The key principles for OCR are that there are a number of questions which must

be specifically addressed in the evaluation and that you should think of it as a

creative reflection task rather than a written essay.
There are 7 questions you need to address for AS Media Coursework:
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups ?
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this
product?
7. Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do
you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

philomediathriller.wordpress.com has detailed comments on each

question, refer to this site regularly when completing your evaluation

https://gabriellasonguimediastudies.wordpress.com/page/2/ Gabriella got

18/20 for her evaluation so this blog would be a good starting point. She
has used a range of different media forms. This is very important for the
evaluation section.

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge

forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film
openings)
A lot of students have had great success using something 'nicked'
from www.artofthetitle.com. This involves selecting nine frames from your
opening and presenting them as a grid, just like they use on artofthetitle to
illustrate openings. In this case, however, each of your frames has to represent a
different aspect of the film you have made.
So you might select nine frames, each of which represents one of the following:

The title of the film

Setting/location
Costumes and props
Camerawork and editing
Title font and style
Story and how the opening sets it up
Genre and how the opening suggests it
How characters are introduced
Special effects

Gabriella uses a similar format and embeds stills from other thriller films and
compares to her opening. This allows you to then evaluate how your thriller film
opening develops forms and convention of the genre. Emily Southall also does
something similar using different titles https://emilysouthalll.wordpress.com/ The
exam board all commented on this particular candidate having a strong Q1
http://thrillerblog2011.blogspot.co.uk/

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Question 2 asks about how social groups are represented. A good way of
expressing this is to do a bit of comparison between the way you have
represented a character and how mainstream media has done it. You will want to
compare the main characters with other character from thrillers, how have they
been influenced? Does your film challenge them? How and why?
Consider how your film represents particular social groups in relation to how they
are presented in other thriller films and also in the context of our society.
For example, if you have cast a girl in your
thriller, what is her character/role? How is she constructed? Use stills from your
opening to evaluate how she is constructed through mise-en-scene/dialogue/
action. Compare to how females in similar thrillers are represented. Go back to
your research for this aspect. Can you draw on your research, providing screen
grabs of females in these thrillers to evaluate how this is similar or different?
Consider the role of antagonist in the thriller. How
does your film present this character? Can you be specific about how it
represents gender/age/ ethnicity? Compare to antagonists of other thrillers.
Review the use of mise-en-scene to present particular social groups. Consider
some of the work you have done in Mr Fullers lesson

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media

product and why?
The emphasis is on the role of media institutions, which may have been an area
of your research, so that you have a good understanding of how distribution of
films.
What is a film distributor?
What is a production company?
1) Think of a film/s that your film is comparable to. Research who distributed
this film and then research what other films it has distributed.
2) Consider reasons for why you might choose this as your distributor. You
might consider whether you want a film distributor who distributes
independent films or British films or blockbusters.
You could do this post as a video commentary, see following video as example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNCFaIJ3pP8

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of

constructing this product?
Firstly state the tasks that you have constructed: preliminary task and the
opening title sequence for a new thriller film.
The question about technologies allows you to bring together your understanding
of software, hardware and online tools and how they might all interact in your
project. This can be very reflective in relation to your own skills development.
There should be lots of pictures and images in this post.
Both Gabriella and Emilys posts are very strong. Gabriella as powerpoint, Emily
as video blog.

Questions 1,2,3 and 6 need to be completed over Easter: these are due Thursday
20th April