Task 2 - Research Into Existing Products: Video Game Product Research - Fallout 4

Fallout 4 is the latest installment in the Fallout franchise by Bethesda Game Studios. The game's premise revolves around a the post-apocalyptic world after a nuclear holocaust in the year 2077. Bethesda as a company have made other games with similar parallels to Fallout, such as the Elder Scrolls series which gives their players the ability to create their own player in an RPG (Role Playing Game) style, giving players the further choice to freely roam the world and play through the story mode.

Genre, Channel for Broadcasting and Target Audience
A full length game trailer such as this is usually 3-4 minutes, which is typically released on YouTube as oppose to TV due to the fact a 3 minute game trailer would take up the entire advertisement slot time. This type of trailer would not be shown on any commercial TV channel such as Channel 4, Sky or Virgin Media as this is a full length trailer. A more suitable trailer length would be a quick 30 seconds TV spot to fit in between a commercial break. A usual 3-4 minute trailer will usually show more of the world that is yet to be explored for the players interested in buying, whether that be already invested fans or newcomers to the series. As the largest gaming event of the year has finished, this game play was presumably already shown at E3, this would have been a huge announcement for fans of the first 3 installments in the series and also a huge way to promote the new game to a very large community of people, and also those watching the event on the internet.

Editing, Sound and Certification
Throughout the entire trailer, the sound and video work in conjunction to show how life was shortly before the first nuclear blasts had occurred in the story, and the post-apocalyptic world that the player will spend the majority of their time playing in. Having both of these elements cross-cut between each other allows dedicated fans as well as interested parties to get a feel for the backstory for this new installment and a feel for the new world in which Bethesda has created for players. Along with the cross-cutting visuals, a slow 1950s-ish song is played called "It's All Over" which is played in conjunction with a public service announcement saying how nuclear war had started. Both of these present how morbid this game is, showing little of actual hope or happiness throughout. The seamless game play through the trailer is also impressive on a technical scale as it shows the performance level in which the new consoles (Xbox One and PlayStation 4) will be working at to achieve a more ambitious gaming experience than what has been shown before. This trailer both acts as a promotion for the game and a way to show off to the public a small dose of what this new game is able to do, in terms of game play. The trailer however does not explicitly show how graphic this game can be despite the beginning of the trailer giving a maturity warning for viewers. Fans of the previous games will remember being able to kill almost every NPC (Non-playable character) in the game including gory decapitations and an acid gun to dissolve characters and enemies. No certification may be showed in this trailer due to the fact there is no such explicit killings shown, only allusions to a small community being killed by a nuclear bomb. A later trailer will most likely be released showing the official age certificate which will go with the game.

Mise-En-Scene

The first shot of the public service announcement presents that from the very start, not everything is okay in the current setting of the game. The black and white screen, as well as the 1960s design TV suitably called 'Radiation King' as a sort of pun, allows the viewer to easily predict that what has happened here is very clearly related to nuclear war. A very important element in the game's overall story. As the camera slowly zooms out we get interspliced shots of the current house in its post apocalyptic damage that has affected the household and shots of how the house would have looked pre nuclear war. The camera tracks a dog that has entered the home and the viewer follows the dog along the corridor and into the child's bedroom. The baby blue crib surrounded by the decay and post war environment creates a very morbid image over where the baby could be, what happened to it, and did the family make it to a bunker safely.

As the dog runs outside of the home and heads down the street past a small community of run down houses, the shot is again interspliced with shots of pre nuclear war which shows various people running towards one point, a bunker. The people running however don't appear to be in any manic panic despite the attack, but instead are slowly jogging towards the bunker which is very unusual. This may be done to present just how secure these bunkers are made to be against the attacks, and once in them people will be safe. However fans of the previous game will know that almost all of the bunkers are hubs to social, psychological and physical experiments that uses humans to test on.

Task 2 - Research Into Existing Products: Johnny Cash - "Hurt" analysis

Johnny Cash was an America songwriter in the 20th century. His work is considered one of the most influential and inspiring music for future generations. Despite his heavy devotion to the Country genre of music, due to his upbringing in Arkahnsas (Southern America), his music has fallen into in other genres such as Jazz, Rock and even Gospel. Unfortunately however in the last 1950s, Cash experimented with drugs to help him stay awake during tours, which eventually led onto an addiction with very dangerous drugs.

