1 a) Assess the effectiveness of the ways in which your research into real media texts led to specific media production outcomes. Refer to a range of examples from your media productions in your answer.[25]
b) Apply the concept of audience to one of your media productions.[25]
June 2016
1 a) Explain the importance of research and planning to your media production outcomes and how your skills in this area developed over time. Refer to a range of examples from your media production process in your answer. [25]
b) Analyse the ways in which one of your coursework productions communicates meaning to the audience through media language. [25]
June 2015
1 a) Explain the most significant ways in which your media productions were informed by your understanding of the conventions of real media texts. Refer to range of examples in your answer to demonstrate how this understanding developed over time. [25]
b) Apply the concept of narrative to one of your coursework productions.[25]
June 2014
1a) Describe the most important post-production decisions you made for your different media productions and explain why these decisions were significant. Refer to a range of example in your answer to show how your skills in post-production developed over time.[25]
b) Apply the concept of genre to one of your coursework productions.[25]
January 2013
1 a) Describe how your research and planning skills developed over time and contributed to your media production outcomes. Refer to a range of examples in your answers.[25]
b) Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to narrative.[25]
June 2013
1a) Explain how your skills in the creative use of digital technology developed over time. refer to a range of examples from your media productions in your answer.[25]
b) Apply the concept of representation to one of your coursework productions.[25]
January 2012
1a) Describe how you have developed research and planning skills for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to creative decision making.[25]
b) Analyse media representation in one of your coursework productions.[25]January 2012
1 a) Describe how your analysis of the conventions of real media texts informed your own creative media practice.[25]
b) Analyse media representation in one of your coursework productions.[25]
June 2012
1 a) Describe a range of creative decisions that you made in post-production and how these decisions made a difference to your final outcomes.[25]
b) Explain how meaning is created by the use of media language in one of your coursework productions.[25]
January 2011
1 a) 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.[25]
b) Apply theories of narrative to one of your coursework productions.[25]
June 2011
a) Explain how far your understanding of the conventions of existing media influenced the way you created your own media products.[25]
b) Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to the concept of audience.[25]
June 2010
1 a) 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. [25]
b) Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to genre.[25]
G325: Sec A: Theoretical Evaluation of Production
The purpose of this unit is to assess your knowledge and understanding of media concepts, contexts and critical debates, through your understanding of one contemporary media issue and their ability to evaluate your own practical work in reflective and theoretical ways.
The examination is 2 hours. You are required to answer two compulsory questions, on their own production work, and 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 theory question marked out of 50.
There are two sections to this paper: Section A: Theoretical Evaluation of Production (50 marks) Section B: Contemporary Media Issues (50 marks)
Section A: Theoretical Evaluation of Production
You answer two compulsory questions. The first requires you to describe and evaluate
your skills development over the course of you production work, from Foundation Portfolio to Advanced Portfolio. The second asks you to identify one production and evaluate it in relation to one theoretical concept.
Question 1(a) requires you to describe and evaluate their skills development over the course of their production work, from Foundation Portfolio to Advanced Portfolio. The focus of this evaluation must be on skills development, and the question will require you to adapt this to one or two specific production practices. The list of practices to which questions will relate is as follows:
Digital Technology Creativity Research and planning Post-production
Using conventions from real media texts 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.
Question 1(b) requires candidates to select one production and evaluate it in relation to a media concept. The list of concepts to which questions will relate is as follows:
Genre Narrative Representation Audience Media language
In the examination, questions will be set using one of these concepts only.
In some circumstances, candidates will be expected to select the production that appears to relate most effectively to the specific concept that arises in the exam question. However, the requirement for candidates to evaluate one of their productions in relation to a concept does not assume that the concept will necessarily always fit easily and in an orthodox way. Thus in some cases candidates will be describing their productions in terms of them not relating straightforwardly to the concept. For example, a candidate producing three websites over their two portfolios might describe ways in which websites cannot be understood easily through applying conventional narrative theory. Whether the candidate applies the concept to the product or uses the production to challenge the concept, it is essential that candidates are sufficiently knowledgeable about the concept for either approach. Candidates may choose to write about work undertaken at AS or A2, main task or preliminary/ancillary.
Pete Fraser explains Approaching Question 1a
These are the previous questions which came up for this part of the exam:
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.
You will notice that each of these begins by asking you to 'describe' and then goes on to ask you to reflect in some way: "evaluate", "how you used" "how your skills developed". herein lies the key to this part of the exam! You only have half an hour for the question and you really need to make the most of that time by quickly moving from description (so the reader knows what you did) to analysis/evaluation/reflection, so he/she starts to understand what you learnt from it.
there are five possible areas which can come up
Digital technology
Research and Planning
Conventions of Real Media
Post-Production
Creativity.
