Million Reasons - Lady Gaga

Million Reasons - Lady Gaga

Women stereotypes:

Makeup

Pink

Attitude

Vain

Caring

Weak (physically and mentally)

Need to conform to society :

          Marriage

          Children

          Housewife

          cooking, cleaning

Bad driver

A million Reasons is a contrasting example of a contemporary music video from a world famous, white, female artist. This particular video (from the album Joanne) marks a change in direction for the artist as media producers make use of media language to construct representations that might attract a broader, more mainstream market whilst not alienating the artist’s core fan base. 

Representation of the music video:

Angry in the car.

A million reasons to walk away, walk away from her job and popstar life, or from her last relationship

Taken back home, not where she wants to be

Being pandered to

Being smothered

Upset

Hat, associated with cowboys

doesn't want to be found

Other people offer support

The male driver offers support

Black and white, in front of the mirror, removing her emotions, as she has to continue the show.

Friends offer support

Religious ties, "Lord show me the way"*, the rosary, the priest

*ties in with the fact that she is lost

in the beginning, she is rolling around in the dirt, like she is having a temper tantrum. 

symbolizes heartbreak and hope

She is wearing pink representing a girls colour

This song is about her being depressed with her life as a star, as shown in her reaction at the beginning of the video where she is either jumping out of a car or having a tantrum about her position. Also shown by her looking upset and angry in the car on the way back from the desert. While I'm on the subject the fact that she is out in the desert is proof that she is trying to run away from something, therefore she is in the desert. When she finally gets back to the studio? The screen goes black and white, to symbolize her emotional state, which is empty. She does not want to be where she is, but she is being ignored and has to put up with it. Hence the line "million reasons to let you go", meaning that she wants to stop her job.

Stereotypes associated with the music industry:

Only sings about love,

Classic piano and singing,

Doesn't wear many clothes,

Sexualised,

Gender is constructed through discourse, dependant on culture and historical context.

Liesbet van Zoonen: Feminist theory
Suggests gender is constructed through discourse, and that its meaning varies according to cultural and historical context.
For example how women are portrayed in the media and how they were thought of throughout history.
Advocates that the very presentation of women’s bodies as objects to be looked at is a core element of western patriarchal culture
Ie, they are there to be looked at.
Also presents that in mainstream culture, the visual and narrative codes that are used to construct the male body are different from those used to objectify the female body Codes- a system of words, letters, Feminist theory:
Meaning that because men make the media, this is why women are objectified. Also, men are congratulated and given credit for their bodies whereas women are not.

Propose that feminism is a struggle to end sexist/patriarchal oppression and the whole ideology of domination 

Suggest the idea that feminism is a political commitment rather than a lifestyle choice 

Advocates that other factors, such as race and class, as well as sex, determine the extent to which individuals are exploited, discriminated against or oppressed

Basically, the struggle against male-dominated society.

Notes

Lady Gaga is representing the female gender in this video.
Stereotypes:

     Emotional

     cares about her appearance

    Is vulnerable

    Pink is a girls colour

    She needs support from her "Sisters"

Proof

Emotional, close shot showing that she is crying, she puts sunglasses on to try and hide this.

Cares about her appearance, This is shown when she is having her makeup done by the makeup artists. 

Is vulnerable, this is shown when she is alone in the desert and when she is being touched on the shoulder by the man behind her, possibly a priest.

Pink is a girls colour, she wears pink in the video

She needs support from her "Sisters" she receives a gift from someone who calls her "sis".

Screenshots

Essay

Lady Gaga's Million reasons is a music video that uses many stereotypes in order to represent feminine identity. One example of this is the stereotype of vulnerability. The stereotype of vulnerability is shown in the music video at the time stamp of 3:32. In this part of the music video, she is being comforted by a friend who also may be a priest. This friend is also a man which shows that feminine identity involves being comforted by a man. This could also be included in the stereotype that women are emotional. The camera shot in this example is a close face shot to show that she is happy that the man is there but is also close to tears. A close face/top body shot is needed in this situation to show that she is emotional, but in this case, it cannot be too close or else you would not be able to see the man in the background and know his significance to her.

At the beginning of the video, she is seen rolling around in the desert, like she is having a temper tantrum. This coincides with the idea that she is feeling depressed and angry about her life, and that she wants to stop being a star because it is breaking her down. This supports the stereotype that she is emotional, and can be interpreted to mean that this is what it is to be a woman. This happens right from the time stamp 0:00 to 0:03. The shot in this situation is actually a far off body shot which shows that she is distressed but that she is also alone.   

