Exam Essay Blog

By this time next week I would like to see a substantial blog entry covering the following areas:

 

I would like you to produce blog entry covering the following:

1. How your work links to and conforms to/ subverts your research on:

• Genre
• Audience
• Narrative
• Representation
• Media Language
• Using conventions from real media texts

Have your ideas changed over the course of the project? Why (or why not?) Make sure you refer explicitly to your video/ print products. You should write a reasonably substantial paragraph on each.

 

2. How your skill are developing compared to your previous work. You should consider:

• Research
• Planning/ Organisation
• Digital Technology
• Shooting
• Editing

You should aim to refer directly to your experience during your previous project work, particularly in terms of your AS final piece, and to specific events/ experiences during the current project.

 

Make sure your read the exam guidelines to support this task:

Question 1(a) requires candidates to describe and evaluate their skills development over the course of their production work, from Foundation Portfolio to Advanced Portfolio. The focus of this evaluation must be on skills development, and the question will require them 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 examination, questions will be posed using one or two of these categories.

 

Where you have produced relevant work outside the context of your A Level media course, you are free to additionally refer to this experience.

 

Question 1(b) requires candidates 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

In the examination, questions will be set using one of these concepts only.

 

In some circumstances, candidates will be expected to select the production that appears to relate most effectively to the specific concept that arises in the exam question. However, the requirement for candidates to evaluate one of their productions in relation to a concept does not assume that the concept will necessarily always fit easily and in an orthodox way. Thus in some cases candidates will be describing their productions in terms of them not relating straightforwardly to the concept. For example, a candidate producing three websites over their two portfolios might describe ways in which websites cannot be understood easily through applying conventional narrative theory. Whether the candidate applies the concept to the product or uses the production to challenge the concept, it is essential that candidates are sufficiently knowledgeable about the concept for either approach. Candidates may choose to write about work undertaken at AS or A2, main task or preliminary/ancillary.

 

Further Guidance

 

In order for candidates to be best prepared for the exam, it is suggested that preparation for G325 should take place alongside production work. However, centres are not recommended to design A2 production briefs purely to be ‘suitable‘ for G325. Rather, candidates should be guided in reflective, theoretical evaluation of production as an ongoing way of learning throughout their AS and A2 studies. Question 1(a) directly requests an evaluation of how candidates’ media production skills have developed progressively from AS to A2, so centres are advised to guide candidates through regular ‘audits’ of skills development. As the question for 1(b) is different in focus for each assessment session, and draws from a list of possible concepts, candidates should either prepare to answer on more than one of their productions (so they can choose the production in response to the specific demands of the question) or prepare an evaluation of one production which covers all of the possible concepts.