Creativity HT CA

10 commandments for reflective writing;

1) Focus on creative decisions informed by institutional knowledge

2)Focus on creative decisions informed by theoretical understanding

3)Evaluate the process-don't just describe it

4) Relate your media to 'real media' at a micro level

5) Try to deconstruct yourself

6) Choose clearly relevant micro examples to relate to macro reflective themes

7) Avoid binary oppositions

8) Try to write about your broader media culture

9) Adopt a meta discourse

10) Quote, Paraphrase, reference.

In OCR media studies book there is a case study by Sophie Hughes called 'woman clone'. It brings up lots of areas for duscussion.

MEDIA LANGUAGE;

• Uses semiotic approach in dialogue with theoretical perspectives from feminists and postmodernists.


• Theme area of critical perspectives linking to synoptics.


• Pull out any one of the micro images that make up the cover and analyse it in isolation.


• Representation of couple in formal dress this could purely represent a straightforward social activity. But placed in this frame along side the rest of the images anchor the name of band/album.


• Sign is motivated towards a cynical response.


• All images suggest a cloning of women in relation to dominant ideas to gender.

GENRE;

• It is possible to locate different styles of covers in sub genre categories e.g. Sophie might consider how her abstract symbolic approach might sit along side other genres of a contrasting style.

NARRATIVE;

• entirely grounded in cultural knowledge linked to a CD cover, we are socilalised to expect this relationship between texts and the ways they are packaged.
• The logo of the band anchors the selection of images and therefore constructs a narrative and how it expects the media to show various signifiers.

Narrative is such a powerful tool that it is, arguably, an even more important key concept than genre. Narrative has probably existed as long as human beings; It is likely that the stone age artists who drew 18,000 year old cave paintings expected narratives to be woven around their images. (Nick Lacey 2000)