Exam Evaluation Section A

Below are a few examples of previous years answers to the Section A exam question

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G325 June 2010 39/50 Section A
1a)
I feel that my production skills from foundation to Advanced have greatly improved.
My thriller opening sequence was about two men who prey on suicidal teenage girls
on the internet, titled “Caught in the Web.” The men rape and murder their victims
but frame it as a suicide, using the suicide support website (where they preyed on
them) as evidence of this suicide. It is a dark enigmatic and gripping film which
captivates the audience (according to my feedback). My music video (Advanced
Portfolio) is to the song “Voodoo Child” originally by Rogue Traders, but our
girlband uses the name The Vixens. We used 4 girls and our video transports the
audience to the mind of the main girl, where her alter-egos (dressed as the deadly
sins) corrupt her. It is a racy funky video that creates a strong band image.
My research for both projects included researching genre conventions (horror/thriller
opening sequences such as “Se7ev”, and electropop-rock/dance/glam music videos
such as Lady Gaga and Katy Perry) and was expanded to include components that
didn’t specifically relate to genre. For my thriller I researched films where they have
internet conversations (as in our opening sequence, the girl is talking to who she
thinks is an agony aunt over an internet forum) which led me to films including “The
Holiday” and “Something’s Gotta Give”, showing me how to successfully change
from filming the person typing the words on the screen and then reading their
message aloud. I developed this skill in my music video research by looking at other
media texts, not just other music videos. I started with trying to be inspired by original
music video concepts such as Radiohead’s video for “Just” in which a man lies down
in the street and the audience can’t hear what he’s saying to explain himself to passers
by. This inspired me to create ambiguity in my video which differs from standard pop
videos where a lot of the visuals illustrate the lyrics. I expanded my research to
fashion magazines and photographs of different eras, since a major concept in this
video was the power of women as confident, independent, sexual beings. Our costume
was very important in constructing meaning and without in-depth research into the 7
deadly sins the audience would not have grasped why we had girls dressed in bold
outfits to symbolise the sins; red, velvet leotard and back combed hair for “wrath”, a
Marie Antoiinette inspred look of a pale blue and pink corset, white face make-up, an
[cannot read text] with one long curled piece of hair, and a chunk of chocolate cake
that signified “Greed”, a black corset with leather leggings to signify “Lust”, and a
green dress, heavy green eye make up and glittery diamond jewellery connoting
“Envy”.
I think that without doing research into character types, character costume, and genre
conventions for my thriller I wouldn’t have known what to look for when researching
for my music video because they can be so abstract and there aren’t many constraints.
I also learned to be open minded.
Since I was one of the performers in our music video, it pushed me to think more
practically – our ideas had to be creative yet do-able on our small budget and time
constraints. After watching several videos on YouTube of thriller opening sequences
and music videos I realised that it is good to have layered meaning a production
because it makes it more interesting for the audience as it challenges them to come up
with their own interpretations and gives the production playability. In the Thriller
project, after researching storylines and narrative themes, my group and I had a strong
idea of what our film was about. Despite the fact we created enigma, we still wanted the audience to understand our dominant reading, however in my music video, I
realised that it is better to- people to have different interpretations as I found that the
most popular current music videos are those that are quirky, different and weird, like
Lady GaGa.
In conclusion my foundation portfolio greatly aided my advanced portfolio because
my skills were refined and I have produced an ever better end product.
EAA 8
EG 8
T 4
(20)
1b)
Genre is often used as a way of distinguishing one style from another; it categorises
works so that the audience can more easily choose what they want to experience. For
my music video, the genre of our music was a hybrid of electropop/rock/dance, which
come mostly from the original song and from our personal tastes. Since our genre is
modern and not common, we drew conventions from artists that had similar styles to
ours. The conventions we found for music video for our genre are; editing often cuts
to the beat; for female artists – costumes are bold, they wear high heels, ands the
performances are strong and full of attitude. Examples of artists’ videos that do this
are Beyonce (through her powerful dance routines and sexy costumes) and Lady
GaGa (who wears extreme hair, costume and makeup).
My music video consisted of my group members (4 girls) giving powerful
performances with sections of dance routine. We stuck to these conventions because
we wanted the audience to recognise it as belonging to a genre and looking back at it
now I think we succeeded. The genre has postmodern influences as does our video. It
starts with a short narrative to no music, where a girl looks at a picture in a locket of
her and a guy, slams it shut and looks in a mirror – which transports her into
‘subconscious mind’. We filmed the bulk of our video in an all-white studio and with
our powerful costumes that intertextually referenced the deadly sins and Marie
Antoinette the audience can quite clearly see that it is not reality.
You can see that our video promotes strong women by their feisty performance and
this is emphasised by the use of a male, white headless, mannequin with a ‘perfect’
torso. In the video the sins are corrupting the girl (but they are all just facets of her
personality) and they dominate the mannequin. This is in contrast with Laura
Mulvey’s theory of the ‘Male Gaze’ whereby media is predominantly made with a
male or masculine audience in mind. Our target audience is 14-25 year old women,
and this is obvious because the audience immediately identify with the main girl since
she is the focus of the narrative and on the mannequin’s torso is a kiss mark, showing
the women ‘marking their territory’ on him. If we were targeting men we would’ve
used a real man, but by our production decisions the target audience and genre is
clear.
We followed the convention of cutting shots to the beat, however we challenged the
convention of keeping lines of the song in one shot. We cut midway through words
and phrases in order to quicken the pace, which is often fast for this genre. An aspect
of the genre which we developed is comedy. In some of the music videos artists take
themselves very seriously, however we combined the sexy performances with the
comic editing and cut aways to five the characters a ‘human feel’ in the make believe world. For example we used what was originally going to be an outtake, where one
girl shakes her bum from side to side, and we matched it to the beat, giving it a comic
edge.
You can apply Lyotard’s theory of mete-narratives to our video since it blurs the lines
between reality and fantasy using the key signifier of a mirror in the opening
narrative.
I think the my music video successfully conveys its genre while still maintaining
enigma. The Reception Theory can be applied, since from feedback, many people had
different interpretations, which is what this genre is all about. Looking at it
objectively I would say that it is a fun, interesting video that invites playability and
successfully promotes the song, which is the aim of a music video.
EAA 7
EG 8
T 4
(19)
Total for Section A 39/50

