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…..