Blog Poll

The results from the poll on my blog are in, with a total of 3 results.
It would be inaccurate to say this represents my target audience as this is a very small percentage of it.
Furthermore, the results from a blog poll are only quantitative data, and for my specific audience research I wanted to find out opinions and feeling about the unemployed and the city of Hull around them therefore a focus group and interviews to gain qualitative data were more important and more useful in finding out my target audience.

Focus Group - Summary

In summary, from my focus group I found:

• YouTube was the main place for looking short films.
  As all of the participants in the focus group were of the younger generation, this may be the reason for all of them using either Google or YouTube, having been brought up in today's technically advanced society.
• Hull wasn't really described as a great place to live - 'not the best' and also those who didn't live in Hull had gathered that those that live there don't really like it.
• Unemployed are misconcepted - some may be 'lazy' and some aren't as jobs require experience but someone with no experience can't get a job?
  Being on the dole is too much of a popular choice - those on the 'dole' presumed to spend it on drugs and cheap food, living from government provision when really they could and should be getting a job.
• In terms of jobs - they understood money was the main motivator for getting a job however two already worked as dance teachers, which they enjoyed and were vocational choices.
• Documentaries were popular and the most important factor for the documentaries were to be interesting. The idea for having a short film with a meaning similar to a documentary seemed to get the group interested.

Focus Group Questions

If you were to watch a short film, where would you look?

How would you describe Hull as a place to live?

How do you view the unemployed?

What is the most important aspect of a job for you? To do something you like or the pay?

Do you feel enough is done for the unemployed?

Do you like watching documentaries? If not why, if so why?

If you feel documentaries are too long would you prefer the information in a short 5 minute film?

Location Ideas - Taken from internet

A shot driving past for the opening sequence - can link to the lazy theme again.

Already taken these shots now - can use the merry-go-round, big wheel and the big wheel with swings around to all imitate the circle of life - work to live, live to work.

I thought this might be an effective shot as it will represent the dominant ideology theories that I want to link into my film i.e. marxism and hypodermic needle theory.

Shots of this and the train platform to show people going to work - in contrast to the 'lazy'

Annotated Poem: Phillip Larkin - Toads

Idea for Introduction: Song (Witch - Lazy Bones)

The term lazy bones is a common term, slang for someone that's lazy and can obviously can have connotations of unemployment when linked to my video - as the unemployed seen as 'idle' or 'lazy' and thus also linking to the name of the film - idle thieving bastards.

I intend to use from 0:00 to 1:47 of the song as the song comes to a fitting break at 1:47 in which I can fade out into the main bulk of the narrative/story. In this opening sequence, I plan to show the contrast in people going to work (for example along the busy railway platforms and bus stops of the Hull and surrounding areas train stations) compared to those who are not going to work for the day - the idle thieving bastards.

This song fits perfectly to the message I want to put across - misconceptions of the unemployed with this song clearly representing these misconceptions. The lyrics in the part of the song I wish to include show a man (singer) talking about a girl having 'the lazy bones' which could easily be linked to unemployment. 'Don't tell me you can climb those mountains while your sleeping' could be interpreted as don't tell me you're trying to find a job when all you do is sleep and stay in bed all day.

Hegemony - Examples of The Guardian vs. Daily Mail

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/columnists/article-2442216/MAX-HASTINGS-David-Cameron-courageous-things-I-wish-real-self.html 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/03/david-cameron-under-25s-assault

Here are two examples of how the same story can be represented in different ways through mediation - which is an idea I will use in my piece on how global ideas affect local people. 
Antonio Gramsci's theory hegemony:
"...Dominant groups in society, including fundamentally but not exclusively the ruling class, maintain their dominance by securing the 'spontaneous consent' of subordinate groups, including the working class, through the negotiated construction of a political and ideological consensus which incorporates both dominant and dominated groups." - (Strinati, 1995: 165)

This idea can be seen in action perhaps in these two examples. David Cameron can be seen as the representative of the dominant group - both in terms of actually being head of conservative government but having always been in the higher social classes throughout his life with his family being amongst some of the richest in the country and therefore some of the most dominant compared to those in the lower social classes. In Gramsci's theory, the ideology and values held by the dominant group within a society are usually those held by the majority - A class had succeeded in persuading the other classes of society to accept its own moral, political and cultural values. The ideas held by this majority appear as 'common sense' to the majority as the dominant ideology held by the dominant power is practiced and spread. 

From the article by the Daily Mail - a notoriously right wing, Tory promoting paper:"Nobody should fool themselves that the struggle to save Britain from dire indebtedness bequeathed by Labour is over...to reform the socially-destructive culture of welfarism. 

