Exam section A
P
Question 1 a
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Question 1(a) requires candidates 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 them to adapt this to ONE or TWO specific practices below. 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
Question 1a
• 1 (a) “Digital technology turns media
consumers into media producers”. In your own
experience, how has your creativity developed
through using digital technology to complete
your coursework productions?
• Key words to discuss: Digital technology and
creativity.
How this should be attempted set
format:
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paragraph 1 should be an introduction which explains which projects you did. It
can be quite short.
paragraph 2 should pick up the skill area and perhaps suggest something about
your starting point with it- what skills did you have already and how were these
illustrated. use an example.
paragraph 3 should talk through your use of that skill in early projects and what
you learned and developed through these. Again there should be examples to
support all that you say.
paragraph 4 should go on to demonstrate how the skill developed in later projects,
again backed by examples, and reflecting back on how this represents moves
forward for you from your early position.
paragraph 5 short conclusion
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(You only have 30mins to answer this question and you must show a range across
the two years and productions).
Question 1b
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
Key words
• (b) “Media texts rely on cultural experiences
in order for audiences to easily make sense of
narratives”. Explain how you used
conventional and / or experimental narrative
approaches in one of your production pieces.
• Two key words, but the question says explain
narratives you MUST ONLY TALK ABOUT ONE
CONCEPT.
Past exam questions what concepts do
they want you to talk about
• In questions 1 (b) you need to choose one of
your media productions to write about
• (b) Analyse media representation in one of
your coursework productions
• (what’s the concept they want you talk
about?)
How you should answer the exam
question
• para 1 Intro: which of your projects are you going to write about? briefly
describe it
para 2: what are some of the key features of the concept you are being
asked to apply? maybe outline two of the theories/ideas of particular
writers briefly
para 3; start to apply the concept, making close reference to your
production to show how the concept is evident in it
para 4: try to show ways in which ideas work in relation to your production
and also ways in which those ideas might not apply/could be challenged
para 5; conclusion
Again remember you only have 30 minutes and that you really need to
analyse the finished production, rather than tell the marker how you
made it
A2 Revision Session
Media Theory and Theorists
for G325
Section A: Examining your own
productions
How to quote
• You must use quote names and dates correctly
• Must use media theory/ theorists
• I have split them by area of relevance: Genre/
Narrative/ Representation/ Audience/ Media
Language
What do you need to be able to do with
theorists and theories?
• You do NOT need to:
– Learn a load of quotes
– Explain their theories in great depth
– Know them all
• You DO need to:
– Use a few
– Be able to apply them to your work/ case studies
– Consider how useful/ not useful they are when discussing
your work
– Use authors name and date accuratly.
How to use theorists…
• Quote
• Summarise
• Comment
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Assume your reader knows about the theory/ theorist.
Don’t explain the theory; use it.
A Todorovian analysis would argue…
Mulvey’s notion of the Male Gaze provides a useful way of
understanding the video in that…
• Kate Wales statement that “Genre is... an intertextual
concept” could be useful here because…
YOU DO NOT NEED TO KNOW ALL OF THESE
THEORISTS. THIS IS MORE OF A MENU OF THEORISTS
YOU MIGHT USE, NOT A LIST OF THOSE THAT YOU
MUST USE.
JUST BECAUSE THEY’RE IN THIS POWERPOINT DOESN’T
MEAN YOU WILL COVERED THESE, OR EVEN THAT
ANY OTHER A LEVEL MEDIA STUDENTS WILL HAVE
COVERED THEM
I HAVE PUT THIS IN CAPITAL LETTERS BECAUSE I AM
SHOUTING IT AT YOUR BRAIN
Some theorists you MIGHT be
able to use
Genre
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Gunther Kress Genre is “a kind of text that derives its form from the structure of a
(frequently repeated) social occasion, with its characteristic participants and their
purposes.”
Denis McQuail “The genre may be considered as a practical device for helping any mass
medium to produce consistently and efficiently and to relate its production to the
expectations of its customers.”
Nicholas Abercrombie “Television producers set out to exploit genre conventions... It...
makes sound economic sense. Sets, properties and costumes can be used over and over
again. Teams of stars, writers, directors and technicians can be built up, giving economies
of scale”
Christine Gledhill “Differences between genres meant different audiences could be
identified and catered to... This made it easier to standardise and stabilise production”
Katie Wales “Genre is... an intertextual concept”
John Fiske “A representation of a car chase only makes sense in relation to all the others
we have seen - after all, we are unlikely to have experienced one in reality, and if we did,
we would, according to this model, make sense of it by turning it into another text, which
we would also understand intertextually, in terms of what we have seen so often on our
screens. There is then a cultural knowledge of the concept 'car chase' that any one text is
a prospectus for, and that it used by the viewer to decode it, and by the producer to
encode it.”
Andrew Goodwin
Genres change and evolve:
Christian Metz - Stages of genres: Experimental/ Classic/ Parody/ Deconstruction
David Buckingham - “Genre is not simply given by the culture, rather, it is in a constant process of
negotiation and change.”
Narrative
• Tzetvan Todorov – Argues that narratives always have a structure of
Equilibrium/ Disequilibrium/ New equilibrium
• Story versus plot
• Claude Levi-Strauss – Argues that human cultural understanding is based
upon a system of binary oppposites (good/ bad; black/ white; male/
female…). Narratologists have taken this theory and applied it to narrative,
arguing that binary opposition forms a fundamental way of understanding
narrative.
• Roland Barthes: Enigma code; Action code. Also, Open and Closed texts.
• Vladimir Propp – argued that narratives always have certain character
types who perform certain actions. Characters are agents of action.
• Pam Cook argues that the Hollywood narrative structure includes:
“linearity of cause and effect within an overall trajectory of enigma
resolution” and “a high degree of narrative closure”
Representation
• Laura Mulvey – argues that cinema positions the
audience as male. The camera gazes at the female
object on screen. It also frames the male character
watching the female.
– We watch the girl; we see the male watching the girl; we
position ourselves within the text as a male objectively
gazing at the female.
– Can be applied to other media forms also.
• Hegemony (dominant ideology)
• Anyone from the Collective Identity powerpoint
Audience
• Stuart Hall: Encoding and Decoding; Preferred/
negotiated/ oppositional readings
• Denis McQuail – Uses and Gratification theory
(audiences consume media texts for Suveillance;
Personal Identity; Presnal Relationships; Escapism/
Diversion.
• Ien Ang - “Audiencehood is becoming an even more
multifaceted, fragmented and diversified repertoire
of practices and experiences.”
Media Language
• Any of the theorists from the previous slides