AS Summer Task due September 2014

A Level AS Summer Task by raybloggs

AS Coursework Guidebook 2013-14

Media Studies as Coursework Guidebook 2013

IPC Adsense Video about audience trust in mag adverts

Interesting video on designing a magazine cover

Removing the background in Photoshop - loose hair

History of Music Magazines

Here is a useful link to a timeline of UK music magazines with profiles of all magazines published in the UK, including titles long since closed. Good for masthead ideas and content ideas. Circulation figures from 2008.

Links to example student blogs at Levels 2 - 4

These examples are taken from the OCR Media Studies A Level support http://ocrmediastudies.weebly.com/g321-as-coursework.html. Level 4 - this blog and product has been awarded grade A Level 3 - this blog and product would be grade C or B Level 2 - this blog and product would have been awarded grade D or E Both the blogs at level 3 and 4 are a good source of planning and research ideas that you could add to your own work to improve it. Finally, this is a link to a school where the board has commended their magazine work as worth seeing. It is a little confusing in layout but if you click on the first few links - AS Group 01, AS Group 02 etc, you will soon see come excellent student magazine design ideas.

Publishing House Bauer Media

The two links here give a way in to the website of Publishing House 'Bauer Media'. This link connects to a page with links to all their magazine tiles. there is also a clear table showing how many of the titles are multi-platform, illustrating Crossmedia synergy (eg Kerrang! has the same design, brand identity and content values on several media platforms including magazine, radio, digital TV and internet) This link goes directly to the Kerrang! page and you will see a brief concept summary, platforms and a short target audience profile. these pages exist for every title that Bauer publishes. It is interesting to note that all Bauer's music magazines are found in the 'Men's Entertainment' section. Did you notice such a gender bias in reading them?

Short film with walk chase scene

Two examples of Photoshop manipulation and one short documentary discussing the effects on audiences

Good example of Contents page analysis

Good example of Contents page analysis from another school here

Researching Magazine Publishers and Market share

To explore which magazines re published by which publishing houses, click here.

A useful article giving the top 100 of recent UK magazine sales appears here.

Here is a summary of the top publishers serving the UK market

If you scroll through the five different pages, you will find some publishers are very specialist in the titles they publish and some publish a much wider range of magazines. You will recognise the biggest publishers when you find them because they have so many titles.

Target Audience Profile for AS Coursework

A target audience profile for your magazine will include a random picture (not someone we recognise) and a description of the typical or average reader of your magazine. This will suggest a typical residential location, some lifestyle choices and hapits, some attitudes and planty of choices from other areas of the media. We have looked at examples of 'core buyer' profiles from real magazines and seen how they include attitudes, lifestyle choices and demographic information. They include gender and average age of the reader.

When you write about where your target audience/core buyer lives, try to include some demographic information. We have looked at the NRS ABC1 system, the ACORN Classifications and Types and we have considered how price and circulation numbers affect how much can be charged for advertising. How much will your magazine sell for, realistically, and how large will your circulation be from your target audience?

Magazine Cover Design and Terminolgoy

Video Production and the Law

The best site to answer questions about film, video and television law is the online site for the BBC Editorial Guidelines. This gives an index where you can search for all aspect of the law mentioned in the BTEC specification. A good summarey of what editors have to follow is here.

Here is a link on copyright and royalties in Music Video.

This is a link about guidelines on Music played by broadcasters during war.

A BTEC Level 3 Student's Blog TV Production

Here is a good example of a Distinction grade blog at BTEC Level 3 showing how to illustrate the process of taking a TV production from the brief, through planning, filming and post production.

Year 12 as media evaluation questions

View more documents from raybloggs.

Year 13 - Three very good film poster/trailer sites

You have probably already found the Apple film trailer site. This shows all the latest upcoming films for release, providing posters, trailers and links to the film websites themselves. Every genre is here and the websites for the films can give a variety of trailers for each film. Also, try Movie Poster.com.

The Film Distributors' Association site is a wealth of information about film releases in the UK as well as a host of issues to do with the distribution side of the industry. A must if you are doing the Film Industry in the retake in January.

Year 11 - Create a Mood Board

This week, try to create a mood board for your folder. A mood board is a collection of images that all share the mood and genre features of your film poster. They are intended to give a rough idea of the style in which you will be designing your work (or reflect the style you were intending to achieve). They can be arranged how you like - collage, 9 image grid etc. They are simple to do. Take a blank page in Word, turn the page to landscape then google for posters of films in a similar genre to your film poster. Print the result and bring it in for your poster. If you want to get really advanced, upload it to your blog!

A good example of a horror mood board by one of our Y13 students can be found here

Here is a mood board for a 'Teen High' genre film. It is the work of a student called Yasmin from Long Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge:

Year 13 - Remember Remember the Criteria

Reminder to all Y 13 that the coursework criteria for your films/videos is posted on posters at the back of my classroom and on the Media Department blog. you must check your plans against this criteria to check you are including everything!