29 Jun 2017

PRELIM Evaluation Questions

A2 Evaluation Questions (Preliminary Activity)

The evaluation questions you will answer at the end of your year 13 coursework are:

  1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
  2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
  3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
  4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
The areas you need to cover in your preliminary video evaluation are:

1) Pre production (story boarding, prop lists etc) 
2) Production (filming etc)
3) Post production (editing footage etc)

On each post (one per area) you need to write an account of what you did at every stage and list skills acquired and skills you need to develop. 200 words (approximately) per post.

Within these 3 areas you need to consider in what ways your media product uses, develops or challenges forms and conventions of real media products? Also, how effective is your video. Is it good or bad? Why? What will you do differently next time/ What have you learned?

19 Jun 2017

Filming Schedule - recreation task 19/06/17 - 30/06/17

All filming and editing must be completed by Friday June 30th at 3:10pm

Schedule WB 19/06/17-30/06/17:

INDIVIDUAL: Complete story boards for at least the first minute of your chosen song (maximum 1 lesson) 
INDIVIDUAL: scan in an upload to blog
INDIVIDUAL: Create prop list and source all props + book equipment/white room  (maximum 1 lesson)
GROUP: Film (maximum 2 lessons)
PAIR: Upload and edit footage. Work in pairs to create your final edit. (maximum 3 lessons)
INDIVIDUAL Complete evaluation tasks (maximum 1 lesson)

15 Jun 2017

Music Video - shot by shot recreation schedule



Schedule
part 1:

  • Complete lip synching task-lip synch first 30 seconds of chosen song. All students to complete.
  • Edit lip synching task.


part 2:
Storyboard first 60 seconds of chosen song (videos are in posts below):

  • Rihanna, Kanye West, PaulMcCartney - FourFiveSeconds
  • David Bowie - Be My Wife
  • Cat Power - Cross Bones Style
  • The Kills - No Wow

Feel free to choose your own video if you can easily recreate it.

  • Storyboard templates can be found here.
  • Assign group roles - director, camera person, band.
  • Organise all instruments and outfits.
  • Begin filming.
  • Complete all filming.
  • Begin editing (in groups edit the same footage).


14 Jun 2017

Lip-synching task


  • Choose any song.
  • Lip synch thirty seconds of the song.
  • Everyone to have a go.
  • Post the results onto your blogs.


Extension task - SLO MO performances


5 Jun 2017

Transition to A2 - Activity 1: The Continuity Exercise




As part of the transition from AS to A2 you must walk into a room and sit down. This activity is the first part of your A2 coursework and must be completed by all students.
Work in a group of no more than 4 students.

All students must produce their own storyboard and edit their own version of the footage


Roles:

Actor 1
Actor 2
Director
Camera operator

Shots:

Close up
Extreme close up
Medium shot
Long shot
Match on action
Shot reverse shot
Two shot 


10 May 2017

Sexuality sequence

TASK 1 

This is the question you will be answering in Friday's lesson:

Discuss the ways in which the extract constructs the representation of SEXUALITY using the following:

·      Camera shots, angles, movement and composition
·      Editing
·      Sound
·      Mise-en-scene
 (50 marks)

WATCH THE SEQUENCE BELOW 4 TIMES AND MAKE NOTES

Remember that no notes can be made during the first screening

TASK 2

DOWNLOAD THE ATTACHED BOOKLET AND PRINT

ANSWER THE QUESTIONS ON PAGE ONE OF THE HANDOUT. ENSURE YOU WRITE IN FULL SENTENCES


WE WILL WRITE THIS ESSAY IN FRIDAY'S LESSON



3 May 2017

Today's TV Drama Lesson - Disability


This PPTX from Mr Hibbert from Neale-Wade Media is excellent and offers great advice on how to improve your TV Drama technique.

Follow the link below and complete the Coming Down The Mountain activity

http://mediastudiesnwcc.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/as-tv-drama-exam-technique.html

27 Apr 2017

How is Disability represented in this extract

https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/54581eb9-a4a9-4c9a-ae86-a3d7616c896d
 

Answer the question below, with detailed reference to specific examples from the extract only.