G325 Section A June 2010 45/50
1a)
Over the two year media course we had to produce both a foundation portfolio of a
school magazine and music magazine as well as an advance portfolio of a horror
teaser trailer, film magazine – developing foundation skills further and a poster to
advertise our trailer.
In the first year we researched existing music magazines and analysed each one so
that we could gain knowledge of particular layouts, fonts and key elements that need
to be contained in our production to make it successful. Research and planning
allowed us to recognise ‘mastheads’ on magazines as being the most important and
therefore the need to focus on a font more detailed to keep continuity with the
contents page and double page spread which we also had to create. Personally I
researched ‘Rock’ magazines such as Kerrang, NME and others because I had chosen
after carrying out a questionnaire to use Rock music as my theme. The real life media
texts allowed me to visualise my favourite parts from each magazine – wripped
sticker graphics and broken font on my own work which I then attempted to recreate
within Photoshop CS4. In year one we were limited to what we could research
because magazines were the only theme however, in the second year I was able to
develop my ability to research real life media texts much further because we had a
range of products we needed to create all under the ‘horror’ genre this time. I was able
to research teaser trailers analysing my favourite and least favourite parts allowing me
to plan with a mood board which I produced from a range of stills from previous
horror films my ideas for my own trailer which helped me to develop my production
of my products in relation to real life media texts and techniques such as restricted
narration and handheld camera found in the ‘Blair Witch Project’ trailer which
inspired my trailer ‘Laquem’ which is also set in the woods. Research into film
documentaries like the ‘American Nightmare’ inspired me to create a product which
reinforced fear and went against usual horror conventions to make it more interesting.
Over the second year research became so important to achieving a product which was
realistic and is now like my own distributed on on youtube as a real life media text of
its own.
Real life media texts like advertising film posters were able to help me develop my
Photoshop skills further because I was able to push myself with the ‘colour burn’
filters and want to create the scary atmosphere of my trailer from just an image and
text which I found really fun.
Research into film magazines allowed me to develop my work from AS level so much
further because I was able to produce a high standard piece of work in two weeks this
year when the magazines took over 3 months last year which shows how much my
skills have improves just by being able to constantly refer back to real life media texts
for inspiration and even colour schemes that work well together such as black and red
which in the first year I just found experimenting with. Research into horror trailers
allowed me to recognise different styles of film and how we like Alfred Hitchcock
could be an auteur creating new angles and ideas using generic conventions as well as
unconventional representations that I have picked upon when watching films and
analysing certain techniques which I have then attempted to do in Final Cut Pro when
editing certain shots together to create collision cutting and changes in pace which my
trailer does extremely well. I was inspired initially by the hand held camera in the trailer REC and the fact I want as an auteur to change the stereotyped representations
to be able use a female psycho killer.
Research also allowed me to produce text and intertitles that shook in order to capture
my audience but narrating the story slightly so the shots when together made sense.
Research into types of camera movements needed were really helpful and allowed me
to completely change the pace with tracking shots and handheld camera which I
noticed was used in Silent Hill and American Werewolf in London which I analysed
and placed on my blog for reference as some pieces of footage I wanted to recreate
including the final girl representations.
EAA 8
EG 8
T 4
(20)
1b)
The media production I am going to write about in relation to genre is my favourite
piece from the whole course which is my horror teaser trailer.
The genre of the trailer is obviously ‘horror’ and this in itself allowed us to be creative
with narrative etc but limited us because we had to stick to a certain amount of
generic conventions in order for it to be recognised by it’s existing target audience.
Steve Neal said that ‘genre is a repetition with an underlying pattern of variations’
which meant certain generic features had to be included and repeated which in my
case was the use of a creepy location of the woods as well as hand held camera and
restricted narration to cause disorientation and suspense within our trailer. However,
the pattern of variation Neal describes also links to my horror teaser trailer because
we were able to creatively push the boundaries by twisting some generic features in
order to make the trailer interesting and therefore cause the audience to want to watch
the full movie. For this my group chose use a female psycho killer I order to subvert
