Resources for AQA GCSE Media Studies on MediaEdu

This page should provide you with an index to the information we have on MediaEdu which relates directly to AQA GCSE Media Studies.

This page also contains external links to support materials on the AQA site.

• 2012 AQA GCSE Media Studies Television Crime Drama Overview

Further Reading & Support

The primary source for authoritative information & support is the AQA Media website.

AQA GCSE Media...

Finally in Year One you should start the class thinking about the topic for the B question in the exam. The current topic is TV comedy.

Individuals need to make their own study of this topic depending on their own consumption of the many varieties of TV comedy, so that they have a thorough knowledge of at least two different texts and preferably three. Gervais in Extras might be a way of looking at postmodern comedy

ACTIVITIES

INSTITUTIONS...

Andy Warhol predicted in 1968 that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. Contemporary observers such as David Weinberger suggest that Internet technologies will make everyone famous to 15 people.  But Reality TV shows confirm to viewers that anyone can become famous to an audience of millions – well almost anyone… 

Genre

Reality television is a hybrid genre. It is like a documentary as it is a factual form concerned with investigating...

Tell the world

What do you want to tell the world? It’s a good idea to have something you want to talk about or discuss with the world. This is not the frustration you get on the bus when you have to stand all the way again, and you really do want to tell someone something. That could make a reasonable item for a short comedy sketch, but it will not make a film or television programme. You may just want to tell the world that you can write...

What is a Soap Opera?

A soap opera is an ongoing, open ended, multi-strand, fictionalised, drama serial on radio or television. It can be broadcast daily or twice or more weekly.

The main quality that defines a soap is that it is a serial. A serial narrative is a story told through a series of separate, but linked episodes. British soaps expect to continue broadcasting for the foreseeable future and so have no end as such. Occasionally...

The genre of Sport on Television can be used as a key component of many GCSE courses. Students studying the WJEC GCSE MEDIA STUDIES for examination in 2010 are required to study sport on television. The WJEC exam papers – two hours writing and 30 minutes reading or viewing - for 2010 are in two parts: Section A has FOUR compulsory questions focusing on SPORT ON TV - for a full scheme of work see WJEC Sport on TV.

An Introduction

A Level Storyboarding

Pre-production Item | Storyboard

Example Brief: Create a storyboard (and video trailer) for a TV Crime Drama

The pre-production brief is to create a storyboard. Students should create a storyboard that shows as much detail as possible including camera instructions with details of camera movement, shot duration, content, details of audio tracks and details of transitions between frames.

This guide opens with a...

Use the three image links above to access GEEVIDEO.com’s excellent archive of Pop Music on TV Clips. When you click on one of the movie clips, you will see a ‘Download Spamblocker’ advert - ignore this and click on the ‘skip’ option on top right hand corner of the screen. The video should then be ready to watch.

Anyone teaching pop music needs to ge their libary to order the fabulous comprehensive history of pop by Alan Parker called All You...

Pete Wall and Charlie Evans from HarperCollins have kindly agreed to share their latest series of podcasts with Mediaedu.co.uk Please click on the hyperlink immediately below to download and listen to an invaluable introduction to this year’s AQA GCSE Media Studies Controlled Test.

Quiz Shows Podcasts

Take a Quick Quiz on Quiz Shows

Quiz Shows Quiz

Quiz Show Intro Letter

‘The focus of this examination is institutional/ scheduling issues and audience pleasures. These pages on sit-com provide a background only to the topic. The specific issues of institution/scheduling and audience pleasures in relation to sit-com will need to be taught separately.’

Brief Definition

The British TV sitcom is a television series that derives humour from the same characters in a fixed location exploring a variety of comic...

Creating a television quiz show is one of the best ways of exploring televisual techniques in a television studio. It is difficult to make a television quiz show without a multi camera set up.

A Further Education College came up with the idea of a 20 minute quiz show, called What Do You Know Quiz Show? Further down the page is how they made it.

The class was divided into two teams of 12 people in each. Each team produced a 10 minute quiz...

Television and film crime/cop drama is very popular with a wide audience. Crime dramas seek to anchor the representations of all types of police officers, criminals and victims as ‘believable’ characters, with ‘realistic’ plot lines, set in urban locations.The genre has been taken up in the US under the heading of American Quality Televsion (AQT) - see under heading AQT.

Codes and conventions

Crime dramas:

• are constructed realities
...

BBC World Service article on How Soaps Changed The World by Stephanie Hegarty.