Hurt

I hurt myself today (Imagery created here can be reflected of both self abuse and heroin. Comparing on of the most notable and destructive elements of celebrity lifestyle, with damaging the human body)
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain   
The only thing that's real
The needle tears a hole (Cash is clearly showing how he's revisiting old demons of his past)
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything (Connoting that the more he does to stop the pain, the worse he feels)

[Chorus]
What have I become
My sweetest friend (In reference to numerous people; a personified addiction, family, fans, children)
Everyone I know    (Connoting ideas that Cash's drug problems are perhaps the cause of everyone he knows leaving him)
Goes away in the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt (In retrospect he's comparing his achievements to nothing because of his inner pain)
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

I wear this crown of thorns (Various religious references in allude to him being an idol of worship, his Last Supper, and being crucified, put on trial by media, critics etc.)
Upon my liars chair (False portrayals have made him a false idol)
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair (Insinuating that the damage is irreversible and has left him with one option, walk away)      
Beneath the stains of time  
The feelings disappear
You are someone else (This perhaps suggests that this "someone" had changed, for better or worse, and yet Cash remained where he was, not making any progress from his drug                 addiction) 
I am still right here  

[Chorus]

And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

If I could start again
A million miles away
I will keep myself (Implications that if he had the chance to start over he wouldn't "sell" himself to the public eye and the media and he'd find a way to be successful without essentially giving himself away)
I would find a way

At the beginning of the music video, various shots of gold ornaments and luxurious fruits are shown, to which could either convey how wealthy Cash has become in his career but also being deeper in showing how Cash is surrounded by all this wealth, but still feels a heavy degree of pain inside of himself, 'Hurt'.

Cash's museum is shown to be 'closed to the public' which can convey heavily that Cash choose to be a very private celebrity, despite various critics saying how inconsiderate that was to his loyal fans. This attitude to fame however became a trope of who Cash was, even gaining a large following due to the fact he was never seen.



Here Cash is pouring and wasting away his, presumably expensive wine. At first it may seem that Cash is perhaps bragging about how much money he has and that wasting a few cups of wine clearly isn't going to affect his wealth. But after digging a little deeper, it seems that all of the things his money has been able to buy him (food, clothes, houses etc.) literally has no value to him due to the fact he feels so empty inside.

Task 2 - Research Into Existing Products: Music Video Research

All music videos have seen either a Narrative Based, Performance Based or Abstract/Artistic music video. Each of which have shaped and changed how music videos are created to convey a certain message or plainly give the audience what they want, to show the band/artist.

The Experimental era in music videos is considered to be around the 1960s. The first music videos started to form. Primarily, The Beatles spearheaded the music video trend with videos like Day Tripper and Lady Madonna. Day Tripper specifically stands out as most significant as it set many typical "conventions" for a music video; Multiple Camera shots, lead singer to focus on, close ups of the band's faces and of the instruments. The music videos created around this era would be used as a key point of influence for many years to come. Also, due to their worldwide fame, the elements used in their music videos would heavily influence several generations of music videos from decades in the future.

The 1980s saw the rise of MTV, and the Classic era in music videos, in which created an entirely new and vibrant platform for artists to promote and publish their music to MTVs viewers so then they'd be able to go to the record store and buy a copy of the song. I Just Can't Get Enough by Depeche Mode is very much a performance video (much like Day Tripper) as the various close ups of the keyboard being played, and the shots of each member in the band, giving the viewers what they want to see. The lack of progression from the Experimental era is very clear as it sticks very closely to shots of the band playing their instruments instead of presenting a clear story within the characters or creating some artistic video with hidden metaphors behind it.

In the modern era, Parody videos have become a larger trend due to social media interests on Facebook and YouTube. These are a way of artists being able to mock someone else's music video and introduce their own element to it which makes it comedic (replacing a man with a woman, replacing main singer with a fruit etc.). This parody of Miley Cyrus' Wrecking Ball aims to make fun of everything Miley has done in her own video and point out some of the odd choices she has made over the past few years which many of her fans are unsure of what she has done.


The final era of music videos is the Deconstruction, or Pastiche. These types of music videos aim to be a homage to a classic music video which is very recognisable and one which people will understand. These types can also take elements from TV shows or movies, which the Blur's The Universal. Taking visual cues from Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange which is considered one of the greatest movies of all time.

Task 2 - Research Into Existing Products: Andrea Arnold research - Wasp

Andrea Arnold was born and raised in Kent, England. Studying at the American Film Institute of Los Angeles, her ambition for film making started at a very young age. The movie solely focuses on a mother struggle to provide for her family, coping with local people's perception of her and wanting to live her own life somewhere inbetween.

