Tips for structuring your exam responses

http://getaheadocrmedia.blogspot.com/2011/01/structure-for-a2-exam-q1a.html

Example 1a question

In your experience, how has your creativity developed through using digital technology to complete your production?

Introduction

Explain the tasks you have done across the 2 years,

including anything done outside the course that you intend to reference.

Main paragraphs

• Write about the technology you have used, with some reflections on how you got to grips with it initially, and where you went from there. You might discuss:

• -iMovie/Final cut pro

  -camera(s)

  -blogger

  -YouTube

  -Photoshop

  -etc.

  • Make some observations about how easy it is to get used to technology these days, particularly for young people who have access to it outside school. Refer specifically to how you used the technology in particular tasks.
  • Open up the question of creativity: what does it mean to you, and where have your ideas about creativity come from? What do other people say about what creativity might mean? (*Quote) How have the tasks themselves encouraged creativity? Refer to examples from what you’ve done.

  • Conclusion

    • Try to bring together these strands - creativity and technology - to answer the question.
    • Refer to ways in which the technology has also allowed you to develop other skills - teamwork, organisation, planning, research, negotiation.
    • Finish by opening up to a wider conclusion - that digital technology has given media consumers the opportunity to become media producers too - particularly via web distribution and that this, in turn, has allowed creative comment in wider communities such as YouTube.
    
    
    Look at the criteria for top marks:
    
    
    

    Explanation/analysis/argument (8-10 marks)

    There is a clear sense of progression and of how examples have been selected, and

    a range of articulate reflections on technology and creativity. There is a fluent

    evaluation of progress made over time.

    Use of examples (8-10 marks)

    Candidates offer a broad range of specific, relevant and clear examples of technology

    in relation to creative decisions and outcomes.

    Use of terminology (5 marks)

    The use of media terminology and research, planning and production terms is

    excellent.

    Complex issues have been expressed clearly and fluently using a style of writing

    appropriate to the complex subject matter. Sentences and paragraphs, consistently

    relevant, have been well structured, using appropriate technical terminology. There

    may be few, if any, errors of spelling, punctuation and grammar.

    
    

    
    

    
    

    
    
  
  

Conventions

How have you used conventions of real media products?

D.I.S.T.I.N.C.T.

Don't. Ignore. Setting. Technical codes. Iconography. Narrative structure. Character types. Themes.

Hybrids mix genres, for example, Back to the Future -
Setting: conventional for historic/retro
Iconography: conventional for sci-fi
Theme: conventional for adventure

Have you mixed conventions?

Postmodern films subvert even the basic conventions for cinema, these include:
linear narrative
forward moving action
the 4th wall
Soundtrack complimenting the visuals

Why are these films considered postmodern?
Once upon a time in the west
Memento
Twin Peaks (TV series)
24 hour party people

Digital Technology

Draw a timeline for your own use of digital technology. When was the first time you used:

Digital camera
Tape
CD
MP3
Email account
Mobile phone
Google
Laptop

What technology have you used in your productions?

Youtube
Blogspot
Still cameras
Mobile phones
etc.

Creativity

What is creativity?

Imganation
Purposeful
Original
Valuable

Which of these are creative:

Doodling
Chatting witha friend
Writing a poem
Singing
Inventing a new hoover
Designing a poster
Thinking about a unicorn

Production

How do these films challange traditional production techniques:

Russian Ark by Alexander Sokurov
Inland Empire by David Lynch
Requiem for a Dream by Darren Aronofsky
Colin

Research and Planning

Terminology:

Reccie report
Risk assessment
Shooting schedule
Call sheets
Storyboards
Shooting script
Budget


Quantative research:
From the word quantity - referring to numbers and values
e.g. questionnaires

Qualitative research:
From the word quality - referring to features and characteristics
e.g. textual analysis

Practice questions for 1b

“Media is communication.” Discuss the ways that you have used media language to create meanings in one of your media products.

“Media texts rely on audience knowledge of generic codes and conventions in order for them to create meaning.” Explain how you have used or subverted generic conventions in one of your production pieces.

“Media texts will never be successful unless they are carefully constructed to target established audience needs or desires.” Evaluate the ways that you constructed your media text to target a specific audience.