the stereotypical male dominated role. This female identification through point of
view shots etc captured our female audience because were providing them with power
and this is unusual for the horror genre although it is known for its forward thinking
approach as it often attempts to focus on subcultural views instead of targeting the
mainstream. Genre encompasses many parts and the trailer links to it in more ways
than one. Its use of enclosed location and the fact the woods attempts to reinforce our
society’s fear of loneliness and isolation which the woods creates when the three
friends get lost. In these sections of the trailer we used a lot of heavy cross cutting
between the female victim who is running anxiously through the woods in order to
find her friends and get home safely. We also used the Kuleshove and collision
cutting methods as the pace began slow as the friends head our in the car unaware of
the danger before them and once they are in the woods we deliberately quickened the
pace of editing to cause tension and to show that something is not right, keeping the
audience on the edge of their seats.
Editing and mise-en-scene is really important to genre and reflects very quickly
certain moods and atmospheres. Levi Strauss and Roland Barthes argued that the
horror genre like many others used ‘binary oppositions’ in order to show the contrast
between good and evil in order to force the audience to be constantly questioning the
trailer for example; in my trailer I used light and dark to connote their happiness and
carefree attitude in the daytime and the darkness to emphasise their fear and reliance on their senses. This is particularly important to the horror genre as characters are
often shown in high angle shots to appear vulnerable and therefore under threat.
Gore or ‘body horror’ is also a common generic convention used by most horror films
that we studied including Dawn of the Dead by George A. Romero who used it to
make the audience feel sick by forcing them to see extreme violence. In my own
trailer we were inspired to use gore differently by showing a hanging scene in slow
motion to create tension and the centoring in on the face and neck which had been
broken and this was shown by the rope burn we had made from latex and the blood
pouring down her chest. This shot moves clockwise and slowly zooms in to force the
audience to see what the hang (woman) has done. In our final two shots we finish the
trailer with the male anti hero being lifted off the ground with blood pouring out of his
mouth which causes the audience to assume no one survives because the final girl is
stabbed by her friend accidentally which quickens the pace and adds tension but she is
the survivor who as Carol Clover suggests will be terrorised throughout the film and
finally overcome the monster. This plays with the audiences emotions and links back
to the horror genre well by creating our own style of horror. Andrew Sarris argues
because it encompasses so much and is key to explaining a film. Genre is the ideas
that collectively make a particular recognisable style that draws in its existing target
audience. My horror trailer had expressionist camera angles as the female victim
desperately trips over the camera and we see her running above it as well as close ups
of her facial expression that causes us to identify with her fear and therefore makes us
scared. This meant the audience also were forced to objectify the female victim from
the high angle camera shot down her top in which we can see her breasts slightly after
watching other Hitchcock movies which use the male gaze theory by Laura Mulvey to
force us to take a male’s viewpoint.
In my trailer we also used an iconic symbol of the noose because obviously as a
hangwoman she needed the prop but also as a female the circular shape suggested
female power and this is something the horror genre often does but for male
characters using guns etc as phallic symbols which we also used as the male anti hero
takes out a knife and stabs his friend frantically when she walks up behind him. The
horror trailer was made much darker in Final Cut Pro using the brightness and
contrast menu and also dragged the saturated colours towards the blue in order to
create a dark, dusky night time atmosphere a generic convention of horror trailers.
The generic conventions we chose to use were all important to the success of our
product and since distributing it on YouTube we have over 4000 which I am really
pleased with and gives me the confidence that we obviously stuck to the genre enough
to capture our intended target audience but were creative enough to make people want
to keep watching the trailer and virally sharing it with others.
Genre places a media text into a grouping giving it an identity which can be
recognised by the mainstream society and I believe my product is successfully fitted
to the horror genre using the narrative that todorov argued was important to the horror
genre by following an equilibrium at the beginning then a problem which in our case
was the male anti hero playing a joke on the soon to be female victim making jump
running after him causing their separation then a pathway to resolution – as they
attempt to find each other and then a new equilibrium at the end which we
deliberately left as an open ending to capture our audience effectively.
EAA 10
EG 10
Term 5 (24/25)
Total Section A 45/50

