AS Media Studies

Summer Work 2016

Name:AS

Media Studies
Summer work

Audience and Institution

25% of your media grade requires you to understand how films are
made. Youll need to be able to compare US films and British films at
every stage of production from pitching an idea, gaining funding,
casting, filming, editing, advertising and finally distribution and
exhibition.
Task: Watch a film at the cinema this summer and complete a case
study on it. Some titles are suggested below:

Suicide Squad
The Secret Life Of Pets
Jason Bourne
The BFG
Star Trek Beyond
Ghostbusters

Below is a list of the basic things you must write about

1. An explanation of the films plot
2. The films genre (who do you think would want to watch it?
Teens, adults, males, females etc.)
3. The films rating (e.g., is it 15, 18, PG?)
4. The films budget (i.e. how much it cost to make)
5. Who directed the film (is this film typical of their work?)
6. Who starred in the film (are they major stars or relative
unknowns? What films have the previously been in?)
7. Which Studio(s) produced the film (and more importantly WHO
owns them?)
8. The technology involved (was it filmed on film or digital, is it
3D? Does it use CGI? etc.)
9. Which studio(s) distributed the film (and once again who owns
them?)
10.
The films release date in the UK and the US
11.
How many screens was the film shown on? (This is a
tricky one)
12.
FIVE different examples of how the film was marketed
(e.g. Posters, trailers, premiers etc.)

Representation and Textual Analysis

By definition, all media texts are re-presentations of reality.
This means that they are intentionally composed, lit, written,
framed, cropped, captioned, branded, targeted and censored by
their producers, and that they are entirely artificial versions of the
reality we perceive around us.
When studying the media it is vital to remember this - every media
form, from a home video to a glossy magazine, is a representation
of someone's concept of existence, codified into a series of signs
and symbols which can be read by an audience.
The study of representation is about decoding the different layers of
truth/fiction.
In order to fully appreciate the part representation plays in a media
text you must consider:

Who produced it?

What/who is represented in the text?
How is that thing represented?

It is worth thinking about each of these for a moment- the first one
is the more straightforward - the media are in the business of
describing things to us- they represent people and types of people
to us so that we end up feeling that we know what they are like
Any representation is a mixture of:
1 The thing itself.
2 The opinions of the people doing the representation
3 The reaction of the individual to the representation
4 The context of the society in which the representation
is taking place.
Representation of certain groups is very common, for example, age,
sexuality, gender. This makes it easier for media producers to get
their message across and we recognize the clues quicker.

Representation in TV Drama
Task 1: Character profile
Choose a character and think about how they are
represented in the show in which they appear.
Make notes on the following points:

TV drama name

Genre of TV drama

Actor/actress name

Character name

Ages of character and actor

Ethnicity

Regional identity

Costume usually includes

Sum up lifestyle in 5 words

Friends

Interests

Motivation in most situations

Love life

Problems in life

Key moment in drama series

Prediction for future narratives (storylines)

How is the audience supposed to react to them? Explain view.