Question 1 Section B

Talk about ONE of your media productions.
Use theorists.
USE EXAMPLES.

Structure…
Paragraph One - Introduction, which project is being written about and a brief description of it.

Paragraph Two - What are some of the key features of the concept you are being asked to apply? Maybe outline two of the ideas of particular theorists briefly. 

Paragraph Three - Start to apply the concept making close reference to your production to show how the concept is evident.

Paragraph Four - Try to show ways in which ideas work in relation to your production and also ways in which those ideas might not apply/challenged.

Paragraph Five - Conclusion.

REMEMBER THAT THIS QUESTION IS ONLY 30 MINUTES! 

Possible areas… 

Genre
- What piece you are working on and the genre.
- Genre pros and cons.
- Showing and following conventions.
- Theorist and how they used the theory.
- refer back to the audience
- Specific examples
- Examples of existing film.
- Theories and how they can be seen in your work.
- Why the production was successful.

Narrative


Representation
- How the media shows us things about society.
- Mediation - REpresentation.
- Shared recognition of people, situations, ideas.
- All representations about society have ideologies behind them. Certain paradigms are encoded into texts and others are left out in order to give a preferred representation.
- A hegemonic view of society - Fundamental inequalities in power between social groups. Groups in power exercise their influence culturally rather than by force.
Concept has origins in Marxist theory - ruling capitalist class are able to protease their economic interests.
Representations are encoded into mass media texts in order to do this - reinforce the dominant ideologies in society. 
Hyperreality - We inhabit a society that is no longer made up of any original thing for a sign to represent - it is the sign that is now the meaning.

Audience


Media Language- Media Language refers to the way in which media producers make meaning in ways that are specific to the medium which they are working and how audience come to be literate in 'reading' such meaning within the medium. For example, the 'language of film' print layout inventions, web design and navigation conventions and rule economies in gaming. 
- These medium specific languages will often be closely connected to other media concepts such as genre or narrative and candidates are at liberty to make such connections to a greater or lesser extent in their answer.
- Aims/Objectives - to reinforce the basic media language that create meaning in texts.
- To have basic understanding of how to evaluate your coursework against the media language that you used.
The importance of media language…
 - Every media has its own 'language' or combination of languages - that it uses to communicate meaning. Television, for example uses verbal and written language as well as the languages of moving images and sound. We call these languages because they use familiar codes and conventions that are generally recognised.

Relevant theorists… 

BARTHES (1977) 
- Argued that "in film connotation can be analytically distinguished from denotation."
- Myth - ideologies work through symbolic codes - mythic in the sense of having the appearance of being 'natural' or 'common sense'.
- "striptease is based on contradiction. Woman is desexualised at the very moment when she is naked" He is suggesting kit is clothes that sexualise her more - loads of evidence of this in pop videos. Can this be subverted in your texts by your representation?

FISKE (1982) - Puts it "'denotation' is what is filmed and 'connotation' is how it is filmed."

Richard Dyer (1983) posed a few questions when analysis media representations in general.
1. What sense of the world is it making?
2. What does imply? Is it typical of the world or deviant?
3. Who is it speaking to? For whom? To whom?
4.What does it represent to us and why? How do we respond to the representation?

Tim O'Sullivan et al (1998) Ideology - Refers to a set of ideas which produces a partial and selective view of reality. Notion of ideology entails widely helped ideas or beliefs which are seen as 'common' sense and become naturalised.
- what is important is that, in Marxist terms the medias role may be seen as: 
- Circulating and reinforcing dominant ideologies
- (less frequently) undermining and challenging such ideologies.

Judith Williamson (1978) - Detailed that advertisements (Posters and adverts) draw heavily on myths. - They use cultural signifiers to represent qualities which can be realised through the consumption of the project.

Carl Rogers (1980) - in the case of magazine texts and adverts they are encoded specifically to represent an aspirational lifestyle offering audiences images of an ideal self and ideal partner.

Baudrillard - Hyperreality - We inhabi a society that is no longer made up of any original thing for a sign to represent - It is the sign that is now the meaning. He argues that we live in a society of simulacra - simulations of reality that replace the real. Think Disney.


