A2 Critical Perspectives Revision

1A and 1B

1A Skills Development: Digital Technology

O Digital technology refers to hardware, software and online technology, so the cameras, the computers, the packages you used and the programs online that you have worked with. It is worth considering how all this inter-links

O Ensure you outline what you did, how you developed in each of the production stages.

1A Skills developments: Real Media Conventions

O Use of real media conventions involves consideration of other texts that you looked at and how skillfully you were able to weave their conventions into your work or ways in which you might have challenged them.

O Ensure you outline what you did, how you developed in each of the production stages.

1A Skills Development: Creativity

O Creativity is the hardest one in many ways because it involves thinking about what the creative process might mean. Wikipedia describes it as "a mental process involving the discovery of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the existing ideas or concepts, fueled by the process of either conscious or unconscious insight."

O For your projects it might involve considering where ideas came from, how you worked collaboratively to share ideas, how you changed things or even how you used tools like the programs to achieve something imaginative.

O This is unlikely to come up on its own but will still appear on the paper.

1A Skills Development: Post-Production

O post-production would actually fall under digital technology as well, so if that comes up it would probably represent an expansion of points you'd make in one section of digital technology. It is really about everything you do after constructing the raw materials for your production; so once you have taken photos and written text, how do you manipulate it all in photoshop or desktop publishing for a print product or once you have shot your video, what do you do to it in editing.

1A Skills Development: Research and Planning

O Research refers to looking at real media and audiences to inform your thinking about a media production and also how you record all that research; planning refers to all the creative and logistical thinking and all the organisation that goes on in putting the production together so that everything works and again gives you the chance to write about how you kept records of it.

Approaching the questionO Reflect on how you developed across the course. You should feel free to

acknowledge weaknesses and to reflect upon how you learned from them and how you overcame problems. It is not a place to be defensive about your work but to really reflect on it!

O paragraph 1 should be an introduction which explains which projects you did

O paragraph 2 should pick up the skill area and perhaps suggest something about your starting point with it- what skills did you have already and how were these illustrated. use an example.

O paragraph 3 should talk through your use of that skill in early projects and what you learned and developed through these. again there should be examples to support all that you say.

O paragraph 4 should go on to demonstrate how the skill developed in later projects, again backed by examples, and reflecting back on how this represents moves forward for you from your early position.

O paragraph 5 short conclusion

O Remember it's only half an hour and you need to range across all your work!

1B Theoretical Evaluation: Genre

O Genre is all about the ways in which we categorise media texts. Whatever you have made will in some way relate to other examples of the same genre. Begin to suggest how you apply differing theories of genre to your Music Video.

O FiskeO AltmanO GrantO NealeO ChandlerO Goodwin

1B Theoretical Evaluation: Audience

O Audience can refer to how media products target audiences, which audiences actually consume media products, but most interestingly how media audiences actually read or make sense of media products and what they might do with them.

O Stuart HallO Patrick PhillipsO Murray SmithO Reception TheoryO Media Effects

1B Theoretical Evaluation: Narrative

O Narrative is about how stories are told. Applying different models of narrative structure to your work may reveal unconscious things that you did in the way you have constructed it.

O FirthO GoodwinO ArcherO TodorovO ProppO StraussO Barthes

1B Theoretical Evaluation: Representation

O Representation particularly focuses on the ways in which particular social groups are presented back to us by the media. So in your case how have you portrayed young people or females or males in your work? what messages are implied in what you have constructed and what would particular types of criticism (e.g. feminism) make of it?

O PerkinsO GoodwinO O’SullivanO Theories of masculinityO Homo-eroticismO Mulvey (support or challenge)

1B Theoretical Evaluation: Media Language

O Media Language is probably the most open one if it comes up, because it allows you to talk about the other areas as well (genre, narrative, audience) as it is about the techniques and conventions of different forms of media (how shots are organised in music video, how text is laid out on a page).

O DeridaO Barthes – semitoic analysisO GoodwinO All other theorists

StructureO para 1 Intro: which of your projects are you going to write

about? briefly describe it

O para 2: what are some of the key features of the concept you are being asked to apply? maybe outline some of the theories briefly

O para 3; start to apply the concept, making close reference to your production

O para 4: try to show ways in which ideas work in relation to your production and also ways in which those ideas might not apply/could be challenged

O para 5; conclusion

USE THE BLOG!!O Go through past lesson materialO Look at the links to other – good

college – blogs.O Practice a response to each area that

could come up!