Evaluation

Evaluation - After contents & front cover finished

Evaluate your Construction using 6 Key Questions

• Project in the classroom your School/College Magazine Front Cover and Contents Page for feedback with key questions as prompts – film the class feedback and upload to your Blog.
• Link your Blog to Facebook and Twitter and send links of your School/College Magazine Front Cover, requesting feedback from the same 10 people who responded to your Questionnaire including the 6 key questions below.
• Record the feedback on your Blog and use Prezi/relevant applications to document this and include your own feedback using again the 6 key questions below but feel comfortable making observations outside the parameters of the questions.
• Support your analysis of each key question with your own individual short comments summarising responses.

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
3. What kind of media institution (publisher) might distribute your media product and why?
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Past Questions

Describe how you developed research and planning skills for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to creative decision making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time.

Describe the ways in which your production work was informed by research into real media texts and how your ability to use such research for production developed over time.

Describe how you developed your skills in the use of digital technology for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to your creative decision making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time.

http://mediachs.edublogs.org/a2-past-papers-answers/

G325 Section 1a Theory

Narrative

• Levi-Strauss: binary oppositions
• Todorov – four act structure
• Roland Barthes – cultural, semantic, symbolic, hermeneutic, proairetic
• Goodwin – useful for analysing music videos – 6 key features
• Propp – 8 character roles
• Lyotard – post modern theory against meta narratives, pro micro narratives and fragmentation
• Joseph Campbell – monomyths and journeys

Genre

• John Fiske – genre as ‘convenience’ for producers and audiences
• Henry Jenkins – genre constantly ‘breaks rules’ e.g. evolving hybridization
• John Hartley – genre is interpreted culturally
• Daniel Chandler – genre is too restricting
• Steve Neale – genre as repetition and difference
• David Buckingham – genre in constant process of negotiation and change
• Jason Mittell – industry uses genre commercially
• Barry Keith Grant - on sub genres
• Rick Altman – genre offers audiences a ‘set of pleasures’

Audience

• Jeremy Tunstall – primary, secondary, tertiary audience engagement
• Blumler and Katz – uses and gratifications theory
• Katz and Lazarsfeld – two step flow theory
• Adorno – passive consumption, hypodermic model (frankfurt school)
• David Gauntlett – producer as consumer (prosumer)
• Stuart Hall – audience positioning and dominant, negotiated, oppositional readings
• Stanley Cohen – moral panics
• Martin Barker – challenging moral panics
• George Gerbner – cultivation theory

Representation

• Angela McRobbie – post feminist icon theory
• Laura Mulvey – male gaze/female gaze
• Carol Clover – last girl theory (horror)
• Stuart Hall – dominant, oppositional and negotiated readings of representation
• Richard Dyer – stereotypes legitimize inequality
• Levi-Strauss – binary oppositions and subordinate groups (see dyer)
• David Buckingham – representation and fragmented identity
• David Gauntlett – “identity is complicated, everyone’s got one” (pluralism but within a hegemonic framework)
• Baudrillard – hyper realism
• Tajfel and Turner – intergroup discrimination and stereotyping (also useful for youth and collective identity)
• Andy Medhurst – stereotyping is shorthand for identification
• Tessa Perkins – stereotyping has elements of truth
• Judith Butler – queer theory

Using conventions from real media texts

How much was your own production influenced by existing texts?

How did you identify the conventions? How did you research into existing texts?

Why follow conventions? Think about the relationship with audiences here.

Which conventions did you follow?

How easy was it to follow conventions in your own work? Were there any obstacles?

To what extent, if any, did you depart from existing conventions? What effects were you hoping to achieve by breaking some of the conventions?

To what extent did adherence to conventions limit your own creativity?

Essay Plan

In Year 12, my brief was…..

To complete this successfully I had to identify conventions in magazine relating to :

Layout

Use of images

Mode of address

Semiotics (especially in relation to colour)

Use of text

Genre

Representation

(discuss these points adding relevant detail and using as much terminology as possible). This document might help

I used these conventions in the following ways. Give details about how your design followed conventions. Explain if your work departed from conventions in some way. Try to discuss why following conventions is important in terms of the text’s relationship with the audience.