If you look through those questions above, you will see that they all contain at least two of the five- creativity is mentioned (as 'creative decision making') in two of them alongside the main area (digital technology on one, research and planning skills in the other). In the third of those past questions , research is combined with conventions of real media. So as you can see, the question is likely to mix and match the five, so you HAVE to be able to think on your feet and answer the question that is there.
So, how do you get started preparing and revising this stuff? I would suggest that you begin by setting out, on cards or post-its, a list of answers to these questions:
What production activities have you done?
This should include both the main task and preliminary task from AS and the main and ancillaries at A2 plus any non-assessed activities you have done as practice, and additionally anything you have done outside the course which you might want to refer to, such as films made for other courses or skateboard videos made with your mates if you think you can make them relevant to your answer.
What digital technology have you used?
This should not be too hard- include hardware (cameras, phones for pictures/audio, computers and anything else you used) software (on your computer) and online programs, such as blogger, youtube etc
In what ways can the work you have done be described as creative?
This is a difficult question and one that does not have a correct answer as such, but ought to give you food for thought.
What different forms of research did you do?
Again you will need to include a variety of examples- institutional research (such as on how titles work in film openings), audience research (before you made your products and after you finished for feedback), research into conventions of media texts (layout, fonts, camera shots, soundtracks, everything!) and finally logistical research- recce shots of your locations, research into costume, actors, etc
What conventions of real media did you need to know about?
For this, it is worth making a list for each project you have worked on and categorising them by medium so that you don’t repeat yourself
What do you understand by ‘post-production’ in your work?
This one, I’ll answer for you- for the purpose of this exam, it is defined as everything after planning and shooting or live recording. In other words, the stage of your work where you manipulated your raw material on the computer, maybe using photoshop, a video editing program or desktop publishing.
For each of these lists, your next stage is to produce a set of examples- so that when you make the point in the exam, you can then back it up with a concrete example. You need to be able to talk about specific things you did in post-production and why they were significant, just as you need to do more than just say ‘I looked on youtube’ for conventions of real media, but actually name specific videos you looked at, what you gained from them and how they influenced your work.
This question will be very much about looking at your skills development over time, the process which brought about this progress, most if not all the projects you worked on from that list above, and about reflection on how how you as a media student have developed. Unusually, this is an exam which rewards you for talking about yourself and the work you have done!
Final tips: you need some practice- this is very hard to do without it! I’d have a crack at trying to write an essay on each of the areas, or at the very least doing a detailed plan with lots of examples. The fact that it is a 30 minute essay makes it very unusual, so you need to be able to tailor your writing to that length- a tough task!
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.
You will notice that each of these begins by asking you to 'describe' and then goes on to ask you to reflect in some way: "evaluate", "how you used" "how your skills developed". herein lies the key to this part of the exam! You only have half an hour for the question and you really need to make the most of that time by quickly moving from description (so the reader knows what you did) to analysis/evaluation/reflection, so he/she starts to understand what you learnt from it.
there are five possible areas which can come up
Digital technology
Research and Planning
Conventions of Real Media
Post-Production
Creativity.
If you look through those questions above, you will see that they all contain at least two of the five- creativity is mentioned (as 'creative decision making') in two of them alongside the main area (digital technology on one, research and planning skills in the other). In the third of those past questions , research is combined with conventions of real media. So as you can see, the question is likely to mix and match the five, so you HAVE to be able to think on your feet and answer the question that is there.
So, how do you get started preparing and revising this stuff? I would suggest that you begin by setting out, on cards or post-its, a list of answers to these questions:
What production activities have you done?
This should include both the main task and preliminary task from AS and the main and ancillaries at A2 plus any non-assessed activities you have done as practice, and additionally anything you have done outside the course which you might want to refer to, such as films made for other courses or skateboard videos made with your mates if you think you can make them relevant to your answer.
What digital technology have you used?
This should not be too hard- include hardware (cameras, phones for pictures/audio, computers and anything else you used) software (on your computer) and online programs, such as blogger, youtube etc
In what ways can the work you have done be described as creative?
This is a difficult question and one that does not have a correct answer as such, but ought to give you food for thought.
What different forms of research did you do?
Again you will need to include a variety of examples- institutional research (such as on how titles work in film openings), audience research (before you made your products and after you finished for feedback), research into conventions of media texts (layout, fonts, camera shots, soundtracks, everything!) and finally logistical research- recce shots of your locations, research into costume, actors, etc
What conventions of real media did you need to know about?
For this, it is worth making a list for each project you have worked on and categorising them by medium so that you don’t repeat yourself
What do you understand by ‘post-production’ in your work?
This one, I’ll answer for you- for the purpose of this exam, it is defined as everything after planning and shooting or live recording. In other words, the stage of your work where you manipulated your raw material on the computer, maybe using photoshop, a video editing program or desktop publishing.
