[eg1: this is only part of the full text]
Describe how you used your research into real media texts for
your production work, and describe how you developed your ability to use this
research over time.
The
transition from AS to A2 was huge, I feel that all of my skills have improved
especially research and production skills. At AS I created a 2 minute opening
for a slasher film, “Last One Standing”, centred on a voyeur targeting and
killing a teen girl in her suburban, semi-detached home, with ‘Blair Witch’
themed flashbacks of her with her friends in the local woods hinting [foreshadowing or signifiying] at an
earlier beginning to the stalking, and a threat to her remaining friends, A2
I created a music video, for
Robbie Williams’ ‘She’s The One’ three generations of a boy and girl (ages: 5,
12, 18) and how their relationship developed from innocent friendship to
romance, using changing technologies and
other aspects of mise-en-scene to signify the changing time period and create
verisimilitude for each. We also had a performer who was signified as Robbie.
For both
productions I started with researching genre
conventions (for the opening Slasher/Horror like ‘Halloween’ and for the music
video, Pop, with artists such as Olly Murs, The Saturdays and One Direction these egs should come out through later
points, probably a waste here). For my slasher 2 minute opening I
researched existing films that include aspects that were similar to my idea [no: make these two clearly sep points:
general genre research AND multi-genre research into certain aspects; the
difference at A2 is you looked beyond music vid], such as, flashbacks which
were found in the “Blair Witch Project” and POV of the killer looking at the
house, found in “Halloween” by John Carpenter, this showed me how to make the
audience feel like they are looking at the same thing the killer is [you should denote some of the media lang observed/used to achieve this] and also
sort of go on a journey with the killer which builds the tension for both the
viewer and the victim.
I developed
these skills in my advanced portfolio, for example, instead of searching into
just one specific genre initially I searched into several [no! we did this too at AS: started with the general THEN focussed on
genre. Perhaps you used web 2.0 sites eg Facebook/fan forums to get further
suggestions for viewing at A2? And because you weren’t relying so much on DVDs
you were also able to use the YouTube recommendations sidebar?]. I looked
at a range of genres, from Katy Perry (Pop) to The Darkness (Rock), this helped
me distinguish different genre conventions and what to include in my pop video.
To create our video, the main pop artist we looked at was Olly Murs because he
is similar to Robbie as he is known as cheeky [again, not strictly necessary for every
point, but you want to denote some of the specific media lang (in this case
I’m assuming direct gaze at the lens/audience with winking or ‘gurning’ as RW’s
often described? Plus other ‘antics’ that will be scripted but are designed to
appear spontaneous – postmodern deconstruction of the music video form by exposing
the supposed behnd-the-scenes aspects? Give example/s] and his videos
linked to some aspect of ours, for example, in most of his videos he is in love
with a woman, this helped because we were also portraying a heterosexual
relationship. Another media text was the 2009 John Lewis advert, this was about
a heterosexual couple who have grown up together, it also showed different time
periods, which really helped in our video because getting the mise-en-scene
correct was vital and to create verisimilitude was just as important because we
wanted the audience to relate to the on screen characters. The video wasn’t the
full on typical Pop genre [the media
lang here is high key lighting which tends to glamourise the subject, thus its
use in pop videos – low key or natural lighting is more common in rock (eg Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony
or Chilli Peppers’ alt version of the Under the Bridge vid), especially Indie
for its connotations of realism. You need to try harder to reflect your
research + cite a relevant eg of a pop vid using natural lighting], because we didn’t use special effects
or studio lights, partly because we didn’t have access to them but also are
video wasn’t a big production, it was more like a home video of the
generations. [okay, so maybe you argue
your AS was more like a form of postmodern bricolage: reassembling familiar
signifiers, but your A2 work, whilst similarly postmodern in its
intertextuality, sought to create something more fresh and distinctive? Also,
you were aware of reflecting the dominant discourse around sexuality (as
Fairclough would argue), but felt that anything but a heteronormative text
wouldn’t work for the genre or audience?]
and 
in Neuromancer and Burning Chrome to describe an all-encompassing, virtual reality internet.
,
where the main characters lose their humanity whereas the computer HAL gains "his".
