1b - Narrative

Applying narrative to your text

Revision Guide A2 Media OCR G325

 

Media Language

I have seen this on Eleanor Watson's blog from the other A2 class & believe it is useful.

Media Language.

Medium has its own language - they use familiar codes and conventions

Denotation - literal meaning, the signifier

Connotation - infered meaning, the signified

Barthes argud that in film connotation can be analytically distinguished from denotation


Fiske "denotation is what is filmed, connotation is how it is filmed"

Charles Sanders Pierce - "we only think in signs" Signs only represents anything when society attributes meaning to them.


Micro-ElementsHow they have created meaning to inform us about genre, narrative, representations/ideology, targeting of audiencesHall - there is a preferred meaning that the film makers want the audience to decode.



Seminotic Terminology


Mise-en-scene creates the diegetic world:

• Location

• Character

• Cinemography

• Layout/ Page Design

Camerawork:

• Shot types

• Camera composition

• Camera movement

• Camera angles

Continuity:

• Establishing/re-establishing shot

• Transitions

• 180 degree tule

• Action match

• Cross-cutting

• Cutaway

• Insert shots

• Shot-reverse shot structures

• Eyeline match

Non-continuity:

• Montage sequence

• Flash back/forward

• Ellipsis

• Graphic match

3 types of signs:

• Icon/iconic - it looks like what it is

• Index/indexical - infered sign

• Symbol/symoblic - signifier doesn't resemble the signified - arbitary or convential

Stuart Hall - texts can be encoded by producers and meaning is decoded by the audience

Genre

Media Language

A2 Media Exam

Creativity - 1A

One of the possible areas you could be asked about in the exam is creativity. The projects you have undertaken will hopefully have felt like an opportunity to display your creativity, but you will need the chance to discuss what you understand by creativity and what it might mean to be creative.

The assignment options at AS and A2 all offer constraints for your work, whether it be making pages for a music magazine, the opening of a film or the packaging for an album; one of the reasons why you aren't offered total free choice is because people often find that working within constraints gives them something to exercise their creativity, whereas total freedom can sometimes make it really difficult to know where to start. It's why genre can be interesting- how has something been created which fits with certain structures and rules but plays around with them to give us something a little bit different?

The word 'creative' has many meanings- the most democratic meaning would really suggest that any act of making something (even making an idea) might be seen as a creative act. In more elitist versions of the term, it is reserved for those who are seen as highly skilled or original (famous artists, musicians, film-makers etc). an interesting third alternative is to think about how creativity can be an unconscious, random or collaborative act that becomes more than the sum of its parts.

Research & Planning - 1A

Here is a write up of how I believe I faired at Research in Planning, not only in my AS but as in my A2 work. 

Post Production - 1A

Digital Technology - 1A

Conventions From Real Texts - 1A

G325 Exam

Just been looking about and found this slideshare. although it's 36 slides, it covers near enough everything for the G325 A2 exam and is definitely worth having a look at! 

January 2011

In question 1 (a) you need to write about your work for the Foundation Portfolio and Advanced Portfolio units and you may refer to other media production work you have undertaken.

1 (a) Describe how you developed skills in the use of digital technology for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to creativity and decision making. (25)


In question 1 (b) you must write about one of your media productions only.

1 (b) Apply theories of narrative to one of your coursework productions. (25)

Section A Total [50]

These questions match the exemplar you were given yesterday.

Past Questions section 1a and 1b

1a

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.


Explain how far your understanding of the conventions of existing media 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.



1b

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.


Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to the concept of audience.

How to answer the pomo question!

THIS is how you answer a PoMo question

Postmodernism exam questions

These are the previous questions set for this topic:

What is meant by ‘postmodern media’?
Why are some media products described as ‘postmodern’?
Explain how certain kinds of media can be defined as postmodern.
Explain why the idea of ‘postmodern media’ might be considered controversial
“Postmodern media blur the boundary between reality and representation.” Discuss this idea with reference to media texts that you have studied.
Discuss why some people are not convinced by the idea of postmodern media.

So as you will notice, the questions may focus on what postmodernism is and how you apply ideas about it to examples, but also to why there is an argument about the term itself. I suspect if you have studied this topic, you will have been introduced to the debates around it and have the ability to apply definitions to examples, but I'll point you in the direction of some useful material here too.

