Eden Morrissey

Term 1B Evaluation

Last term we covered three topics: The Big Issue, Music Videos and The Jungle Book. We learnt
about their history, target audience, creators and so on and I will be demonstrating what I have
learnt through this text.

The Big Issue magazine launched in 1991 in response to the growing number of rough sleepers on
the streets of London, by offering people the opportunity to earn a legitimate income through selling
a magazine to the public. Twenty-five years on, vendors come from a variety of backgrounds and
face the problems associated with poverty and inequality. John Anthony Bird (who had been born
into a poor irish family and been made homeless at age 5) created the magazine in 1991 with
Gordon Roddick, cofounder of The Body Shop. In November 1995, he launched The Big Issue
Foundation to further aid the homeless and support vendors of The Big Issue. He is currently on the
board of directors for the company. The Big Issue magazine started as a local London venture, but
expanded with specific editions and services to other British cities, and then to other countries. The
Big Issue’s target audience is educated individuals typically aged 18-39. Slightly more women read
the magazine than men and 48 percent of The Big Issue Readers are high income earners. The Big
Issue has a reputation for its comedic covers containing intertextuality. Intertextuality is when a text
is created referencing another or others. It is used to create layers of meaning and comedy to
serious topics. One example of The Big Issue using intertextuality is when the election was
happening and they released a cover with David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage’s heads
photo shopped onto a very famous photo of the band ABBA performing on a photo shopped Strictly
Come Dancing stage. The cover includes headlines and captions quoting famous ABBA songs like
“The winner takes it all” suggesting the election has been turned into a talent show. As a class, we
were set the task to create our own cover using intertextuality for The Big Issue. I chose to do my
cover on the issue of Brexit and intertextualised the 2001 movie Mean Girls which is still referenced
on social media today.

Another topic we studied was music videos. We learnt about the history of music videos, which
originated from short clips from musicals in the 1950’s and slowly became a phenomenon through
the 60’s thanks The Beatles. We also learnt there are three main types of music videos: Narrative,
Performance and Artistic.

A narrative music video is a video consisting mainly of a story line relating to the lyrics and genre of
the song. This is a good technique to use for engaging the audience. These videos tend to tell a story
depicted within the lyrics of the song. A good example of a narrative music video is I Know I’m Not
the Only One by Sam Smith.

A performance music video is a video where the band/artist is performing the song to the camera or
audience. This works best with high tempo songs and can create the illusion of a concert setting. A
good example of a performance music video is 30 Seconds to Mars- Closer to the Edge

An artistic music video is a video with an artistic concept more than a story line. They often
concentrate on a specific editing technique. A good example of an artistic music video is Her Morning
Elegance by Oren Lavie.

We then created our own music videos. We were shown earlier on in the term how to use adobe
premiere to edit videos but I decided to use iMovie because that is the software I have used for
years. I chose to do a narrative music video and I think I went quite well.
Eden Morrissey

Finally we also studied The Jungle Book. The books were written by Rudyard Kipling in 1894 as a call
for discipline during a particularly difficult period of imperialism. Kipling, a white, middle class,
privileged man, wrote the stories as a series of fables, designed to impart moral lessons to children
through animal characters. Most of the stories that comprise "The Jungle Book" were first published
in magazines in 1893-1894. Kipling was already a popular author by this time. The stories consist of
Anthropomorphism which is the attribution of human characteristics or behaviour to a god, animal,
or object. In The Jungle Books case, the attribution of human characteristics and behaviour are to
animals which exist within Kipling’s fables in order to tell moral stories in a less serious, child friendly
way. There have been hundreds of adaptations of The Jungle Books throughout the years since it
was published, the most well-known being Disney’s 1967 animation, complete with a soundtrack
too. The film was a family animation musical that featured Jazz-swing music, a classically black
genre. In the early 1960’s president JFK’s death made many feel that their hopes died too, the films
purpose was purely to entertain but there are cultural things happening in the background that
reinforce the films relevance at the time. In 2016, Disney created another The Jungle Book film. This
film told the same story with the same characters but was made with today’s technology and ended
up looking incredibly realistic. The 2016 film revives classic characters but for a new generation.

Due to their 1967 animation, Disney owns the rights to the animation and can continue to exploit
those rights. After all, they lead the world in the production and distribution of pop culture. For the
2016 film, some synergistic heavy lifting was done by Disney theme parks. During the jam-packed
spring break weeks, park theaters in Florida and California offered sneak-peek footage of the movie,
with Mr. Favreau, providing introductions.