ONLINE MEDIA REVISION

Most of this is taken from the chief examiner's blog, have changed and altered bits for you.

MEDIA IN THE ONLINE AGE. REVISION. 8/6/2011

Questions tend to focus on what difference the internet has made ('revolutionary', 'changed everything', 'exaggerated', 'transformed'' ‘opportunities’ and ‘threats') but also looking at audiences and producers. So long as you read the question carefully to see which angle it is looking for, you shouldn't have a problem. However, this focus on 'difference' does mean you have to be thinking about what the media was like pre-internet.

If we look at the bullet points in the Specification, which defines what should be studied, we should be able to see what kinds of question can come up:

• How have online media developed? (change from the past)

• What has been the impact of the internet on media production? (does it allow more people to produce their own media? what effect has it had on mainstream media?)

• How is consumer behaviour and audience response transformed by online media, in relation to the past? (audiences and the difference the internet has made)

• To what extent has convergence transformed the media? (technology's impact- mobile devices, tv online, etc)

the kinds of thing you could talk about would include:

music downloading and distribution,

the film industry and the internet,

online television,

various forms of online media production by the public or a range of other online / social media forms.

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. Different types of media online count, so the fact that you are talking about say, music downloading and people making youtube videos would tick the boxes for two media, even though they are both online.

For 2. the main thing is to ensure you have a majority of material from the past five years. I'd urge you to make it even more recent than that- say the time you have been doing the course, as the web changes so fast. (YOU ONLY HAVE TO GO BACK THROUGH THE TWITTER!) Talking about the future for this topic is easy- you can speculate about how your chosen examples might develop in the future- what next after facebook? what can you see happening with mobile media? how will traditional media cope with further spread of fast wireless connections?

Apple’s announcement of iCloud is massive... research it!!

For 3. you need some critics/writers who have developed ideas about online media- it is interesting to note how things are in a state of flux.. how a possibility can become a fact/ how a fact can become obsolete, all overnight!

(Theorists posted on twitter 7/6/2011)

Some supplementary case study ideas (you need to explore the case study, noting what has changed in terms of production/distribution/audience behaviour-interaction)

-Alan Partridge recent show purely as Youtube web series sponsored by Fosters

-Dub Plate Drama (designed specifically with the web in mind, with its alternative endings which could be voted for via TV or MySpace)

-Primeval web series

-Youtube exclusive broadcasts of concerts

-Online exclusive streams of albums pre-release

-Mobile TV (iphone, ipad, xbox, ps3 etc)

-Illegal football streams, film streams etc

-gaga google mash (on twitter 7/6/11)

*along with hundreds of others discussed in class and twitter

1A QUESTION

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!

1B Revision

QUESTION 1 B REVISION. 8/7/11

PAST QUESTIONS:

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

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, 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_genre

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 http://www.slideshare.net/petefrasers/narrative-theory-hand-out-copy 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. Here are some links to some starting points for theories:

general intro

presentation on reception theory

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

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.

Sample Answers

Unit G325 - Exemplar answers - January 2010 scripts

Unit G325 - Exemplar answers - June 2010

Examiner's report - January

Examiner's report - June

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

In the examination, questions will be set using one of these concepts only. (but you would need to prepare for all)

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.

Some useful Sites

some good terms for online media/convergence

conventions essay

creativity essay

representation essay

genre essay

narrative essay

audience essay

creativity from the chief examiner

chief examiner site

Sample Question 2

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

1(a) Describe the ways in which your production work was shaped by the availability of digital technology and media and how your skills developed from AS into A2.

(30 Minutes/25 Marks)