If we look at the bullet points in the Specification, which defines what should be studied, we should be able to relate them to the questions set so far:

• What are the different versions of post-modernism (historical period, style, theoretical approach)? (first and fourth questions above)
• What are the arguments for and against understanding some forms of media as post-modern? (possibly all six questions!)
• How do post-modern media texts challenge traditional text-reader relations and the concept of representation? (first, second, third and fifth questions)
• In what ways do media audiences and industries operate differently in a post-modern world? (quite a hard one, maybe a bit of the third and fifth ones) 


The kinds of thing you might use as case studies include:

How post-modern media relate to genre and narrative
computer / video games, virtual worlds, augmented reality and and new forms of representation,
post-modern cinema,
interactive media,
social media and social networking,
reality TV,
music video,
advertising,
post-modern audience theories,
aspects of globalisation,
parody and pastiche in media texts or a range of other applications of post-modern media theory.

It is pretty open in terms of what you might have studied, so I would expect answers to draw upon very different case study material.

This part of the exam asks you to do three more specific things, whatever topic you answer on:

1. You MUST refer to at least TWO different media
2. You MUST refer to past, present and future (with the emphasis on the present- contemporary examples from the past five years)
3. refer to critical/theoretical positions

So for 1. you might compare and contrast examples from film and TV or from games and the web.

For 2. the main thing is to ensure you have a majority of material from the past five years. There were a number of answers last year which were dominated by older examples, so beware of this if you are writing about games or the web, you can be pretty up to date, but the same is true of examples from TV, music video or cinema. This is not to stop you referring to historical examples, just encouraging an emphasis on recent ones. For the point about the future, you could say something about how as we all live more of our lives online, more and more texts take on elements of postmodernism.

For 3. You will hopefully have been introduced to some theory and your teachers will have tried to make it accessible- some key names are Baudrillard and Lyotard and their ideas are summarised quite neatly here

Research & Planning

For my A2 work in  terms of primary research, I analysed current music videos from the genre of music we wanted to create a video for, looking at bands such as The Maccabees, Arctic Monkeys and Bombay Bicycle Club. I also looked at past and present examples of digi-packs, ranging from various genres to get a good idea of all of the options that were available to us to try and create something of a similar standard. I looked at not only examples from a similar genre, but also ranging to Hip-Hop looking at artists such as Jay Z and Kanye West's digi-packs. I also completed analysis of various posters and magazine adverts used by artists

I believe that I can take a lot out of my primary research as it has helped me break down music video from a similar genre to see what is typically common in a music video of this genre, and if it worked and why. Looking at examples of artists' digipacks also really helped me get a good feel as to what the commonly used idea is [having on image spread across all 3 page].

For my secondary research for my A2 work I looked through all of the current charts to see what was popular and we also had a look at the indie charts as well, being more specific to our genre. I read various reviews of music videos to see what kind of video was accepted as being a good video, and if so why, furthermore I also took notes in class from my teacher where he would show us previous examples of some good work.
I scanned through a lot of music magazines to try and get a better feel for the poster/magazine advert that I needed to create, spending a long time watching music video channels in an attempt to gain a good feel for what is currently out there, and what in my opinion works and what doesn't. I believe that my secondary research helped me more than my primary as I had a much more wider range of sources to look at. I personally felt that my research looking through the magazines was the most beneficial for me as it enabled me to get a good idea of what kind of look I wanted to go for my own magazine advert.

For my AS primary research, I analysed current magazines from the genre of music we wanted to create a video for, looking at bands such as The Maccabees, Klaxons' etc. Lastly, I also completed analysis of various posters and magazine adverts used by artists who fall within our specific genre. This shows that my primary research for my AS coursework was lacking slightly, despite me still getting a really good grade. In terms of my secondary research, I looked at various fonts from websites and organisations. I furthered this in terms of actually looking at some clothing brands that I felt looked really good such as 'Supreme' using futura, a font that I went on to use a lot for my AS work. I also had a good look at the style of writing in magazines such as NME. I believe that this really helped me with my article, with that getting some excellent feedback from my AS teacher, which I was really happy with.

I believe that my research for my A2 coursework was a lot better overall. This is due to a lot of work being put in terms of my primary research, with me analysing in depth various music videos such as When The Sun Goes Down by Arctic Monkeys. For me, creating a music video was much more an interesting idea alongside the digipack and the magazine advert than the AS coursework of the magazine front cover, contents and DPS. Therefore I believe that this also inspired me to do a lot more research as I wanted the video to be something that not only I thought was good, but also something that really did fit our genre well and also a video that I enjoyed watching.