Many of the lyrics also show how she is feeling and how this represents certain stereotypes. For example, she says that she has a million reasons to leave but she only "need one good reason to stay'. This is a counter-stereotype to the main one that states women are vulnerable and need looking after because it supports the stereotype that women usually leave men and are meant the be unobtainable. This supports the idea that women are independent and can make their own opinions. Whilst she is singing this she is walking towards the camera with a full body shot this shows that she is in a position of power and authority, and she is pointing at the camera, also adding to the power in her stance. In conclusion, this puts a different spin on women's believed identity at least from the point of the media, from the weak gender to the strong gender.

One other point is that she needs support from her "sisters". This is shown in the timestamp 3:39 where she is being helped up by her friends and she is then hugging them. it is also shown at the timestamp 3:07 when she receives a gift with a note saying "love you, Sis". This gives the idea that women support each other and that they can work together to achieve greatness    

                    

Minecraft Media Analysis

Minecraft

Media industry: How the media industries’ processes of production, distribution, and circulation affect media forms and platforms.

Media audience: How media forms target, reach and address audiences, how audiences interpret and respond to them and how members of audiences become producers themselves. 

Digitally convergent media: Video games consoles are an excellent example of a digitally convergent device, you can not only play games but access social media, surf the internet, stream films and TV content and upload content into cloud-based servers. Cross-media content helps maximize profits and also improve reach to new customers. 

Production: This refers to all phases of designing, developing and making the media product;. 

Distribution: This refers to all processes linked to delivering the media product to audiences both through tangible (disc) and digital (Cloud-based) media. 

Consumption: Explores the way in which the media text is used by audiences for pleasure but also explores the rise of user-generated content across several platforms. 

Sandbox game: A world that is free for the player to explore and change on their own terms. no rules or stories. 

Sold to the Evil Microsoft for $2.5 Billion!!!

It was created in 2009 (released in 2011) by Markus Alexej Persson Lead developer of Mojang the development team

Minecraft: It’s an open-ended game where players decide what they want to do by themselves!

Minecraft memes are important to the company because it increases the audience, hits non-players and spreads awareness for the game without the company spending any money.


Minecraft is the second most successful video game of all time behind Tetris.
It was created and designed by Markus Persson, a game programmer, who also developed and published the game through his company Mojang. A full version of the game went on release in November 2011.
To date, well over 121 million copies have been sold across all platforms, including over 27 million PC copies, making it the biggest selling PC game of all time. 

The success of the games market.

The UK’s US$4 billion; 

China, US$24.4 billion 

America’s US$23.6 billion. 

A recent report by the UKIE1 suggests that the global games market is now worth in excess of US$100 billion.  

In comparisons to traditional media like film, radio, print, and television, video games are much younger, exponentially growing since the 1970s.

The advantages of lower cost user-generated marketing are that it costs relatively no money and spreads very quickly. One other advantage is that this form of marketing is very viable for word of mouth transportation because people can talk about the game, Ie Minecraft and the user-generated content, which then promotes more user generation, which promotes more of the subject matter, going round and round in a circle.

Minecraft and lego synergize because they are both children's games and focus around the same core elements. For example, they both rely on imagination and cognitive skills to build creations. There are no rules in their games, meaning anything can be done at any time. They both rely on blocks to build there structures and creations. So this means that a Minecraft Lego set would work well because there is very little difference between building on Minecraft and building with lego. Therefore because they have so many similarities it would be easy for lego to make a Minecraft set. This benefits both because Lego is a well-known brand that Minecraft can take advantage of and Minecraft is a new trend that is receiving a lot of attention and is now the main model for video games.   

Uses for education: Collaboration, Coding, Creative problem solving, Hand-eye coordination, engineering  

In November 2011, prior to the game’s official release, Minecraft had over 16 million registered users and 4 million purchases. 

Due to its popularity, Minecraft was released across multiple platforms becoming a commercially viable franchise with increased interactivity. In particular, Minecraft: Pocket Edition was released on Sony Xperia Play, available on Sony Xperia smartphones. Minecraft also becomes available on Android and iOS devices shortly after. 

Game Genre:

Action

Arcade

Adventure

Fighting

Racing

FPS

RPG
Sandbox

TPS

MMO

Action Rpg

It is worth considering how a simple PC Java game has become a globally successful phenomenon across all consoles and hand-held devices

2017 Minecraft is now a multi-platform game which is not only just for PC gamers but those who own smartphones, Microsoft consoles (Xbox); PlayStation 3, 4 and PS Vita; and more recently Nintendo consoles (Wii U) and hand-held devices (Nintendo Switch and Nintendo New 3DS, New 2DS XL and New 3DS XL) 

The audience was involved in the production of the game.

Then Microsoft took over and developed it in C++ allowing for Cross-Platform Gaming and more complex gameplay mechanics and items improving visuals.