“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.

“Representations in media texts are often simplistic and reinforce dominant ideologies so that audiences can make sense of them.” Evaluate the ways that you have used/ challenged simplistic representations in one of the media products you have produced.

Media Language

• Media language’ means the language of the medium you are working within. For example, there is a language of film which is different to the language of music video/ television drama etc. This is different to genre: genre can cut across media (e.g. a sci-fi film/ TV programme/ music video (!)).
• How are you using the language of the medium?
• How have you used the language of music videos/ film openings/ digipaks/ magazine adverts?
• What would Andrew Goodwin say about your music video?

Audience

Does a media text have any meaning without an audience?

• 1. The Hypodermic Needle Model
  
  Dating from the 1920s, this theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media. It is a crude model and suggests that audiences passively receive the information transmitted via a media text, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data. Don't forget that this theory was developed in an age when the mass media were still fairly new - radio and cinema were less than two decades old. Governments had just discovered the power of advertising to communicate a message, and produced propaganda to try and sway populaces to their way of thinking. This was particularly rampant in Europe during the First World War (look at some posters here) and its aftermath.
  
  Basically, the Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information from a text passes into the mass consciouness of the audience unmediated, ie the experience, intelligence and opinion of an individual are not relevant to the reception of the text. This theory suggests that, as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media texts, and that our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed by media-makers. It assumes that the audience are passive and heterogenous. This theory is still quoted during moral panics by parents, politicians and pressure groups, and is used to explain why certain groups in society should not be exposed to certain media texts (comics in the 1950s, rap music in the 2000s), for fear that they will watch or read sexual or violent behaviour and will then act them out themselves.

• The effects/hypodermic model

• The original model for audience was the effects/hypodermic model which stressed the effects of the mass media on their audiences. This model owes much to the supposed power of the mass media - in particular film - to inject their audiences with ideas and meanings. Such was the thinking behind much of the Nazi propaganda that was evident in Triumph of the Will and similar films. It is worth noting that totalitarian states and dictatorships are similar in their desire to have complete control over the media, usually in the belief that strict regulation of the media will help in controlling entire populations. The effects model has several variants and despite the fact that it is an outdated model it continues to exert influence in present debates about censorship and control in the media.

TWO STEP FLOW

• The Hypodermic model quickly proved too clumsy for media researchers seeking to more precisely explain the relationship between audience and text. As the mass media became an essential part of life in societies around the world and did NOT reduce populations to a mass of unthinking drones, a more sophisticated explanation was sought.
  
  Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet analysed the voters' decision-making processes during a 1940 presidential election campaign and published their results in a paper called The People's Choice. Their findings suggested that the information does not flow directly from the text into the minds of its audience unmediated but is filtered through "opinion leaders" who then communicate it to their less active associates, over whom they have influence. The audience then mediate the information received directly from the media with the ideas and thoughts expressed by the opinion leaders, thus being influenced not by a direct process, but by a two step flow. This diminished the power of the media in the eyes of researchers, and caused them to conclude that social factors were also important in the way in which audiences interpreted texts. This is sometimes referred to as the limited effects paradigm.

Uses & Gratifications

During the 1960s, as the first generation to grow up with television became grown ups, it became increasingly apparent to media theorists that audiences made choices about what they did when consuming texts. Far from being a passive mass, audiences were made up of individuals who actively consumed texts for different reasons and in different ways.

Researchers Blulmer and Katz expanded this theory and published their own in 1974, stating that individuals might choose and use a text for the following purposes (ie uses and gratifications):

* Diversion - escape from everyday problems and routine.
* Personal Relationships - using the media for emotional and other interaction, eg) substituting soap operas for family life
* Personal Identity - finding yourself reflected in texts, learning behaviour and values from texts
* Surveillance - Information which could be useful for living eg) weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains

Since then, the list of Uses and Gratifications has been extended, particularly as new media forms have come along (eg video games, the internet)

RECEPTION THEORY/ACTIVE AUDIENCE

Extending the concept of an active audience still further, in the 1980s and 1990s a lot of work was done on the way individuals received and interpreted a text, and how their individual circumstances (gender, class, age, ethnicity) affected their reading. This work was based on Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model of the relationship between text and audience - the text is encoded by the producer, and decoded by the reader, and there may be major differences between two different readings of the same code. However, by using recognised codes and conventions, and by drawing upon audience expectations relating to aspects such as genre and use of stars, the producers can position the audience and thus create a certain amount of agreement on what the code means. This is known as a preferred reading.

