Audience and institution - exam facts

Coupled with your study of TV drama, you will also have a question on Audience and Institution on your exam.

YOUR EXAM TAKES PLACE ON THE 19TH MAY 2016.

You will have 45mins in the exam to answer a question around the film industry, looking at production, marketing, distribution and consumption.

In preparation for the exam, you will produce four case studies that you will need to memorise and be able to use to answer a question that may come from any of seven different film industry areas:

• Media ownership
• Cross media convergence and synergy
• Technology
• Proliferation of hardware and content
• Technological convergence
• Marketing
• Consumption

Your exam will be focused on British audiences - and you should cover a specific studio or production company in detail in order to meet the exam requirements.

Audience and Institution - an introduction

Film production is the process of making a film.

For the exam you'll need to understand all the stages of film production, these are:

Development - This is simply the process of 'finding' a story. Ideas for films come from a variety of sources, they can range from novels, real life events to computer game adaptations. Once you've got an idea you'll need someone to write a pitch for you which you take to a film producer in an attempt to get some funding to make your film. Even at this very early stage you need a very clear idea of who you're aiming you film at so you can include elements that will appeal to them.

Pre-production - Once you've got funding you establish your budget and can begin to get a film crew together, you can storyboard the script. You also need break the script down into individual scenes and identify all the locations, props, cast members, costumes, special effects and visual effects needed.

Production - This is simply the process of 'making' the film. Provided you've done your job properly in the pre-production stage making the film should be straight forward. 'Film' is very expensive and difficult to store so an increasing number of film makers are using digital cameras to save money.

Post-production - During this stage you take all the 'film' you've shot and give it to a film editor. They will then begin putting it together. Special effects will be added, a soundtrack will be added, any missing dialogue will be re-recorded and added resulting in a 'rough cut'. This will be shown to the director and a test audience who will offer feedback. Often this causes scenes to be filmed and added or removed.

You need to find out what the following key roles and areas entail:

• writer
• producer
• casting director
• director
• film finance
• camera operator
• editor
• production designer
• marketing
• exhibition

You must write a description of each role / area and add a relevant image to illustrate.

These sites (alongside wikipedia) will help:              

http://creativeskillset.org/creative_industries/film

http://laurasygrovelcmedia1213.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/stages-of-filmmaking.html

Complete the work in Word, illustrate with relevant images, upload to your blog, print and stick in your books.

Evaluation questions

There are 20 remaining marks assigned to your project for evaluation - you must complete seven tasks on your blog.

Your evaluation should link back to your research and use it to explain the choices you have made in your own work.

The tasks must be posted in order, with the question heading at the top of each task. Make sure you answer each question, as well as produce the visual elements.

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of music magazines)
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

The following blogs (courtesy of Lutterworth College) were awarded full marks:

• Sian Lynes
• Bronte Woodland
• Matthew Hopkins
• Billy Raybould

Evaluation question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of music magazines)

As part of your planning and research you should have looked at Music Magazines and selected a particular sub genre (e.g. Indie, pop, r&b, dance, etc) to re-create. Find an example of a pre-exisiting music magazine which matches your magazine, paste it into your blog and highlight the key generic conventions of the magazine (the list of terminology can be found HERE)

You should go through the final version of your project and select elements which follow conventions and any which do not.

Produce a nine-frame presentation (in your choice of software) that covers the following aspects:

The title of the magazine

Graphology/page layouts

Costumes, props, iconography used to reflect genre

Camerawork and framing of images

Title, article, header etc font and style

Genre and how the magazine cover, contents and spread suggests it

How your artist(s) are represented

Colour scheme

Evaluation question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Pick a key image of your artist from your magazine (ideally the cover image). Take a screengrab of a reasonable sized image of them. Think of one or more recording artists/stars from other magazines with some similarity to them (but maybe some differences too!), find an image on the web of that/those stars and grab it as well. 

Drop the two into photoshop, as a split screen. Export this splitscreen image as a jpeg then drop onto your blog and write about the similarities and differences in terms of appearance, costume, etc.

So for example if you have a female R&B star on your cover, look for other female R&B star to compare them with (remember to try and ensure that they are of a similar age, ethnicity etc).

Evaluation question 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

For this question, you are going to do a 'director's commentary' style voiceover explaining some of the key features of your magazine cover.

You will need to script the voiceover which deals with institutional issues to include:

Discussion of your production company name and logo and the role of such companies

What does a publishing company do?

The idea of a distributor and who that might be and why. start here

Where the money might have come from for a magazine such as yours here

What your magazine is similar to 'institutionally' (name some magazines which would be released in a similar way)

You need to refer to actual company names and processes so you will need to maybe do a bit more research into magazine publishers like emap

When you have scripted, record the voiceover using iMovie, windows movie maker, etc. on a new audio timeline, then export to quicktime and embed on blog. (this is a good example of what you can do. It was created for A2 and a slightly different question but the style is correct).

Evaluation question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

You should have a a discussion of your target audience member and an explanation of what kinds of taste they might have - where they would shop, what music they would listen to, what their favourite Tv programme would be, etc.

Make sure you screenshot this discussion, and include a further post that details how your magazine targets those audience you have identified.

Evaluation question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

Take a screen grab of your magazines cover, content and spread and place into iMovie, movie make etc. You will then use YOUTUBE's annotation tools to add NOTES, SPEECHBUBBLES, and LINKS to your magazine:

http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=92710

These annotations will highlight the ways in which your Magazine links to other similar magazines in order to attract the particular audience you have previously identified.

Your annotations will refer to genre conventions, use of iconography, similarities with other magazines and what you have identified as the Unique Selling Point of your magazine.

Evaluation question 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

In pairs, take a picture of each other holding the kit you have used. This might just be the camera and tripod, and your Macbook but there may be other things you want in the shot.

Drop the image onto your blog and annotate it, adding all the programs and other technology you have used as screengrabs and what you learnt about it/from using it. 

Your written text need only be minimal. You could include reference to all the online and computer programs you have used such as flickr, blogger, facebook, photoshop, vimeo, scribd, slideshare, etc.

Evaluation question 7

Looking back at your preliminary task (the school magazine task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Concentrate on mise en scene and camerawork.

Grab some images from both tasks and put them on the blog and show what you know about shot types, magazine terms, etc. Explain how you've improved.