A2 Media Exam tips

Hi Kids,

I have been going through your essays and have found that you are all overwhelmingly making exactly the same errors, so rather than going to the trouble of scanning and emailing you back your own work I've done this general feedback. Come and see me Monday any time after period 1 if you want some 1-1 assistance and to get your own paper.

Leanne x

General feedback:

1.a)
*Too much focus on research with little mention of planning activities. The question is asking you about both, so you should give examples of both.

*Too much generalised discussion with a lack of specific activities undertaken and their impact on creative decisions. I.e. 'for my title sequence I made an animatic, which allowed me to more fully visualise what my finished production would look like and this led me to realise that there was an inconsistency in the pace of the first few shots which gave it a more lighthearted tone than I wanted, so I changed my storyboards to address this.'

*Research should be divided into Primary, Secondary and Market. Primary = stuff you found out yourself, Seconday = stuff you found out from books/internet articles etc, Market = stuff you found out about/from your target audience/the media market within which your product would fall.

*Planning could include things like: storyboarding, scripting, animatics, location scouting, costume design, casting, thumbnail sketches, production plans/shooting schedules...

*Nobody's really answered the question that was set. You would all do well to write a thorough conclusion where you literally go back to the question asked and attempt to answer it in one paragraph, drawing on everything you've already discussed in the main body of your response.

*Keep looking back at the question throughout your essay as well, so as not to end up waffling about elements that aren't really relevant. The majority of you have ignored the fact that the question refers to creative decision making and have just given an account of your production process. This will not score you very many marks in the exam, you need to be reflective and specific to whatever the question is asking.

1. b)

Most of you haven't attempted this one and where people have, responses are generally not bad but lacking terminology and reference to media theory/critical approaches. I know we haven't done that much on this but you could all spend some time researching and there MUST be loads of exemplar essays by now on other academic blogs (there's one of these linked on my blog I know) which would reference theory that you could 'nick' if it relates to what you've done too.