Scouse film website

http://thehouseofscouse.weebly.com/scouse-movies.html

Knockout Scousers - July 2012, E4

"Liverpool's tough areas of Huyton and Toxteth are known for their riots, racial tensions of the past and youth issues of today, but also have a story of hope to tell. Knockout Scousers has followed fighters as they emerge from the city's amateur boxing clubs to become contenders for the Olympic Games".

"The film also follows Merseyside success story and local hero Tom Stalker who, at 27, has gone from stealing cars for teenage kicks to becoming Team GB captain".

Philip Boland

Cities

Volume 25, Issue 6, December 2008, Pages 355–369

The construction of images of people and place: Labelling Liverpool and stereotyping Scousers

"This paper examines the labelling of Liverpool and stereotypes of Scousers. It explains how historical and contemporary events, and their coverage in various arms of the media, construct social and spatial imaginations of the city. This involves a more systematic contribution to the how and why dimensions of negative place imagery and social stereotypes, and enhances our understanding of the processes and issues affecting our interpretations of people and place. The analysis is both historical and contemporaneous in teasing out how previous and current events shape the perceptions of insiders and outsiders. This paper reveals that despite concerted efforts to re-brand Liverpool the city continues to face difficult challenges with ongoing bad publicity and negative place imagery."

Scousers - This Is England

This Is England is a 2006 British drama film written and directed by Shane Meadows. The story centres on young skinheads in England in 1983. The film illustrates how their subculture, which has its roots in 1960s West Indian culture, especially ska, soul, and reggae music, became adopted by white nationalists, which led to divisions within the skinhead scene.


Combo has a strong scouse accent and in the film he is represented in a negative way. He's an older skinhead who returns to the group after just serving a prison sentence - Committing crime, fits in with the typical negative stereotype of a scouser
He strongly expresses English nationalist and racist views - Giving scousers a racist representation



Racist antagonism of local shopkeeper Mr. Sandhu, a Pakistani man.
- In this scene,  Combo is seen firing racist abuse at the man and holding a machete towards his face.

Scouser Images

• Typical 'chav' style
• tracksuits
• liverpool football shirts - supporting where they come from - representing liverpool in a negative way 
• hair scraped back into a ponytail
• heavy make up
• scowls
• 'we don't care what you think' and 'we'll do what we want' attitude

Representation Of Scousers in the Media

The series Desperate Scousewives on E4, is about people living in liverpool wanting to show how they live their lives.
The main representations of 'scousers' in this reality series:
Rich
Glamorous
Big Houses
Expensive Lifestyles

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1886355.stm

This is a link to a BBC News report about 'international Scouse day' but not everyones happy about it.
It mentions in the article that when a newspaper needs a feature on juvenile crime, poverty or drugs, the journalist will look no further than liverpool.
To the southerners, liverpool is seen as a place 'full of rogues looking for houses to burgle'
This shows that Liverpool and 'Scousers' have a negative stereotype, and are unable to avoid negative reactions.

Post Production Homework

1. Photoshop

After I had taken photo's for my magazine I used photoshop to edit them. I hadn't used it that much before and didn't have much knowledge about it so it was new to me. I used tools such as the magic wand and the crop and different colour effects to get the image and style I wanted to fit in with my magazine. I learnt that Photoshop can be quite tricky but after some getting used to it gets easier to use.

2. Publisher

I used publisher for setting and writing everything out that needed to be in my magazine. I used it to get the layout correct for things like my double page spread. Its something that I had used many times before so I knew what I was doing and found it as always easy to use.

3. Blogger

I used to blogger as a way of keeping my work together all in one place so it was easy to find and look at. I hadn't used Blogger before but after I'd got the hang of it it was simple to use and I will carry on using it when doing other coursework.

4. Questionnaires

Before making the magazine I made a questionnaire to see what everyone would want to appear in a magazine. It was an effective way of finding out this information as I got all sorts of people to answer it e.g boys, girls, different ages and interests. But it was also quite time consuming.

