Harry Potter Tour

Enjoy!

Blogger of the Week

Well done to Lauren and Jazmin for editing the superb school Languages Week video to play to the whole school. The more videos the better!

Emmy Awards 2017

The Emmy Awards are presented by The Television Academy, the only major organization devoted to the television and broadband screen entertainment industry. The Emmy Awards, telecast prior to the fall television premiere season, is the flagship event for which the Television Academy is best known.

The award is named after the image-orthicon camera tube, which was instrumental in the development of television. "Immy" was feminized as "Emmy" to complement the design chosen for the statuette, which depicted a winged, idealized woman holding an atom.

The 69th annual Primetime Emmy Awards took place in Los Angeles on Sunday. This year's awards were dominated by digital television. 'The Handmaid's Tale' and 'Big Little Lies' were the main winners. 'The Handmaid's Tale' won five awards including best drama series, best actress for Elisabeth Moss and best supporting actress for Ann Dowd. 'The Handmaid's Tale's' win for best drama series means Hulu has become the first streaming service to win that award, beating the likes of big hitters Netflix and Amazon.

Big Little Lies took five prizes in the limited series categories, including wins for Nicole Kidman and Laura Dern.

'Stranger Things' stars at The Emmys 2017

Blogger of the Week

A difficult decision this time as everyone has worked really hard filming and uploading preliminary tasks. But Lily gets an Emmy statuette (as it was the Emmys this weekend) this time for her additional post on her camera shots and evaluating how they were effective. Well done, everyone!

Blogger of the Week

Well done to our first blogger of the week #jazziemonkey16 (aka Jazmin) who made a superb video to illustrate 'me and the online age':

Week 2: Me and the Online Age

Tasks To Complete on Representation

Representation: thinking points

1. Firstly, think about how you represent yourself! Make a list of all the different identities you have in your life: school pupil, daughter, sister, friend, babysitter, Tesco worker, dog walker... Then draw up a pie chart with each chunk representing how much you think of yourself as that identity.

To make a pie chart that represents your identity, follow these steps:

• Complete the sentence ‘I am…” ten times. 
• Put those in to a basic order of importance. 
• Give each ‘identity’ a score, relative to the others, based on how import this label is to your overall identity. 
• Use this information to make a pie chart. 

You can use the attached Excel sheet to help you make your chart – just put in the details and the numbers and the chart will do the rest.
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/document-preview.aspx?doc_id=122759157

Here's one drawn up for a media studies teacher:






2. Make a collage (either digitally or cutting and pasting pictures) of all the things that represent you as an individual. It might be pictures of hobbies, clothing, activities you enjoy, possessions that mean a lot to you, TV programmes that are important to you, people you admire (such as celebrities or bands)...


3. Think about the way you represent yourself to other people. Make a list of the different ways you communicate with people, particularly online: facebook, twitter, email (school and home), mobile phone - texts, bbm, Skype, letters, Youtube, MySpace, online games... Watch

The Onion's Lost Friendster Video



http://tinyurl.com/y939xk8.

How has communication changed since your parents' generation? Now watch Obama's advice about facebook.

Now watch James Cordon's reaction to Obama's new facebook page:


TASK: Make a presentation on the history of YOUR communications from the time you were a baby, entitled 'Me and the Online Age'. You can include found images and music, with captions.

PRODUCTION TASK:
Make a video which shows one person entering a room through the door, walking across the room, sitting down opposite another person and exchanging a couple of lines of dialogue.

In this video you should demonstrate three key concepts:

• match-on-action
• shot-reverse shot
• the 180 degree rule

Week 1: Introduction to the Media

How much do you know about 'the media'. As a digital native, probably more than you think! See this brief history of the media to gain a broad understanding of how you got to being the media-savvy student you are today:

Media evolution from Sara Afonso

So how do YOU fit in to all this? Compile a list of how you interact with the media on a day-to-day basis.

Theorists of the week:
Power and Media Industries – Curran and Seaton 

A political economy approach to the media – arguing that patterns of ownership and control are the most significant factors in how the media operate.

Media industries follow the normal capitalist pattern of increasing concentration of ownership in fewer and fewer hands. This leads to a narrowing of the range of opinions represented and a pursuit of profit at the expense of quality or creativity.

The internet does not represent a rupture with the past in that it does not offer a level playing field for diverse voices to be heard. It is constrained by nationalism and state censorship. News is still controlled by powerful news organisations, who have successfully defended their oligarchy.

Read their book 'Power Without Responsibility: The Press and Broadcasting in Britain' (1997)

Key quotation: "The press and broadcasting exercise a massive power, but it is more than ever a power without responsibility."

https://www.ted.com/talks/david_puttnam_what_happens_when_the_media_s_priority_is_profit

See this TED Talk on Media power and responsibility.

Welcome!

Welcome to St Mary's GX Media Studies, following the OCR A Level Media Studies course http://www.ocr.org.uk/qualifications/beta/as-a-level-gce-media-studies-h009-h409-from-2017/.

You can read the Specification for this A Level course here.

Basically, the course is assessed as follows:
TWO exams at the end of Y13
1: Media Messages (35% of total A Level)
Section A: News - Two linked in-depth contemporary news studies
Section B: Media Language and Representation - magazines, advertising & marketing, music videos

2: Media Industries and Audiences (35% of total A Level)
Section A: Media Industries and Audiences - radio, video games and film
Section B: Long Form Television Drama

3: NEA (Non-exam assessment) (30% of total A Level)
You will create a cross-media product from a set brief

You'll be able to find all the resources you need for the course on this blog. Good luck and enjoy the course!