Critical Investigation & Linked Production Ideas...


1. To what extent are the mentally ill beautified in the media landscape?
- A Documentary exploring how the media portrays the mentally ill, coparing to the relaity of mental dissorders
- An opening to a soap opera, where the protagonist is diagnosed with a mental disorder, either glamourising it or oposing to this idea, and showing the reality of it

2. Is it still the norm to have 'White' main characters in the mainstream media?
- A documentary exploring different films/tv shows that have 'white' protagonist and those with ethnic minority- and compare sucess and reactions
- look at different adverts, those for higher and working classes and comapre what nationalities are used for which

3. Has classic Disney films, given false impressions on idealist Gender Roles/Relationships?
- A documentary exploring the view on society's on gender roles and if exaggerated films produced by institutions such as Disney (Pixar) have had an impact on these thoughts

Chosen Idea...

To what extent are the mentally ill beautified in the media landscape?

M- as it is a documentary, mostly natural lighting will be used, with a range of camera angles. Diagetic and non-diagetic sound will be used, and it is typical of documentaries to use a lot of sound bridges

I - non-hollywood, mainstream and will also be shown past the watershed (due to language, and offensive scenes)

G - this documentary genre will be: social issue and also reportage/investigative

R- A vary of positive and negative representations of those who are mentally ill

A- target audience ages: 15-25, students, those who are interested in the material featured such as Eastenders. These will be mainstreamers, but also explorers and they will be interested in whats behind what the media presents to us concering those who are mentally ill.

I - the positive values of this documentary will be to educate, inform and to encourage social change, as it will hope to change the ways those of mentally ill are percieved, whether this is different to the way the media present it or whether it conincides with it

N- as it will be a documentary, it will have a linear narrative.

The Global Village

Marshall McLuhan

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/bas9401.html

The underlying concept of McLuhan's view of electr(on)ic technology is that it has become an extension of our senses, particularly those of sight and sound

we are increasingly linked together across the globe and this has enabled us to connect with people at the other side of the world as quickly as it takes us to contact and converse with those who inhabit the same physical space (i.e the people that live in the same village)

McLuhan argues that it is the speed of these electronic media that allow us to act and react to global issues at the same speed as normal face to face verbal communication


http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_mcluhan.htm


McLuhan chose the insightful phrase "global village" to highlight his observation that an electronic nervous system (the media) was rapidly integrating the planet

His insights were revolutionary at the time, and fundamentally changed how everyone has thought about media, technology, and communications ever since

McLuhan's second best known insight is summarized in the expression "the medium is the message", which means that the qualities of a medium have as much effect as the information it transmits


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan

it is a tool that profoundly shapes an individual's and, by extension, a society's self-conception and realization

the world has become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us

A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individual's encyclopedic function and flip into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind