Critical and Challenging Engagement...

A few weeks ago, I began to think critically about my production piece and what it is I am trying to achieve and understanding where my project sits on a media scale:

This is what I came up with:

My project acts as a social commentary/ critique on media control and the influences of, it in this I mean PR, advertising and more prominantly the News within contemporary society, through the form of a motion comic.

So what is my critical and challenging approach to theme and method?

Firstly, I'm challenging my own practical skills in:

• Dreamweaver
• Final Cut Pro
• Photoshop
• Flash

By deciding to present my production piece through the form of a motion comic, I'm incorporating a playful interpretation which I would not have been able to achieve if I had chosen film. Using motion comic conventions, I will incorporate a ficitional narrative which can loosely be related to Western society today where the user will hopefully recognise the extremities of media control, as it is quite prevelant in our contemporary society.  Similar to A Scanner Darkly, it will have capabilities that would surpass the medium of film. To use the form of a motion comic, it removes a certain level of realism that film would have. Challenging the idea of Media Control, is one stemmed from cynicism and reading the work of Noam Chomsky and Edward Bernays and of course watching such documentaries like The Corporation (not intiarlley related but close enough) and Adam Curtis' Century of the Self series. I find the term Media Control fitting for the purpose of my production piece as personally, I find the term stems from certain feelings of what we as society know or learn; the majority of what we know and learn is through the media. We learn about the world through the News. Which I find increasingly worrying, as there is an element of manipulation that enables the media to have the upper hand, they can make what they like up about the world we inhabit, and you know what, the majority of us wouldn't question it; we take it as truth.