Characteristics of postmodern film

• Bricolage: the process of assembling artefacts from bits and pieces of other things

1. Genre Cross-Over
2. recycling old forms
3. mixing high and low culture (kitsch)

• Intertextuality: the multiple ways in which a text is entangled with or contains references to other texts
• Pastiche (copying in tribute) and Parody (copying in jest)
• Style over content; the image and visual excitement over narrative coherence
• Confusions over time and space; the subversion of classical cinematic conventions; fragmented narratives; time-bending.
• Self-reflexiveness / self-referentiality: texts that openly reflect upon their own processes of artful composition.
• Metafiction: fiction that deals, often playfully and self-referentially, with fiction and its conventions
• Flattening of Affect: Technology, violence, drugs and the media lead to detached, emotionless lives
• Hyperreality: Technologically created realities are often more authentic or desirable than the real world
• Altered States: Drugs and technology provide a darker, sometimes psychedelic, gateway to new internal realities
• More Human than Human: Artificial intelligence, robotics and cybernetics seek to enhance or replace humanity

Features of postmodern films

• Pastiche
• Self-referential, tongue-in-cheek, rehashes of classic pop culture
• Flattening of Affect
• Technology, violence, drugs, and the media lead to detached, emotionless, unauthentic lives
• Hyperreality
• Technologically created realities are often more authentic or desirable than the real world
• Time Bending
• Time travel provides another way to shape reality and play "what if" games with society
• Altered States
• Drugs and technology provide a darker, sometimes psychedelic, gateway to new internal realities
• More Human than Human
• Artificial intelligence, robotics, and cybernetics seek to enhance, or replace, humanity

Postmodern ideas

1. We no longer have any sense of the difference between real things and images of them, or real experiences and simulations of them.
2. The distinction between media and reality has collapsed, and we now live in a ‘reality’ defined by images and representations – a state of simulacrum.
3. Postmodernism rejects the idea that any media product or text is of any greater value than another. All judgments of value are merely taste.
4. Culture ‘eats itself’ and there is no longer anything new to produce or distribute.
5. All ideas of ‘the truth’ are just competing claims – or discourses – and what we believe to be the truth at any point is merely the ‘winning’ discourse.
6. Postmodern texts are said to be intertextual and self-referential – they break the rules of realism to explore the nature of their own status as constructed texts.

In the postmodern world, media texts make visible and challenge ideas of truth and reality, removing the illusion that stories, texts or images can ever accurately or neutrally reproduce reality or truth

Postmodern mixtape

Insert name here ___

1a - Creativity and Digital Technology

Creativity and digital technology 1a from Neill Ford

Digital Technology and Creativity - Potential Question 1a

Example Question from OCR

"Digital technology turns media consumers into media producers.” In your own experience, how has your creativity developed through using digital technology to complete your coursework productions? (25 Marks - 30 minutes)

Ideas and theories to help you:

"A process needed for problem solving...not a special gift enjoyed by a few but a common ability possessed by most people" (Jones 1993)

"The making of the new and the re arranging of the old" (Bentley 1997)

"Creativity results from the interaction of a system composed of three elements: a culture that contains symbolic rules, a person who brings novelty into the symbolic domain, and a field of experts who recognise and validate the innovation." (Csikszentmihalyi 1996)

"There is no absolute judgement [on creativity] All judgements are comparisons of one thing with another." (Donald Larning)

Themes and Questions:

1. Is creativity an internal cognitive function, or is it an external social or cultural phenomenon?

2. Is creativity a pervasive, ubiquitous feature of human activity, or a special faculty, either reserved for particular groups, individuals, or particular domains of activity, in particularly artistic activity?

3. Is creativity an inevitable social good, invariably progressive, harmonious and collaborative; or is it capable of disruption, political critique and dissent, and even anti-social outcomes?

4. What does the notion of creative teaching and learning imply?

Benaji, Burn and Buckingham (2006)

Questions 1a and 1b (2010-2013)

In question 1a you need to write about your work for the Foundation Portfolio andAdvanced Portfolio units and you may refer to other media production work you have undertaken.

In question 1b you must write about one of your media productions.

January 2010:
1a. Describe how you developed research and planning skills for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to the creative decision making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how your skills developed over time.

1b. Analyse media representation in one of your coursework productions.

June 2010:
1a. Describe the ways in which your production work was informed by research into real media texts and how your ability to use such research for production developed over time.

1b. Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to genre.

January 2011:
1a. Describe how you developed your skills in the use of digital technology for media production and evaluate how these skills have contributed to your creative decision making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how your skills developed over time.

1b. Apply theories of narrative to one of your coursework productions.

June 2011:
1a. Explain how far your understanding of the conventions of existing media influenced the way you created your own media products. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how your skills developed over time.

1b. Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to the concept of audience.

January 2012:
1a. Describe how your analysis of the conventions of real media texts informed your own creative media practice. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how your skills developed over time.

1b. Analyse media representation in one of your coursework productions.

June 2012:
1a. Descibe a range of creative decisions that you made in post-production and how these decisions made a difference to the final outcomes. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how your skills developed over time.

1b. Explain how meaning is constructed by the use of media language in one of your coursework productions.

January 2013:
1a. Explain how your research and planning skills developed over time and contributed to your media production outcomes. Refer to a range of examples in your answer.

1b. Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to the concept of narrative.

June 2013:
1a. explain how your skills in the creative use of digital technology developed over time. Refer to a range of examples in your answer.

1b. Apply the concept of representation to one of your coursework productions.

1a Topics

The 1a topics are:

1. Creativity
2. Digital technology
3. Research and planning
4. Post Production
5. Real Media Conventions

JUSTICE postmodern music

Postmodern music: JUSTICE from Millie Drew