Ashley knapp, jesus Martinez, tyler pittman, steven towle, matt patton, mikey whiteker, renee Atkinson
GOALS/THESIS: Our video text will address the issue of stereotyping of women in the medium of video games. It will take a historical approach by illuminating the milestones in women in video game history as far as female characterization is concerned. The Damsel in Distress, the Dangerous Midriff, the Just One of the Boys, the Ghost Girlfriend, and other tropes will be discussed with examples. These will be integrated into video examples of the same stereotypes in other medias such as television and movies from the same time period to show the male dominated industries provide a limited vision of women through the male gaze regardless of the particular medium used. We will also touch on how consolidation has limited the consumers options , like in Rich Media, Poor democracy. We will tie in some o f the definition about masculinity to the documentary Culture of Cool, and how important the virtual citizen soldier is to our ideas of masculinity in video games, terrorist thwarting movie and television plots.
INFLUENCES: Our group has a variety of viewpoints in it. We have some members who haven’t played video games since childhood, we have some members who love video games, and some members who only play video games occasionally. Our group has 3 women and 4 men, which will influence how we look at gender issues to come out a bit more evenly. Our group’s perspective is limited by all over us being enrolled at the same Midwestern college as far as education level, socioeconomic class, and geographic influence.
Idea for video: A composite documentary using existing video game play footage, video game trailers, film trailers, television ads, and scenes from movies and film with voice over narration summarizing main ideas. Dissection of each stereotype will be divided into two parts revealing the stereotype in the video game via video scenes and audio explanation, before following it up with a Film/TV example of a similar trope using footage and voice over narration.
Our introduction will feature a quick history of video games contrasted with a history of films and tv (Not in-depth, just things like starting dates, demographics of industry leaders. )
Our conclusion will feature in reiterating our main argument with more evidence that video games are gender segregated, and revealing that films and TV are much the same way. It will end on a hopeful note that all mediums are trying to draw in all audiences, though, and hopefully attain a more balanced portrayal of gender.
RESOURCES: We will secure the resources we need by dividing up the labor for the project. Because we will not be shooting new footage, we need only to ensure the group member doing the recording has an adequate microphone. We will always be able to share audio files digitally if we cannot arrange a time to meet in person. We have divided the job of project idea, initial script and outline, video gather/conversion to different individuals in the group.
