The document provides guidance on answering exam questions for a media studies course that require students to analyze and evaluate their own media production work. It outlines the key areas and concepts they should discuss, including developing skills in areas like digital technology and creativity, how they conducted research and planning, and how they approached post-production and use of conventions. Students are advised on how to deconstruct one of their own media pieces by applying concepts like genre, narrative, representation, audience, and media language.

1. Question 1 A
Specific examples for each focus
Progression in different skills areas
from AS- A2
Key Terminology
Digital Technology
Creativity
Research and planning
Post-production
Using conventions from real media texts

2. Question 1 B
Genre
Narrative
Representation
Audience
Media language
Theories and detailed examples
from your work for each...

3. Question 2- Collective Identity
Media theories
Case studies
Key arguments
Key terminology
Quotes
Essay plan
Introduction
conclusion

4. G325: Critical Perspectives in
Media
Section 1:Theoretical Evaluation of
Your Production Work

5. Section 1
Question 1(a) you will have to describe and evaluate your skills development over the course of your production work, from
Foundation Portfolio to Advanced Portfolio. The focus of this evaluation must be on skills development, and the question will
require you to adapt this to one or two specific production practices. The list of practices to which questions will relate is as
follows:
• Digital Technology
• Creativity
• Research and planning
• Post-production
• Using conventions from real media texts
In the exam, questions will be asked using one or two of these categories.
Question 1(b) requires you to select one production and evaluate it in relation to a media concept.
The list of concepts to which questions will relate is as follows:
• Genre
• Narrative
• Representation
• Audience
• Media language

6. 1. Digital Technology
• Discuss what technical skills you have learnt
and developed on your A level Media course

7. 2. Creativity
This is quite a tricky one; start by listing the creative
choices and decisions which you have made over the
course, and what skills you think you have developed:
Q. Discuss how you feel you have developed your
creativity over the two year course. You should think
about:
• What have you enjoyed the most, and what
experiences have lead to you becoming more creative
• What are you particularly proud of
• How this creativity has helped you in other areas of
your life
• Are you developing this with your further studies?

8. 3. Research and planning
This is a key area for showing you understand how professional production companies work. You need to
understand the importance of preproduction work and explain how it informed your planning and eventual
finished product.
Primary and Secondary Research
Primary- research which you carry out yourself, all of the data is created by the research which you have done
Secondary- this data is already collated by researchers, you then use this to inform your work
Qualitative and Quantitative Data
Qualitative Data- this is data which is more in depth and carried out on a smaller section of people, this would
include focus groups and interviews. This is more time consuming, however it gives you greater quality of
research as you can ask people to expand on their responses, this involves open questions
Quantitative Data- this is data which is less detailed however you would get a larger sample, this would include
questionnaires and surveys. It is quick and easy to administer and involves closed questions. The advantages of
this are that you get a large quantity of data, thus allowing you to draw conclusions, however you do not get
detailed responses.
• Explain what you researched before starting your production work and why you carried out this research
• How did your research inform your production work
• What difficulties did you encounter whilst carrying out your research
Preproduction Planning
Make a list of all of the preproduction tasks you carried out before your production work.
Next to each task explain how it helped you with your production and why it was important for your
planning

9. 4. Post-production
This includes the post production editing process, audience
feedback, refining your product and evaluating the success of
your product. As you are fully aware filming the media
product is merely one part of a long chain; without the post-
production process there is no product!
• Explain in your own words what the post-production
process involved and what skills you learnt and developed
over the course. You should include:
• All of the techniques which you used during the editing of
your videos on Final Cut (think about filters, colour
correctors, transitions, titles, speed,

10. 5. Using Conventions
from Real Media Texts
Whether you chose to follow or subvert conventions
understanding the forms and conventions of the medium and
genre within which you are working is key to the success of
any media product.
• Explain why conventions are so important to media texts
• Explain how you found out what the conventions were for
the product you were planning (at AS+A2), and how you
identified audience expectations for these
• List the forms and conventions of the medium and genre
within which you worked
• Explain whether you followed or subverted these, and
why you decided to do so
• How did using conventions help you achieve a successful
end product?

11. Past Paper Essay Questions
• Describe a range of creative decisions that you made in
post-production and how these decisions made a
difference to the final outcomes. Refer to a range of
examples in your answer to show how these skills
developed over time
• Explain how far your understanding of the conventions of
existing media influenced the way you created your own
media products. Refer to a range of examples in your
answer to show how this understanding developed over
time.
• Describe how your analysis of the conventions of real
media texts informed your own creative media practice.
Refer to a range of examples in your answer t o show how
these skills developed over time

12. • Describe how you developed your skills in the use of
digital technology for media production and evaluated
how these skills contributed to your creative decision
making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to
show how these skills developed over time.
• Describe the ways in which your production work was
informed by research into real media texts and how
your ability to use such research for production
developed over time.
• Describe how you developed research and planning
skills for media production and evaluate how these
skills contributed to creative decision making. Refer to
a range of examples in your answer to show how these
skills developed over time.

13. Question 1b- Deconstructing your
work
This question asks you to evaluate one of
your productions and evaluate it with
reference to one of these concepts:
• Genre
• Narrative
• Representation
• Audience
• Media Language

14. • You need to be able to apply each of these
concepts to your work through deconstructing
your text. For each of these concepts you also
need to be able to discuss the importance and
significance of them when producing your text
• You need to reflect on how well your project
actually works as a media text- this is where
audience feedback for each section is important,
you should be clear about what worked and what
didn’t and what you learnt from this.
• Remember micro evidence throughout- this is
worth 40% of your work!

15. • Genre – how you have followed/subverted/worked with genre
conventions, how important genre is when producing a text, audience
expectations infectious
• Narrative – what structure did your video follow, how did you ‘tell a story’,
how was this used to engage the audience, how did it work with the
lyrics/genre?
• Representation – think about what groups you have represented in your
music video, how have you portrayed them, how would the audience
respond to this, what ideologies have you followed or challenged, what
stereotypes have you used (remember stereotypes are extremely
important in music videos as they are an easy and quick way to
communicate with an audience)
• Audience –how did you target an audience and appeal to them, what
research did you do into this, how did your audience respond to the text,
what comments did people leave on your blog/YouTube? Theory: Uses
and Gratifications, Dyer’s Utopian solutions, Maslow etc…
• Media Language- this involves you deconstructing your text and looking at
how you created meaning in your music video, this would draw in the
other concepts above, whilst analysing the technical side of the
production work.

16. Assessment Criteria
• 40% - Discussion
• 40% - Examples/evidence
• 20% - Terminology