MODE OF ADDRESS

• Still in line with the active audience idea is the concept of mode of address. This refers to the way that a text speaks to us in a style that encourages us to identify with the text because it is 'our' kind of text. For example Friends is intended for a young audience because of the way it uses music and the opening credits to develop a sense of fun, energy and enthusiasm that the perceived audience can identify with. This does not mean that other groups are excluded, merely that the dominant mode of address is targetted at the young. Mode of address can even be applied to entire outputs, as in the case of Channel Four which works hard to form a style of address aimed at an audience which is informed, articulate and in some ways a specialised one. Newspapers, too, often construct their presentation to reflect what they imagine is the identity of their typical readers. Compare The Sun and The Guardian in this context.
• 
  

• • 
    

    Ethnographic model

    • The latest research into audience has resulted in an ethnographic model, which means that the researcher enters into the culture of the group and uses questions and interviews to try to understand media engagement from the perspective of the group. What seems to be emerging from this work is a) the focus on the domestic context of reception of media texts b) the element of cultural competence, and finally
    • c) technologies.
    • 
      The first of these stresses the fact that engagement with the media is often structured by the domestic environment because of the domestication of entertainment and leisure. It appears that the home is not a free space and there are issues about finance for purchase of media goods, control of the remote, the gendered nature of watching TV and the 'flow' of TV that fits alongside or within a set of domestic relationships. So TV viewing may not be the concentrated, analytical business that some theorists suggest.
    • The second area is best understood in terms of texts that can be identified as belonging to a genre that has gender appeal. For example, soaps are usually seen to have a strong female bias in viewing audience. There is a selection of competencies that are brought to such texts so knowing about cliffhangers, the role of the matriarch or the fluid nature of character relationships simply adds to the pleasures associated with the text. Think about the texts that you enjoy and even though you know how a text will be shaped or how it will end these are not barriers to your enjoyment of that text.
    • Competencies even include the very expectations that you have for the text. The male preference for news and more factual forms can be seen as a feature of cultural competence because men occupy more public space than domestic space and therefore feel the need to be aware of the public worlds reflected in such texts.
    • The third area identified relates to the way we engage with the hardware in order to enjoy the output of the media. There seems to be a strong gender divide here with computers and complex technology fitting into the category of 'boys’ toys'. If present trends in technology continue then there is a real danger that just as our society is dividing along lines of information-rich and information-poor then there will be a further demarcation along gender lines. This explains why schools and TV programmes need to present positive gender representations and good practice that supports females and technological expertise. You will note that many of the lifestyle programmes that are on TV use females in less traditional roles as a way of redressing the balance.
    • Overall the shift in the models for audience has gone from mass audience to individual viewer with stress on the active audience rather than the passive model. The level of activity in the implied audience is related to the uses, pleasures, cultural competence, situation and available technology for the particular audience.

Narrative

OPEN – questions remain unanswered eg. a cliffhanger, the end of the first part of a serial.

CLOSED – all questions are answered, e.g. a magazine

LINEAR – the narrative is in order, it makes sense.

NON-LINEAR/FRACTURED – out of order e.g a film trailer or use of flashbacks

SINGLE STRANDED – one storyline in the media text

MULTI-STRANDED – several storylines weaving into an overall narrative eg. Soap operas

Roland Barthes—narrative codes

This French critic devised five different narrative codes that we can use when analysing media products:

Action code:

The audience will recognise an action code in a media text as it is used to indicate what is the next logical step. It advances the narrative eg the buckling of a gun belt in a Western film signifies the start of a gun fight.

Look at the following…. What do you think they indicate?

Packing of a suitcase?

Starting of a car engine?

Whistle of approaching train?

Flashing lights?

Mystery Code or Enigma code:

This code is used to explain the narrative by controlling what and how much information is given to the audience. It grabs the audience’s interest and attention by setting up an enigma or problem that is resolved during the course of the narrative. Eg, someone’s murderous hand in the opening sequence – who does it belong to?