Period Dramas are also known as Historical Dramas or Costume Dramas. Below are the typical codes and conventions of Period Dramas but also examples of key texts:

• Elaborate costumes and sets to catch the ambience of a particular time period (stereotypically female audiences are attracted as much by the costumes as by the narrative content)
• Multi stranded narrative based on character (each character has their own storyline)
• Often part of a...

Sub Genres

Television Drama is a broad area of study covering a range of sub genres and even genres that would be considered to be a category of their own with their own codes and conventions. Some texts cross over different sub genres e.g. 24 is Crime Drama and Action Adventure. A generic, comprehensive list includes:

• Period Drama | Emma, Downton Abbey, The Tudors, Mildred Pierce
• Crime Drama | The Wire, Luther, Life on Mars / Ashes to Ashes,...

Waterloo Road is a television drama broadcast first on BBC1 in 2006 between 6pm and 7pm and currently (November 2011) is in its seventh series – two new series (8 and 9) have been commissioned for April 2012 after an explosive end to series seven when Linda, who is Head of English deliberately runs over the male head teacher, Michael Byrne after he ends their brief relationship. Waterloo Road is set in a troubled 11-18 comprehensive school...

History and Context

Distant ancestors of Punch and Judy shows, Situation Comedies originated, as with much TV Comedy in part on the radio in the 1920s and 1930s. Due however to the exclusive nature of ‘the situation’ and the concept of visual audience identification it remains fundamentally a successful audio-visual sub genre – Hancock’s Half Hour is a notable exception to this in the 1950s transferring successfully from radio to...

Trollied is a Situation Comedy set in a fictional supermarket, Valco in the north-west, specifically Warrington in Cheshire. It is broadcast on a Monday night at 9pm and more unusually it is on Sky 1 (it is rare for Sky 1 to commission programmes from the Sitcom genre). Trollied is repeated immediately after on Sky 2 at 10pm. In its classic 30 minute format it follows some genre conventions but offers post watershed representations.

The...

H140

• G321 Foundation Portfolio in Media (50%) and G322 Key Media Concepts (50%)
• G322 Section A: TV Drama (52%) and Section B: Film Industry (50%) - 32 Week Scheme of Work

Overview

• OCR A Level Media Studies Overview

Scheme

• OCR AS Media Studies SOW 2011-2014.doc

Concepts

• Media Language, Forms and Conventions (Media Language, Representation, Genre, Narrative)
• Film Industry Institution
• TV Drama and Representation
• Research, Planning and...

Institutional Factors | Production and Historical Context

The Tudors is a critically and commercially successful Period Drama, (a sub genre of TV Drama), produced by an Independent Production Company, commissioned by the BBC and screened on BBC2 in October 2007 but originally shown on the American cable channel, Showtime. It ran for four seasons until 2010. Screenwriter Michael Hurst created the series, he had previously written Elizabeth,...

Overview

• GCSE Media Studies Overview

Scheme

• OCR GCSE Media Studies 2012 2-Year SOW.doc

Concepts

• Media Language, Forms and Conventions (Film Language, Genre, Narrative)
• Representation
• Audiences (Targeting, Appeals / Pleasures, Positioning)
• Institution
• Analysis, Production, Evaluation
• Research and Planning, Production, Evaluation

Skills

• Textual Analysis, Communication Skills, Note Taking, Group Work, Identifying & Understanding Action...

Associated Resources

• Narrative AS Terminology Revision Sheet.doc

Overview

• Narrative
• Narrative Enigmas
• Narrative Themes
• Narrative Structure
• Narrative Theory

Narrative

• The structure and organisation of media texts e.g. story
• Narrative chain of cause and effect – the plotlines in a story that are triggered by action and enigma codes (something happens that causes something else to happen)
• Narrative is correlated...

Cultural Context

• “Television is the Drug of the Nation”
• “Like Religion Television is a form of Social Control”
• “Television has a disproportionate status in our lives”
• “Television is cool, there’s loads of great programmes and those massive HD, LCD/Plasma screens are so awesome. I’m gonna get a 3D TV and sit in my front room with the silly glasses on, woo-hoo!”

Marshall McLuhan

• “The Medium is the Message” – Like the...

Overview

• Year 11 AQA Media Studies GCSE 1 Year Scheme of Work 2012: (4812 Single Award)
• Unit 1: Investigating the Media (TV Crime Drama) and Unit 2: Understanding the Media (Controlled Assessment)

Scheme

• AQA GCSE Media Studies 2012 1-Year SOW.doc

Concepts

• Media Language, Forms and Conventions (Semiotics, Genre, Narrative)
• Institution (Producers, Distribution, Technology)
• Audiences (Targeting, Theory and Debate)
• Representation
• Research,...