For each of these lists, your next stage is to produce a set of examples- so that when you make the point in the exam, you can then back it up with a concrete example. You need to be able to talk about specific things you did in post-production and why they were significant, just as you need to do more than just say ‘I looked on youtube’ for conventions of real media, but actually name specific videos you looked at, what you gained from them and how they influenced your work.
This question will be very much about looking at your skills development over time, the process which brought about this progress, most if not all the projects you worked on from that list above, and about reflection on how how you as a media student have developed. Unusually, this is an exam which rewards you for talking about yourself and the work you have done!
Final tips: you need some practice- this is very hard to do without it! I’d have a crack at trying to write an essay on each of the areas, or at the very least doing a detailed plan with lots of examples. The fact that it is a 30 minute essay makes it very unusual, so you need to be able to tailor your writing to that length- a tough task!
Pete Fraser explains How to prepare for question 1b
All questions which have been set in previous sessions:
Analyse media representation in one of your coursework productions.
Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to genre
Apply theories of narrative to one of your coursework productions.
You will notice that each of these questions is quite short and fits a common formula. You can be assured that the same thing will apply this summer. You will be asked to apply ONE concept to one of your productions. This is a quite different task from question 1a, where you write about all of your work and your skills, as this one involves some reference to theory and only the one piece of work, as well as asking you to step back from it and think about it almost as if someone else had made it- what is known as ‘critical distance’.
There are five possible concepts which can come up
Representation
Genre
Narrative
Audience
Media Language (film language = camerawork, mise-en-scene, editing, sound)
If you look through those questions above, you will see that the first three have all already come up, but don’t be fooled into thinking that means that it must be one of the other two this time- exams don’t always work that predictably! It would be far too risky just to bank on that happening and not prepare for the others! In any case, preparing for them all will help you understand things better and there are areas of overlap which you can use across the concepts.
So, how do you get started preparing and revising this stuff? First of all, you need to decide which project you would be most confident analysing in the exam. I believe that any of the five can be applied to moving image work, so if you did a film opening at AS, a music video, short film or trailer at A2, that would be the safest choice. Print work is more tricky to write about in relation to narrative, but the other four areas would all work well for it, so it is up to you, but to be honest, I’d prepare in advance of the exam as you don’t want to be deciding what to use during your precious half hour! What you certainly need is a copy of the project itself to look at as part of your revision, to remind yourself in detail of how it works.
Representation
If you take a video you have made for your coursework, you will almost certainly have people in it. If the topic is representation, then your task is to look at how those representations work in your video. You could apply some of the ideas used in the AS TV Drama exam here- how does your video construct a representation of gender, ethnicity or age for example? You need also to refer to some critics who have written about representation or theories of media representation and attempt to apply those (or argue with them). So who could you use? Interesting writers on representation and identity include Richard Dyer, Angela McRobbie and David Gauntlett. See what they say...
Genre
If you’ve made a music magazine at AS level, an analysis of the magazine would need to set it in relation to the forms and conventions shown in such magazines, particularly for specific types of music. But it would not simply comprise a list of those conventions. There are a whole host of theories of genre and writers with different approaches. Some of it could be used to inform your writing about your production piece. Some you could try are: Altman, Grant and Neale- all are cited in the wikipedia page here
Narrative
A film opening or trailer will be ideal for this, as they both depend upon ideas about narrative in order to function. An opening must set up some of the issues that the rest of the film’s narrative will deal with, but must not give too much away, since it is only an opening and you would want the audience to carry on watching! Likewise a trailer must draw upon some elements of the film’s imaginary complete narrative in order to entice the viewer to watch it, again without giving too much away. If you made a short film, you will have been capturing a complete narrative, which gives you something complete to analyse. If you did a music video, the chances are that it was more performance based, maybe interspersed with some fragments of narrative. In all these cases, there is enough about narrative in the product to make it worth analysis. The chances are you have been introduced to a number of theories about narrative, but just in case, here’s a link to a PDF by Andrea Joyce, which summarises four of them, including Propp and Todorov.
Audience
Every media product has to have an audience, otherwise in both a business sense and probably an artistic sense too it would be judged a failure. In your projects, you will undoubtedly have been looking at the idea of a target audience- who you are aiming it at and why; you should also have taken feedback from a real audience in some way at the end of the project for your digital evaluation, which involves finding out how the audience really ‘read’ what you had made. You were also asked at AS to consider how your product addressed your audience- what was it about it that particularly worked to ‘speak’ to them? All this is effectively linked to audience theory which you then need to reference and apply.
