Assessment 1- GBHS MEDIA STUDIES A LEVEL Mark sheet

Mark scheme-

Assessment 1A with answers and mark scheme from Great Baddow High School Media

Media Vocabulary

Definitions-

• Media Frameworks - LIAR - Language, Industries, Audience, Representations
• Genre - A type or category

• Genre Analysis - DISTINCT - Describe, In detail, Setting (location, time of day etc..), Themes (E.g. Love, good vs Evil etc..), Icons (significant objects), Narrative (plot), Characters, Textual analysis (Camera, editing, sound, Mise en Scene)
• Semiotics - The study of signs - Something that symbolises another thing - E.g. Red can be seen as anger or love.
• Denotation - The literal meaning 
• Connotation - What the denotation implies - read between the lines.
• Mise on scene - CLAMPS - Costume, Lighting, Actors, Make-up, Props, Settings.

• Audience - Anyone who watches the media.
• Demographic profiling - putting the audience into categories by age, money and occupation.
• Psychographic profiling - Putting the audience into categories by what they are looking to find in media. 

Screencast online v newspaper

Super mints final advert

1) What was the task you were given and who was your target audience? As the audience wasn't typical of the product how did you manage to sell it? What was the name of your brand? We were given the task of creating an advert for middle aged men's sweets. In order to appeal to this age range we focused on changing and adapting the setting, flavour of sweets, costumes and actors to make sure they were all relatable and were liked by the target audience. We named our brand 'SuperMints- the mints that make a man' , we did this firstly because our main product we are trying to sell are mints, we repeated the word mint twice is order to make our product stick in peoples head therefore remembering the product, we used a simple yet catchy slogan to also do this. We chose to call the brand super mints because at first glace it looks like superman, then going on to say the mints that make a man, suggesting that in order to be a (super) man you need to eat these mints.

2) Who did you work with and how did you divide the research, planning, filming and responsibilities?
In my group was me, Calvin, Jen, and Jack, we tried to stick to our original jobs however we changed slightly. Jack took upon the role of being the actor, collecting props and writing our initial ideas on the blog, Jen was the co-director, editor and helped to come up with ideas, Calvin designed the product packet, edited, acted and he also helped to record some camera shots and planned the best angles. I mainly directed the advert, and recorded the shots, however I also helped to collect some props and wrote on the blog.

3) How did you plan your sequence?
Firstly, I made a ruff story board so that we had  an idea of timings and the different camera angles, meanwhile Calvin wrote out the recording schedule.  We spent the first two days recording the footage we could film whilst we waited for the muscle suit to arrive on Wednesday, we then stayed after school on Tuesday to edit the footage we had so that we had an idea of how much longer our advert ended to last for. On Wednesday and Thursday we finished recording and did more editing during the day. Finally, on Friday we finished editing and uploaded our blog to YouTube.

4) What research and planning did you undertake?
After discussing our brand and product, myself and Jen found YouTube videos which were similar to what we wanted to create and achieve which had a similar audience. We decided what we needed and who we needed so we all went out and brought in what we needed in order to start recording (Jack- suit and muscle suit, Calvin- suit and packet, Holly- fruitellas). After this we made our, story board, shot list, script and prop list in order to start recording.

5) What was you initial feedback? What did others say about your production? How successful was your sequence?
After showing the teacher our original advert she said that we needed to have more variation with the video and audio transitions and effects, which we worked on edited, and changed to make our sequence look like it could feature of TV. From the audience feedback everyone seemed to like and enjoy it and think the music timing was good, also the transitions worked well.

6) Identify what went well and with hindsight what you do to improve/do differently.
I think that overall our advert went well, also our planning and filming went very smoothly and we managed to easily get all of the shots we needed. I think we worked well as a group and managed to share roles fairly well, however to improve I think we could have tried some of our shots in different settings were it is more built up so that it look more realistic, for example the bus scene and walking down the hall.
7) What have you learnt from completing this task (groups skills, communication, compromise, using your initiative, creative input, production skills, editing etc)
From doing this I think I have improved when working in a team, meaning making compromises and listening to other peoples ideas, I have also learnt some new camera angles and when is a good time to use them, for example it was Calvin's idea to do the shot which followed the hand when grabbing the mints which I think worked really well and would be something I could use in future tasks. I also now know how to use more of the effects and can confidently change and play with the audio in order to change the level of sound to fade in and out.
8) Looking ahead, how will this learning be significant when completing your future productions?
In the future productions, I feel like whoever I am put with in a group I will be able to work with well and also be able to make a more effective, realistic end product. I think that when planning in the future I will be able to make a lot more contributions and help to develop the product.

