'Good as Gold' Shelter advert

The campaign focuses on a young girl who seems to be practicing conventional acts of "christmas kindness" however the advert adds a statistic and its use of emotive language as '131,000' children wish for a home at christmas, shelter is aso known for being very factual. Shelter also plays on the idea of young, white girls being vunerable, and also mums with babies as they are who are presented as homeless in this advert, this evokes feeings of sympathy and empathy.

 Using this stereotype highlights the need for social responsibility, to raise awareness, it also makes their audience think about who could be affected by homlessness using the same girl in multiple different situations, a child on a bus, in the shops, a neighbour, a student, it raises a sense of compassion, responsibility and guilt. The use of strongly emotive and disturbing scenes place an expectation on the audience that if they are able they should be trying to help, it emphasises donating as an alturistic social behaviour. 

shelter began in the 1960's,to elieviate the stress of bad hosuing and homlesness, it was inspired by a BBC programme called 'Cathy come home' at the time the hoousing crisis was not well known but, now these adverts truy reflect the zeitgeist as anyone can be impacted by homlessness or rogue landlords which these adverts pay on as the make anyone feel they can be impacted.

The use of the sans serif font at the end of the advert evokes a sense of urgency, which reflects the house style and message of shelter. The red and black typogrpahy colour presents a sense of misery and danger, its also bold and stands out attracting attention (as part of an out of home campaign, where information may only be presented for a few seconds). The information being central, shows the magnitude of the problem and promotes the need to donate.

• Halls (preffereed meaning) is that homlessness can happen to anyone, and it plays on the demographic, and how the audience will percieve the ideology
• you could also argue that Gerbners 'mean world theory' is that these adverts would be broadcasted regularly and the audience will be effected by its message and feel that everyone is vunerable to homlesness

 'Gerbner' by Mark Dixon

key notes

1. fear cultivation 

•  media products can guide an audiences attitude, before mass media the churchand education systems applied the same techniques 
• television can influence everyone, especially due to the growing scale of people who have access to a televsion 
• he proves this point because you dont have to be literate to understand the easily accesible content, especially as its consumed by everyone, due to relativey low or no cost.
• television is predominantly produced by a few media makers, which leads to dominnat messages however this could be changing in recent times
• media products are encoded with realism, which makes it harder to seprate them from reality

     2. The violence index 

• the impapct and scale of violence depicted in film could be having an effect on the collective conciousness of society
• some of Gerbners findings incuded:

           - 8/10 programmes contained some kind of violence

           - 9/10 kids shows had violent content  

           - 8-16 episodes contained violence per hour 

           - females are normally depicted more vunerbale than men (1.32 females victims for each episode               of violence, compared to 1.19 males)

           - elderly,single and non white white females are prone to victimisation. The victimisation of this               category is common in drama programmes. while white males are least victimised.

• within the news industry theres a focus on violence becuase thats what attracts an audience 
• the more negative and vioent media consumed the more likey we are to believe that the world is this way 

     3. Cultivating fear and danger

•   Cultural indicators project designed to pressure television networks to remove violent content
• audiences exposed to more violence had a heightened perception of real world violence 
• it also found that higher viewing makes peope feel less trusting in others and fearful of the real world and the crimes
• Resonance: high crime areas=heavy tv viewers, subject to double the effects 
• Mainstreaming: heavy viewers that where less informed on crime, face more perception of violence, these kind of tv shows can change peoples perspecitves 
• heavy mass media consumption can make people more susceptible to messages in media products
• this is called 'Mean World Syndrome'

      3. violence on television represents symbolic power

• television creates winners and losers, social groups have hierarchy
• key groups of victims often have ideologically inferior status in the real word 
• dominance of white males as heroic law makers/enforcers, puts them in a social superior positon
• narratives such as bad people being stopped by the laaw and everyone having a happy ending as a result shows the messag of good will always win
• media justifies targetting key groups to violence
• audiences rely on authority for protection as they are to afraid to stand against percieved injustice 

      4.constructing content for the mainstream

• against media reliance on advertising revenue 
• media frames events so that it appears neutral

      5.cultivation theory (Magazines + internet)

• Gerbners interest stemmed from the expansion of tv ownership post war
• encuturalisation (a process that forms a persons identity) is caused by tv

 Super curricular 

 'A screenwriters guide to the reading (and writing) the media ' article from the Media magazine 

The article looks into deconstructing the genius behind the 'MasterChef' programme with Ian Pike. He advises looking into the screenwriters perspective, because its often not just the drama, comedy, arguments and tension that keeps an audience entertained. Looking into the idea of narrative, its a summary about what actually happens and what makes a plot so enjoyable, how an audience perceives it compared to a screenwriter.

 Action is the most commonly used technique within any piece of media, it follows Todorov's narratology theory as nothing exciting would happen if the equilibrium never shifts, Pike talks about how language can shift the focus and weight of  scene to make moments more light hearted or serious to create dramatic tension; which allows him to analyse any media product to develop a deeper understanding of why or how something has been written.