The document contains questions about media concepts and skills used in media coursework productions. It asks the student to discuss concepts like media language, genre, audience, narrative, and representation in their work. It also prompts the student to reflect on how they developed skills like research and planning, digital technology use, post-production techniques, and creativity over the course of their AS and A2 studies. The student is asked to provide examples from their productions and evaluate how these concepts and skills were applied and developed.

1. Question 1a – Skills and Processes
Conventions of real media texts Post-Production Research and Planning Digital Technology
Explain how you have used, developed
or challenged conventions of real media
products.
Discuss the decisions you made during
post-production of all 4 media products
How did your Research and Planning
inform your production? (GDS)
How has digital technology aided your
creativity to during your coursework
productions? (GDS)
Evaluate how you creatively drew upon
and/ or developed conventions of real
media products.
Discuss the ways in which you have
exercised creativity during post-
production?
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. (Jan10)
“Digital technology turns media
consumers into media producers”. In
your own experience, how has your
creativity developed through using
digital technology to complete your
coursework productions? (Exam board
example)
 In what ways have your productions
used or developed conventions adopted
from real media products?
 In what ways have your productions
challenged or played with conventions
adopted from real media products?
 In other words, is your work generic, or
experimental – or both?
 Some media producers adopt a style
of working that is quite distinctive –
explore how your own favourite
producers/ directors/ designers/
publishers may have influenced work you
have produced. Do you have a ‘style’?
Are you an auteur?
 What do you consider to be the
impact of having learnt and applied
typical conventions AND why your
ability to apply this understanding has
improved over the course.
 What would Andrew Goodwin say
about your work?
What did you do @ POST
PRODUCTION that you are particularly
proud of and how did you do it?
What was the impact/outcome on the
quality of media texts produced?
How specifically and to what extent
did your skills develop @ AS & A2?
If and how did a lack of access to PP
soft/hardware or of PP skills, impact
your work
 How much of your text was ‘created’ in
post-production?
 What technologies did you use to
modify your raw material? How did this
change the meaning of your work?
 What transitions/ effects did you apply
during post-production? How did you
manipulate narrative/ colours/ lighting/
contrast/ brightness/ sound etc during the
edit?
 How much of your footage ended up
‘on the cutting room floor’ (unused) and
why?
 How has digital technology helped
you to capture your ideas?
 What benefits do digital technologies
offer over analogue? Are there any
disadvantages?
 How did digital technology influence
your work in pre-production,
production, and post-production?
 How have your skills with digital
technology developed, and how has
this influenced your productions?
 What role might digital technology
plan in the distribution of your work?
 How is digital technology changing
media production?
 How did your research into genre
contribute to your production work?
 How did your research into audience
contribute to your production work?
 How did your research into institutions
responsible for the production and
regulation of the media influence your
production work?
 What pre-production planning
techniques did you employ (scripting,
storyboarding, shot-listing, flat-planning
etc.)? How effective was your planning –
how did it help you in the production
phase?
 What did you learn from planning
your first production that helped you
to improve your planning for the
second?
 How did you use audience feedback to
influence your production work while it
was in progress?
Creativity
You will not get a question on creativity on its own. Creativity is ONLY used in conjunction with one of the other key areas.
 What features of your work would you say are original to you?
 Which media texts and producers have influenced your creative decisions?
 How successfully does your work engage its audience and provoke its interest?
 Consider some of the creative choices you had to make during the course of your production – how to use cameras, lighting, dialogue, colour etc. How did you make
these decisions, and how did these contribute to the final production?
 How did digital technology/ real media texts/ research and planning/ post-production give you an opportunity to express and stretch your creativity?

2. Question 1b – Concepts
Media Language Genre Audience
“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 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?
• How useful is the concept of genre in understanding
your work?
• How can genre be used to understand music videos,
and how is this different to genre and (thriller) films?
• How is your work intertextual? How does it fit in with
other music videos?
• How is your production conventional of the genre?
• Why is genre useful to you as a media producer/
useful to audiences?
• Genre theorists you have quotes from: Gunther
Kress, Denis McQuail, Nicholas Abercrombie, Christine
Gledhill, Katie Wales, John Fiske. Jacques Derrida: “A
text cannot belong to no genre, it cannot be without... a
genre. Every text participates in one or several genres,
there is no genreless text.”
• How could you use the theories to discuss genre and
understand your production?
• What would Andrew Goodwin say about your work in
terms of genre?
• Genres change and evolve (see Christian Metz and
David Buckingham). How is your production using/
developing the genre?
• How useful is the concept of audience in
understanding your work?
• Who is your target audience? How did you develop
your target audience? How does your production
appeal to your target audience?
• How useful are various segmentation models to
describe your target audience? Demographics?
Psychographics? Findyourtribe?
• Consider theorists and theories such as: Stuart
Hall: Encoding and Decoding; Preferred/ negotiated/
oppositional readings; Denis McQuail – (Uses and
Gratification theory); Ien Ang - “Audiencehood is
becoming an even more multifaceted, fragmented
and diversified repertoire of practices and
experiences.”; Hypodermic Needle Theory
Narrative Representation
“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. (Exam Board Example)
Analyse media representation in one of your coursework productions. (Jan10)
“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.
• How useful is the concept of narrative in understanding your work?
• How is narrative and music videos different to narrative and film?
• How is your narrative structured? (convergent/ parallel/ circular/ linear/ non-linear/
interweaving/ fragmented/ impressionist…?) How did you use chapters/phases?
• What pleasure(s) does your narrative offer the audience?
• How do you use characters in your narrative? How have you used protagonists/
antagonists? Is Vladimir Propp useful to understand your production?
• Some theorists and theories you may be able to apply: Story versus plot; Tzetvan
Todorov (equilibrium etc); Claude Levi-Strauss (binary opposition); Roland Barthes
(Enigma code; Action code. Also, Open and Closed texts); Pam Cook; Noam
Chomsky (narrative is fundamental to human understanding)
• How does the narrative structure/ ending shape the meaning of your production?
 How does your video represent different social groups/ people/ places/
lifestyles? What values/ ideologies are you representing/ promoting?
 Does your production create a hegemonic representation/ does it represent
and reinforce the dominant ideology?
 What positive/ negative/ stereotypical connotations and representations are
you constructing/ using/ challenging?
 How are the representations in your production the products of your own
cultural experience/ background/ ideology/ values?
 What would Laura Mulvey say about your production?