Year 11 C: AVENGERS REVISION + 03 CREATING MEDIA

We go over your last exam script answer for q.5 on The Avengers and revise how the programme was a product of its era, how it was ground-breaking and how both Steed and Mrs Emma Peel are depicted.
We watch relevant extracts from The Avengers using ClickView (which you can access from your own laptop both at home and school).
 PREP
On your blog, post an account of how you plan to tackle your first photoshoot (music magazine) or film shoot (soap opera). The account should include:

• who features in the shoot (character AND which person / friend (or yourself) you will use)
• where it is set, including clear, contrete  info about if the shoot is at home or school
• when you plan to carry it out 
• what they (you) will be swearing / carrying / needing as props 

Year 10: AUDIENCE THEORY: USES AND GRATIFICATIONS

PREP
In class, you were introduced to Blumler and Katz's model pf audience behaviour, which frames audiences as ACTIVE. For Prep, please read and understand the following which are taken from the very useful BBC Bitesize. Click on the first bit to enlarge it.

Year 10 FILMING

Learn to use the Canon cameras.
Divide into groups of four.
Take your props and costumes.
Shoot a short sequence with the following shot types: establishing shot, wide shot, long shot, shot-reverse shot

Learn to use the Apple Macs:

Insert memory card

Create desktop folder & name it

Open your photo file

Select all your video files

Drag and drop them into your folder

Next lesson: edit your footage

PREP On your blog, write an account of what you did in the film shoot today.

Year 11 Q. 2 EXAM REVISION

In today's class, we revise for the forthcoming mock exams.
PREP Revision for q. 2
Please read carefully:

Cuffs is a pre-watershed drama illustrating, for example: the dominance of the police drama genre in contemporary television schedules and the industrial importance of the serial narrative form, the role of BBC1 in the contemporary television industry, how representations seek to reflect contemporary contexts, the offering of uses and gratifications to attract a mass audience in an increasingly segmented market. 

The Avengers is a PG certificate drama illustrating a historically significant media product. The Avengers was a landmark television series in the 1960s and reflects the brand image of ITV as more daring in this era. The media language is comparatively rich for a television product of this era and a monochrome episode has been set to illustrate changing television technology. 

The Avengers TV show helped define the ‘spy drama’ genre in the 1960s and was influenced by events occurring as it was filmed, including episodes that parodied current and historical events. The Avengers also included one of the first memorable examples of product placement (the ‘Lotus Elan’), a technique which has great historical significance in contributing towards the funding of films and commercial television programmes in the present day.

The Avengers also illustrates the industrial importance of the series narrative form in 1960s television, the role of ITV in the era of three channel television, how representations reflect the 1960s contexts, how audience responses and interpretations may change over time as popular television products develop cult status. 

The Avengers series is also a significant product due to its cultural and social impact and reach. The Avengers was a long-running series that was a mainstay of 1960s primetime television. Series four was sold to American television and the series played a role in representing 1960s Britain to the rest of the world – eventually showing in 120 countries – reinforcing stereotypes of the traditional British upper-class. It became a cult programme as an important example of 1960s popular drama and is still aired on British television today. 

We study at least the one set episode of each of these programmes in detail, practising analysis of extracts, and developing our knowledge and understanding of the theoretical framework as it applies to the programmes as a whole. 

We must study the contexts associated with the media products and develop an understanding of the differences between how the two media products illuminate the changing social, cultural, historical and political contexts of the mid-1960s and mid-2010s, enabling us to develop a detailed understanding of how they appear in mainstream drama.

It is recommended that you investigate other similar media products from these periods to reinforce your understanding of how the two products reflect their contexts.You must study the listed episodes in terms of all four areas of the theoretical framework, including the theoretical perspectives, and the media products’ social, cultural, historical and political contexts, listed in the table at the end of Component 01.

Yr 11 : 03 CREATING MEDIA

CLASS and Friday's PREP:
Continue developing your music magazine or soap opera.

SOAP OPERA BRIEF:
When you study other title sequences, you notice how the main cast are introduced, often one by one. 