Super Mints Plan

MAOAM - I like how this advert uses the idea of eating the maoam and his personality changing as it shows that by eating it your day with go from boring and average to fun a interesting (be free/let go). We are going to try to follow a similar concept to this for our advert.


TREBOR - We got the idea of creating mint range and like the idea and concept of this advert. We are going to try to use similar camera angles to the ones in this clip as it looks really affective and interesting.



HARIBO - I like how child voices where used in the adults body for this advert because it is fun and entertaining for the audience, also it makes the advert memorable. It also suggests that adults feel like kids again when they new eating them which we might recreate in a similar way and take influences from.



CADBURY - This advert follows the similar ideas and concepts that we want to achieve in our advert, for example I like the story line throughout this clip which we may try to recreate in a similar way.

Sweets Planning

Mint:

• Mystery flavours- old school hard boiled sweets
• Minty
• Lemon Sherbert
• Minty toffee
• Mystery- Beer, cider or cocktail (mojito)
• "mints that make a man"- slogan

Man:

• Superman under suit
• Mint completely changes him
• In a busy area- pops the mint and then becomes 'superman' and bowls it down street
• his outlook on life changes

Monday- Filming

Tuesday- Filming

Wednesday- Filming

Thursday- Editing

Friday- evaluation

Jack- Actor

Jen- Props/blog

Holly- organiser/ producer

Calvin- notes/ director

I started to practice how some of the editing would work for the final advert, so I downloaded an app called burstio and used the camera on my phone to create a burst to give a ruff idea of the final outcome we was aiming to achieve, the video follows;

Camera angles

For this task we were put into groups (me, Olivia, Jack) and had to investigate and film all of the different camera shots and angles which worked well.
I think we worked well as a group and listened to one another to work out the best way of filming this task. We decided that Jack and Olivia would be in the clips as they were most comfortable in front of the camera and me and Olivia gave a short description of what each shot was and what it is used for. We all took it in turns to film so that we all had knowledge of the camera shots/ angles also so that we each knew how to work the camera for future tasks.
Overall, I think that this task went ell because we managed to film every shot, work well together and know know each type of shot and what it is done/used for.

Club advert remake

For this task, each group got assigned a certain advert to remake to look as similar to the original as possible. My group got given the second half (17 seconds) of the club advert which lasted for 11 seconds, even though our section was only short there was a lot of clips and camera angles which took time to select and repeat.
During this task I mainly edited the clips and tried to make sure they were all as accurate to the advert itself. I did this by changing the size, colour and timings of the clips to aim to make the video flow as best it could.
Our first scene was of a man wheeling in a wheelbarrow into the park with people walking and skating along the path next to him. To shoot this we required some props so we went and borrowed a wheelbarrow on sight, also I brought in my roller-skates to make the video as close to the original as I could. We then looked at the setting of the scene and whereabouts resembled it the most within the school grounds, deciding that behind the dance studio was the most similar.  The first shot was crab right giving the effect of following the wheelbarrow along. This lasted for  2 seconds which we made sure we replicated in our video.
The next clip was of the man (Niamh) singing along to the theme song with people in the background which was a medium shot lasting for 1 second, normally used in conversation.
The next two clips only lasted for 1 second each as they was a close up (of the duck) and a big close up (the baby) just showing more of the setting and who is there which helps to set the scene and seem as though the advert is set in a real life situation.
The following section of a girl and her dog is split into three 1 second clips where the camera angle is head on. the first clip you see a long shot of the girl and her dog to show the body language and setting, this then goes into a close up of the dog running which is an effective way to showing movement without the camera having to follow the dog itself. The final part of this section is a close up of the girl being pulled by her dog off screen, this has given the impression that the individual scenes of the girl and her dog are happening at the same time because of how they have jumped from one to the other.
Finally in the last clip there is a group of people in a park which finishes with the hand holding the chocolate bar punching through the centre of the screen.
I think that there was a lot of successful parts of our advert such as how we managed to stick to the correct timings, get similar settings and how well the clips blended together giving it an overall finished look. However, some of our camera angles and lens movements weren't exactly the same as the original, for example in the last scene the camera started zoomed in and higher up but as the camera turn't left it zoomed out and moved downwards whereas we didn't do this as we was on a strict time scale.  Also one other thing we could have improved if we had more time was as the hand punching through the screen as we could have changed the colour of the hand as it had turned green as we filmed it in the greenroom and if we had more time we could have re filmed it to make it the correct colour and worked out how to make the chocolate bar flash different colours at the end.