Wednesday 30 March 2011

A2 Exam

Time to start thinking about the A2 exam:

(From the Spec)
Section B: Contemporary Media Issues
One question to be answered from a choice of six topic areas offered by OCR. There will be two questions from each topic area.
The topic areas require understanding of contemporary media texts, industries, audiences and debates.
Candidates must choose one of the following topic areas, in advance of the examination and, through specific case studies, texts, debates and research of the candidates’ choice, prepare to demonstrate understanding of the contemporary issue. This understanding must combine knowledge of at least two media and a range of texts, industries, audiences and debates, but these are to be selected by the centre / candidate. The assessment of the response will be generic, allowing for the broadest possible range of responses within the topic area chosen. Each topic is accompanied by four prompt questions, and candidates must be prepared to answer an exam question that relates to one or more of these four prompts. There should be emphasis on the historical, the contemporary and the future in relation to the chosen topic, with most attention on the present. Centres are thus advised to ensure that study materials for this unit are up to date and relevant. Candidates may choose to focus on one of the following contemporary media issues:

- Contemporary Media Regulation
- Global Media
- Media and Collective Identity
- Media in the Online Age
- Post-modern Media
- ‘We Media’ and Democracy

I will be going through a range of case studies including analysis of things like wikileaks, youtube, Banksy's Exit Throught The Gift Shop, relating all case studies to all of the contempory media issues. We will then focus on one or two issues to research in depth for the exam.

Friday 4 March 2011

Evaluation - Finally!

These are the four questions which you need to address for the last 20 marks of the project, for evaluation. As with the film opening earlier in the year, these questions will each be accompanied by a task, which you must carry out and then post the outcome to your blog. All four should be completed by the end of Friday 19th March and must sit at the top of your blog in the order here. Some parts of the task will be done individually and some may be done with your group partners. If you are doing some individual work at home on the task, you may complete it over the weekend, but everything MUST be on all blogs by Sunday 21 March at 9 pm.



1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products ?
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
4.How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products ?


For this task, you will do something very similar to the film opening; take nine frames from your video and put them into a grid. The nine frames need to represent the following features of your music video:

1. a shot that shows a link between lyrics and/or music and visuals
2. a shot that typifies the way a record company would want their artist to be represented
3. a shot that illustrates how your video uses music genre
4. a shot that shows an intertextual reference
5. a shot that demonstrates your use of camera
6. a shot that demonstrates your use of lighting
7. a shot that demonstrates your use of mise-en-scene
8/9. Two shots which you feel demonstrate something which shows you have watched other music videos

here is how Alex approached it:


For each of these nine shots, write a couple of sentences explaining how they fit the brief here.

You then need to take screengrabs from other (real) music videos and construct a second nine frame grid which you will use in parallel to your one on your blog. There must be at least THREE music videos which you have grabbed from.

Again for each of the nine frames, write a couple of sentences about how they meet the brief. Here is alex’s version:

This task is to be completed on Tuesday ready for feedback in Wednesday's lesson.

We also want you to take the panes of your digipack and set them alongside images from other album covers to show similarities and to take your advert and set it alongside an advert to show how you have used conventions. In each case, you will need to annotate your work.

This task is to be done individually.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

For this, we want you to take your finished video and grab some stills from it and put them on a document alongside grabs from your digipack and advert and to annotate the document to show how they all go together. This should be done in lesson time on Thursday and may be done as a group.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

For this task, we want you to consider four stages of feedback

1. class and teacher feedback on your initial treatment
2. rough cut- class feedback and teacher feedback
3. class feedback on your digipack roughs
4. final version of everything- class feedback and feedback from anyone else

For 1. You need to have a paragraph which notes what people said at that stage and illustrates changes you made

for 2. You need a paragraph about what the class said and what you changed as a consequence- with screengrabs to illustrate

for 3. you need a paragraph on what was said and grabs of your sketches/ early drafts (even if already on the blog, link to them)

for 4. again note down any responses you get.

This task may be done as a group in Thursday's session.

4.How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

For this final task, you are to do the same as for the film opening: have a photo of each person with the technology used and a screengrab of each website/program used as part of the project: facebook, Myspace, blogger, youtube, Final cut, etc

Put it together and annotate it in photoshop then upload to your blog. example here

This task may be done individually or as a group.

Please note that for any group task, you will be credited for your contribution to it.

If you are feeling really adventurous, construct a prezi like this one, and put all your four tasks into it. A good prezi has a strong chance of top marks.