Media Magazine Conference

Professor David Buckingham
Chewing gum for the brain: Why do people talk such rubbish about Media Studies? 

To begin with, David Buckingham introduced this topic in a negative way by showing examples where the media makes strong negative opinions against Media studies as a subject. The Daily Mail quoted ‘Studying Simpsons was duming down the study of Shakespeare in English’. A private school, Harrow also said that it gives students false hopes to the future. On the other hand, Michael Gove who was interested in Media studies did say that it is a subject where it potentially boosts schools averages but there is no evidence to prove this. These examples highlights that Media is considered as a ‘soft’ subject which is not take seriously.

David Buckingham used the term ‘trendy travesty’ in a lot of detail proposing that Media doesn’t guarantee a job after you graduate and also a ‘Mickey Mouse’ subject.

After this debate and opinions of various people, David started to talk about the history in how English Literature wasn’t accepted at first and how it took a lot of criticism. Two people, Frank and Queenie were the introducers of Media Studies within schools. They pushed and pushed until it was accepted as they proposed that there was nothing wrong with it academically.

In the USA, they claimed that media studies goes against defending young innocent kids from the violence, drugs, sex and obesity that may be involved whilst studying it. 

Overall, David summarised his debate on whether Media Studies was a soft subject or not. His first argument was that it connects many subjects together, it’s always around us therefore worth studying and most importantly it is actually liked by employers. Some statistics to prove this is; 2/3 of graduates after 6months get a job and a high percentage mostly get jobs in the media.

Dr. Julian McDougall:
Online media, Cleggmania and the Cowell Factor.
How do online media and convergence impact on the ways audiences and producers use and create media?

Julian McDougall’s main argument was that online media has become a massively used resource to communicate and socialise. Referring to Web 1.0 which involves newspapers and books which are now quite unpopular to the young generation will eventually die out. At the moment, we live within Web 2.0 which are social networking sites, emailing, video conferences and YouTube.

Using this, Julian posed this question; will media influence democracy in the future? He mentioned that online media has already made countries more democratic, but is it a good or bad aspect?

Overall, Julian told us as media students that we need to be more critical compared to the general population who are very opinionated without any thought.

Pete Fraser:
Perfecting your production work. How to get the most out of your practical projects.

Pete Fraser gave lots of tips on how to succeed on various media productions for example, a music video, a trailer or an opening to the film. He showed us some examples of ones that got low grades but also ones that were simple and effective and got very high marks. 

From this lecture, I took away many things, mostly on the procedures of creating a media production successfully with maximum resources and planning.  Research is the most important aspect because it sets you up to what you are making, examples, evidence, all angles and the audiences are key aspects to look up. Moving onto the planning side, he mentioned that you need to plan all eventualities and show the process in which you are heading.  The work you’ve done can be recorder by blogging, taking pictures and just making sure everything is organised.

When making initial ideas, simplicity is very important because from there you can build without it being too complicated and confusing. Also, you need to make sure your plan is realistic otherwise in problems may occur when producing it. This leads onto thinking about the people, places and props which need to be decided as early as possible just in case something goes wrong. Ensure all characters are serious for your production to get the best out of your media production.

Lastly, before handing in the coursework, Pete Fraser recommended that feeback from peers and other teachers may be beneficial to improve your work even further rather than just the first one you do and handing it in.

Overall, this lecture was very insightful to the detail and organisation we need when producing my film trailer.