Obviously to achieve this it was crucial that in terms of secondary research with me having a look at videos from ranging genres on the Internet, that I could pick which bits I like and believed worked well and what I felt would work well within our music video. With my digipack research, I found this rather quite easy. Despite not buying too many CD's these days, I still have a decent collection, and when I do tend to buy an album, it will often be the special edition with all of the inserts in the fold out digipack style. This helped me as obviously I could just look through my personal collection, and also my Dad's as combined we had some really interesting pieces ranging from all different genres which helped to give me some really good ideas. Furthermore, in terms of the front cover in particular, obviously in iTunes you have all the album artwork. Therefore in terms of research for me this was really easy as I went on my iMac and could literally scroll through all of my music library looking at the different front covers. This once again meant that I could have a widespread field of inspiration and really helped me.

My research literally cost me nothing. As I have spoken about, my research consisted of things that in today's world are fairly basic. For example, looking through my mac for different album artwork's, searching the Internet for all different videos and other inspirations for my digipack. In addition to all of this, I also watched several music channels in an attempt to get a good feel for what exactly worked well in the latest videos and what I didn't think worked as well. Therefore, my research cost me nothing really.

At times my research was hard to conduct. This was obviously due to things such as trying to search the Internet for different ideas and where I could take something from another piece of work and let it inspire me in terms of my own personal work. As you can imagine, this therefore was very time consuming, however with it being in a field that I have genuine interest for, I didn't really find it too much of a chore. The research that I conducted was taken from mainly other pieces of work, not really students as I didn't want to take anything into my video that maybe wasn't as professional and as well thought out as a professional piece of work. Therefore it generally came from established artists, looking at things like album artworks, their musics videos and watching interviews with the band for an insight into their ideas.

I believe that the research that I conducted really did influence my work. For example, we took a lot of inspiration from the original video from Bombay Bicycle Club. There was a couple of shots that really did have an impact on our final piece, this can be seen with a shot where we had a band member waving at a passing train. This was also used by Bombay Bicycle Club, however we used it in a different way to them, using it to close our video off showing. We aimed to achieve this feel with having the band member waving at the train to try and give the viewers the sense that he was almost waving good bye to them as an audience. My research heavily influenced my digi-pack, in particular my front cover. After going through so many different front covers, I decided that I was really interested in re-creating something like the Klaxons' 'Surfing The Void', which was a collage with several images within images. Despite knowing that this would be a very time consuming task, I took the challenge on and feel that when you compare the two front covers [mine & the Klaxons'] you can really see how they are so heavily linked, whilst at the same time using totally different images with a different theme to the pictures. In terms of my research having a strong influence on the rest of my digi-pack, I had a strong feeling that after looking at so many varying ideas for the 3 page spread, that I wanted to actually follow the usual convention of having one image spread across all 3 pages. I achieved this by getting a panoramic shot of a local woodland, therefore not really having to stretch and therefore distort the image itself. I decided that I wanted to actually change things rather a lot and provide a contrast to my work in terms of the colour. I decided to give a black and white to the initial image, however then taking into consideration my theme, to actually get some patterned colours in there as well to brighten things up slightly, which also helped my digi-pack to fit well into the alternative/indie genre.

I found all of my research really helpful as it gave me a clear image of what exactly is out there in terms of what's been done before and what stands out from the crowd. It appeared to me that in order to stand out and make your digipack seen in terms of the front cover was to either have something really basic, such as Arctic Monkeys' cover for Suck It & See or to go all out there and have an extremely busy front cover such as the one I created. I'm glad that I did so much research and spent a lot of time looking through all different pieces from different genres as it meant that I could be influenced by images and ideas that weren't just from my genre, but from elsewhere such as Hip-Hop etc.

I personally believe that my organisation skills in terms of referencing my work, labelling it on blogger etc drastically improved in my A2 work compared to at the start of the AS course. At first, with me not actually keeping my own personal blog I was fairly useless in terms of blogger, I understood the basics, however generally my work was a bit 'all over the shop' with me not realising that I could actually manually select what time I wanted each post to be actually posted, therefore meaning that I could have certain pieces following work that is also relating to the same subject. I feel that in my A2 course, my blog is a lot more organised, I aimed to actually label every single post in order for me to be able to quickly locate it if I ever needed to get it back up. This really helped me in terms of going back to look at things such as written analysis's etc.