The film opens showing a family rushing down several flights of stairs, the mother being bear footed carrying a baby that is bear footed and three daughters that wearing scruffy clothing. It can be implied either way that the family was simply just in a rush to get to wherever they need to be, but as the film develops, it is made very clear that this family is not very financially secure and can not even provide the most basic things needed for a comfortable life. When the mother finally arrives at the place she needs to be, she's finally greeted by another woman to which the mother opens with 'You bitch'...'fuck with my kid!'. This is seen as an act of pure rage and anger as the audience have seen this mother drag her children all the way to this house because this mother wanted to start a fight, but arguably for a morally correct reason, to defend her own child, but going about it in a very wrong way. Allowing her own children to see their mother act this way is a good way of presenting the character of not being able to make good decisions, which reoccurs throughout the movie.


The eldest daughter, Kelly, reacts to the confrontation with 'My mom looks like Victoria Beckham you fowl cow!' and after the fight is over and the family is presumably walking back home the mother says to Kelly 'Don't say that thing about me looking like Victoria Beckham again okay?' 'You said it, not me'. This implies that the mother has fantasied about herself being Victoria Beckham, with all the money and fame and nice husband, heavily suggesting that she has big, yet unreachable dreams for herself. Telling Kelly not to repeat it again further connotes that she recognises how unrealistic these dreams are and to even speak of them out loud somehow taboos the "spell" and destroys her dreams.

In the next scene we are introduced to David, who is established as an ex boyfriend of the mother. it is very clear that she intends to join David for a drink at the pub, but the ever present look of guilt on her face as she looks back at her vulnerable children lingers in the back of her mind. One wide shot in particular shows a dog prowling in the background of the children, connoting themes of the children being surrounded by danger, which can later foreshadow what surrounds them later in the film when they're left alone outside the pub.

The family is next scene in the kitchen where the mother is looking to prepare food for the family, looking through near empty cereal boxes and moldy bread, whilst her children watch saddened in the background. There is a substantial feel of melancholy over this scene as while the children watch with sad faces, the mother calls a friend to talk about her encounter with David, stating before that she 'don't have much credit'. This supports evidence towards this mother not being fit to care for her children as instead of calling for help from family or even the friend she's talking to for help with food/money, she's talking about a date which she can't even be close to affording. Later in the scene a close up on a Wasp trying to get outside can be very symbolic of the mothers's current situation as she is also fragile and trapped behind the glass (poverty), but she needs someone else to help her escape (open the window) for her to be free. This message only announces itself to her at the end of the movie, shortly after it nearly endangers her newly born child. 

A little while after the family arrives at the pub and it slowly turns dark, the children are seen running around in puddles, not being looked after and being left to their own devices. Not only does the audience further loose sympathy for the mother and her issues, but they further sympathise with the characters of the children, which is especially effective towards the climax of the film when the children spot a group of men holding bags of chips. Several close ups of insects fluttering around rubbish along the car park of the pub symbolises the children's current situation. Similarly to the mother and the Wasp, the moth and butterfly symbolise these fragile beings simply existing in the world, not making any major impacts, or in a endangered position, but they're just simply there with no purpose. A combination of starvation and lack of common sense, as a result of the mother, resorts them to eating the food, even giving the food to the new born baby, meanwhile the mother is in the car with David, within sight of the children, alluding to having sex together.

As the night comes to a close, a Wasp finds its way to the youngest child and slowly crawls its way into the child's mouth. This causes the girls to scream and the mother in hearing this, runs to them. The severity of the baby almost dying finally makes the mother realises that she can't cope with all of her problems on her own, and the audience is left with some hope when David finds them all helpless together.

Task 2 - Research Into Existing Products: Lynne Ramsay research - Gasman

Lynne Ramsay is a Scottish director raised in Glasgow. Having studied Photography at Napier College in Edinburgh, it always seemed that she would eventually make the leap from photos to film. Ramsay's Gasman shows a brother and a sister spend Christmas night away from their mother and instead with their father who introduces the children to his step children. 

The opening of the film shows various close-ups of each member of the family getting ready for some kind of formal event. The mother cleaning the children's shoes as she demands her children to get ready, the son presenting his vulnerability in using the sugar to play with, which also links with the Christmas songs playing in the background presenting a clear time of year. Close ups on the girls feet and legs as she gets ready as the shot lingers on, helps to create a sense of innocence with this character. This point is further emphasised with the girl saying 'There is no place like home', quoted from The Wizard of OZ, thus comparing herself to Dorothy who is living in a fantasy world, something most children like to do for fun.

