Unit 6: Critical Approaches to Creative Media Products - Task 2

Narrative & Genre


Downton Abbey is a Period Drama set in the 1910's, the first episode set specifically in 1912. The narrative of the show follows different types of people who live in the Grantham Estate, from the servants and staff up to the Lords and Ladies.


The story in the extract we watched followed the news of the Titanic sinking making it's way to Lord Grantham. This meant seeing the different class and status between various characters. In 1912, class was incredibly divided. This is very prominent in the way the characters act around each other. Characters of a higher class tend to look down on the lower classes, speaking in a more derogatory manor however, when speaking amongst the same class they speak in more polite, respectful manor. The accents and dialect of characters are also very distinct between classes, which makes it easy to tell the difference between characters straight away. The lower classes sound like they are less educated than the higher classes due to the words they use.


The narrative of the extract/scene we watched follows characters in order of their class. Introducing the poorer, worse off people first and as more are introduced, going up the ladder in terms of their class. Each character that is introduced is of a higher class each time until we eventually meet the lords and ladies of the manor. The news of the Titanic sinking travels through each of these characters, each of them reacting to the news before they hand it over to another character.


Mise en Scène

Despite the caption at the beginning saying '1912', there are many other details in the show that indicate it is set in that specific time period. Things such as costume and set design is an important part of creating the illusion all that is taking place in the show is during 1912.


The costumes of the characters are very specific to the time period it is set in. Although the clothes worn are very different to what people wear nowadays, it is still very obvious to the audience which characters fall into which class. The lower class workers wear much more basic, plainer clothes compared to the lords and ladies who wear very expensive looking, posh garments. There are also different classes of workers too, the servants who deliver the food and drinks to the lords and ladies wear black suits, much nicer clothing than the staff in the kitchen making the food who wear dull, scruffy looking rag-like clothes.


The set in the show is a large manor with many different rooms. The varied rooms look distinctly different. The kitchens and the bedrooms of the staff are very dull and grey, with very little detail on the walls or on furniture. As we follow staff into the main living areas and rooms of Downton Abbey, the surroundings of the characters change. The rooms where the higher classes stay are much more furnished with more extravagant items and they have much more detailed design in the architecture of the room. A lot of the furniture in the room is made from expensive materials such as leather, silk and even coloured gold in some cases.


Camera & Editing

The use of camera in the extract is another way class is represented. One of the opening shots is one long tracking shot follows different characters through the different rooms. Each time the camera switches between a characters, that next character is of a higher class. It changes character multiple times, throughout the tracking shot as a way of going up in the ranks of the abbey.


The shots and editing used are different between classes. The staff in the kitchen are the first to be shown and their scene is very fast and rapidly paced with fast camera movement and quick cuts. This represents the hectic environment of their work and possibly even their lifestyle. However, the camera and editing for Lord Grantham when he walks down the stairs towards the end of the extract (as he is the last character to be shown) is very slow and calm. There are only 2 shots used when he walks down the stairs, a close up of his feet and a wide shot of the entire staircase. There is only one cut between these for the entire scene. The camera movement is a very slow pan as he walks down the stairs which represents the calm in his life as all the hectic jobs are taken up by the staff.


Sound


The sound and music is also a huge indicator of class in Downton Abbey. The music used is classical and sets the scene of 1912.


The music is very subtle when we first meet the characters of the staff, and it is a slow start. Upon those characters entering the abbey the volume of the music increases and becomes a much bigger sound to show that the abbey is very extravagant and is quite a lot to take in. The music makes the building feel larger than life.


While following the workers in the tracking shot the music stays very fast paced and hectic to show the workers all at different jobs and switching jobs frequently. The music stays this way all the way through the extract until Lord Grantham enters. When he does, the music drastically slows down to a much more peaceful calming sound. Similarly to the camera movement, everything about this scene slows down representing a calming important presence in the scene.

Unit 6: Critical Approaches to Creative Media Products - Task 2

Social Media

In the build up to the 2016 US Election, twitter has been one of the most popular platforms for the candidates to share their views. It’s used as much as it is because it is so accessible. It makes it very easy to for the candidates to get their messages across to their audience directly. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have each been incredibly active on Twitter, sometimes interacting with each other which has led to things getting heated at times, even to the extent of being classed as a ‘Twitter War’.

In one example, when Obama endorsed Clinton, Trump tweeted, “Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary. He wants four more years of Obama-but nobody else does!”, to which Clinton quickly responded: “Delete your account”. Trump responded again with “How long did it take your staff of 823 people to think that up--and where are your 33,000 emails that you deleted?”


Other twitter users quickly got involved; the most popular response was from a user being “Fuck you both. Stop arguing on Twitter. I'm scared for either one of you to run this country.”. This was only one of the many tweets in response to their interaction with each other. The responses ranged from very negative to very positive for both sides of the argument.