• Their name appears clearly in the frame next to them. 
• They are often framed in close-up or mid shot.
• They are engaged in doing something that makes their characters and roles within the soap clear to the audience.
• They may be represented in freeze frame or in action.
• Design this so that their names are clearly legible. This means arranging 'white space' or an uncluttered bit of background in the frame at the planning stage. 
• You should be drawing this as you imagine it. Use a Post-it.

Your second character may be introduced as he /she walks into the scene or as the first character moves through the frame to meet up with him / her. The third and fourth characters are introduced in a similar way.

• This sort of camerawork can be seen in the title sequence of TV programmes like Suits, The West Wing, which we have looked at.
• It engages the audience because it is lively with lots of movement for the eyes to follow.
• There may be dialogue between the characters, in which they talk about an issue that is interesting, one that will form the basis of a narrative thread.
• It allows for the two plots / narratives to be launched. 
• There may be an 'ensemble' (group) shot at the end.

At this early stage, you must plan different camera angles and shot types in order to have visual interest.

• Character 1 is a musician? In addition to a mid shot, plan an over-the-shoulder shot of them playing.
• Character 2 has a secret relationship / hobby that her family / friends don't know about? In addition to a CU or mid shot of him / her, plan a point of view shot where something is being concealed. 
• Character 3 is sporty? Introduce him / her from behind and have him / her spin face front to the camera.
• Character 4 is always in trouble for being late, sleepy? Plan a high angle shot above their face as the alarm goes off.

Stills / location can be interleaved with the characters to establish and reinforce a sense of place. See how The West Wing uses cross dissolves of the American flag and The White House.

Plan your soundscape. Most soaps have a musical soundtrack. Your target audience is 14-16 and you are broadcasting before the 9 p.m. watershed, so you need to avoid anything dark or too adult. Aim to provide entertainment, escapism, diversion.

MUSIC MAGAZINE BRIEF:
Your main splash is the central most important item for you to decide, as it dominates both the cover and the double page spread.

• Plan how the musician(s) will be framed on your front cover. Draw out roughly where their head and body will go. Don't be afraid to base your composition on real music magazines. 
• It is essential to plan the photo shoot background so that it is as plain as possible: you will have a lot of other writing and images on the front which must be easy to read and see.
• Exactly what is your musician wearing?

Main splash text.

• Your music magazine will sell well if the reader is promised an exciting read. What is the story that you promise to tell the readers inside on the double page?

Cover lines

• Music magazines are 'busy' visually. Write out the text for your additional cover lines (the other stories that you say are inside your magazine). They do nt have to be written. They do not have to involve 'real' musicians.
• Pay careful attention to the genre. You wouldn't have a girl band in a heavy metal magazine. 
• This is your chance to be really creative. Which of your friends is prepared to dress up and have their photo taken for the parts? Plan your costumes and instruments.

The double page spread.

• The key here is the layout. Feel free to base your grid of text and images on a successful layout that you admire somewhere in a real magazine.
• The priority is: does it LOOK good? Don't feel that you need to cram text into every corner.
• Write the article. Who are you covering? Is it a question / answer formula? Are you writing as the journalist asking the questions? Write the sub-headings. These break up the text. Write the photo captions.

 

Yr 10 TELEVISION: INDUSTRY and AUDIENCES

THURSDAY 20 SEPTEMBER
Today you are starting to read about the history of televsion.
Please click on this link which opens the page below. 
Then open Planning and Teaching (see below). On the right, scroll down until you can see 'Television: Industry and Audiences'.
Please download and save to your desktop then start reading it.

Yr 10 Q.1 CUFFS: SOUND

Today we learn about the soundscapes in moving image.

How is 'sound' used in film and TV?

'Sound' refers to everything we hear onscreen — words, sound effects, and music. Sound is used in film to heighten a mood, provide us with information about the location of a scene, advance the plot, and tell us about the characters in the story. There are two categories of sound in film: diegetic and non-diegetic. Diegetic refers to sound that is happening in the world of the film, like walkie-talkies, brakes screeching, dilaogue.

How does sound help onscreen? 

