How does the Skins promo trailer represent young people?

The Skins promo trailer shows young people in many different ways. The promo begins with someone in a bear suit bouncing on a bed. There are lots of different things happening in the promo, such as drug taking, drinking, partial nudity, and sexual promiscuity and the use of many quick cuts between clips keeps it fast-paced and exciting. The soundtrack is The Gossip - Standing in the way of Control. This fits in well with the fast paced nature of the clip. The only sound in the promo is the non digetic soundtrack from The Gossip. This has the effect of making the viewer feel like they are not actually there which fosters a sense of voyeuristic fantasy.

The first half of the clip shows young people as very happy and enjoying themselves. They are dancing around the house, playing with toys, getting off with each other and taking various drugs. This represents youngsters as quite hyper and happy because of all dancing and running around you can see. It shows teenagers as being very promiscuous as nearly every other shot includes teenagers removing clothes, dancing sexually or making-out.

Up until 45 seconds or so into the trailer, everything is happy and everyone having fun, drug taking, dancing and laughing. However, the second half of the promo shows the characters arguing, breaking things, vommiting and generally making a mess of the place. It begins to show the nasty side of drug and alcohol use which balances out the video and shows that not everything at the party is still going well. People begin to start throwing up, pushing each other, breaking vases and other things... This shows the bad side of alcohol and drugs and represents the effects they have on teenagers. This represents teenagers as the kind of people who are easily affected by alcohol and become out of control while under the effects. This shows the different side to teenagers when they have been ingesting alcohol and drugs.

The camera shots are mostly close ups and mid-shots. This is done so as to capture all the different characters and their reactions to the party. The main themes of the promo are sex, drugs, alcohol and then towards the end, violence, figting and arguments. The colours used are mostly bright, vivid colours. This, along with the use of bright flashing lights helps give a feeling of being high on drugs and at the party. This is also enhanced with the use of slow motion on some of the clips, distorting your perceptions of time - as if you are high.

Overall this promo represents young people as very promiscuous and fun-loving. It also represents teenagers as typically taking loads of drugs and drinking too much, then being sick everywhere and getting into fights as they are all drunk or high on various drugs. The music and editing in the promo shows young people as very energetic and upbeat as they are all dancing around having fun. From this promo, you would expect the whole series to be all about parties, sex and drugs.

Explain, using specific examples, how the expansion of digital media has been and improvement for audiences.

Digital media has improved over the last decade by the way in which audienced view media and where they can view it... Before the internet, you could only watch films and shows on TV or at the cinema but now audiences can watch almost anything on a computer and access things through smartphones and games consoles too.
When it comes to movies, you used to have to go to the video shop and buy or rent a movie before being able to watch it... Then came DVDs and people were able to view movies much more quickly and easily, in much better quality. Blu-ray disks came next, again improving on picture and sound quality. This, along with the advances in home cinema systems means watching movies at home is almost as good as seeing it at the cinema
Because more people can watch films now, producers are making more films and spanning more genres, even creating some. These sub-genres are liked by audiences and a lot of people enjoy cult films more than the big-budget Hollywood blockbusters. Films such as Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project were huge hits and cost little to make.
The expansion of digital media has also turned consumers into producers... Films like the Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield both give the effect of a cheap handheld camera, reflecting what is really happening in society. Websites such as youtube make it simple for anyone with a webcam to become a producer. Uncomplicated film editing software such as Windows Movie Maker mean that it is also easy to cut up your clips, add transitions and effects and a soundtrack and almost anyone can make a short film.

Narrative Theories

Propp
Came up with the theory that characters in a story take on specific roles or functions. Propp came up with 7 character types usually found in a narrative (a character could adopt 1 or more of these roles); the Hero (restores narrative equilibrium by embarking on a quest), the Villain (creates the destruction/chaos), the Donor (gives the Hero something to help restore balance), the Helper (aids the Hero in some way), the Princess (usually has to be saved), the Dispatcher (sends the Hero on their task) and the False Hero (appears to be good but turns out to be evil).

Todorov
Todorov came up with 5 stages he thought would be found in the narrative of a text, and tend to be found in most mainstream ones. These stages are as follows;
1. a state of equilibrium at the beginning
2. the disruption of the equilibrium
3. a realisation that there has been a disruption
4. an attempt to repair the disruption
5. the restoration of the initial equilibrium or a new equilibrium

Barthes
Barthes came up with 5 codes which he thought were in any narrative. These 5 codes are as follows:
Enigma Code - Something the audience does not know.
Action Code - Something the audience knows and don't need explaining.
Symbolic Code - A structure which organizes meaning such as through the use of binary opposites (good/evil, war/peace).
Semic Code - Using hints to connote certain concepts such as a man wearing a suit in a mansion with classical music playing connotes wealth.
Referential Code - Looks at the audiences wider cultural knowledge, morality and ideology.

Levi-Strauss
Saw narrative structures in terms of binary oppositions; sets of opposite values which reveal the structure of media texts. For example, earth/space, new/old, light/dark... He was not interested in the order events were arranged. Themes can contain a variety of oppositions; Sci-fi films may contain earth/space, good/evil, human/alien etc...