A reality check ... one last time

Reality & Media Collide: In my 6th April entry there is a vid' for Skins, a new UK TV drama for teens. This show hit the news in the UK today...

"A TEENAGER was hiding last night after 200 yobs at a Skins party wrecked her family’s posh home. Rachael Bell, 17, wanted to copy the cult Channel 4 sex and drug drama while her parents were away. She posted an invite on networking website MySpace to "trash the average family-sized house". Tearaways from across Britain flocked to the £250,000 home..."

The full story can be read here.

UK social trends report

The Office for National Statistics published a detailed UK social trends report today. A full PDF download is available here.

There is some tie-in with GI's recent 'One Life' global visual trends report. For example, more than seven million Brit's now live alone, compared with three million in 1971. And the average age for a first marriage in England and Wales is 32 for men and 29 for women, up from 25 and 23 in 1971.

A reality check ... again

In yesterdays entry I briefly covered the trend of documentary styling in commercial visuals, especially those featuring/targeting teens & young adults. I've just remembered some recent trailers for a new Brit TV show, 'Skins', that happen to feature/target teens & young adults. Click here to see one of them.

Quite a revision on the 90's teen hit 'The Fresh Price of Bel-Air' isn't it... Click here.

I appreciate that some of us Europeans have for a long time leaned toward a greater level of realism in our visual media than Americans, but this is something I also see shifting. Our YouTube generation may be an unsuspecting movement for a form of global visual unification.

A reality check

It seems clear that there is an increasing crossover between illustrative (aka straight, documentary, journalistic, editorial) and produced (aka commerial, creative, advertising, conceptual) imagery in terms of what is deemed by viewers as 'real'. In essence what was once accepted as reality is now viewed with a level of scepticism by some viewers. I'm not just talking about moon landing conspiracists here. In recent years Photoshop combined with the distribution of the Internet have thrown up tens-of-thousands of faked 'real' images and made them available to millions of viewers. It's got to the stage where professional PJ's have lost their contracts for enhancing their hard news images...

http://www.intellnet.org/news/2003/04/02/19060-1.htm

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3286966,00.html

Conversely commercial imagery, once the exclusive domain of the beautiful people, the designer home, and 2.4 children is moving towards societal reality. As recently mentioned on my MAP Report entry the hero figure is being replaced by the real person. But it goes beyond this and can be separate from this.

Documentary & 'snapshot' styling is the other facet to consider. I'm seeing a growing number of print and internet ads that at first glance you take to be a genuinely candid snap taken by a friend of the very real looking (non-'modelly') subject(s). Only when you begin to clock the subtle technical considerations do you realise this is produced imagery. It's becoming a popular look for advertising featuring and targeting teens & young adults.

I'll finish this entry with a link to a Meisel shoot for Italian Vogue. It was published Sept. 2006. When the high end of fashion photography throws up something like this you know there's a real shift in produced visuals underway ... Click here.

MAP Report Live Meeting

I've just come off of a Live Meeting hosted by Getty Images London. Lewis Blackwell, GI's Senior VP of Creative Customers, took us through the findings of the recently published MAP report. The report is the result of research conducted by GI.

'One Life' is the title of this first MAP (Make A Picture) Report. A tidy reference to the common thread that runs through its findings: Visual media is moving away from depicting social groups and shared activity and towards representing individuality and a reflection of self. The report is broken down into several sections, each with it's own peculiar title: Anchorage, Guru Joe, Trickle Down Time, Solo Chic, and more. It's particularly relevant to imagery that falls into the lifestyle photography sector. I have copious notes scribbled in dodgy shorthand but I'll try to keep it succinct and summarise a few of the key points...

Anchorage & Guru Joe: The sense of place & belonging, either physical or spiritual. Concepts such as security, comfort & family are key. This is tied in with a re-affirmation of character represented by faces of character. A move away from individuals as part of a corporate 'machine' and the hero figure, to individuals we can relate to and trust. Lewis summed them up as "people we want to meet".

Mono-tasking: The opposite of multi-tasking. Doing just one thing and doing it well. Time devoted to ones self on things important to 'the self'. Simplicity, balance and control are in. Overtime, working lunches, and TV dinners out.

Solo Chic: It's now OK (cool even) to be alone. Whether as an honest-to-goodness singleton, or as one who aspires to spend more time alone. On a survey conducted by the MAP researchers 79% of those surveyed were in favour of using people alone in visuals (in China it was 91% against!).

These trends and others were summarised as "a rejection of the hyperlife": In essence a move towards the personal, the simple and the spiritual. All positive concepts that I look forward to tackling as photographer.