Media Language
A lot of people have assumed this is going to be the most difficult concept to apply, but I don’t think it need be. If you think back to the AS TV Drama exam, when you had to look at the technical codes and how they operate, that was an exercise in applying media language analysis, so for the A2 exam if this one comes up, I’d see it as pretty similar. For moving image, the language of film and television is defined by how camera, editing, sound and mise-en-scene create meaning. Likewise an analysis of print work would involve looking at how fonts, layout, combinations of text and image as well as the actual words chosen creates meaning. Useful theory here might be Roland Barthes on semiotics- denotation and connotation and for moving image work Bordwell and Thompson.
For example, consider how much more communication about the passage of time and space takes pace in a tightly edited car chase scene. Just watch any of the pulsating and exhilarating car chases from the film Ronin (John Frankenheimer, UK/France/USA, 1998) and you will see how fast the speed the cars are travelling and their proximity to each other is conveyed through the editing. The scene will feature a variety of shots, wide angle, point of view, close up and so on and the edits between shots will be fast and tight with no one individual shot appearing on the screen for more than a fraction of a second. These factors are discussed at length by Bordwell and Thompson in their book “Film Art, An Introduction” (tenth edition, 2013) and they discuss the role of editing in creating temporal (time) and spatial (space) meaning. They also discuss how the way a scene is edited gives it rhythm and visual, or graphic meaning. Rhythm is important in a chase scene such as the one previously described because the rhythm of the editing needs to match the emotion of the scene. Put simply, the pace of the cars and the frantic nature of car chases is communicated almost as much through the temporal, spatial and rhythmic considerations in the editing as through the performance of the actors and the mix of the roaring engines and screeching tyres in the diegetic sound and the fast paced, upbeat music in the non-diegetic sound.
So what do you do in the exam?
You need to state which project you are using and briefly describe it
You then need to analyse it using whichever concept appears in the question, making reference to relevant theory throughout
Keep being specific in your use of examples from the project
Here is a link to a good answer to q1a and 1b from the January session.
Analyse media representation in one of your coursework productions.
Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to genre
Apply theories of narrative to one of your coursework productions.
You will notice that each of these questions is quite short and fits a common formula. You can be assured that the same thing will apply this summer. You will be asked to apply ONE concept to one of your productions. This is a quite different task from question 1a, where you write about all of your work and your skills, as this one involves some reference to theory and only the one piece of work, as well as asking you to step back from it and think about it almost as if someone else had made it- what is known as ‘critical distance’.
There are five possible concepts which can come up
Representation
Genre
Narrative
Audience
Media Language (film language = camerawork, mise-en-scene, editing, sound)
If you look through those questions above, you will see that the first three have all already come up, but don’t be fooled into thinking that means that it must be one of the other two this time- exams don’t always work that predictably! It would be far too risky just to bank on that happening and not prepare for the others! In any case, preparing for them all will help you understand things better and there are areas of overlap which you can use across the concepts.
So, how do you get started preparing and revising this stuff? First of all, you need to decide which project you would be most confident analysing in the exam. I believe that any of the five can be applied to moving image work, so if you did a film opening at AS, a music video, short film or trailer at A2, that would be the safest choice. Print work is more tricky to write about in relation to narrative, but the other four areas would all work well for it, so it is up to you, but to be honest, I’d prepare in advance of the exam as you don’t want to be deciding what to use during your precious half hour! What you certainly need is a copy of the project itself to look at as part of your revision, to remind yourself in detail of how it works.
Representation
If you take a video you have made for your coursework, you will almost certainly have people in it. If the topic is representation, then your task is to look at how those representations work in your video. You could apply some of the ideas used in the AS TV Drama exam here- how does your video construct a representation of gender, ethnicity or age for example? You need also to refer to some critics who have written about representation or theories of media representation and attempt to apply those (or argue with them). So who could you use? Interesting writers on representation and identity include Richard Dyer, Angela McRobbie and David Gauntlett. See what they say...
Genre
If you’ve made a music magazine at AS level, an analysis of the magazine would need to set it in relation to the forms and conventions shown in such magazines, particularly for specific types of music. But it would not simply comprise a list of those conventions. There are a whole host of theories of genre and writers with different approaches. Some of it could be used to inform your writing about your production piece. Some you could try are: Altman, Grant and Neale- all are cited in the wikipedia page here
Narrative
A film opening or trailer will be ideal for this, as they both depend upon ideas about narrative in order to function. An opening must set up some of the issues that the rest of the film’s narrative will deal with, but must not give too much away, since it is only an opening and you would want the audience to carry on watching! Likewise a trailer must draw upon some elements of the film’s imaginary complete narrative in order to entice the viewer to watch it, again without giving too much away. If you made a short film, you will have been capturing a complete narrative, which gives you something complete to analyse. If you did a music video, the chances are that it was more performance based, maybe interspersed with some fragments of narrative. In all these cases, there is enough about narrative in the product to make it worth analysis. The chances are you have been introduced to a number of theories about narrative, but just in case, here’s a link to a PDF by Andrea Joyce, which summarises four of them, including Propp and Todorov.
