CUFFS: MEDIA LANGUAGE, REPRESENTATION OF CHARACTERS, SOCIAL ISSUES AND CONTEXTS

We watch Cuffs using Clickview and work from the OCR GCSE text book starting at page 10.

PREP Choose a piece of Popcorn Prep and post the answer on your blog tonight. 

In point

 

Out point

CUFFS: MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS & CONTEXTS

OCR have told us that the unseen extract will be from The Avengers this summer but that the focus for CUFFS will be on media representations and media contexts.
 OCR pdf guide to Television : Industry and Audience here

pdf here 

• The BBC wanted a programme to replace Waterloo Road, a social realist serial drama set in a school with an ensemble cast. Cuffs is a police drama / police procedural with an ensemble cast
  
• Television series with ensemble casts, such as Cuffs, offer audiences a team, or substitute family, towards whom they can adopt a ‘mother’ role – forgiving the characters’ weaknesses, admiring their achievements, and hoping for the best for them.  
• The cast reflects the social and historical contexts of the time: changes in social and cultural contexts mean that television audiences expect diverse representations in their television programmes. In multicultural and post-feminist Britain it would seem unusual to have a solely white male ensemble cast.  There are representations of strong women in positions of responsibility like Jo and Donna.
  
• The presence of Jake, a gay character who is not defined by his sexuality, in Cuffs reflects the BBC’s assumption that audiences would not find this representation unsettling. Simon Reddington, a lawyer and duty solicitor, embarks on a relationship with Jake.
  
• The role of Ryan as the trusted mentor of Chief Superintendent Vickers' son positions him as both the team leader and cornerstone of the force. Both Ryan and PC Misha Baig, a young female Muslim police officer, reflect the diversity of ethnicities in modern-day Brighton.
• The slot – 8pm Wednesday – was pre-watershed prime time, so required family-friendly mass entertainment. 

  The show offers comedy, suspense and action, some elements of spectacle and attractive actors.

  Television series with ensemble casts, such as Cuffs, do not offer simple hero and villain roles that enable identification with role models. However, audiences might identify with the values celebrated by the programme, such as public order, professional teamwork, comradeship, and dedication to duty in the face of public indifference, or might choose favourites as role models from among the ensemble cast. 

  WHAT KINDS OF EXAM QUESTIONS? This summer, look for the terms representation and contexts. Here are some exam questions on the class blog.
  

  Usually, we also need to prepare for media language (mise-en-scene, camerawork, sound and editing) and industry / audiences.
  

  
  

   

 

 

MAKE A MOJO COVER

Show that you know the genre conventions for a music magazine cover by making your own.

In Photoshop, the first thing to do is create an A4 page. Then drag on your main image.

Look at the example covers on your desk.

Yr 10 NEWS - THE OBSERVER TWITTER

Today we look further at journalism. We analyse the representations in three extracts from Observer Tweets.

PREP Look through The Observer's Twitter feed. Aim to understand its perspective and its audience, based on what how we analysed the three Observer Tweets in the exam paper today.

Then list 5 articles (in any order) on your blog that seem to you to represent the kind of journalism that The Observer / Guardian regularly publishes. Be ready to say what kind of article it is and why it typifies Observer values, messages and audiences.

As the school IT department have to block Twitter at school, you will have to screenshot your chosen Tweets and add them to your blog as images. Otherwise, we will not be able to discuss them.

Yr 10: NEWS - MEDIA LANGUAGE IN THE OBSERVER

On your desk are copies of The Observer and also a sheet giving you media terminology about newspapers. We note the tabloid features and the broadsheet features. We match the features described on the sheet with the actual copy on our desks.

By media language, we mean layout features such as columns, skybox, and use of photographs; genre features such as the masthead / title, use of fonts, standfirsts, body copy and so on.

You have time to look through the various supplements in each Observer and you identify what kind of content interests Observer readers: not just hard news.

PREP Research the different kinds of newspapers on sale. Can you distinguish which are the 'red top' or tabloids, pushing sensationalist content, with huge images and very little text? Can you see how different the 'broadsheets' are, even if they are now the same size as the tabloids? You can use the poster below. What seem to be the main differences between the types of newspapers?