Minecraft is about creating and exploring to your heart's content, therefore VR would be a good addition to this because it would put the player directly in the world.

Basically a telltale game


Sky does Minecraft - Sky does everything does Minecraft 11Million 3.7 Billion views overall
Do vlogs, Minecraft and more popular games ie Fortnite

Pewdiepie 80 million subscribers 111billion views

Before Minecraft realms random people would have to make dedicated servers for the Minecraft community, and would then host their IP address on the internet, to allow people to join. The IP addresses would be put out on certain websites that people would look up. The income to support the server would often come from the people using it who would by special ranks unique to the server, or exclusive items that the creators of the server would add by using command blocks. The use of the youtubers listed above means that Mojang does not have to pay for advertising and that it is community-based.

Minecraft Market Place

Effectively a store that people can upload their creations to, which are then bought for money, of which Microsoft takes a small portion of.

Essay

Minecraft was produced by a Swedish programmer called Marcus Perrson. The game was originally called Cave game and was designed to be a college project originally. He started off working in his bedroom, asking around online and coding in java code, to make it easy to help with and accessible for other programmers. This helped to keep the production costs to just that of one computer and education costs. He announced the games progress and development on certain online forums and made regular updates on youtube. This quickly spread around the internet, and several online gaming news sites chipped in and wrote articles about the game that he was developing. This also kept the advertising costs to practically zero. The game was originally thought up and started development in 2008 and was officially released in 2011, this meant that Marcus had 3 years to build awareness for his game and 3 years to develop and patch his game to release a stable version that people would enjoy. From 2011 Minecraft exploded all over the internet, as it was a fairly cheap game with pretty much infinite options of what to do in the game. This was the beginning of the era of sandbox games. Sandbox games are games that involve the player having a set of basic game mechanics given to them, and then being told to do whatever they like. This was a big hit at the time because it had never been done on such a scale before. Where most games followed a core design of story, progression and overall goal and endgame, and the others just being online games that consist of the same thing over and over, Minecraft gave control completely over to the player. 

Minecraft then proceded to pump out update after update, fixing bugs and adding new content to the game adding to the replayability which is the games main feature, although strangely, yet thankfully, this was not capitalised on massively as other corporations would have. However, by 2014 Microsoft bought Mojang, the company developing Minecraft, for $2.5 Billion. After this event that began to change. During the period before Microsoft bought Mojang they relied on youtubers making videos of their game as the advertisement, this kept costs to a minimum and is what helped them become so successful, but when Microsoft bought them Microsoft then began to advertise the game on their own sites and introduced several new features that helped to make even more money out of this game.

One of these features was called Minecraft realms, and this was Minecraft Realms. This is basically rented server space, making it easier for people to play over WAN (wide area networks), and while this did make it easier for people to play with each other because they did not have to set up servers which took some technological know how. But This killed off the public user-generated servers, communities that had up to1000 people on at a time had now been reduced to no more than 50 people if even that. Microsoft also created an educational mode, which made sense as they already had contracts with the education sector of the government so they can sell their computers to schools so, why not use one of their products to add to that part of their company. 

The education mode is basically Minecraft but with certain subtle changes that make the game applicable for a teacher-student relationship. It is proven to help with hand-eye coordination, teamwork, problem-solving skills and other important skills that are developed in childhood. Also when Microsoft took over, they changed the games source code from javascript to C++, they claimed that this was so it could be played on multiple platforms, but it also made it harder for people to make user-generated modifications to the game, more commonly known as "mods". This meant that people could play with their friends on other platforms as this offered cross-platform support, but it also put an end to mods, yet another example of Microsoft's capitalization. 

However, this cross-platform support meant Minecraft was available for so many more people than just PC, Mac and Linux players (pronounced Lin rhymes with tin ux..not line oox James). It instead opened up availability for PlayStation, Xbox and Switch users. Meaning their market would be much bigger, generating more sales and by extension more money. This also gave rise to Virtual Reality, and really Minecraft is the ideal game for VR conversion. Also considering Microsoft own their own VR device it was a no brainer. 

Finally as the reason why Minecraft is so applicable to a wide range of different age groups is that creating your own world is amazing to a small child. But the game also offers some difficulty and has a really high skill cap for interesting builds, command block creations and Redstone circuitry. This makes it more appealing to higher ages as well.

Now am I going to go on a rant about Youtube because Minecraft and Youtube are involved with each other a lot. As I have discussed earlier Youtube is key to Minecraft's success and advertisement in the beginning but Minecraft was only successful because of Youtube. Also because of how Youtube chose to change its content at the time played a massive part. Instead of long blogs which was what people were doing, and moved on to short episodic series that left the viewer something to look forward to next episode. However, without Minecraft being viewed on Youtube, Youtube would not have become so popular either.