In my Year 13 film promotion exercise

In Year 13 I made a trailer and to do this identified a number of key conventions….(explain what they were). Discuss to what extent you conformed with or challenged these conventions in your work. Use lots of detail.

In the examination, questions will be posed using one or two of these categories.

Where candidates have produced relevant work outside the context of their A Level media course, they are free to additionally refer to this experience.

Post-production

It would be possible to discuss some of the Photoshop effects that you used to manipulate photographs here but this topic really requires you to consider  your trailer project.

You would need to discuss:

EDITING – techniques used; style; pace; transitions and how the editing helped communicate meaning to the audience.

SOUNDTRACK & SOUND EFFECTS – the choices made and the impact of these choices on audiences.

SPECIAL EFFECTS – discuss any special effects (fast-motion, slow-motion etc) and any effects you used to distort/edit images. Again, the emphasis should be on the way these effects impact on audiences and communicate meaning.

An Essay Plan

My AS brief was to…..

As part of this I had to develop considerable post-production skills using Adobe Photoshop to…..

I used a variety of tools including …………………to …………………….In particular I used…………… to…………… While I was generally satisfied with my final productions, I was a little disappointed……..

In My A2 year, I was able to make considerable progress and build on some of my own perceived post-production weaknesses. I demonstrated new skills in my ability to use Photoshop to…..

My post-production skills were also developed beyond Photoshop in my A2 year. I made extensive use of Adobe Premiere to …… The key skills that I developed included…., and I became particularly accomplished at. One of my most successful uses of the technology was in……As well as editing the video footage, I did a considerable amount of work recording and editing sound (give details) in ?. I imported this work into my project to add soundtrack music and sound effects.

Research and planning

How much did research inform the development of your own ideas?

-          What types of research were most significant in developing your own ideas?

-          What difficulties did you encounter in your research?

-          How did you plan your production work and what types of planning were most effective?

-          What issues did you experience in moving from the planning to the production phase? How useful was your planning in the production phase?

-          What aspects should you have planned and prepared more thoroughly?

Creativity

What do you understand by ‘creativity’ and to what extent have you been creative?

-          How have you tried to facilitate and encourage your own creativity?

-          Did you experience limits/blocks on your own creativity?

-          How easy/difficult was it to be creative while still working to the brief?

-          Did working within conventions stifle your creativity?

-          To what extent did you need to work with others and ‘bounce ideas’ off other people to be truly creative?

-          How much of your creativity was about trying to picture things in your mind’s eye?

-          How much of your creativity was about trial and error?

-          To what extent was a lack of confidence an issue in terms of your creativity?

-          To what extent was a lack of technical competence/confidence an obstacle to your creativity?

Here are some quite extensive notes on the theory of creativity. You should learn one or two quotes from this.

Here is an interesting presentation on Creativity .

An Essay Plan

My AS brief was to…………

Creativity is ……………..

I was able to demonstrate my creativity in a number of ways…….

Ways in which I supported my own creativity included….

Obstacles to my creativity included

…..working within conventions

…..taking risks when marks were at stake

…..working in isolation (getting lost in my own ideas)

…. lack of technical competence

…..lack of confidence

I think my ability to be creative really progressed in Year 13. I found that with the second brief…..I was able to….. and…… I found ways of avoiding the obstacles that had undermined my creativity in Year 12 by…..

Creativity

You will probably not get a question on creativity on its own. Creativity is usually only used in conjunction with one of the other key areas.

·         What features of your work would you say are original to you?

·         Which media texts and producers have influenced your creative decisions?

·         How successfully does your work engage its audience and provoke its interest?

·         Consider some of the creative choices you had to make during the course of your production – how to use cameras, lighting, dialogue, colour etc. How did you make these decisions, and how did these contribute to the final production?

·         How did digital technology/ real media texts/ research and planning/ post-production give you an opportunity to express and stretch your creativity?

Digital technology

Possible things to consider...

·         How has digital technology helped you to capture your ideas?

·         What benefits do digital technologies offer over analogue? Are there any disadvantages?

·         How did digital technology influence your work in pre-production, production, and post-production?

·         How have your skills with digital technology developed, and how has this influenced your productions?

·         What role might digital technology plan in the distribution of your work?

·         How is digital technology changing media production?

