Representing Reality - Mediation

In today's lesson we read about Mediation. The media is known for placing us at one remove from reality. They take something that is genuine, either a person or an event and alter its form to produce whatever they are aiming for, and it is this text we as readers and viewers end up reading. This type of representation can be linked into our music promo videos as we have been constantly editing our video to portray a specific storyline.

It is like thinking of an album, it is not just the sound of one or two musicians but the sound of mediation. The authenticity in the sound of the album has been mediated before it reaches to listeners. This is done through engineers and producers changing the sound which is created in the music studio until it is 'just right'.

Linking this specific type of representation into the production of our music videos, it can be said through the chosen setting and the use of our mise-en-scence we have mediated our video into a precise representation. This is evidently true as my group and I made sure we editing bits of our video which did not look like it conformed to the stereotype of the 'RnB' genre.

When something like the news is switched on we automatically tend to beleive what is being said to us. However, the News is the greatest mediated piece of media in today's society. Specific shots are used in order to interpret the story they are telling in a specific way. The story is always different to the experience of someone who was at the scene, this shows how mediated the News is.

Here are the three key things to look for in Mediation:

1. Selection: Whatever is being portrayed to you, there is a greater selection that has been omitted. For example, a specific picture has been chosen from a great number of pictures, to be shown to a wide range of audience.
2. Organisation: Different components are organised in the way the producer has ordered it to be in, usually not the same as in real life. This is known as mise-en-scene, linking this into the production of my music promo video, we chose to film in a females bedroom and urban area to follow the conventions of 'RnB'.
3. Focusing: The whole mediation process is to please us, the audience. Therefore, the audience are encouraged to concentrate on a chosen aspect. For example, when a film or video wants to depict the importance of character the camera pans towards them.