Out of the three tweets, Hillary’s got the most retweets and likes. It actually went viral with 556,456 retweets, a significant amount of retweets more than her usual, which usually range from around 100,000 to 150,000. While the responses to both of Trump’s tweets stayed serious and mostly political, because to the viral status Hillary’s tweet got it reached a much wider audience who were not political and was responded to with a lot unpolitical tweets, many of the responses even coming in Gif form:


Many people believed this Twitter interaction seemed unprofessional however this wasn’t the only time the two used social media in this way. There were many other occasions where both Trump and Clinton tweeted badly about each other. Trump even coined the hashtag #CrookedHillary and often used it in his tweets when speaking of Clinton. This presidential election was like no other because the amount of aggressive back and forth the two candidates would have on Twitter. While it may seem unprofessional to many people, it’s actually very smart from both sides. The use of Twitter not only broadens the candidates audience/following, it accesses a younger generation who might not usually pay attention to politics.


It can be proven that the use of attacking the opposing candidate over social media is a successful publicity tactic as some of the most popular tweets from both Trump and Hillary have been the tweets aimed at each other, as shown by the earlier examples. The use of “Delete your account” by Hillary is a very common term used by the younger, more social media focused generation which allowed her to access that part of her audience, whereas if she was to tweet about political issues, there would be a significantly smaller amount of response to it.


Jon Keegan wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal which live-updates a comparison of Trump and Clinton’s twitter profiles. Below is a graph from the article, showing the amount of followers both Trump and Clinton have gained since announcing their candidacy.

As shown, Trump has gained over 6 million more followers on Twitter than Clinton has over the same amount of time. Clinton actually announced her candidacy months before Trump did but had a much slower gain of followers compared to Trump’s sudden rise in Twitter fame. It is obvious from simply looking through Trump’s Twitter profile that he is the most controversial, or at least most brutally honest, out of himself and Clinton. This would suggest the controversy in his tweets gained more attention than anything else that was being said by any other presidential candidate. By using Twitter in this way, Trump managed to frequently catch the attention of even the least politically involved Twitter users.

Unit 6: Critical Approaches to Creative Media Products - research

"I like it because I can get also my point of view out there, and my point of view is very important to a lot of people that are looking at me," Trump said

General Statistics:

• The internet has 3.17 billion users
• There are 2.3 billion active social media users
• 91% of retail brands use 2 or more social media channels
• Internet users have an average of 5.54 social media accounts
• Social media users have risen by 176 million in the last year
• 1 million new active mobile social users are added every day. That’s 12 each second
• Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp handle 60 billion messages a day

Social Media Users:

• 4Chan: 11 million users
• Airbnb: 50 million users
• Facebook: 1.71 billion users
• Flickr: 112 million users
• Google+: 300 million users
• Instagram: 400 million users
• LinkedIn: 450 million users
• MySpace: 50.6 million users
• Periscope: 10 million users
• Pinterest: 100 million users
• Reddit: 36 million accounts
• Snapchat: 100 million users
• Twitter: 320 million users
• Wechat: 1.12 billion users
• Weibo: 600 million users
• WhatsApp: 900 million users
• Youtube: Over 1 billion users

Twitter:

• 500 million people visit Twitter each month without logging in
• There is a total of 1.3 billion accounts, but only 320 million are active
• Of those, 44% made an account and left before ever sending a Tweet
• The average Twitter user has 208 followers
• But 391 million accounts have no followers at all
• There are 500 million Tweets sent each day. That’s 6,000 Tweets every second
• Twitter’s top 5 markets (countries) account for 50% of all Tweets
• It took 3 years, 2 months and 1 day to go from the first Tweet to the billionth
• 65.8% of US companies with 100+ employees use Twitter for marketing
• 77% of Twitter users feel more positive about a brand when their Tweet has been replied to

Unit 6: Critical Approaches to Creative Media Products - Task 1

Task 1:
Understand how media producers define audiences for their products




Quantitative audience research


Quantitative research is when a company gathers information in large amounts, A way of doing this might be by collection information via surveys of different types of groups. Different kinds of surveys may be mail surveys, telephone surveys, internet surveys and face to face public surveys.

Qualitative audience research

Qualitative research is gathered to get a target audience's range of behaviour and perceptions. This research is usually done with smaller groups of people. Unlike quantitative research, which is statistical, qualitative research is are more descriptive of the audience. Some ways of gathering qualitative research are individual interviews or group discussions.

Audience classifications

Audience classification is the recognising of demographics in an audience. Demographics are the characteristics of the audience. These can be factors such as Gender, Age, Sexuality, Religion, Income, Socio Economic status etc.