In terms of draft versions of my work, I created draft versions of all of my final products, the magazine advert, the digipack as a whole, and also the music video. These mock ups really helped me as it highlighted the areas of each part of my work that worked and also obviously what needed improvement and changing. It also helped to give me some ideas on how I could change things for the better. My mock ups were all created using the exact software that I would be using for my final pieces. This helped me not only get familiar in depth of how the software worked, but it also meant that it was also then easier to get my final piece done, as I already had a starting point on my mac.

When you're creating something like a Magazine front cover, a digipack or a music video, it is obviously vital that you obtain some audience feedback. The bottom line of it is that you want to know if your specific target audience actually likes what you're doing or what you've done and if it would appeal to them. It can obviously influence your work tremendously, as you may find that several people don't like/don't really understand a part of your video. This would make you think about that particular part and see how you could adapt/change it so that it would appeal to the audience.

When you're completing a coursework project such as this, obviously the volume of work that is required to be completed in a set amount of time can often be rather daunting, which is something that we found. However, I know that individually in my AS coursework that I met all deadlines, including even my draft deadlines. Furthermore, collectively as a pair me & Ed also met all of the deadlines for our draft videos, draft digipacks and also the final pieces of all the work. Obviously in terms of photo shoots, video shoots etc it can be really hard to get everyone together, especially as the models I used for my work were ranging in terms of age and also what type of education were in, with some actually being at work full time. I learnt that it can be a really stressful process when you need to get everyone together, as it requires planning weeks in advance, so this really tested our organisation skills, however I'm pleased to say we really did manage to get this done well. I would say that my knowledge about production schedules has developed significantly since I drew my first one up for my AS coursework photo-shoots. I have learnt that if my production schedules are in more detail it allows me to get things done a lot faster when it comes to actually videoing or taking the pictures as I know exactly what I want in terms of angles, personnel etc. I overall believe that organisation & meeting deadlines was therefore a strength of mine.

For me, the AS coursework was a lot more 'convienient' in the sense that I had photoshop on my laptop and could literally get it out whenever I fancied and get on with my work, due to me individually having my own ideas and plans for exactly how I wanted the work to turn out. Also with me doing it individually it meant that I didn't have to consult anyone in terms of what I should do next, I could just get on with it. However, I learnt that in the A2 coursework that having someone alongside you in a pair like I did for my video really does help out at times. For example, if you are really busy and cannot get some work done, if you explain to your partner your thoughts and how you want that particular shot to work they can get on with the work whilst you're busy which is definitely a positive. For me, I believe that there were however a lot of negatives to working in a pair. It was at times really hard to ensure that we were both available at the same time due to us both having work commitments, however with us both attending the same college it obviously meant that we saw each other a lot so that made the issue a lot easier to get around. I believe that the coursework was made easier by the fact that both me and Ed shared very similar ideas in terms of how we wanted the video to look, so we never really had to argue that we preferred a different shot etc. In reference to the planning stage, it meant that me & Ed spent a lot of time together simply discussing and researching any potential ideas that we had, and also that together we would research different videos from different genres giving us a really wide range of sources when we came together to discuss progress.

In terms of technology for both AS and A2, I used a wide range of different technologies to present my ideas on my blog and also to my class. Examples of this would be my use of things like Prezi, Animoto, Photoshop, SlideShare, Blogger etc. At first, in my AS year, most of these technologies were new to me, however by the time it came to my A2 year,  I was now finding them much easier to use and they allowed me to be more creative. 

Coming back to my organisation, I believe that in terms of AS coursework I kept a 'diary' of my progress. I did this by posting updates on my blog, which would also help jog my memory if I ever thought 'what needs doing next'. In terms of the A2 work, this was once again very similar, with us both noting what we had got done and also what we aimed to get done in the coming weeks. However, we also arranged times where together as a pair we would sit down and discuss any issues, but most generally just the progress we had made since the last chat.

Overall, when I look back to my research and planning from my AS coursework compared to my A2 I can really see some amazing differences. I demonstrate some really good depth of research and planning with my A2 work, which were perhaps lacking slightly in my AS work. I have also learnt that the more detail I go into in terms of planning, using things such as storyboards etc that I can make things a lot less time consuming and also generally a lot easier to do that if I just turn up without a thorough plan. My research was, in my opinion, really well detailed for my A2 work, and I believe that is reflected in the outcomes of all of my work with them all being of a reasonably high standard. My overall skills since my AS work have come on leaps and bounds in terms of using new technology, and using it well and confidently. I have also now demonstrated that I can work alongside someone and we can still together produce really good pieces of work.

G325 an introduction to the exam