"This is America" - Childish Gambino music video

Camera:
F A M - Frame, Angle, movement.

Mise en scene:
C L A M P S - Costume, Lighting, Actors, Makeup, Props, Setting.

Contrapuntal - opposite to what you're expecting.


FAM:

• ls.
• mls - accentuates 'crazy' facial expressions.
• track in/track out.
• rotating.
• 17 seconds - bad things, representing the death of 17 students.
• guy with guitar shown at the beginning and the end of the video.
• shows how casual and easy it is to shoot someone.
• grotesque smiles/facial expressions.

CLAMPS:

• underground car park.
• shirtless - neutral colours.
• gospel singers.
• natural lighting.
• yellow shoes - only colour? (cars at end are coloured).
• cars/horses/(gospel cloaks).
• cars are stolen?
• Glover looks confident.
• Glover dances.
• shocking, violence.
• intertextuality.
• juxtaposition - dancing distracts from chaos.
• Glover represents America not paying attention.
• equality.
• Black Lives Matter.

EXTRA:

• he's acknowledging the dehumanising way black people were treated.
• guns are treated with more respect than black lives.
• choir is a reference to Charleston, South Carolina massacre.
• polysemic = multiple meanings.
• camera pans to kids with phones - white people muzzling police brutality - high angle.
• horse relates to the bible.
• dancing!

The Big Issue essay

Question 5 Explain how the representations in magazines reflect their contexts. Refer to The Big Issue covers you have studied to support your answer. [10]
In the majority of The Big Issue covers, they have many things in common. For example, there are normally lots of bright and bold colours to draw the reader's/audience's attention. The covers are eye-catching with usually one main person on the cover. The Big Issue likes to challenge political topics like Trump and the Tories or even topics like poverty and homelessness. The magazines are always playing around with their words, creating puns in order to make the audience be intrigued in the ambiguous story titles. Furthermore, celebrities and well-known people are always doing interviews for The Big Issue which aids in attracting younger people. One of the biggest things that The Big Issue does is intertextuality. The term intertextuality refers to the process of creating references to any kind of media text via another media text. There is a lot of intertextuality between political issues and entertainment themes in a lot of the magazines. For example, in some of The Big Issue magazines, the people on the front cover may be holding a The Big Issue magazine, further advertising the brand. This aids in influencing people to read further into the magazine.The two magazines below have similarities and differences. Each one represents certain aspects of The Big Issue and what they aim to contain in their magazines. For both magazines, there is evidently an aspect of entertainment. On the left cover, the entertainment is shown by the use of a character from a new film that came out about an icon in history. On the right cover, the entertainment is shown by the use of the judges from The Great British Bake Off which has been going on for many years. Both covers represent icons in history. The Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen) cover shows an icon in music history whereas The Great British Bake Off cover shows an icon in baking history. The Freddie Mercury cover represents individuality and uniqueness. These are qualities in The Big Issue that are constantly repeated to show people that being unique and different is okay because everyone is equal no matter what. This cover is a fantastic way of showing power as Freddie has his hand up (this is a large part of the brand as they believe in a hand up, not a hand out). The Big Issue are always playing on words and creating puns however they have used words (in this cover) to symbolise the movie Bohemian Rhapsody. They have done this by creating Freddie Mercury out of lyrics from Queen songs, which is a very inventive and creative way (this is typical for The Big Issue). The Great British Bake Off cover represents a community and being proud. This is emphasised in the repetition of hints of the baking icon Mary Berry who is no longer on the show. The repetition of Mary Berry shows how she was a large part of the show and also how people miss her as she has changed people's lives all around the world. Some of the plays on words include French words (like 'bouche', meaning 'mouth' in English). This relates to French cuisine/French baking. As has already been said, intertextuality is used in this cover in the bottom left-hand corner on the mug. Even though The Big Issue normally shows people of different races, this is not evident on this cover. However, there are different genders so it does link in to how the magazines from The Big Issue try to target all different audiences (e.g. age, gender, ethnicities etc.). Both magazines use bold fonts in bright colours to attract the attention of people. The colour text on The Great British Bake Off cover stands out from the rest of the colours enough for people to know that that is the main topic. On the other hand, the colour text on the Freddie Mercury cover is the same colour as the 'clothes' that Freddie is wearing however, it still stands out because it is very large and it is also on a black background 9further making it stand out). Like the other cover, this boldness is enough for people to recognise that Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek) is the main topic. This could be linked to how The Big Issue magazines stand out from normal magazines as they represent community in an equal and positive way. The light colours used for the main topics could then also be related to how The Big Issue magazines are always trying to show the positives in society.

