MEST4: Linked production planning

For your Year 13 MEST4 coursework, 32 of the 80 marks are for a piece of production work that links with your Critical Investigation. Key details:

• You CAN work with others but the production MUST have some kind of link to ALL of your Critical Investigations. Group size limited to FOUR by AQA.
• Video work generally should be around 3 minutes long and no longer than 5 minutes. However, certain genres or texts will be shorter than this (e.g. 30-second advertisements or 2-minute film trailers).
• Print work must be a MINIMUM of three full A4 pages per candidate (e.g. if a pair work on print work the minimum is SIX full A4 pages).
• Found images/video (e.g. downloaded from the internet) are NOT permitted except as minor additional material (e.g. a small cut-out of a celebrity to use on a magazine cover).
• To achieve top marks, your work must comfortably sit alongside professional examples of the text and genre you have chosen.
• As with AS Level work, the key to professional production work is highly detailed research into the key conventions of your chosen text.

Important note: your Year 13 Linked Production CANNOT be the same as your Year 12 brief (opening of a TV programme aimed at E4 audience) OR the other Y12 briefs (a three-minute extract from a 30-minute arthouse film; two-minute section/trailer for a TV lifestyle show; a two-minute music promotion introducing and showcasing a new music artist). 

A reminder of your Year 12 MEST2 brief: Produce the opening few scenes of your TV programme establishing narrative themes, characters and location. You could include a title sequence and your finished product should be approximately two minutes long.


Writing your own Linked Production brief

Complete the following and post it to your blog in a new blogpost called 'Linked Production brief'.

Your Critical Investigation topic: 


Your Linked Production brief: 


Length/size of production (e.g. 3 minutes, 5 pages etc.): 


Give an example of an existing media text this is similar to what you plan to produce: 


Give an example of an institution that would produce or distribute your planned production:


How would your production reach its audience?


Who do you plan to work with on this project?



Preliminary exercise: Recreation task

Your Year 13 Preliminary Exercise is to produce a 30-second shot-by-shot recreation of an existing text that is similar to the production you are planning to create. Complete the following in a blogpost called 'Recreation task planning':


Name of the text you plan to recreate:


Scene/section you will recreate:


Location you will use for your recreation:


Actors you will require for your recreation:


Props/costumes you will require for your recreation:


Equipment you plan to use:


Any other relevant information:



Recreation deadline: Two weeks

MEST4 Linked Production deadline: Easter