Discuss the ways in which the extract constructs the representation of age using the following:

• Camera shots, angles, movement and composition
• Editing
• Sound
• Mise en scène

[50 marks]

22 Mar 2017

Evaluation Feedback - Question 4

Download and print off the feedback sheet for question 4 (question 2 guidance from Mr Ford is on his blog).

HERE 


Use the advice and examples given to make improvements to your own work.

Remember that your final work MUST be presented in a creative way.

Evaluation Feedback - Question 3

Download and print off the feedback sheet for question 3 (question 2 guidance from Mr Ford is on his blog).

HERE 


Use the advice and examples given to make improvements to your own work.

Remember that your final work MUST be presented in a creative way.

19 Mar 2017

Evaluation Feedback - Question 1

Download and print off the feedback sheet for question 1.

HERE

Use the advice and examples given to make improvements to your own work.

Remember that your final work MUST be presented in a creative way.


Deadline for evaluation questions Friday 31st March 3:10pm.

16 Mar 2017

Exemplar Evaluations 2014





Evaluation Tasks HOW TO ANSWER THEM

This week's lessons will be given over to teaching and writing the evaluation questions. In class you will prepare your responses so Mr Ford and I can check that the content of your responses are up to standard. Once we have agreed that your work answers the question you can then demonstrate your creativity (an essential skill for AS and A2) by following the instructions below.

For the final 20 marks of the project, you must complete seven tasks on your blog, posting them in this order, with the question heading at the top of each task. Make sure you answer each question as well as producing the visual elements. Try not to write more than 1500 words per question in total.

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of music magazines)

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups ?

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

7. Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Below is a guide from the exam board on exactly how to answer these questions.

EVALUATION ACTIVITY 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of music magazines)

As part of your planning and research you should have looked at Music Magazines and selected a particular sub genre (e.g. Indie, pop, r&b, dance etc) to re-create. Find an example of a pre exisiting music magazine which matches your magazine, paste it into your blog and highlight the key generic conventions of the magazine (the list of terminology can be found HERE)

You should go through the final version of your project and select elements which follow conventions and any which do not.

The aspects we would like you to consider across your nine frames are:

The title of the magazine
Graphology/page layouts
Costumes, props, iconography used to reflect genre
Camerawork and framing of images
Title, article, header etc font and style
Genre and how the magazine cover, contents and spread suggests it
How your artist(s) are represented
Colour scheme

EVALUATION ACTIVITY 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Pick a key image of your artist from your magazine (ideally the cover image). Take a screengrab of a reasonable sized image of them. Think of one or more recording artists/stars from other magazines with some similarity to them (but maybe some differences too!), find an image on the web of that/those stars and grab it as well. Drop the two into photoshop, as a split screen. Export this splitscreen image as a jpeg then drop onto your blog and write about the similarities and differences in terms of appearance, costume etc.

So for example if you have a female R&B star on your cover, look for other female R&B star to compare them with (remember to try and ensure that they are of a similar age, race etc)...

EVALUATION ACTIVITY 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?


For this question, you are going to do a 'director's commentary' style voiceover explaining some of the key features of your magazine cover

You will need to script the voiceover which deals with institutional issues to include:

discussion of your production company name and logo and the role of such companies

What does a publishing company do?
the idea of a distributor and who that might be and why. start here
where the money might have come from for a magazine such as yours here
what your magazine is similar to 'institutionally' (name some magazines which would be released in a similar way)
You need to refer to actual company names and processes so you will need to maybe do a bit more research into magazine publishers like emap

When you have scripted, record the voiceover using iMovie, windows movie maker etc on a new audio timeline, then export to quicktime and embed on blog. (this is a good example of what you can do. It was created for A2 and a slightly different question but the style is correct).

EVALUATION ACTIVITY 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

You should have a produced a blog post on your target audience and an explanation of what kinds of taste they might have- where they would shop, what music they would listen to, what their favourite Tv programme would be, etc.

Simply take a pic of them reading your magazine, post it on the blog and write a few notes explaining why they would buy your magazine (e.g. appeal of artist, articles, features etc)

EVALUATION ACTIVITY 5

How did you attract/address your audience?
Take a screen grab of your magazines cover, content and spread and place into iMovie, movie maker etc. You will then use YOUTUBE's annotation tools to add NOTES, SPEECHBUBBLES, and LINKS to your magazine:


These annotations will highlight the ways in which your Magazine links to other similiar films in order to attract the particular Audience you have previously identified.