Music in film and TV achieves a number of things: it establishes setting; it creates atmosphere; it calls attention to elements; it reinforces or foreshadows narrative developments; it gives meaning to a character's actions or translates their thoughts; and it creates emotion.

We listen to a film extract and analsye the types of sound that we can hear.

Tonight's prep should be done on your blog. If you are uncertain about uploading the work, please see me in the Media Studio in morning break. Your prep should be done on the night that it is set. It should take no more than half an hour.

Aim to write about at least two examples. Write the equivalent of about half a side of A4 paper. You can pick any parts of the Cuffs extract.

PREP

Here is an example answer:
"There are different sound effects used to  build tension in this extract, to show how panicky the characters are feeling, such as when the female police officer calls in an incident on the walkie talkie and her voice is high-pitched. She is speaking very quickly suggesting to the audience that something is about to happen.

When the police car responds to an urgent call for assistance, non-diegetic sound like the distorted voices coming through the police radio / walkie talkie builds the sense of urgency and realism.

When the robbers are breaking into the shop, diegetic sounds like the smashing of the window as the glass splinters on the ground and the sound of the van crashing create the aggression and danger of the situation.

In the cafeteria, the diegetic sound while the men and women are talking conveys a sense of realism as there are the sounds of background music, people eating food and banter."

Yr 11 EXAM PREP

There are no new exam papers on the OCR J200 website as yet, so let's vary q.1 and instead of picking 'sound', let's do the question on 'camerawork'. So that can include camera angles, camera movement, camera shot types (such as close-up, reaction shot, point of view shot).
PREP Analyse how camerawork is used in the extract to create meaning. Refer to at least two examples from the extract in your answer.
Worth 4 marks. Write half a side of A4. (in the exam: tonight, you write on your blog)

Yr 11 AUDIENCE PROFILE

In class, you will have a demo of a collage tool that may be useful in creating a composite image both now and in future tasks.

We also read The Times (14.09.18) article on aging audience demographics for BBC tv programming.

PREP Complete your audience profile and post it on your blog.  The help sheet 16 'Building an audience profile' asks for writing as well: use all the points on the help sheet.

Yr 10 BLOGGER

We set up our own individual blogs today on Blogger. 
Pick the template 'simple' to start with so that your font is black on a white background which makes it legible. 

To customise your blog, you should adjust the widths of the main blog page and right sidebar.

To make your blog more individual, you may change the background image and title image. We will cover this next lesson along with posting, adding & captioning pictures, using hyperlinks, inserting the search engine in the right sidebar along with a bloglist of the rest of the class, and other items.

PREP In class together, we continued watching Cuffs as far as Jake's attempts to arrest a female petty thief. For prep, continue watching the episode using Clickview. You have all told me that you know how to access Clickview.

The aim of your watching this screening is to start finding evidence that the episode is told from the point of view of the police rather than that of the criminals, that is, it depicts the police in a more sympathetic light than the criminals.

Yr 11 AUDIENCE PROFILE

Focus: Activity 16 Building the audience profile.
We work through the first two elements of this activity which include how brands profile audiences using demographics, psychographics and lifestyles.

Using NME's audience profiling, we study a model of how a very successful brand profiles its target audience. This will serve as a model for you to base your 'mood board' on. Please call your own version an 'audience profile'.

Soap opera and magazine production: we brainstorm how you might include characters and themes that appeal to different psychographic profles including reformers. You make specific notes on 3 potential ideas.

Yr 10 CUFFS

Introduction: Daniel Chandler's The Grammar of Television and Film

We watch Cuffs as far as the scene below and analyse how the different representations of people and places are constructed. 

We put into practice key terms that we learned in the lesson introduction:
Editing language such as transition, dissolve, cut

Camera language such as zoom in, high angle, low angle, point of view shot
Representation such as positive / negative representation of a character, how clothing codes establish status / rank, how props (like a bicycle) build a character
Sound codes such as non-diegetic sound (synth noise during build up to racist attack), diegetic noise (police sirens during car chase); modes of address during conversation ("I'm Jo").

You have all sent /given me your prep and there is no homework tonight.

STATEMENT OF INTENTION

Revue your statement of intention.