A useful guide from the Chief Examiner

June Paper Q1a) 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. 1b) Analyze one of your media productions in relation to genre

Examiner’s Top Tips – 1a) 1.Plan and prepare – it can only be a combination of two of five things. Some combinations are more likely: digital technology and anything, creativity and anything. 2.Ensure you range across all your work. 3.In advance, identify examples from your work which you can talk about for each skills area. (you could adapt the same example for different skills areas)

Examiner’s Top Tips – 1b) 10marks – argument, points 10marks – specific examples from coursework 5marks – terminology How will you revise to make sure you can cover each area?

Find Five – Skills Areas Digital technology Creativity Research and planning Post-production (evaluations) Using conventions from real media texts.

Give two examples to show your progress in… Digital techology

Give two examples to show your progress in… Research and planning

Give two examples to show your progress in… creativity

Give two examples to show your progress in… Using conventions from real media texts

Examiner’s Tips 1b) 1.Genre 2.Narrative 3.Representation 4.Audience 5.Media language

Which theories and examples would you use for… Media Language

Which theories and examples would you use for… audience

Which theories and examples would you use for… genre

Which theories and examples would you use for… representation

June 2011 – Last Year’s Paper 1a) Describe the ways your production work was informed by research into real media texts and how your ability to use such research developed over time. b) Analyze one of your productions in terms of genre

January 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 to show how these skills developed over time. b) Anayze media representation in one of your productions.

The examiner says… Genre = you need to do more than tick off the features of your video / magazine against the relevant genre conventions. You need to consider theorist’s ideas and the importance or significance of genre Narrative = reflect on how your video works as a text. What is its purpose and how does narrative fit into this? Don’t just apply Todorov to try to prove your video fits a pattern. Think analytically about how your video is actually structured. Use the knowledge you have learnt in the other unit – media 2.0 might raise issues of audience and genre. Consumers become producers etc.

Explain how you used conventional and or experimental narrative approaches in one of your productions. 1.Pick your music video. Define the concept of narrative then make some general points about how music videos work and that they don’t need to tell a story, though sometimes they do use narrative; then home in on your production to talk about what you decided to do with it in terms of narrative.

2. Give a very brief account of the video, the artist, the genre of music then get into your analysis. You certainly need to consider the idea of structure and how you chose to organise the music video if not through a chronological narrative. This would give you the opportunity to consider how far a narrative structure emerges from it: – What governs the beginning, middle and end? Is it the music? Or the performance? Or is there a story? – How have you played with time and space in the video? – How will the audience have understood it?

3. Discuss how your video conforms to or subverts the ideas of one theorist – eg. How do Eisenstein’s ideas about montage reflect how your video is structured. 4.Then apply the ideas of another theorist and discuss how your video conforms to or subverts these – eg how far does your video reflect Levi- Strauss’s ideas about binary opposites. How far is your video structured through its use of pairings of binary opposites? How does this help create meaning for the audience?

5. There is not a single right answer here: whatever you write will need to be justified and explained with close reference to your production. You will also need to consider it in relation to other examples that you have seen, to show how you either followed or broke conventions.

Revision Targets What do you need to do to put yourself in a position to do your best in the exam? How will you structure your remaining study time to ensure you do this? What revision strategies will you use? How will you approach the task in the exam? – Five minutes to plan – 20minutes essay – 5minutes to check. What is on your checklist? (examples, clear points, theorists, terminology)