The Semic Code

Basically, this code is all about signs and meanings in a text that tell us about its narrative and characters. Eg, in a horror film, the supernatural would be signified by the fear of light/garlic, an increase in body hair etc.

The Cultural Code

This code is used in order for the narrative to make sense to a culturally and socially aware audience. It makes reference to elements from the real world that the audience will recognise, eg Aston Martins and Martinis in James Bond films.

Code of Oppositions

This code refers to a narrative that relies on binary opposites, eg, black v white, hot v cold, male v female, nature v civilisation, war v peace etc.

Claude Levi-Strauss (1970)—binary opposites

Alike to Barthes, theorist Levi-Strauss (the man, not the jeans) also worked with the idea that there are binary opposites within media texts. He studied the myths of tribal cultures and discovered how there were underlying themes in these myths, such as darkness v light, good v evil. In media we look at his work to find out the underlying themes and symbolic oppositions in media texts. For example men v women, good v evil.

Tzvetan Todorov— Equilibrium and disequilibrium

Todorov looks at the way narratives are structured. He suggested how in many narratives there is a change. The narrative begins with the equilibrium or balance or harmony. But then this is then disrupted by something known as an ‘agent of change’ which brings unbalance to the narrative or unpredictability causing disequilibrium. For the audience to feel that all is well, the equilibrium or balance must be restored.

Vladimir Propp (1968) - Propp’s Morphology

Propp came up with the idea of how fairy stories have certain stages to it. He then applied the same theory to different genres and realised that in many cases it was accurate. Altogether there are 31 stages to Propp’s Morphology, but we can condense it into six stages…

Preparation the scene is set

Complication a problem occurs or some evil takes place

Transference the hero receives help (often a magic object) and goes on his quest

Struggle there is a fight

Return the hero succeeds in his mission

Recognition the villain in punished and the hero is rewarded

You should also be familiar with Propp's roles of action, which explain a set of characters which are common to any story.

Representation

"Obviously, any good Media student knows that there is no such thing as reality in the media, all texts are merely re-presentations of reality: someone’s idea or viewpoint."

Because of this we need to question the decisions that have been made when a producer decides to represent someone/something in a certain way.

Research these theorists' ideas:
Stuart Hall - Race representation
Laura Mulvey - Gender representation

Have you conformed to any stereotypical representations?

Genre

Some theories:

The Ideological Approach
Defines genres as ‘the generalized, identifiable structures through which Hollywood’s rhetoric flows […] Hollywood uses Genre as a tool for stamping beliefs and values onto audiences.’ -ALTMAN

I.E. Director: "I say that this is a thriller film because I am the one producing it. Whatever messages I want to put into the film I can."

OTHER Critics and Theorists who like this approach are
Cahiers Du Cinema Critics (France) and the Frankfurt School (Germany)




The Ritual Approach
Attributes ultimate authorship to the audience ie the people watching it are the ones who decide what genre it is based on their previous experiences. This approach sees Hollywood as responding to societal pressure and thus expressing audience desires.

Critics and theorists who like this position are:
John Cawelti, Leo Braudy, Frank McConnel, Micheal Wood, Will Wright and Tom Schatz



•Semantic- Like ingredients or building blocks- helps us to identify the genre.
•As Altman states‘ the primary, linguistic elements of which all texts are made’


•Synactic- Like recipes or architectural structures- helps us to explore meanings and values. As Altman states - ‘The secondary textual meanings that are constructed[…] between primary elements.’

I.E. The semantics would be the individual conventional elements of a genre and the syntactics would be the result of their use - e.g. a horror film.

Questions 1a and 1b of the exam

Each question is worth 25 marks and requires 30 minutes of exam time.


1a asks about the whole of your practical work:
•Preliminary task at AS.
•Main task at AS.
•Main task at A2.
•Ancillary tasks at A2.
•Work completed outside the course.
The question is all about skills and development and will focus on one or two of:
•Digital Technology
•Creativity
•Research and Planning
•Post-production

Using conventions from real media texts



1b asks about only one of your projects (again could be something completed outside the course). It will ask you about any one of the key concepts:
•Genre
•Narrative
•Representation
•Audience
•Media Language