“Digital technology turns media consumers into media producers”. In your own experience, how has your creativity developed through using digital technology to complete your coursework productions? (Exam board example)

How has digital technology aided your creativity to during your coursework productions? 

Digital technology!

Digital Technology – how have your skills have progressed and how they helped you in your productions

Make sure your essay describes all of your Digital skills development over this course – make sure you show that more than one skill has been developed include camerawork, art work, framing, editing techniques and directing and reporting skills such as asking open questions.

1a

paragraph 1 should be an introduction which explains which projects you did. It can be quite short.

paragraph 2 should pick up the skill area and perhaps suggest something about your starting point with it- what skills did you have already and how were these illustrated. use an example.

paragraph 3 should talk through your use of that skill in early projects and what you learned and developed through these. Again there should be examples to support all that you say.

paragraph 4 should go on to demonstrate how the skill developed in later projects, again backed by examples, and reflecting back on how this represents moves forward for you from your early position.

paragraph 5 short conclusion

Remember it's only half an hour and you need to range across all your work!

·          Checklist of requirements for success in the exam:

·          Creative decision making

·          Process

·          Progress over time

·          Specific examples

·          Reflections on own development

·          Terminology (theoretical/technical)

·          It’s about the student

Digital Technology

Digital Technology

You need to consider the skills you have learnt with software such as-

• Adobe Photoshop. The image manipulation program allowed you to manipulate graphics necessary for the magazine. E.g. crop tools such as Marquee (magic wand), Lassos, and colour converters such as Red Eye Corrector, Colour Variations, Colour Dropper, Dodge and Burn, text tools, picture boxes, shape tools, photograph manipulation, layers
• Movie Maker/Premiere enabled you to edit your films/audio files and introduced you to timelines, dissolve/fade transitions, sound effects, the layering of audio over images etc
• Weblogs e.g. blogger which allowed you to regularly post about your research & planning, progress and to display your final piece. It also enabled you to leave comments (audience feedback) on each other’s blogs.
• Other Web software – Prezi, Facebook, Twitter etc.

You also need to consider the skills you have learnt with hardware such as: cameras, USB cables, Lighting, Mini DV, cameras,Tripods,Fire wires,PC/Mac,Mini DV tape 

What are the pros and cons of the software and hardware you used in terms of skills development? How did you use your skills to aid the construction of your task?

Digital Technology – how have your skills have progressed and how they helped you in your productions

Throughout your essay you should try and give several examples of real occasions you used these technologies.  For example “At AS we started to use Blogger to keep a record of all our coursework.  We had no real experience of blogging prior to this etc  ……  then at A2 we developed our skills with blogger so instead of having a group blog, we were able to have an individual one.  This gave us more autonomy over our own work and helped us take more responsibility for all the research and planning”

Intro:  Digital technologies have a had a massive influence on media production over the last few years and since you started in Year 12 you have learned a massive amount about how to use them and what the benefits are of using them.  They in turn have had a massive impact on the quality of your finished products.

Premiere in comparison to Moviemaker,I Movie etc – Had zero experience at the beginning and have now moved from basic editing to more complex editing, effects, transitions, sound manipulation.  Be specific – What specific techniques did your group use and where?

Social Networking Sites – Allows you to communicate with a far wider network of people than other websites.  You could have used this to gather audience research, upload your video and ask for feedback etc..  Be specific – Give an example of something you did using facbook etc

You Tube – Allows you to communicate with a far wider network of people than other websites. Allowed you to research existing opening sequences and music videos.. you uploaded your opening sequences and used the feedback / comments that people posted to help you improve when it came to your A2 productions etc.. Enabled you to post your own video to a massive audience.  Be specific – Give example of real video you looked at, real comment you got etc..

Digital Cameras – Never used before.  Struggled initially with holding steady shots, framing etc..  But they allow instant playback, LCD screen, small, portable (in comparison to larger older bulkier cameras) etc.  Allowed you to film in small spaces, to easily travel all over London to film, to film something and view it straight away to check if was ok.  Now can easily film a variety of shot types.

Photoshop  (you used to use Word and Powerpoint etc) – Photoshop allows manipulation of images, effects, colours, cropping, layering images and words.  Be specific – What did you do on Photoshop?