Outnumbered is a successful British Situation Comedy (Sitcom) named so simply because the two parental central protagonists, ‘Sue’ and ‘Pete’ are outnumbered by their three children. It is set in West London and although on the surface offers pluralistic representations in the guise of their unruly children who often intellectually challenge their parents it very much follows a standard genre template established by family based...

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These quizzes are best viewed in Firefox.

Firefox is an excellent alternative to Internet Explorer which is available free for both PCs and Macs.

Half or Full Day Revision Courses in Your School

Programme Details

Our practical workshops usually include:

• Investigating genre conventions (cards and games)
• Starter activities, ‘odd one out’ / ‘top n tail’ / connective thinking
• Loop cards with key facts
• Loop cards with relevant theories
• Carousel activities ‘add facts’ and move on….
• Carousel activities…making a storyboard…and move on…

We ensure that students get to know the exam structure,...

Half or Full Day Revision Courses in Your School

Programme Details

Our practical workshops usually include:

• Investigating genre conventions (cards and games)
• Starter activities, ‘odd one out’ / ‘top n tail’ / connective thinking
• Loop cards with key facts
• Loop cards with relevant theories
• Carousel activities ‘add facts’ and move on….
• Carousel activities…making a storyboard…and move on…

We ensure that students get to know the exam structure,...

It all began in Wiltshire with the brutal murder of a three year old boy in June 1860. His body was taken from his bed at his home Road Hill House and dumped in the privy.

Who done it and why?

The crucial murder mystery element was that all the principal suspects were the people in the house at the time – the family and the servants.

The media in the form of local and national newspapers reported with relish every detail of the case and it...

Scheme

• AQA GCSE Media Studies 2012 Unit 1 SoW - Television Crime Drama.doc

Associated Resources

• AQA GCSE Media Studies Television Crime Drama Overview

Concepts

• Media Language, Forms and Conventions (Semiotics, Genre, Narrative)
• Institution (Producers, Distribution, Technology)
• Audiences (Targeting, Theory and Debate)
• Representation
• Research, Planning and Responding to a Brief
• Constructing, Creating and Evaluating

Skills

• Textual Analysis,...

Guides

Understanding Crime Drama

Understanding The Murder Mystery

Case Studies

The Mentalist

Luther

Life on Mars

24 Magazine

Bones Homepage

Activities & Skills

Coming soon…

Associated Resources

Coming soon…

TV Crime Drama Police Procedurals Worksheet.doc

TV Crime Drama Characters Worksheet.doc

TV Crime Drama Mise-en-scene Worksheet.doc

TV Crime Drama Production Ideas.doc

This page should provide you with an index to the information we have on MediaEdu which relates directly to the 2012 AQA GCSE Media Studies External Assessment on Television Crime Drama.

This page also contains external links to support materials on the AQA site.

Scheme

• 2012 AQA GCSE Media Studies Unit 1 Scheme of Work: Television Crime Drama

Guides

• Understanding Crime Drama
• Understanding The Murder Mystery

Case Studies

• Crime Drama Case...

Trailer: Season 3

Genre: US Police Procedural

First seen in September 2008, on CBS. The show was created by Bruno Heller, who is also the show’s executive producer. Duration is 44 minutes of actual drama.

By 2011 it is in its third series and joins a stable of police procedurals on Channel 5 including:

CSI: Miami; CSI: NY; CSI: Crime Scene Investigation; NCIS and US Law and Order.

I have chosen it as a case study because it attracts a...

Click on the link below to find out more about The Birth of Video Journalism, Video Journalists (VJs) & Channel One (C1).

http://viewmagazine.tv/videojos.html

There are two parts to the commissioning of television programmes by broadcasting companies.

The first part involves the programme originator only, and is complicated but transparent.

The second part involves the broadcaster and is simple but opaque.

In theory anyone who has an idea for a programme that might work on a television channel can submit the idea to the broadcaster of that channel – e.g the BBC, ITV or C4.

There are other...

By Tina Dixon & Jeremy Orlebar

Week 1 Overview

Video of various extracts of documentaries shown in class using a glossary of documentary definitions and a worksheet identifying codes and conventions of documentary.

OHP used on various hybrids of documentary that students copy.

World at War Episode 15 looked at and a worksheet filled in to highlight key codes and conventions. This series was made on film.

Homework

Students are to watch a...

