Improving Your Coursework

Here's some tips for improving your coursework.

Firstly, check what it is you are being marked on (see below) are you covering the points you should be. If you've followed the essay plans given to your teacher then you should.

If the task is an analysis one, check that you are explaining and not just describing. The easy way to check this is to make sure you are using 'because'. To get the top grades you have to explain.

For production tasks get someone at home, who might not know what the task was, to look at what you've done. If your project makes sense to this audience then you must be doing something right.

Check your friends' work and get them to check yours. This is a good way of spotting if something is missing, and also a way of getting new ideas!

Ask your teacher. Get verbal feedback from them if there is something you don't understand.

Re-draft it. Don't be satisfied with the grade you got first time, re-work your essay until you are happy.

Use technical vocabulary. You have to show that you are comfortable using technical words (think camera angles and other key terms). It is not enough just to use them, you have to show that you know what they mean.

Hope this helps. Remember it is easy to get bogged down with coursework. It is VERY important but only worth half of your GCSE. To make sure you can concentrate fully on the exam work ahead, get the coursework done and dusted as soon as you can.

The Oscars!

So, the Oscars and as we discussed in an earlier blog the point of these awards is to raise awareness of the films that are being celebrated. How many people in the UK had heard of Slumdog Millionaire before its nominations? But today everyone is talking about it. Expect it to go up in the box office charts this week as people catch up with it. This is all about INSTITUTION (who made it and who is selling it), but interestingly Warner Bros. whose logo appears on the trailer, didn't really want to pay to show it cinemas, it was going to go 'straight-to-video', usually this means that a film isn't very good - how wrong in this case!

For us though the other big story is that Wall-E won the Best Animated Feature Oscar (told you it would!). This wasn't a surprise and actually won't make much difference to the film - most of Wall-E's AUDIENCE (small children) aren't interested or don't know what the Oscars are - in terms of sales. Still, it deserved its Oscar.

As Media students you should be able to talk about all aspects of a media text so INSTITUTION is important, you should know who made a film (not just the studio, but the director as well) as well as be able to identify the LANGUAGE features (camera angles and so on). In terms of the Oscars think about the type of media coverage that they are given; how many Oscar news reports focus on the dresses being worn? Why is the AUDIENCE interested in this? How are the stars being REPRESENTED?

As well as Animated Film, the other exam topic this year is News in the Print and Electronic Media. A good exercise would be to see how news websites are using still images and video (interviews in particular) to cover the Oscars, and not just using text. These bits all together are called 'packages'.

So, the Oscars, done for this year but a useful example in how the Media industry works.

Awards Season!

We're well in to the awards season at the moment (we've had the Golden Globes and the Baftas and tonight, Wednesday, its the turn of the Brits), the big one however is the Oscars, held on Sunday night (Monday morning in the UK) in Hollywood. So why do we have awards ceremonies and why are they on our tellies?

Simple: they sell. The more nominations a film/pop star/actor/whatever gets the more PUBLICITY it gets. If it wins an award then it will get even more. This means we're more likely to hear about it and therefore more likely to spend money on the CD or seeing the film.



If Duffy wins British Breakthrough Act tonight does it mean she was the best newcomer (or was that the Ting Tings?)? No. It just means that she has been rewarded by the record industry for selling more CDs (4.5 million of 'em) than anyone else last year.

So what about the Oscars? Well, away from the big awards (expect Slumdog Millionaire to win a load - and rightly so) the one we should be interested in is Best Animated Feature. And the nominees are:

• Bolt
• Wall-E
• Kung-Fu Panda

So which should win? I reckon Wall-E should and will, at one point critics were suggesting it could win Best Film (Beauty and the Beast is the only animated film to get nominated for this,in 1992, it didn't win) but that never happened. I hope it does win as I thought it was the best thing I saw at the cinema all year (even better than Juno, and that's going some). But what do you think? I've put a poll up for the next week or so to say who you think should have won.

For more information on the Oscars go to: http://www.oscar.com/
and for the Brits, see here: http://www.brits.co.uk/

So, remember awards are all about INSTITUTION and raising the profile of a product, it's a way the INDUSTRY can help to SELL that product.

The Media Projects

Many of you will already be working on your Media Projects. This is an important piece of coursework but its easy to let it the whole thing get out of control! So here's a few tips for getting your project right.

• If you're working in a group make sure that everyone is given a resposnsibility. This is important for several reasons; one, everyone knows what they've got to do, it saves on arguments and also you get marked on what YOU did, not the group.


• Follow closely real examples of whatever it is you're making. So if its a film trailer watch loads (apple.com/trailers) or if its a magazine go into Tesco and study the covers; it might be worth buying a copy too!


• Get your teacher (or me) to look at what you've made. If not, ask someone in your class. A really good test is to get a family member to look at it; if you do this dn't explain what you've made - they should be able to tell if you've done a good job!


• Remember that its only worth 20% of your final mark, so shouldn't get in the way of preparing for the exam (worth 50%)


• Enjoy it! For most pupils this is the part of the course they enjoy most.

Below is the mark scheme for this piece of work. Ask your teacher if you're not sure what it all means!

Welcome to the new etc film and media blog!

Hi, this is the very first film and media blog. The blog is designed to be an extra source of help and advice for those of you studying Media Studies at Edensor.

So how's it going to work? Well, the idea is that as the exam gets ever closer I'll not only be adding useful links to websites to help you revise, but giving advice on how to get the best marks in the exam itself.

I'll be posting things that I've found interesting or useful and asking you to post reviews of any films, TV shows or websites that you have enjoyed.

You can post questions that I'll try to answer and also sum up any lessons that you might have missed.

So all in all I hope that you'll find the blog another way to get further ahead in Media Studies.