Year 10 Media Studies

Homework Booklet
2014
Audience and Institution

A proportion of your media grade requires you to understand how films are made.
Youll need to be able to write about films at every stage of production from pitching an
idea, gaining funding, casting, filming, editing, advertising and finally distribution.

Learning Objectives: To ensure an understanding of audience and institution. To develop an
understanding of film making as a business and to begin to use appropriate terminology.

Task: Watch a film at the cinema this summer or research a film youve seen recently
and complete a case study on it. Some titles are suggested below:

The Lego Movie
Transformers: Age Of Extinction
X-Men: Days Of Future Past
The Fault In Our Stars
Edge Of Tomorrow
Maleficent

If you cant get to the cinema then a DVD will do.

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?)
7.) The technology involved (was it filmed on film or digital, is it 3D? Does it use CGI?
etc)
8.) Which studio(s) distributed the film (and once again who owns them?)
9.) The films release date in the UK and the US
10.) How many screens was the film shown on? (This is a tricky one)
11.) FIVE different examples of how the film was marketed (e.g. Posters, trailers,
premiers etc).

Useful websites:

imdb.com (general film info)
wikipedia.com
screendaily.com/ (website dedicated to films)
makingof.com/ (site dedicated to how films are made)


Representation

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 or Soap Opera

Learning Objectives: To ensure an understanding of Representation within television
programmes and how programme makers achieve this through narrative and mise-en-
scene.

Task:

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/soap

Genre of tv drama/soap


Actor/actress name

Character name

Ages of character and actor

Ethnicity

Regional identity

Costume usually includes

Sum up lifestyle in 5 words

Friends include

Interests

Motivation in most situations

Love life

Problems in life

Key moment in drama series / soap

Prediction for future narratives(storylines)

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