Audience
Every media product has to have an audience, otherwise in both a business sense and probably an artistic sense too it would be judged a failure. In your projects, you will undoubtedly have been looking at the idea of a target audience- who you are aiming it at and why; you should also have taken feedback from a real audience in some way at the end of the project for your digital evaluation, which involves finding out how the audience really ‘read’ what you had made. You were also asked at AS to consider how your product addressed your audience- what was it about it that particularly worked to ‘speak’ to them? All this is effectively linked to audience theory which you then need to reference and apply.
Media Language
A lot of people have assumed this is going to be the most difficult concept to apply, but I don’t think it need be. If you think back to the AS TV Drama exam, when you had to look at the technical codes and how they operate, that was an exercise in applying media language analysis, so for the A2 exam if this one comes up, I’d see it as pretty similar. For moving image, the language of film and television is defined by how camera, editing, sound and mise-en-scene create meaning. Likewise an analysis of print work would involve looking at how fonts, layout, combinations of text and image as well as the actual words chosen creates meaning. Useful theory here might be Roland Barthes on semiotics- denotation and connotation and for moving image work Bordwell and Thompson.
For example, consider how much more communication about the passage of time and space takes pace in a tightly edited car chase scene. Just watch any of the pulsating and exhilarating car chases from the film Ronin (John Frankenheimer, UK/France/USA, 1998) and you will see how fast the speed the cars are travelling and their proximity to each other is conveyed through the editing. The scene will feature a variety of shots, wide angle, point of view, close up and so on and the edits between shots will be fast and tight with no one individual shot appearing on the screen for more than a fraction of a second. These factors are discussed at length by Bordwell and Thompson in their book “Film Art, An Introduction” (tenth edition, 2013) and they discuss the role of editing in creating temporal (time) and spatial (space) meaning. They also discuss how the way a scene is edited gives it rhythm and visual, or graphic meaning. Rhythm is important in a chase scene such as the one previously described because the rhythm of the editing needs to match the emotion of the scene. Put simply, the pace of the cars and the frantic nature of car chases is communicated almost as much through the temporal, spatial and rhythmic considerations in the editing as through the performance of the actors and the mix of the roaring engines and screeching tyres in the diegetic sound and the fast paced, upbeat music in the non-diegetic sound.
So what do you do in the exam?
You need to state which project you are using and briefly describe it
You then need to analyse it using whichever concept appears in the question, making reference to relevant theory throughout
Keep being specific in your use of examples from the project
Here is a link to a good answer to q1a and 1b from the January session.
PRACTICE QUESTIONS FOR SECTION A: EVALUATION OF PRODUCTION
1a.
i. To what extent have digital technologies helped develop your research and planning skills during your Media 'A' Level?
ii. Has using conventions from real media texts in your work enhanced or impeded your ability to be creative?
1b.
i. With reference to your study of genre, how useful is it to apply a critical framework to your production work?
ii. What decisions did you make during the creation of representation in your production work?
G325 Section A question1 b) NARRATIVE
Click here for essay outline
For NARRATIVE I suggest you think about incorporating the following points:
- At the start, offer ideas on the place of narrative in the music video form in general: how is narrative usually handled? Is it handled in the same way in this genre as in say, film? Apart from narrative, what does the M V genre require? (eg performance, stars, relationship with the band, repeatability).
- Narrative in MV is rarely linear; editing sees to that: explain why. What elements of MV form shape narrative, such as the chorus (lyrics, and the visuals that go with them); instrumental sections (like your opening shot)?
- Refer to genre conventions: we learn from Andrew Goodwin Dancing In The Distraction Factory that narrative treatment may be illustration, amplification or disjuncture in relation to the lyrics: which is yours? How much ENIGMA is there?
- ELLIPSIS? A huge feature of MV narrativ
- FLASHBACKS?
- Is there quite a lot of repetition? Why?
- POV shots? To immerse the audience in the world of the MV, to 'privilege' the audience
- Cinematography. Stress that form IS a huge part narrative. For instance, 'Using a fish eye lens in a rapid pan delivers the visual code about disorientation.'
- Closure of narrative: CLIMAX? Resolution
Here are some provocative thoughts! MV have often been
characterized as the ultimate medium of the postmodern world: Fast.
Empty. Lascivious. At least that is how the majority of the academic and
educated world perceives them. Using Frederic Jameson's terms, music videos
have been defined as a schizophrenic string of isolated, discontinuous
signifiers, failing to link up into a coherent sequence, as a string without a
centre. Andrew Goodwin talked about "semiotic pornography",
"electronic wallpaper" and "neo-fascist propaganda" and
Michael Shore defined the medium by its so-called "decadence", its
"surface without substance", by its "clichéd imagery". For
Heidi Peeters (2004), what gives narrative coherence to the form is the star:
“The star is the one that lends the video world its splendour,
that gives the audiovisual elements their enchanting attraction and that
illuminates viewers all over the world from the Olympus of the screen. This may
seem rather obvious, but one would be surprised at how the majority of
theorists still consider music videos to be visualizations of a song. While
they may seem discontinuous .., the shots (in music videos)are highly connected
through the image of the star.”
