Why is Glee Postmodern

In this blog and our discussion of postmodern television, the TV showGlee has come up as an example.. One of the theories we’ve learned about postmodernism is that it rejects the idea of metanarratives (stories about stories). In postmodernism there is not black and white, good vs. evil, etc. In the show Glee there is the character Puck, a football player who seems to be your typical tough-guy bully. However, even though Puck is a bully and even shoves around some of the other characters that we like, we still do not dislike him. We don’t see him as the villain even though typically the jock/bully is seen as the “bad guy.”

Plurality is another term we learned regarding postmodernism, and this is when there are multiple stories and multiple identities. This show has so many characters, each with their own personal story and all of their stories get told in one way or another. Within Season 2 episode 8 the character ‘David’ is focused on and he is being questioned about whether he is gay or not. The glee club is a dance singing club but within this is another story. This gives the program room to expand and here for example the program deals with modern day issues that are publicised in the media. Grand narratives are clearly contradicted in this episode as homosexuality is put in the limelight and is praised. One of the male characters shows very feminine attributes and in their rehearsal wears a top which says “Likes Boys.” This is done to try to numb the shock of homosexuals coming out and normalise it so that the program can move forward.

 There are different races, different personalities, different handicaps; different cliques, all represented in this show and all of their stories are being told. Nostalgia is another postmodern term represented in Glee. Many of the songs performed on this show are songs from the past for example Les Miserables – Kareoke and Born this Way. The teacher in charge of Glee Club, Mr. Schuester, loves doing songs from when he was younger and this really brings nostalgia to the show.

Convergence, the flow of media content across a range of different platforms is also part of this show. You can download the songs performed on the show, many viewers discuss the show online, and many people attempt to win parts on the show by creating videos of themselves singing and performing and posting them online. There are many forms of media involved with this show other than simply watching the show. Not to mention the fact that you can also watch the show online, just one more form of media regarding this show.

Describe how you developed research and planning skills for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to creative decision making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time

The tasks we were given were called the preliminary task, the main task, and the music video. These were all final products that had to be looked into very deeply to get the product that we wanted. It was a lot harder than I had predicted but I had to have good time management to make sure things went to plan.

The preliminary task proved to be a challenge for me as I had had no recent contact with any form of editing software whatsoever, but I had a brief understanding about what a magazine cover should look like. I looked deeper into the main aspects of a magazine and understood that the positioning of the picture and masthead can easily divert someones attention to or from your magazine. I looked into similar magazines and saw that the masthead is usually large and at the top of the magazine and the main picture is the main story. I took pictures around the school with a Canon 5d and a lense that I wasn’t familiar with. This helped me significantly as I was able to work with this structure and try different colors and sizes to make it look more attractive but I could have made it better if I had chosen a more suitable lense.

The preliminary task really helped me in gaining knowledge about magazines and what actually goes into them. Also it gave me soem hands on time to practice and play around with some of the effects. This was good, but I needed to look more into what goes into the research and planning of magazines. My style of magazine was urban and the type of music it was based around was grime/hip hop which is known to attract a young urban audience. Knowing now what style I had chosen it helped me target the correct audience which would influence my codes and conventions meaning a lot of research was needed to be done.

I looked through similar magazines such as Vibe and XXL and found that the colours that they use for the artists are usually red, black and gold. Now that I had looked at colour connotations are I understood that these represent blood/death, darkness/negativity and wealth. These were 3 colours that would be perfect for my magazine as I wanted to show how a young urban boy was living in a negative environment and is now rich. After taking the photos of my model I used the crop button which helped me remove the background, then I used adobe lightroom to make the picture seem dark behind him and at the same time really putting his face in a positive light as he is looking forward and upwards in the picture.

My magazine was progressing well but the organisation of it was slacking slightly. My teacher recommended that we use a site called www.blogger.com to keep track of what we had done and to make notes on what we had learnt. This was new to me as I was not familiar with any blogging site but it proved helpful as I started to manage my time a lot better and set myself targets. This then was used in my final project which was the music video.

The music video was a task which involved making a visual for a piece of music and to target it at a certain audience. I decided to use an urban style of music yet again and developed a clear understanding of what I should be looking to do. The camera I wanted to use was called a Canon 550d, this gave me the ability to shoot in HD and also go have a lot of frames per second. This was perfect for me as my music video consists of lots of slow motion actions such as smoke and laughing. I researched into slow motion and found that it is most effective when something is shown such as an emotion or a movement that wouldn’t be so spectacular if shown in normal time. Along with slow motion i would use close ups, i found out that these would highlight emotion and would pinpoint certain aspects of my video.

I would have to say that overall I gained a lot of experience in making magazines and music videos and have gained an understanding of what they consist of. Also I am familiar with technology such as DSLR cameras and editing software such as Adobe Premier and Adobe Photoshop where as before I had no knowledge at all.