Section a Practice

Examiners report with tips!

06 A2 Media Studies UnitG325 PrinicpalsReportJan2010

Section A: Theoretical Evaluation of Production

You must answer both 1(a) and 1(b).

In question 1(a) you need to write about your work for the Foundation Portfolio and Advanced Portfolio
units and you may refer to other media production work you have undertaken.

1 (a) 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. [25]

In question 1(b) you need to choose one of your media productions to write about.
(b) Analyse media representation in one of your coursework productions. [25]
Section A Total [50]

Editing - the invisible art

In film-world editing is known as "the invisible art" - and it's probably the hardest to teach. After the director, the editor is the next most important person on the production side of making films. Once the film has been shot the editor gets to work and the process of shaping and creating a story out of a film's thousands of miles of footage can take months - and sometimes years!

Most of the terms you need to understand for editing in TV drama can be found in the link below. This link has most of the BASIC information on editing you need to know.

For practice in seeing how editing works in TV drama we can view a few sequences to identify the main types of edits and how they create meaning and narrative in a sequence from a TV drama.

Meanwhile, have a look at these abridged Youtube sections from "The Cutting Edge: the magic of movie editing". This is a "must see" for understanding the "invisible art". In Hollywood "the more invisible the cuts the better the editor".

Taken from AS and A2 Media Studies blog

Exam Tips for Question 1a and 1b courtesy of Longroad Media

Longroad Media are one of the premier Media Colleges in the country, the link below is to their blog on the G235 exam (questions 1a and 1b only).

Media Matters Blog - designed for Teachers and Students

http://petesmediablog.blogspot.com/

Great tips on theory, theorists and the exam.

Scribd documents for A2

Most of you should have joined scribd during the past year. What scribd offers you is the opportunity to 'subscribe' to contributors who interest you, one particular individual to subscribe to is this mysterious person.

http://www.scribd.com/api_5814_user340683

I've not had chance to read and assess the quality of what they've produced but that shouldn't stop you from reviewing their work. You are primarily interested in anything labeled G325.

Key Concepts in Media studies

Media Glossary

View more presentations from The Cottesloe School.

Genre Evaluation

D.I.Y. Generic analysis

The following questions are offered as basic guidelines for students analysing their coursework in relation to genre. This is a potential question in Section B of your summer examination. Note that an analysis of a text which is framed exclusively in terms of genre may be of limited usefulness. Generic analysis can also, of course, involve studying the genre more broadly. This is something we simply don't have time to do in class so you will need to spend time outside of class doing this (although you will hopefully have done lots of this when planning your production).

• General
  
  • In what context did you encounter it? (web, film, TV etc)
  • What influence do you think this context might have had on your interpretation of the text?
  • To what genre did you initially assign the text?
  • What is your experience of this genre?
  • What subject matter and basic themes is the text concerned with?
  • How typical of the genre is this text in terms of content?
  • What expectations do you have about texts in this genre?
  • Have you found any formal generic labels for this particular text (where)?
  • What generic labels have others given the same text?
  • Which conventions of the genre do you recognize in the text?
  • To what extent does this text stretch the conventions of its genre?
  • Where and why does the text depart from the conventions of the genre?
  • Which conventions seem more like those of a different genre (and which genre(s))?
  • What familiar motifs or images are used?
  • Which of the formal/stylistic techniques employed are typical/untypical of the genre?
  • What institutional constraints are reflected in the form of the text?
  • What relationship to 'reality' does the text lay claim to?
  • Whose realities does it reflect?
  • What purposes does the genre serve?
  • In what ways are these purposes embodied in the text?
  • To what extent did your purposes match these when you engaged with the text?
  • What ideological assumptions and values seem to be embedded in the text?
  • What pleasures does this genre offer to you personally?
  • What pleasures does the text appeal to (and how typical of the genre is this)?
  • Did you feel 'critical or accepting, resisting or validating, casual or concentrated, apathetic or motivated' (and why)?
  • Which elements of the text seemed salient because of your knowledge of the genre?
  • What predictions about events did your generic identification of the text lead to (and to what extent did these prove accurate)?
  • What inferences about people and their motivations did your genre identification give rise to (and how far were these confirmed)?
  • How and why did your interpretation of the text differ from the interpretation of the same text by other people?
  
  
  
• Mode of address
  
  • What sort of audience was your text aimed at (and how typical was this of the genre)?
  • How does the text address your classmates?
  • What sort of person does it assume they are?
  • What assumptions have you made about their class, age, gender and ethnicity?
  • What interests does it assume they have?
  • What relevance does the text actually have for you?
  • What knowledge does it take for granted?
  • To what extent do you resemble the 'ideal reader' that the text seeks to position you as?
  • Are there any notable shifts in the text's mode of address (and if so, what do they involve)?
  • What responses does the text seem to expect from your audience?
  • How open to negotiation is their response (are they invited, instructed or coerced to respond in particular ways)?
  • Is there any penalty for not responding in the expected ways (think in terms of enjoyment for the audience or consequences for the institution)?
  • To what extent did people find themselves 'reading against the grain' of the text and the genre?
  • Which attempts to position your audience in this text do they accept, reject or seek to negotiate (and why)?
  • How closely aligned is the way in which the text addresses you with the way in which the genre positions you (Kress 1988, 107)?
  
  
  
• Relationship to other texts
  
  • What intertextual references are there in the text you have created (and to what other texts)?
  • Generically, which other texts does the text you created resemble most closely?
  • What key features are shared by these texts?
  • What major differences do you notice between them?
  
  
  

OCR A2 G325: Critical Perspectives in Media - Exam Question Help

After Christmas your work in class will be clearly defined into two areas.

Section A: Theoretical Evaluation of Production

Section B: Contemporary Media Issues

Below is a very brief overview of the requirements for Section A


A2 G325 Critical Perspectives in Media