Focus Group

My focus group is made up of a selection of my closest friends who will provide me with complete honesty and creativity whilst completing the lead up to the finalisation of my products.

 Mia Hidveghy

Age: 17.  Psychological group : Aspirer.

Interests: Reading, music, cooking, linguistics

Occupation: Student.

Evie Lander

Age: 17                                                                                           Interests: Dancing, Sewing, Music, writing, reading, geography.     Occupation: Student.                                                             Psychometric group: Explorer.

Sofine Bolter

Age: 17

Interests: Music, song-writing, make-up and hairstyling.

Occupation: Student

Psychometric group: Aspirer

(Potential model)

Connor Chalmers

Age: 17.                                                                                                     Interests: Music, Psychology, fashion, editing, Politics.                      Occupation: Student, waiter.                                                               Psychometric group: Aspirer.

Maxwell Starkey

Age: 19

Interests: Sailing, Reading, Music, Philosophy, Fashion, Travelling.

Occupation: Student, Bar waiter.

Psychometric group: Struggler 

(Potential model)

Rowan Patel

Age: 17.

Interests: Rugby, Music, Economics.

Occupation: Student.

Psychometric group: Aspirer.

Magazine Research

Magazines are periodical publication containing articles and illustrations, often on a particular subject or aimed at a particular readership. 

VOGUE ANALYSIS

Vogue = A fashion or general liking, especially one that is temporary - fashionable in a time period.

Luxury lifestyle magazine Vogue clearly illustrates an influential fashion and lifestyle implement within the public eye. They have recently expanded from stereotypically featuring females and fashion, to representing communities, revolutions, and absolute icons in pop culture. It continues to feature work from exceptional artists and photographers to supply high quality content for audiences and their regular participatory readership. It's aimed readership audience is 17-29 year old females.

 

Rolling Stone Magazine

I researched the popular music magazine - the Rolling Stone magazine to educate myself on the importance of the role of media within promoting artists and music. When studying music videos as my set syllabus (Media Studies A Level - Music Video topic- Media Language and Representations), I came to the understanding that advertisement through the Media presents part of the success to elevate recognition.

Magazine Brief

 

Moderator's Report

 Moderaters Report 

1. 1. Careful planning led to outcomes which demonstrated verisimilitude required for the work to be marked in the higher levels - Conscious constructions. 

2. 2. Candidates managed to explore the cross-media aspects of the briefs very well, with some excellent links being made between products. 

3. 3. Marking of music videos tended to be more accurate, perhaps because this has been a feature of A Level Media coursework for many years under the legacy specification and so centres are more attuned to the codes and conventions of the genre. Awareness of levels. 

4. 4. The best coversheets included clear, bespoke, candidate-specific commentaries that referenced assessment criteria and cited examples from student work. This was particularly helpful where candidates had produced projects that took a counter-typical approach to the briefs (for example, music videos that subverted generic conventions of dance while still adhering to the requirements of the brief). “Thinking outside the box”. 

5. 5. Some were incredibly detailed, going into great depth about how and why particular effects would be created and how these ideas linked to ideas explored elsewhere in the course (theorists). These also tended to go through the brief in depth, demonstrating how every requirement and detail was to be addressed. 

6. 6. The best products demonstrated that candidates had understood the specific requirements of the brief relating to genre, representation and industrial context and clearly researched this before planning their own pieces. 

7. 7. There were some very creative and accomplished productions seen which, through strong technical skills, demonstrated a fundamental understanding of the relevant codes and conventions. The best work emphasised the performance aspect, filming the artist performing the track several times in different locations with different mise-en-scene and utilising a variety of camera shots and movement, which was then effectively edited with accurate lip-synching throughout. 

8.  8. The moderator’s statements highlighted that lower standard work/ less successful pieces featured (music videos): 

-Tracks that did not fit the dance genre. Although this is a very broad field, some songs chosen could not be regarded as dance, with a number of pop/ballad tracks, for example (e.g. a low-tempo piano track by Lorde with no drums or bass; several indie rock pieces and at least one 1980s classic which, good though it was, was clearly not ‘dance’) 

-Failure to mention the name of the band/ artist/ track at the start or end of the video 

-Editing which did not match the pace/ BPM of the track (particularly important for the genre) 

-Concepts which lacked a clear through-line (for example, pieces which were effectively just environmental studies where candidates had gone into the countryside or down to the beach and simply filmed footage with little or no consideration of structure/ theme) 

-Mise-en-scene featuring school fields / classrooms/ uniform. In several centres, it was hard to see that two social groups were represented 

-Pieces where performance footage was used in a perfunctory manner or where lip-synch was not fully effective 

-Videos where some sort of simplistic narrative, e.g. a chase or use of a candidate’s holiday footage (a huge number of airplane windows were filmed through this session!), was imposed with little or no consideration of the content/ mood/ tone of the track 

-Camerawork/ camera movement which did not demonstrate the level of skill, finish or excellence required for Level 5 marks to be secured – although this is less important than it was for the legacy specification, the criteria relating to this uses the descriptors ‘sophisticated’ and ‘accomplished’; where shots are out of focus or the camera-operator is reflected in glass, it is difficult to agree that these are appropriate terms to use 

9. 9. Such examples made it evident that candidates had considered real-world examples of websites and had applied this knowledge effectively. 

10. 10. Where the convergence was well-considered it was effective; the use of imagery/ logo/ models/ colours/ themes across products clearly demonstrated that the overall branding had been considered - there had to be an emphasis on mutual promotion: promoting one product across the other form; thus, products were often overt in using the ‘call to action’ to direct readers/ listeners/ viewers to content on the website (for example, a shout-out on the radio or television show, a link at the end of the video or copy on the cover/ contents pages of the magazines), while the websites were very effective in their use of cross- media links (for example, featuring the front page of the current edition/ embedding the video/ radio show) and highlighting specific content in the partner product).