G325 Section A June 2010 34/50
1a)
At AS (Foundation Portfolio) I created the opening two minutes of a new feature film.
I chose the genre of Social Realism and the narrative of the film was about a teenage
girl (roughly 15) who ended up pregnant but who then after having her baby got in
with the wrong crowd of people who then lead her astray, causing all sorts of
problems for the young girl, her family and her baby. The main issue we wanted to
raise and explore through the world of media was teen pregnancy and the
problems/issues that come with it.
The main character in this film was a young girl (15 years of age) and her name was
Linda, there was also another main character who was Linda’s best friend, another
female character called Courtney; These characters were the binary opposition of each
other.
At the A2 (Advanced Portfolio) I created a teaser trailer for a new feature film, soon
to be released. I changed the genre of this production from AS work to the sub genre
of slasher from the genre of Horror. I did this because I wanted and was capable of a
whole different challenge.
The Teaser Trailer was about a young couple (aged between 17 and 18) who started
off their relationship well and full of love, until the arguments began they end up
splitting up while the young female is moving on with her life, tutoring a guy from
her class, her best friends start to disappear (and are murdered). The young girl thinks
its her ex-boyfriend, killing her friends out of spite but the twist actually is that it’s the
guy who she it tutoring who has a huge obsession with the girl. However the trailer
doesn’t show this and it portrays her ex-boyfriend as the killer.
There are a few main protagonists/antangonists throughout this production. To start
with there is ‘Carie’ the main protagonist (young girl) and ‘Ben’ the main protagonist
but the audience think he is the antagonist when really ‘Paul’ is the main antagonist
(the killer). Lastly there is ‘Carie’s’ best friend ‘Hannah’ who ends up getting killed
but she is a binary opposite to ‘Carie’.
I carried out a lot of research into real media texts, using digital technology such as
websites (eg. www.imdb.com); this website was very useful when carrying out
research into real media texts as I was able to research texts that would help me to
develop my creativity from my own productions: I used this website for research for
both my AS and A2 productions and it was very helpful. This researched had a big
impact into my own production work because I was able to find out what the key
codes and conventions were from real media texts and artificially inject them into my
own productions.
A real media text I researched a lot in my AS production was ‘wish you were here’
starring Emily Lloyd and set in the seaside town of Brighton. This film had the same
genre as my AS piece (social realism) and it was tackling the same issues (teen
pregnancy). From this research we decided to give our main protagonist the same
name as the main protagonist in ‘Wish You Were Here’ which was ‘Linda’ so the
name our main protagonist was informed by research into real media texts as we
wanted to intertextually link our production in with ‘Wish You Were Here’ which
inspired me greatly. I used research methods such as the internet for ‘Wish You Were
Here’ (www.imdb.com).
At A2 we worked on the genre of Horror (the sub genre of slasher) as this genre was
completely different to our AS genre we had to do all our research from scratch. One way in which my production has been informed by research into real media texts is
taken from the film ‘Psycho’, we were really inspired by ‘Psycho’s’ famous shower
seen, which we researched through ‘YouTube’ and watched many different clips of.
We wanted to intertexually link this in with our production so we challenged this
convention and added a bath killing scene into our montage of killings. This basically
was a close-up-shot of a girl in a bath with a high angle a medium shot of the mirror
showing a dark figure which could trigger a narrative enigma next to another shot of a
shadow of a knife coming down. This is how proved that a killing was taking place
without showing any nudity or blood.
Research into real media texts was a lot easier as we had more resources and our
knowledge of where to find different resources was greater we were able to have
acess to a wide range of dvds in the library that were linked into our genre that were
not there when we were completing our AS productions.
At A2 we were also able to acess a wide range of books in the library which weer
linked in with our genre which we didn’t have at AS. So at AS we were very limited