Labelled Newspaper

News values

> Threshold - the bigger the impact and reach of the story
> Unexpectedness - an event that is a shock or out of the ordinary
> Negativity - bad news is more interesting 'if it bleeds, it leads'
> Elite persons/places - stories about important people and powerful nations
> Unambiguous - stories that are easy to understand and for papers to report on
> Personalisation - stories that include human interest - 'real' people
> Proximity - stories that are closer to home that are more likely to be included
> Continuity/currency - stories that are already in the news continue to run and are updated

C     U     P     P     T     U     N     E     =     ACRONYM

GUARDIAN and DAILY MIRROR comparison

QUESTIONS	THE GUARDIAN	THE DAILY MIRROR
Who was involved?	Bidhya Sagar Das, the mother who is not named, a witness and twins (1 boy and 1 girl).	Bidhya Sagar Das, Gui Gui (witness), baby boy Gabriel, baby girl Maria and Cristinela Das.
What happened?	Bidhya killed the one-year-old boy with a hammer and his sister was critically injured. Child dies and his sister is critically injured. Investigators await results of post-mortem exam.	A man has been held over a suspected hammer attack on twin toddlers that killed one and left the other fighting for life.
Where did it happen?	Finsbury Park, North London.	Property in Hackney, North London.
When did it happen?	Saturday 18th March 2017, late on the Saturday. The police were called at 11:10 pm	Saturday 18th March 2017. At 11:10 pm that night, the mum ran into the streets screaming.
Why did it happen?
What do you notice about the difference in content and how the articles convey this information? Why do you think that is?	The article does not go into a lot of depth about why and how the incident happened. There is more information on the witnesses and the later events that weekend. The article also does not include the names of the twins. There is much more text in this article.	There are larger images in this article to make it stand out how children are involved. By using a large image of children, it automatically creates an emotional aspect of the article and the story. Witness quotes are used in the article. Article is more emotional and less informative.

Screen recording newspapers online

Semiotics

Semiotics - the study of signs/anything which stands for something else
Denotation - what we see when we look at an image
Connotation - what we understand from this image


DI- This television poster shows the main characters all standing together amidst the chaos of downtown New York. Each character is surrounding the star of the show Clary Fray/Fairchild.
S - The series is set in New York as you can see the skyscrapers in the background.
T - The themes shown in the poster are good vs evil due to the fact that the characters (who fight against demons) are surrounded by a dark and gloomy city. However some could argue that love and jealousy is also a theme as in the centre of the poster is the main character Clary, but beside her is her father-like figure Luke and her love interest Jace.
I - There are no props used in this poster however their costumes do add that aspect of mystery and possible danger as they are all wearing black leather.
N - There is no story told in this poster.
C - Each character is standing next to a character that they have a relationship with (whether that be family or not). However, you can clearly see the main character is the strong red head in the centre of the poster as she draws the attention into the middle of the poster.
T - The large red symbol at the topnof the poster draws peoples attentions immediately as the photo has had a darker filter on it to make it look mysterious and dramatic, emphasising the genre of fantasy/sci-fi/action/adventure.

Denotation:
There are eight strong looking characters all surrounding one main female character who is placed in the center of the poster. The background consists of the skyscrapers in New York and a very cloudy/misty sky.

Connotation:
From the poster, we can clearly see how in the middle of the poster there is a red headed femal wearing black leather and being surrounded by harsh looking people. This draws the attention of young women as there aren’t gradually becoming more and more strong female leads on the television. We can also see that death is possibly involved as the large red symbol at the top of he poster shows the red slightly running down past the outlines of the symbol, creating an effect that looks like the dripping of blood. All of the buildings, walls and the stairs all look fairly old and tired however, the characters do not as they look clean and polished. This could mean that they are of he younger generation or it could mean that they are re new to whatever they are doing around the city of New York. The stormy looking weather in the background adds to the effect of possible or imminent danger.