An Introduction to Documentary

Documentary on MediaEdu

Ideas for Teaching Documentary

Documentary Quiz 1

Documentary Quiz 2

Click on the link below to download a PDF booklet you can print out.

Situation_Comedy_-_Flight_of_the_Conchords.pdf

Click on the link below to download a PDF booklet you can print out.

Genre_and_Sitcom.pdf

Luther (BBC)

6 X 60 minutes drama originated on BBC1 May/June 2010

View Preview for Episode One

Characters

• DCI John Luther

• Alice

• DCI Ian Reed

The BBC’s new crime drama Luther is the first major drama series to have its eponymous hero played by a black actor. DCI John Luther, played by British actor Idris Elba, is familiar from his role as ‘Stringer’ Bell the drug lord with business acumen in The Wire. He was also in the US...

The rights to broadcast this years showpiece sporting tournament is in the hands of two national mainstream television channels: BBC and ITV.

The Football World Cup in South Africa 2010 will command many hours from both BBC and ITV primetime television slots from 11th of June – 11th of July. Games will be shown at 12.30, 17.00 and 19.30.

Programs will no doubt contain many hours of build up, the game itself, half time replays of highlights...

Sitcom is a genre which has remained successful by reacting to the changing contexts of the times in which it is produced, as well as more recently experimenting with hybridisation in order to attract its audiences.  (Depending on how much time you wish to spend, you could show either clips or episodes, and I have suggested suitable episodes which should be readily available on DVD or possibly Youtube.)

Rooted in the radio variety shows of...

Click here to download as a PDF

Joe McElderry and Rage Against the Machine: a most unlikely chart battle!

In this scheme of work Stephen Hill compares the campaign for Joe McElderry’s ‘The Climb’ (UK number two, Christmas 2009) and Rage Against the Machine’s ‘Killing in the Name’ (UK number one, Christmas 2009). He considers the ways in which the marketing of the two songs reflects very different strategies for the promotion of...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6482369.stm

How to make a one minute news report

BBC presenter Polly Billington explains how to make a one-minute report for TV news in five easy steps.

This video is part of the BBC News School Report project and accompanying website which encourage young people to make the news in their schools

Notes:

By Polly Billington
BBC News

BBC presenter Polly Billington explains how to make TV news in a...

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A Suggested Scheme of Work

This scheme of work is not in any way prescriptive, it is simply offered as a possible way in. It should be adapted and moulded to fit particular teachers, students and resources.

Adapt and use according to your particular circumstances.

This is the new GCSE which will be first examined in 2010. For the single GCSE there are two units which can be taught over two years. 

Two extra units exploring media industries...

WJEC GCSE Media Studies for exam in 2010

A Suggested Scheme of Work

This scheme of work is not in any way prescriptive, it is simply offered as a possible way in. It should be adapted and moulded to fit particular teachers, students and resources.

TERM 1

Week 1 Class Work

Intro to GCSE media studies. Two parts - Sport on TV and - advertisements in print and electronic media, and practical course work.

I suggest the pattern of Term 1 is to...

Getting Started on TV Drama

A Suggested Scheme of Work

In this section:

• Getting started with unit G322 – TV drama
• What do students need to be able to do?
• TV drama background
• Activity – quick textual analysis
• Some theory
• Shot analysis
• Shot size
• Camera angles
• Framing
• Mise-en-scène
• Soundtrack
• Postproduction
• Activities

As a teacher you will be thinking about the structure of this two year course- see Course Structure. It’s a good idea to...

BBC World Service article on How Soaps Changed The World by Stephanie Hegarty.

Half or Full Day Revision Courses in Your School

Programme Details

Our practical workshops usually include:

• Investigating genre conventions (cards and games)
• Starter activities, ‘odd one out’ / ‘top n tail’ / connective thinking
• Loop cards with key facts
• Loop cards with relevant theories
• Carousel activities ‘add facts’ and move on….
• Carousel activities…making a storyboard…and move on…

We ensure that...

Half or Full Day Revision Courses in Your School

Programme Details

Our practical workshops usually include:

• Investigating genre conventions (cards and games)
• Starter activities, ‘odd one out’ / ‘top n tail’ / connective thinking
• Loop cards with key facts
• Loop cards with relevant theories
• Carousel activities ‘add facts’ and move on….
• Carousel activities…making a storyboard…and move on…

We ensure that...

These quizzes are best viewed in Firefox.

Firefox is an excellent alternative to Internet Explorer which is available free for both PCs and Macs.

Click here to open this resource