“The star promotes the phenomenon of identification, a
process by which viewers become attached to a star, ranging from emotional
affinity limited to the context of the movie theatre to projection,
by which fans try to become their idols through imitating speech, movements and
consumer patterns. It is obvious that when the object of projection appears to
be the owner of fancy cars, expensive clothes and luxurious houses, a
capitalist establishment can only welcome the attitude of identification.
Identification with stars does not necessarily have to be based on appearance
or sex, as especially for pop stars, it can also rely on the musical style and
the subcultural group to which the singer refers. Sometimes identification is
not so much a question of the male-female opposition as it is a question of us
versus them, young versus old, rebels versus establishment.”
Will and Alex made an ALTERNATIVE treatment. That is, you
show both the public face and the private struggle of the band. Both narrative
treatment and cinematography shows this dichotomy (opposite worlds). You don’t
create a Utopian world of which the star seems to be the instigator, as claimed
by Richard Dyer's Entertainment and Utopia. What you do is create the
world of the band, the place where they hang out, practise, play and fall out,
in a more realistic, indie way. You would agree with Peeters that “Narrativity
does not seem to be an absolute necessity within the medium.” What you are
doing is creating emotional connection with your band through a series of
poetic montages.
“The fact that music videos in this sense are primarily poetic
does not mean that clips never contain narrativity. Most music videos do
develop a storyline, embedded within its poetic structure and some clips even
contain introductory story sequences or non-musical narrative sequences
inserted within the video number but "outside" its musical score.
Narrative in clips becomes a device to structure the poetic clip world and make
it more accessible and recognizable to the viewer.”
'Describe how you developed your skills in the use of POST PRODUCTION
The
dialogue is in snippets to introduce social satire types. We had one of
the celebrities complaining about her hair extension falling out to
emphasis the stupidity of the girl.
A
challenge we had in our group was editing on green screen. We did not
know at the time of shooting the two women, that the larger one was
wearing a green coat, so therefore we could not edit the background.
Moreover if some shades of the green screen are darker this effects the
editing process as it becomes all grainy and transparent. We have
learn't from this mistake in future editing circumstances.
There
are also other important factors that I have learned throughout the
project, for example like editing, sound and mise-en-scene, etc. They
would all help convey the mood and atmosphere of the film to audiences
and also shows the genre of the film. I think in order to create a
good, successful film opening, the most important thing was that all of
the factors that I have mentioned above must be well balanced. You
cant spend all your time focusing on getting a nice story but not
putting any effort in choosing the right music and dialogue.
Section A Question 1a) 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.
Before starting our
productions I made
Our preliminary involved…
At AS I made..
At A2 I made..
Blogger + Presentational tools an
essential part of the production process as I researched, planned, recorded and
sought feedback for my production using tools such as Pinterest, Tumblr
and ScoopIt! to collate research which
shaped my decision making and helped me organize my creative decisions
efficiently, especially the access to professional examples that I intended to
emulate. Communication tools were already part of my everyday working methods
(Facebook, Evernote, Skype, email, BBM, Instagram) so that I could work
effectively with my group and these I developed and extended during the 18
months to include Twitter as a research tool (following Alan Rusbridger’s
advice that Twitter as a search engine rivals Google, and acts as a news
aggregator for relevant information). In order to create evidence supporting
the creative decisions that lay behind my productions at AS, I used digital presentational
tools like Slideshare and Prezi embedded in my blog and by A2, I was using New
Hive (an interactive infographic) to collate my work.
From the start, I used digital equipment
to film my movie work using a Digital camera Canon 550D to make Cherie ( a practice film opening) and my
prelim. I also made ancillary products: at AS, I made a set of marketing tools
to promote my film using the digital camera (film poster, webpage design) and
online digital tools such as facebook and Twitter to market and distribute my film.
I created an audience profile in Photoshop based on NME’s.
To edit my film work, I have used Apple
Macs both at school and at home I quickly became very competent editing in
Adobe Premiere (for prelim & comedy
), learning to make our comedy opening
using green screen, audio, soundtrack,
colour correction etc……….. I am particularly pleased about learning to use
After Effects to make………
Later I moved to iMovie to edit my music video where laying down the
soundtrack was easy but the lip-synching
in the editing much more challenging as it was very precise work with a huge
number of edits and transitions. As Heidi Peeters asserts, music video is all
about spectacle, so linear narrative gives way to a succession of visual codes,
leading to the interweaving of genre
conventions (such as performance, close ups of the star, some illustration
of the lyrics) with spectacle that
is cut to the beat. This meant a
huge skills development for me as I sought to depart from the simple narrative
structure of my comedy film opening, which was more or less a series of brief
scenes with a voice over, music and titles punctuating the visuals, to an
explosion of visual spectacle that should withstand repeated viewings.
