Term 1b write up

The Big Issue is an independent charity aimed to help the homeless make a living by selling copies of
the magazine and letting them keep a profit. Launched in September 1991 by a man called John Bird,
the Big Issue has had great success in achieving their aim by selling over 200 million copies. John Bird
himself came from a lower class background, spending years living on and off the streets, which
sparked his idea in creating The Big Issue. Now Bird has been granted a Lord due to his immensely
great work with The Big Issue. The newspaper is read by an estimated 406,000 people in the United
Kingdom every week. The big issue has a very diverse audience, using audience demographics the
company have worked out that 72% of their readers in the ABC1 category, meaning they are range
from higher to middle class. This still leaves 27% of readers from another category, having such a
diverse audience is a struggle as it is difficult to appeal to everyone’s media needs. In lessons we
learnt about how the Big Issue uses intertextuality in their magazine. Intertextuality refers to when
you create one text in reference to another, it is used to create layers and meaning that at times are
hidden, and you can use a direct quote, parody or a similar genre to make the reader think “I’ve seen
this before.” The Big Issue uses this particularly in the font covers of the magazine to attract the
audience and sometimes give a different view on how the issue is portrayed. An example of
intertextuality in The Big Issue was in 2016 around the time of Brittan leaving the EU, the magazine
photo shopped the politicians head onto the members of ABBA and used song lyrics to have a
comedic twist and a cheap pun on the situation. We were set a task of creating our own Big Issue
cover with the theme of intertextuality on Photoshop. I personally find that Photoshop is clearly laid
out and easy to use and as I thoroughly planned my cover, it was enjoyable to complete. I based it
around the topic of the Queen not paying taxes and portrayed her as ‘trumping’ on the nation.

The next topic we looked at was music videos, history was made in 1981 when MTV launched the
first 24 hour music video channel, the first video to be played was ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’
performed by The Buggles. A music video is a message to the audience, the main purpose of music
videos is to promote artists and promote brands. But it's mainly to promote the track. A music
video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes.
One of the famous music video is for the song ‘Thriller’ by Michael Jackson, released in 1982 and
currently has over 478 million views. When released it was the first kind of music video which had a
short, horror based film in it. When creating a music video you have to decide what genre you are
going to do, there are three main genres which are performance, narrative and artistic. A
performance video will show the artist performing an act, often lip syncing to the song or playing
musical instruments. A narrative music video contains a visual story which is easy to follow, there
would be no lip syncing, and however the story is a concept and may relate to the song. An artistic
music video has no obvious narrative or lip syncing, an image may be manipulated and it is common
in experimental videos. In this topic we created our own music video, first by using an easily set out
planning page we had to plan our videos, making the task a lot more efficient. Taking into
consideration the mise-en-scene and the artistic performance type I went out and got a variety of
shot types and angles to create my music video to the song ‘Magic’ by Coldplay. To put the video
together we used Premiere, I thought this soft wear was easy to use as the lay out was clear and
Alan taught is very well.

The last topic we learnt about in term 2 was The Jungle Book. The Jungle book was written by
Rudyard Kipling in 1894. The book was dedicated to his baby daughter Josephine who was just one
year old. She died five years later of pneumonia. The book was written in short stories put together
over a year and at first the success of the book was not great, but over time it became more
successful because it was a series, enticing the audience to be a part of it. Over the years there have
been many adaptations of the jungle book. In the 20th century, Walt Disney made the most famous
and well known version of the jungle book when they released it as an animated film in 1967. In the
1960’s there was a civil rights movement making the Britain and America more liberated, the movie
had a theme of acceptance, enhancing the film’s success as it made over 141 million dollars. Later in
2016, Disney released a new version of the film which really brought the animals to life, this was
more of a fantasy adventure film, having no real meaning other than a newer version of the film, it
made over 966 million dollars.

A theme throughout the jungle book is Anthropomorphism, this is the attribution of human
characteristics or behaviours to a God, animal or object. By giving the animals in The Jungle Book
human traits to tell their stories, helps us to make sense of their world and ours. It may make the
media more entertaining and also more accepting to children. The anthropomorphic animals serve
well as models of behaviour in a communal society. Lastly we learnt about the ownership, marketing
and distribution of The Jungle Book. Disney have owner ship over the jungle book, they own the
rights of the cartoon meaning they can continue to make money throughout years to come. Their
rights to the book have expired so anyone can use the story line but they still own the characters
and the songs. Different companies can have their own version of the film but cannot look or act like
Disney’s. The format films are exported in have changed over the years from Cinema to VHS to CD
and now online streaming, so Disney have to stay up to date.
Disney use social media to promote their new stuff, people share the stuff meaning more people will
know about it.