These include plans to strip benefits from the long-term jobless unless they work full-time picking up litter, removing graffiti or preparing meals for the elderly." - Daily Mail

Notably through the article from the Daily Mail there is no mention on the thoughts about the effects and externalities to the proposal from Cameron - only blind support for anything he says and anything against labour.

However from the article from the Guardian, a very different story is told:

"It would be also be a mistake to describe this as a "war on the young" as many commentators have done. A war implies two sides vying for supremacy. This is a strictly unilateral assault, a grand act of persecution. Indeed watching the prime minister singling out unemployed youngsters for uniquely punitive measures while pretending it is for their own good, cheered on by a gang of braying chums, it looks less like the behaviour of a national statesman and more like the petty vindictiveness of a schoolyard bully." - The Guardian


Comparing the two articles, both provide very different messages which is interesting considering they are reporting the same event - this is as a result of mediation. The Guardian clearly takes quotes from the speech and picks apart their meanings and what will happen as a result from these proposals however the Daily Mail summarises the speech as 'stick with me, because Ed Miliband would ruin everything' and doesn't talk about any consequences or results from putting these proposals into place. It is obvious were each paper stands, and this is a prime example as to why the stereotypes from each paper still stand, with the Guardian on the left side of politics and the Daily Mail on the right. 

Theory Inspirations (linked to Initial Ideas)

In terms of all of the initial ideas, I could take inspiration from theorist Karl Marx or 'Marxism' as I introduce the idea of dominant classes and ideology through how the global ideas held by the minority (those in power) and how their ideas based on theory are actually put into place locally to the masses and how they may have the completely wrong idea - i.e what the masses think to these ideas.

For example I could have clips from famous speeches, then read over local images contradicting these ideas. Then I could famous local speeches/written word by famous writers like Phillip Larkin, Andrew Marvell and Sir Tom Courtenay, read through vox pops. Representing the global speakers as the elite and the local thinkers/speakers as the masses.

This also introduces the theory of binary opposites - a theory by Levi Strauss. This theory represents the idea of having an antagonist and protagonist which could be shown in my film through having the 'global thinkers' as antagonist and protagonist shown through the realism of local images and through the realism of what the spoken word represents.

Final Synopsis

Work hard. Revise. Don’t stay out late. This is the crucial age and it’s down to you from here. Confused and misdirected, a journey littered with pitfalls, distractions and potential dead ends scares protagonist Alfie into making the right decision, or does he?

To work to live, To live to work?

Another synopsis idea - to continue on the theme of how global ideas affect local people, however focusing around the main theme of unemployment I feel would tie my film together and therefore make my film less broad and give it a stronger meaning.

I took this inspiration about the idea of whether us as humans 'Work to live or live to work?' this idea is shown clearly in the famous poem 'Toad' by hull-based poet Phillip Larkin.

Further Advance on Synopsis idea

I could base my film around the opposition or simply underlining of the extremist right wing ideology that are becoming more and more acceptable and 'common knowledge' for the masses of the UK - i.e. the demonisation of the working class.

My idea for a film name - 'Idle Thieving Bastards' based around the work by Charles Murray that has become the basis for many right wing ideologies.

Charles Murray thought up the idea of the 'unholy trinity' of unemployment, single parenting and crime.

In Murray's words:

'When I use the term 'underclass' I am indeed focusing on a certain type of poor person defined not by his condition, for example, long term unemployment, but by his deplorable behaviour in response to that condition, for example, unwilling to take jobs that are available to him.'

Initial Synopsis Ideas

Ideas for quotes - Philip Larkin - 'Here'

Here

Swerving east, from rich industrial shadows
And traffic all night north; swerving through fields
Too thin and thistled to be called meadows,
And now and then a harsh-named halt, that shields
Workmen at dawn; swerving to solitude
Of skies and scarecrows, haystacks, hares and pheasants,
And the widening river's slow presence,
The piled gold clouds, the shining gull-marked mud,

Gathers to the surprise of a large town:
Here domes and statues, spires and cranes cluster
Beside grain-scattered streets, barge-crowded water,
And residents from raw estates, brought down
The dead straight miles by stealing flat-faced trolleys,
Push through plate-glass swing doors to their desires -
Cheap suits, red kitchen-ware, sharp shoes, iced lollies,
Electric mixers, toasters, washers, driers – 

A cut-price crowd, urban yet simple, dwelling
Where only salesmen and relations come
Within a terminate and fishy-smelling
Pastoral of ships up streets, the slave museum,
Tattoo-shops, consulates, grim head-scarfed wives;
And out beyond its mortgaged half-built edges
Fast-shadowed wheat-fields, running high as hedges,
Isolate villages, where removed lives

Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands
Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken,
Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken,
Luminously-peopled air ascends;
And past the poppies bluish neutral distance
Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach
Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence:
Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.

--Philip Larkin