Another challenge was creating a
unified whole out of three different products: I had to incorporate visual elements
of the music video into the digipack design which in turn had to feature on the
magazine advertisement in order for the three to work as a synergistic whole
promoting the album.
Using Photoshop, I designed the layout
of the digipack and magazine advert, bearing in mind the need for clear visual codes, as I had learned from Roland Barthes.
Question 1a) POST PRODUCTION
Question 1a) POST PRODUCTION
'Describe how you developed your skills in the use of POST PRODUCTION
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.'
From
when I first started this course I was very inexperienced and had
little knowledge on anything to do with filming, such as the camera
angles and shots, lighting and sound effects.
Looking back at the beginning of my project, I have learned a lot about new technologies, distribution practices and film production, etc.
Throughout
our filming, I think it is fair to say we have all realised how
important different aspects are, such as getting the lighting spot on,
different camera shots and angles and the editing after.
However,
once we improved on our filming skills, and our knowledge started to
improve, the filming started to gradually get easier.
The
first scene we filmed for our film opening was shot in the school
cafeteria as we wanted to get a strong location for the scene with
Heston Blumenthal cooking his eccentric dishes. Even though we were
satisfied with the location, the lighting, on the other hand, was a
major weakness as it was extremely dark and unclear from the lack of
lighting.
To
improve this, we decided to change the location completely, and shoot
the scene in the sixth form kitchen, which, along with the lighting, had
a much better outcome.
In
one off our scenes we filmed, was in the kitchen involving the
characters Heston Blumenthal and Dani. Heston appears in his wacky mood
of preparing food, where Dani looks at him in confusion while a voice
over plays over of her speaking. The voice over was something we
recorded on photobooth on the Mac, I had at least 3 tries before getting
the accent spot on and the words sounded correctly. We zoomed up onto
the food being chopped exaggeratedly, then the dialogue follows in. We
tried to portray the chef Heston Blumenthal as an adventurous person
with food. As our character was not a professional chef he found it hard
to chop the food up fast, so therefore we used post production using
Adobe. this was a simple procedure, of just using the slow or fast
motion dial.
The
voice over is crucial in introducing our central character – Danni, the
gap year student. The voice over is important in establishing the point
of view and making the audience share her attitudes towards her
employer and customers she meets.
Although
Danni and her opinions do not feature largely, because they’ll be
developed later on in the film, nether the less she sets the tone of how
the audience sees what’s going on. Everything that goes on in the
British restaurant is all very foreign to Danni as she’s Australian and
this is Britain. She’s alternately aspirated and amused with the people
she encounters. In
doing this we are echoing the convention of other comedy films like
Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging where the narrative is framed through
the viewpoint of the teenage girl.
The
dialogue is in snippets to introduce social satire types. We had one of
the celebrities complaining about her hair extension falling out to
emphasis the stupidity of the girl.
We
researched professional film title sequences in a variety of ways, such
as the website 'art of the title'. We focused a vast amount of time on
the opening film titles as we felt this was majorly important as it
introduced the feel to our tv opening.
As we are making a comedy
film opening we decided that an element of surprise and fun was key to
indicating genre to our audience. We also knew we had to signal the
location very early on, which is a restaurant setting. Therefore we
decided we would use CGi to introduce our titles and have them appearing
on different part of props in a way that would be visually arresting.
We start with our production company 'WLF' where milk is
being poured onto a chopping board and displays the name. We edited this
on after effects. In common with most films we build up with the title
of our film at the end. We based our methods on food ink. We tired
different variations of how we could produce the names of production
onto culinary objects. Our first scene was pouring milk down onto a
chopping board which we then edited in Adobe. Other scenes we filmed
were, melting butter in a pan and toast popping up of a toaster.Our
soundtrack has three main elements, which often feature in film
openings: the musical soundtrack dialogue and voiceover. The audience
first hears the soundtrack. We listened to music choices such as songs
form The Holiday soundtrack, but came to a conclusion that
we preferred Banana Pancakes as this had a bubbly happy feel to it, and
we felt that because the song is about food this fitted into our
theme. It has upbeat, cheerful and lively qualities.
A
challenge we had in our group was editing on green screen. We did not
know at the time of shooting the two women, that the larger one was
wearing a green coat, so therefore we could not edit the background.
Moreover if some shades of the green screen are darker this effects the
editing process as it becomes all grainy and transparent. We have
learn't from this mistake in future editing circumstances.
