engage with the way codes and conventions are used and/or

subverted

• Students should engage with the product’s position/relationship within its genre, its history and development

Media Language - Narrative

• Media language is used to create • Narrative (structure)

• Narrative devices

• Character roles

Representations

• Media language choices combine to make representations

• Representations create the messages and ideas that are communicated by the media product

• Students should look for (if appropriate)• the use/subversion of stereotypes

• points of view

• evidence of misrepresentation

• the reinforcement/challenging of dominant ideas

• the construction of ideas and values

Music Video: ‘Letter to the Free’

• Social and political context• Context of race relations in the US

• Slavery and racial segregation

• Civil rights

• The war on drugs/mass incarceration

• Obama and the post-racial context (?)

• Fergusson, Black Lives Matter etc.

• Trump and the alt-right

Wider Theoretical Approaches

• Theories around ethnicity and postcolonial theory:• Cultural imperialism (cultural appropriation)

• Multiculturalism

• Imagined communities

• Marginalisation

• Orientalism

• Otherness

• Gilroy's ideas and theories on ethnicity and post-colonial theory:• Diaspora

• Double Consciousness

Other media products/events that may add to the debate• Childish Gambino – This is America

Other media products/events that may add to the debate• The Black Eyed Peas – Ring the Alarm

Other media products/events that may add to the debate• Power

Other media products/events that may add to the debate• Atlanta

Other media products/events that may add to the debate• Key and Peele

Other media products/events that may add to the debate• Get Out

Other media products/events that may add to the debate• Beyoncé

Other media products/events that may add to the debate• Kanye West

Other media products/events that may add to the debate• Apu

Find the video and other video resources here• ‘Letter to the Free’

• http://www.albionmill.org.uk/?page_id=2484• Password: 18LttFAM

• Related ideas• post-colonialism

• http://www.albionmill.org.uk/?page_id=1265• Password: 18Reps2AM

• cultural appropriation• http://www.albionmill.org.uk/?page_id=1886• Password: 18Reps3AM