Your annotations will refer to genre conventions, use of iconography, similarities with other magazines and what you have identified as the Unique Selling Point of your imaginary film.

EVALUATION ACTIVITY 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

In pairs, take a picture of each other holding the kit you have used. This might just be the camera and tripod, and your Macbook but there may be other things you want in the shot.

Drop the image onto your blog and annotate it, adding all the programs and other technology you have used as screengrabs and what you learnt about it/from using it. Your written text need only be minimal. You could include reference to all the online and computer programs you have used such as flickr, blogger, facebook, photoshop, vimeo, scribd, slideshare etc.

EVALUATION ACTIVITY 7

Looking back at your preliminary task (the school magazine task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Concentrate on mise en scene and camerawork.

Grab some images from both tasks and put them on the blog and show what you know about shot types, magazine terms etc. Explain how you've improved.

19 Feb 2017

Work to complete 20/2/16 - 23/2/16

This week you will develop your ability to understand and apply the OCR mark scheme. This activity counts towards your research and planning marks, evaluation marks, and will enable you to make improvements to your own work, so it is important that you complete it to the best of your ability.

TASK

Download the AFL booklet and complete all tasks either by typing directly onto the document or by printing off and completing it using a biro.

Ensure you read the instructions carefully, failure to do so will result in you dropping marks.

The example magazines can be found in the post immediately below the booklet.



AFL Booklet

Download and save this document to your area. Then type in your responses to the task before uploading to your blog.

This booklet will help you understand and evaluate the standard and skills required before making adjustments to your own work.

DOWNLOAD IT HERE

AFL Cover Contents and DPS





  




























30 Jan 2017

This week's lessons

Finish composing cover/contents page/ double page spread draft version Friday 3rd Feb 

Work to be printed out and submitted to the English office+posted on blogs. Names and Candidate number must be clearlyindicated on submission. Marks may be deducted for late submission

15 Jan 2017

This Week Monday 16th - Jan - Fri 27th Jan

Monday 16th - Jan - Fri 27th Jan 
 
• Lessons to pitch idea to class and receive Feedback
• Evaluate class feedback
• Test shots of artist/band
• Complete fat plan of cover/ contents page/ double page spread (1 lesson)
• Gather audience feedback on your mock up flat plan.
• Write draft article
• Begin composing cover/contents page/ double page spread / draft version



To help with creation of flat plans
This list will get you started on your research into magazine/ graphic designers. In brackets is an example of their work (google it).

Omar Sosa (Apartamento)
Francesco Franchi (Il)
Albert Handler & Anouk Rehoek (A Guide Magazine)
Jop Van Bennekom (Fantastic Man)
Guido Kroger & Maxime Pintadu (Nico)
Mike Meire & Tim Geisem (o32c & kid's wear)
An Art Service ('sup magazine)
Raffiere AG Fur Gestalung (Kinki Magazine)
Matt Willey (Elephant)
David Carson (raygun)
Vier 5 (Fairy Tale)

Double page image from Kinki Magazine

12 Jan 2017

Thursday 12th January - Year 12Y work











Complete Preliminary task. Carrying out research and planning. To include:
• Examples of other texts generally and also within genre
• Analysis of magazine covers' contents pages and double page spreads
• Analysis of colour palettes' fonts 3 examples of each
• Language register: read magazine articles' interviews and reviews as part of research. Decide on style you wish to adopt.
• Decide on style of music magazine based on research carried out
• Analysis of existing magazine titles within genre
• Decide on title of magazine
• Research relevant fashion/styling associated with genre
• Mood boards
• Audience research; use uktribes.co.uk. This must be conclusive and you must show evidence of responses From at least 3 people
• Audience profile
• Research relevant photographers' graphic designers' magazine creators
• Analysis of institution that would publish your magazine
• Preparation of a 20 word pitch
• Compose 20 song playlist of tracks that have inspired you using spotify 
extension task
• Read and comment on peer blogs Extension task*
Look at examples provided for guidance.

Coursework Tips from the chief examiner

Colours: Text on Background

When evaluating magazine colour palettes it is important to know which colours work with others. Below is a definitive guide to this.