In our film editing, I chose to use Imovie. Although I wasn't that familiar with it in the beginning, but after the preliminary task I have learned a lot about it and it had made editing our opening so much easier as all of us were quite familiar with it already.
We are all more positive and independent when we do different aspects of filming and editing on our own and I think this has showed in our final product. We have used a variety of tools, such as our blogs, Facebook and mobile phones to help us become more organised and manage our time.
There
are also other important factors that I have learned throughout the
project, for example like editing, sound and mise-en-scene, etc. They
would all help convey the mood and atmosphere of the film to audiences
and also shows the genre of the film. I think in order to create a
good, successful film opening, the most important thing was that all of
the factors that I have mentioned above must be well balanced. You
cant spend all your time focusing on getting a nice story but not
putting any effort in choosing the right music and dialogue.
I
have learned a lot throughout the process and I believe these skills
and techniques would be very useful in the rest of the course and even
for my future career.
G325 Section A question 1b AUDIENCE
Analyse one of your productions in relation to AUDIENCE
I will
analyse my A2 production in relation to audience. At A2, I made a promo pack of
a music video, 4 pane digipack design and magazine advertisement to promote
Miley Cyrus’s Wrecking Ball.
· target audience: we researched in order to identify our target
audience; tools used, sites that you searched (fans use MC’s website, Facebook,
Instagram + Twitter pages which had a range of interactive tools encouraging
her fans to see her gigs and videos, buy her albums and merchandise, take part
in competitions, download pictures and so on.) Cyrus core fanbase: tweens. Define the demographic more
closely..
· Uneasy relationship with fans following
controversy: the core demographic of her fan base has evolved over time from
her Hannah Montana period to her assertively adult ‘wrecking ball’ sexualized
persona.
· I investigated a variety of audience
theory frameworks at A2. From reception theory, I understood that a
media text in itself has no meaning until it is read or decoded by an audience.
The study of theoretical positions helped me deconstruct
the relationship between audience and text.
· The media effects model, or ‘hypodermic
syringe model’ contends that audiences are passive recipients of media texts. The Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information
from a text passes into the mass consciouness of the audience unmediated, ie the experience, intelligence and
opinion of an individual are not relevant to the reception of the text. It
assumes that the audience are passive
and heterogenous. This theory is
still quoted during moral panics
by parents, politicians and pressure groups, and is used to explain why certain
groups in society should not be exposed to certain media texts (comics in the
1950s, rap music in the 2000s), for fear that they will watch or read sexual or
violent behaviour and will then act them out themselves.
· This model led to moral panics about
MC’s influence, because of the negative examples set by her highly sexualized
onscreen and onstage behaviour, such as ‘twerking’ which younger, impressionable,
loyal, copy-cat audiences might ingest passively without challenging such
behaviour.
·
For
example, Cyrus initially disturbed adult viewers
– and instantly became a martyr in the eyes of her teen-age following – for her
strip-tease behavior in her videos and performance at the VMAs.
·
Certainly, the
two-step flow model of audience behavior contends that there are opinion
formers in society who are influential. In this model, audiences are seen as
open to persuasion about the merits, values and importance of what they see in
the mass media because of what their peers or role models think. Fans could be
seen as manifesting ‘sheep like’ admiration of a role model such as MC if influential
opinion formers supported her or indeed took against her, as Annie Lennox did
when coming out against MC.
- Newer models of audience theory, developed by Blulmer and Katz, for instance, assert that individuals choose and use a text actively for entertainment, to develop personal relationships, to support their own values and identity, and to learn what goes on in the world. This model is known as the ‘uses and gratifications’ model. As a Cyrus fan myself, I find her performances brave, novel and fascinating. She challenges current models of what is acceptable onscreen and probably is no more ‘pornographic’ than other performers in music videos. She may even be acting ironically, a pioneer in challenging her audiences to question traditional male sexual stances which audiences take for granted. Therefore, I developed a particular treatment for my version of Wrecking Ball that gives the audience an insight into an imagined hidden conflict within Cyrus, a conflict that reveals that there are two sides to her public persona: the innocent, child-like side that dwells in the safe fantasy land of Alice In Wonderland, as well as the raunchy side that is almost forced to outrage audiences in order to keep the lead in a music industry where women have traditionally been objectified by the male gaze of the camera.
- I attract and address my audience by offering a model of defiance that is also innocent and playful. In my music video, I show Cyrus breaking free from constraints in a vibrantly colourful and powerful scene where she plays the drums and cymbals, showering powder paint over herself and the white walls. Elsewhere, she tears off her innocent Alice in Wonderland costume to reveal more raunchy clothes. I also included an elaborate set in which Miley has an Alice in Wonderland tea party with a pretty tea set, sweets, lollipops, a besuited and top-hatted admirer, all in a beautiful woodland grotto mise-en-scene with rustic wooden seats.