Previous Questions…June 2012 - Explain how meaning is constructed through the use of media language in ONE of your media productions. 
Jan 2012 - Analyse media representation in ONE of your coursework productions. 
June 2011 -Analyse ONE of your coursework productions in relation to the concept of audience. 
Jan 2011 - Apply theories of narrative to ONE of your coursework productions.
June 2010 - Analyse ONE of your course work products in relation to genre.

Jan 2010 - Analyse media representation in ONE of your coursework productions. 

Question 1 Section A

Talk about BOTH Foundation and Advanced Portfolio.
Don't use theorists.
USE EXAMPLES.

Structure…
Paragraph One - Introduction explaining which of the projects I completed (Short Paragraph)

Paragraph Two - Should pick up on the skill area and perhaps suggest something about the starting point. Talk about the skills you have used and how this was shown in the work produced, use an example.

Paragraph Three - Talk through use of that skill in early projects and what you have learned and developed through these. Use examples.

Paragraph Four - Go on to demonstrate how the skill has developed in later projects, again back up with examples and reflecting back on how this representation moves forward.

Paragraph Five - Short conclusion.

REMEMBER THAT THIS QUESTION IS ONLY 30 MINUTES! 

Possible areas… 

Digital Technology
- What Software was used?
- What equipment was used?
- What were the technical pros and cons of the software and the hardware?
- In what ways were the technology used to create the production?
- In what ways id the technology constrain or enable the production to be developed?

Camera, Youtube, Web 2.0, Premier pro, Imovie, Photoshop, Blogger etc.

Creativity
- What was the intended outcome of the production?
- How were these outcomes achieved in terms of camera shot choices and editing decisions?
- What Stylistic techniques were used to appeal to the audience?

Post-production
- What editing decisions were made?
- How did they inform production?
- What particular editing tools were used and to what effect?
- How did the post-production process enhance the overall production? 
- What skills did you develop at the sage of post-production?

- Production at AS consisted of filming and making the preliminary task and title sequence/ taking photographs.

- Production at A2 consisted of filming for the adverts, photographs for pop up and audio for the radio advert.

- Post-production at AS consisted of editing the timelines and putting text and graphics together and using photoshop.

Post-production at A2 consisted of editing the footage and audio in premier pro and the pop up in photoshop.

Research and planning
- What primary and secondary research was undertaken?
- How did it inform the production? (existing adverts)
- How effective were planning methods such as story boards and practice edits? Were they followed?

A2 Research - More advanced, more direct, in more detail.
A2 Planning - More detailed and intricate.

Using conventions of real media products
- In what ways were conventions adhered to?
- Were the representations involved appropriate to the product?
- Audience?

Previous Questions…
June 2012 - Describe a range of creative decisions that you made in post-production and how these decisions made a difference to the final outcomes, refer to a range of examples in your answer.

Jan 2012 - Describe how your analysis of the conventions of real media texts informed your own creative media practice. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills develop over time. 

June 2011 - Explain how far your media understanding of the range of existing media productions influenced the way you created your own media products. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how this understanding developed over time.

Jan 2011 - 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 your skills have developed over time.

June 2010 - Describe the ways in which your production work was informed by research into real media texts and how your ability to use such research developed over time.

Jan 2010 - 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 answers to show how these skills have developed over time.

The way that mediation has formed the representation of youth

Discuss how one or more groups are represented through the media…

The way in which youth are represented in society depends entirely on how what is being shown has been mediated. Mediation is the process in which any piece of information or events go through before being presented in the media. What is being shown in the media is not real life it is just somebody's representation of real life. An example of this is the way that youth are often represented in a very negative light shown in the historic film 'Quadrophenia' and the contemporary documentary 'Unsafe sex in the city'. Giroux's theory however argues that this is an 'empty category' as this representation has been created by adults and therefore is not reflecting the reality. In other contemporary documentaries such as 'The young apprentice' youth are represented as hard working and respectful, showing how each representation is merely based on the opinion of the producer and is not reality.

Pluralism however, suggests that the media has a wide range of choices with regards to representation which are entirely mirrored on society and therefore if a certain representation is dominant it is purely due to that representation being popular with the audiences. This idea suggests that the audiences must be entertained by this negative representation of youth and this is why this has become dominant. 

Acland

Gerbner