Conventions Homework

1. Which were the most influential conventions for you? How did your study of them affect your decisions and outcomes?

When making my music magazine for AS, I was following an Indie style genre. I looked at existing magazines such as NME and Q a lot to get inspiration and ideas to make my own. With my theme in mind I was looking out for things such as colours used, font style and size, and the overall house style of the magazines. Both of the magazines had a large title at the top of the page that always stayed the same, I decided that my magazine would have the same so it stands out and people would be able to tell straight away what it is.

I decided to keep the colours of the written parts of the double page spread the same, this made it easier to read. I chose the colours carefully and so it would suit my theme of magazine, I used a burgundy colour as the interview was with girls and I thought the colour fitted well with an indie image.

I also put adverts in my magazine, in NME they had an advert on the contents page, I thought this worked well as its the first page you see so I decided to put a subscription advert on my contents page.

After not doing very much of this for my preliminary task I could tell the difference. The final look of my magazine looked far better than the practise one. After studying existing magazines I had a much better outlook and higher knowledge of what to put in mine.

2. Did you subvert any conventions that you studied in the music magazines?

Not really, I did play about with a few things like the heading of the magazine; I moved it around the page a bit but ended up keeping it at the top as I thought this worked best. Everything else that was in my magazine I kept similar to already existing magazines like NME. Due to lack of creation I didn't explore too much with it.

Homework 2

Detail how your understanding of the importance of good research and planning skills developed throughout the pre production of your AS coursework.

Having good background knowledge of how to achieve good research and make good planning skills before starting a piece of coursework is always very helpful. When I started my AS coursework, I didn't have much of a plan or schedule of when I was going to do each bit or how I was going to do it. As time went on I realised that I had lost a lot of valuable time and that it was really important to put everything into a plan so that I had enough time to get everything done. Getting good quality research and knowing how to do so is also very important as it helps you get a better idea on whatever it is you are trying to find out. You have to research it all into as much detail as you can in order to gain the most knowledge on what it is you are planning to do, otherwise the finished product won't be as good as it could be.

How did your knowledge of digital technology aid your research and planning skills throughout the pre production of your AS coursework?

Having knowledge of digital technology helped quite a bit throughout the pre production of my coursework. It meant that I was able to look things up on the computer for research into music magazines and everything else that was needed to fit into the genre of magazine I was looking at. Using the Internet to do this was very quick and helpful. Having the frequent use of a smart phone means that you could easily set out a plan/schedule to fit in everything that you need to do, using alarms if need be to remind you when to do it. I didn't use this idea for my last piece of coursework but for future coursework this could work really well.

Homework 1

1. Do you think you were creative or not throughout your coursework?

I tried to come up with creative ideas for my music magazine but it ended up looking quite basic in the end. Although I incorporated colour and designs that fit with the style of music. Also, when taking pictures I took into mind things like fashion, poses and location to make sure that it all fit in with the genre of my magazine.

2. Did technology enhance your creativity or not?

Yes it did help, modern technology enabled me to take high quality photo's on a digital camera and then edit them using software like photoshop on the computer. Having frequent use of modern technology meant that I could explore creativeness.

3. What ideas did you communicate and what stylistic techniques did you use? how did it relate to your interests / self identity?

We come up with lots of ideas like what colours to use throughout, and the style of the photo's and fashion styles for the people in the photo's. We then came up with what should be in the magazine and the sort of music that would fit th e style of the genre that we chose.

4. Was your product influenced by your environment?

When in the process of making my music magazine I always had other existing magazines in mind, and what the styles were like in the genre that I had chosen. So yes, my product was sort of influenced by my environment, I used existing styles and ideas and incorporated them into my own.

5. Was it original or did you add something extra to an original media text?

I tried to make my magazine as original as I could, and it didn't look like any other magazines that are out, the colours and designs were different but the layouts were very much similar to already existing music magazines.

6. Would you take any creative skills into future projects or have you been influenced to engage these skills in any other projects?

As my previous work wasn't as creative as I had wanted it to be, it has made me want to be a lot more creative when it comes to making my music video and made me want to explore a lot more new technology and different software in order to help me be more creative and original.