Black on white is still the easiest way to present type and to read it and you change that colour at your peril. Using coloured paper, coloured type or a heavy type patch often reduces legibility. In tests carried out by Karl Borgrgrafe (cited in Favre and November 1979) to see which colours worked best together, the following taxonomy of colour mixes was discovered, starting with the most legible, and working through to the least legible.

Black on yellow
Yellow on black
Green on white
Red on white
Black on white
White on blue
Blue on yellow
Blue on white
White on black
Green on yellow
Black on orange
Red on yellow
Orange on black
Yellow on blue
White on green
Black on red
Blue on orange
Yellow on green
Blue on red
Yellow on red
White on red
Red on black
White on orange
Black on green
Orange on white
Orange on blue
Yellow on orange
Red on orange
Red on green
Green on orange

As you can see, black and white comes pretty near the top although the list suggests that a yellow panel behind the black type would improve legibility (which is why important warning signs of danger are usually printed black on yellow.)


From: Designing for Newspapers and Magazines, by Chris Frost, Routledge, 2003


Note: though black on yellow may be more striking than black on white, it is unlikely to be more pleasing in large quantities. Magazine designers have to strike a balance between legibility, impact, and reader satisfaction.
Between getting attention, and not being annoying.   CE

Tips and Advice on Layout from Clive Edwards


Below are a series of tips on how a successful magazine should be set out. When analysing magazine front covers evaluate which of these tips they follow.

The first colour is white. The second colour is black. The third colour is red. Calligraphers and early printers grasped this over 500 years ago and experience has proved them exactly right. White for background, black for text, red for accent and excitement. These three colours are the best . Be very careful with all other colours.
Roger Black (designer of Newsweek, Time Out, Esquire, National Enquirer, Rolling Stone)

A cover should be a poster. A single image of a human will sell more copies than multiple images or all type. Always has, always will. Think about why.
Roger Black

Never set a lot of text type in all caps. After a while, it’s just too hard to read.
Roger Black

Use only one or two typefaces. Italian design is the model: a strong sense of a few things that work together. Avoid a free for all of multiple fonts/colours.
Roger Black

Get lumpy! The trouble with most design is that it has no surprise. If you want normal people to pay attention, you have to change pace in your presentation. Monotonous rhythms of picture, headline, picture, text, ad, headline, picture, ad, etc. Is like a pudding without raisins – a stew without lumps.
Roger Black

Break up type to add interest
Chris Frost – Designing for newspapers and magazines

Don’t use too many typefaces. Too much variation will end up looking a mess. It’s best to limit yourself to one font, and variations of it.
Chris Frost

Emphasise your entry point, with larger intro type, bold faces, drop letters, etc. Choose your entry point with care, and make it the focal point of the page.
Chris Frost


Even mediocre photographs attract an audience and a good news picture, even on an inside page, may attract 80% of the readership.
Harold Evans – Pictures on a Page

Just switching type face from serif to sans can result in massive differences in reader comprehension, and response, to advertisements
Colin Wheildon – Are you communicating, or just making pretty shapes? (2005)

There are few major newspapers in the English speaking world today which use the sans serif type for the body text. Conversely, many major magazines choose sans serif. Serif faces have long been regarded as highly readable. One theory is that the serifs acted as tram lines, keeping the eyes on target. Another was that the modulated thick and thin strokes of serif types provided greater opportunity for individual letters, and hence words, to be distinguished and read.
Colin Wheildon

Responses to text in printed colours showed a considerably lower level of good comprehension.
 81% said they would prefer to read the page of coloured type because it was more attractive. But the test results clearly show that in practise, they found coloured text more difficult to read. It was attractive to look at but did not make a good reading environment.
Colin Wheildon

Editors and designers are the missing link between the ape world and man.
Colin Wheildon

Every picture should have a caption. Readers get very irritated if they cannot find the caption. But the caption must not state the obvious. A picture of a vicar pouring a cup of tea, should not have for its caption: Vicar, pouring cup of tea. Captions should add to the information in the photo, not re-state it.
Many music mags use witty, tongue-in-cheek  captions.


Type size for the body of an article should be between 9-14.  (not the headlines, standfirst, crossheads etc). Some newspapers go down to 8, and many would consider that anything above 11 is too large, wastes space, and patronises the reader. 9 is the most common size.