University of West London podcast

Well done again to all of you who joined us for the University of West London trip - it was brilliant to see you demonstrate your knowledge of new and digital media alongside real production skills.

The report is available online here via Audio Boom in three parts. We also have a copy of the audio here that we'll be putting on the Media Shared drive.

It was a great introduction to the production values required for Year 13 - remember we need to be hitting professional standards to reach the top grades at A2!

MEST4 Summer Project

Your summer project involves vital research that leads into your Critical Investigation - the most important aspect of your coursework in Year 13. 

The following needs to be completed by the first lesson back at the start of September:

1. Choose a media text and media debate/issue that you are interested in and that is less than five years old.

2. Spend several hours analysing the text – watching, reading, annotating, notetaking, re-watching, discussing with others (and considering the MIGRAIN questions below) etc. 

3. Research your text online.

4. Post up all evidence of research on your MEST4 blog. You are looking for the following: reviews, newspaper/magazine articles, online comments or blogs linked to your text, useful book titles linked to your text, relevant theory, relevant media issues and debates, information about wider contexts, your own bullet-pointed notes on each concept etc.

5. Don't just cut and paste mindlessly - be selective, try to summarise the information, comment on it and explain why it is useful. Also, make sure that you include specific links to all the sites you find.

6. Feel free to be as creative with your blogs as you can. Include pictures, clips, reflections, links etc.

7. Prepare a 5 minute, 20-slide 'Ignite' presentation on your text to be ready for the first week back. If you're unsure how these work, remind yourself by reading through the lesson slides: Introduction to Summer Project 2016, and look over our blogpost with good Ignite examples.

8. Try to address as many of the Key Concepts (MIGRAIN) as you can in your presentation (you won't be able to cover them all in 20 time-limited slides), and provide bullet-pointed answers to the following questions on your research blogpost...



MIGRAIN key concept research

Media Representations 

• Who is being represented? In what way? By whom?
• Why is the subject being represented in this way? 
• Is the representation fair and accurate?
• What opportunities exist for self-representation by the subject?

Media Languages and Forms 

• What are the denotative and connotative levels of meaning?
• What is the significance of the text’s connotations?
• What are the non-verbal structures of meaning in the text (e.g. gesture, facial expression, positional communication, clothing, props etc)?
• What is the significance of mise-en-scene/sets/settings (CLAMPS)?
• What work is being done by the sound track/commentary/language of the text?
• What are the dominant images and iconography, and what is their relevance to the major themes of the text?
• What sound and visual techniques are used to convey meaning (e.g. camera positioning, editing; the ways that images and sounds are combined to convey meaning)?

Narrative 

• How is the narrative organised and structured?
• How is the audience positioned in relation to the narrative?
• How are characters delineated? What is their narrative function? How are heroes and villains created?
• What techniques of identification and alienation are employed?
• What is the role of such features as sound, music, iconography, genre, mise-en-scene, editing etc within the narrative?
• What are the major themes of the narrative? What values/ideologies does it embody?

Genre 

• To which genre does the text belong?
• What are the major generic conventions within the text?
• What are the major iconographic features of the text?
• What are the major generic themes?
• To what extent are the characters generically determined?
• To what extent are the audience’s generic expectations of the text fulfilled or cheated by the text? Does the text conform to the characteristics of the genre, or does it treat them playfully or ironically?
• Does the text feature a star, a director, a writer etc who is strongly associated with the genre? What meanings and associations do they have?

Media Institutions 

• What is the institutional source of the text?
• In what ways has the text been influenced or shaped by the institution which produced it?
• Is the source a public service or commercial institution? What difference does this make to the text?
• Who owns and controls the institution concerned and does this matter?
• How has the text been distributed?

Media Values and Ideology 

• What are the major values, ideologies and assumptions underpinning the text or naturalised within it?
• What criteria have been used for selecting the content presented?

Media Audiences 

• To whom is the text addressed? What is the target audience? (Demographics, Psychographics)
• What assumptions about the audience’s characteristics are implicit within the text?
• What assumptions about the audience are implicit in the text’s scheduling or positioning?
• In what conditions is the audience likely to receive the text? Does this impact upon the formal characteristics of the text?
• What do you know or can you assume about the likely size and constituency of the audience?
• What are the probable and possible audience readings of the text? 
• What are the audience pleasures, uses or gratifications?  (Refer to theory).
• How do you, as an audience member, read and evaluate the text? To what extent is your reading and evaluation influenced by your age, gender, background etc?

Good luck. There is a lot to do here. Our advice is to work on this throughout the Summer rather than leaving it all to the last minute. It should be an independent, enjoyable process - finding out about something that YOU are interested in and have chosen specifically. If you have any problems then email us or discuss the project in school on one of the exam result days (18th and 25th of August).

And remember, the aim of this is to develop your key research skills that you'll be using when you do your coursework next year...and these are skills that are vital for for all subjects in Year 13 and at university.

We look forward to watching your Ignite presentations in the first lesson back in September!