Other technologies you could mention include : Live Type, Blogging, Prezzi, Internet

Conclusion: Digital Technology has enabled you (a consumer of media) to become a producer that can not only make a higher quality media product, but edit it and distribute it to a wide audience..

To get A & B grades

To get the higher grades on this question, you need to ensure you are not just DESCRIBING how your skills developed.  Instead you need to focus on the EVALUATE part.  To EVALUATE you could comment on any of the following throughout your work

•             HOW important digital technology was

•             WHY was digital technology important

•             WHAT EFFECT did digital technology have on your final work

•             WHAT would you NOT have been able to do without digital technology?

•             HOW did digital technology benefit you?

Digital Technology Theory

Ensure you understand the following -

1. Media Convergence
2. Proliferation of Media
3. The Long Tail
4. Web 2.0
5. Media Prosumers

Please research the following theorists ...

1. David Gauntlett - The Prosumer
2. Andrew Keen - The Prosumer creates amateurs
3. Chris Anderson - The long tail
4. David Chandler - Online genre proliferation
5. Henry Jenkins - blurred global boundaries, multiple communities
6. Michael Wesch - Youtube as a cultural phenomenon

Deadline Monday @ Midnight!!!

Please make sure you have submitted your blog by Midnight Monday. You must Email me your blogger xml file. You can email the file to either

Mr Ambrose - jambrose@beaverwood.co.uk
or
Beaverwoodmedia@gmail.com

To obtain your xml file and submit your blog, please follow these steps.....

1. Log in to your blogger account and go to your blog settings, by clicking on the drop down arrow next to your blog name and hitting settings...

2. Now select Other in the settings menu in the bottom right

3. Now select Export Blog and then hit download blog to download your blog

4. Finally email me your downloaded XML file....

If you have any questions please email Mr Ambrose asap

Important News!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mr Ambrose and I have been checking your blogs regularly since December, we are very disappointed to note that many of you are not updating your blogs on a regular basis. May we remind you the deadline is 31st January that is two weeks from today! You will be given lesson time during the next two weeks to finish your coursework, if we do not think you are working hard enough in lessons then you will be put into Friday catch-up at the end of the week. Ms James & Mr Ambrose

A2 exam question 1a – Essay Structure

A2 exam question 1a – Essay Structure (suggested by OCR)

Paragraph 1:  should be an introduction which explains which projects you did. It can be quite short.

Paragraph 2: should pick up the skill area and perhaps suggest something about your starting point with it- what skills did you have already and how were these illustrated. use an example.

Paragraph 3: should talk through your use of that skill in early projects and what you learned and developed through these. Again there should be examples to support all that you say.

Paragraph 4: should go on to demonstrate how the skill developed in later projects, again backed by examples, and reflecting back on how this represents moves forward for you from your early position.

Paragraph 5: short conclusion

Remember it's only half an hour and you need to range across all your work!

Critical Perspectives in Media: An Exam In Two Parts....

Critical Perspectives in Media: An Exam In Two Parts....

Candidates are required to answer three compulsory questions:

Two questions on their own production work

One question from a choice of six topic areas.

The unit is marked out of a total of 100, with the two questions on production work marked out of 25 each, and the media topic question marked out of 50.

There are two sections to this paper:

Section A: Theoretical Evaluation of Student Production (50 marks)

In question 1(a) students are asked to write about their work for the Foundation Portfolio and Advanced Portfolio units.  Students need to describe how they developed research and planning skills for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to creative decision making.  They should refer to a range of examples in their answers to show how these skills developed over time.

The value of each student’s production log is clear as it provides the basis to answer this question.

The focus of this evaluation is on skills development, and the question will require students to adapt this to one or two specific production practices from this list:

1. Digital Technology
2. Creativity
3. Research and Planning
4. Post-production
5. Using conventions from real media texts

The second question 1(b) in section A of the exam asks students to identify one of their productions and evaluate it in relation to one theoretical media concept from:

1. Genre
2. Narrative
3. Representation
4. Audience
5. Media Language

Section B: Contemporary Media Issues (50 marks) discussing one from this list:

1. Contemporary Media Regulation
2. Global Media
3. Media & Collective Identity (Representations)
4. Media in the Online Age
5. Post–modern Media
6. ‘We Media’ & Democracy