with what resources we could actually use and I do feel that if I had had the books,
dvds etc that I had at A2, that my production at AS would have benefited.
It was harder to research for my AS task because we were looking at the openings of
films which were a lot harder to find on the internet but for A2 we were looking at
teaser trailers anf the web (including www.imdb.com and ‘youTube’) are absolutely
full of trailers.
EAA 8
EG 7
T 3
(18)
1b)
For my A2 production (Advanced Portfolio) I created a teaser trailer in the sub-genre
of slasher from the genre of Horror. The synopsis of this teaser trailer is about a
young couple (roughly 17-19 years of age) who are in love in the beginning but the
relationship turns sore and they split up, the girls moves on with her life and the boy
doesn’t like this and starts to follow her; The girl starts tutoring a guy in her class who
is struggling but who is a complete binary opposition to her ex-boyfriend in the sense
that he is a bit of a geeky character and her ex-boyfriend is a Jock (both of these
characters you will find stereotypically in horror films) one by one the girls friends
keep disappearing or are murdered and the suspision lies in the hands of the exboyfriend due to spite. But the question is does he really love her enough to not kill
her? Throughout the trailer the audience thinks the ex-boyfriend si the killer but
actually as it turns out it’s the geeky boy who has become very obsessive over the girl
and wants her to himself.
The characters in this production are all very stereotypical of what you would find in
an American ‘slasher/horro’ film. The two main female protagonists are ‘Carie’ and
‘Hannah’ Carie is your stereotypical ‘final girl’ which you would find in of not all,
most horror films, this character is always brunette and seen to be ‘innocent’ we used
this key code and convention of the genre horror from the film ‘Halloween’ staring
‘Jamie Lee Curtis’, As she is the ‘final girl’, she has brunette hair, the same as ‘Catie’
and she also wears the coulor blue as throughout our production ‘Catie’ is seen
wearing the colour blue. For ‘Hannah’ she is our stereotypical ‘scream queen’ we
looked at a film called ‘Hell Night’ and from seeing this their ‘scream queen’ was wearing red, had red lipstick and had blonde hair, we chose our character of ‘hannah’
specifically so that she would have blonde hair and we also dressed her in a red
costume and put red lipstick on her for her makeup. These two characters are
complete binary opposites and are juxtaposed together.
From our research into ‘Horror’ teaser trailers we found that a common code and
convention was a fast montage so we created a fast montage of all the killings
throughout the film, however we also found that ‘slasher’ films portrayed someone
else as the killer so that the audience don’t actually know who the killer is, or the
suspect that the wrong person until is revealed at the end of the film; this is
strereotypically done in horror films to create tension, suspense and even a narrative
enigma.
On some shots of the killings eg. When the killer is following ‘Abby’ one the girls
friends down into an underground tunnel, you have a point of view shot in the
perspective of the killer walking behind Abby with the view of her back, we also tried
to create yellow tinted lighting, using colour filters as we also found that this was a
common code and convention of ‘horror’ also with the colour blue.
Through using these different lighting effects I have tried to anchor the preffered
reading so the audience can tell what the genre of the film would be but also to
connote that something bad is about to happen to that specific character.
There were many more signifiers throughout our media production that would have
signified the genre to the audience however it was difficult with having to create a
piece that lasted between 60-90 seconds and due to the fact that we are young film
makers we don’t have big Hollywood film funding budgets. We only have small
budgets to go on make-up and costumes. Had we had larger budgets though we would
have been able to create a production a lot better. So there were limitations which
could have had an effect on the genre.
EAA 6
EG 7
T 3
(16)
Total section A 34/50

Exam Evaluation Section A

Wednesday 15 May 2013

See below Dan's prezi on Laura Mulvey & Marxism in Music videos

Wednesday 1 May 2013

Past Exam Exemplar

Monday 16 April 2012

Introduction to Question 1A and 1B

Thursday 22 March 2012

Overview of Exam Evaluation

Friday 10 June 2011

Question 1B Topic Areas

Wednesday 25 May 2011

How to answer a 1B Question on AUDIENCE

Wednesday 18 May 2011

1A and 1B Mock Exam Questions