The mother's strain with dealing with family life is shown in the short and aggressive responses she gives her children 'Just stand still, come on', 'Go get your coat'. This could suggest that they have an unstable family environment due to the fact the husband has had/is having an affair which the wife is aware of, thus putting an unstable relationship across the entire family. The slow pan to the mother looking at her children from the window could suggest that she feels anxious about her children going with their father, due to the fact she's unaware of him at this time.

The seemingly endless railway tracks show a large level of significance as it can symbolising the family's endless hopelessness and inability to change their current lane, assuming they'd be stuck in this family situation forever.
The vignette around the frame of the shot also suggest that darkness and lack of hope is holding the family back from happiness.


The brother and sister's reaction to the other little girl suggest that, despite the character's being represented as innocent and having limited child like emotions, they in fact call the other little girl 'ugly' and a 'tramp'. This is the first time the children express emotions that are similar to that of adult emotions, the later scene being the small fight between the girls in contrast to the adults who are drinking and socialising. These two scenes stand out as being very significant as it shows the potential effect of a dysfunctional family on the children caught in between. The adults relationship is also presented within this scene also as the man is clearly in love with this other woman which he shows in his defeated his face after he presents her with little to no money, and also as he attempts to touch her hair as a sign of affection, the extreme close-up emphasises he learn away from his hand as she pulls away out of frame.

A little while later, the group finally arrives at the slightly rundown pub where the Christmas party is being held. Shots of children playing together, focusing on the childhood interaction, inter-spliced with close ups of the father in the foreground quite clearly "drowning his sorrows" with beer. The slow panning across the room conveys a sense of intoxication over the adult characters, thus paving the way for the chaos between the two girls to take place unchecked. The quick cuts emphasise the point of the adults choices of getting drunk having an affect on the children, as perhaps if they weren't drunk then the girls wouldn't have fought. The neglect and lack of hope is shown in the father's attention to his drink and cigarettes rather than breaking up the fight between his daughters.

As the film comes to a close, the mother and father meet at the tracks again but no words are exchanged between them and choose to walk in different directions. Connoting that despite the man's efforts of affection towards the woman, he knows it's a futile attempt. As the two parties separate, the brown haired girl runs back to pick up a rock and almost throws it at the mother and daughter, copying what her brother did earlier in the film. This can also suggest that children as just as capable as expressing adult feelings (jealously, hatred, anger), as expressed earlier, despite having been represented as innocent and vulnerable.

Task 2 - Research Into Existing Products: Levi Strauss Binary Oppositions - Crime Genre

In the late twentieth century, two theorists by the names Claude Levi Strauss and Roland Barthes developed the idea of "Binary Opposites" which exist only as of cultural creations within the current society. They discovered that representations of words and objects only had significant meaning due to the fact they had an opposite.

In applying this to today's movie's, there are very clear binary opposites in most genres and within those movies. A good example of these Binary Opposites is the Crime genre which most simply focuses on the polar differences between the good and bad, justice and injustice. Within the movie Heat (1995), the opening sequence clearly presents these opposites within how the thief act, how they dress, what they intend to do and on a basic moral ground.

In the opening scene, there is an overall presence that portrays the thieves as being more calculated and more sophisticated than any "normal" band of thieves, and also that they have everything so planned out that they can avoid the Law. One of the most notable Binary Opposites is the use in prop choice and vehicles by the thieves who are supplied with advanced assault rifles and have managed to obtain heavy duty vehicles. On the opposite side of the spectrum however, it is very aware that the security seen the be being robbed are merely equipped with mere handguns and batons showing that very clearly the Law can not compete with these thieves, thus supporting the theory founded by Strauss and Barthes which further emphasises the conventional "bad guys"'s villainy and tone in the movie.

The parallel of who is outwitting who is played with throughout the entire run of the movie with Al Pacino not only being dedicated to stopping the criminals, which plays to the conventions within the genre, but it also shows the audience that these two Binary Opposites aren't in a stable position at any point in the movie. This point is further emphasised later in the movie when the two leads Al Pacino and Robert De Niro have a "face off" in a restaurant, neither of them giving into their set Binary Opposite. The typical opposite that many Crime movies use is having the "Good Guys" be represented as the smart people who are solving the case and figuring it out and the "Bad Guys" be the nonsensical people who are always tripping up over themselves and making mistakes for the benefit of clearly defining these Opposites. Se7en is a good example of this but uses it to the advantage of creating a twist at the climax of the movie, leading the audience to believe that just as the Detectives were about to solve the case, the Villain reveals their carefully calculated plan which is several steps ahead of the Detectives, completely swapping the conventional Binary Opposites that the movie, and other's in it's genre, have set up throughout the story.