Instruction and advice on how to make a good blog for A Level Media Studies students (OCR)

1. Recipe for a Good Blog

2. What must be on your Blog
Sensible Title
Full name and
candidate
numbers
‘Followers’
app ‘Contributors’
Archive Labels

3. What features were on the blogs that
you looked at?

4. What is the examiner looking for?
• Level 4
• There is excellent research into similar products and a potential target
audience.
• There is excellent organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props.
• There is excellent work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or
storyboarding.
• There is an excellent level of care in the presentation of the research and
planning
• Time management is excellent.

5. What should you do?
• There is excellent research into similar
products and a potential target audience.
– Show that you understand what a Thriller is
– Analysis a number of Thrillers (different
subgenres) and Directors
– Analysis past student work for all tasks
– Link research to own work
– Show how you have learnt about iMovie/Final Cut
– Do audience surveys, questionnaires, focus
groups, test screening ALL THE TIME and post it!

6. What should you do?
• There is excellent organisation of
actors, locations, costumes or props.
– Mindmaps of costume/prop ideas/mise en scene
– Take photos of your locations and actors etc and
explain decisions
– Write up many many lists of ‘stuff’
– Include a production schedule ( I can show you an
example)

7. What should you do?
• There is excellent work on
shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or
storyboarding.
– Record everything!!!!!
– Draw good storyboard! Or do ‘photostoryboards’
(you can ‘animate’ these as well)
– Do the shotlist properly! Ask me if you don’t know
how
– Include separate dialogue/music script
– Include drafts

8. What should you do?
• There is an excellent level of care in the
presentation of the research and planning
– SPELL THINGS CORRECTLY
– Use good grammar – paragraphs, tense, sentence
structure, capital letters, tone etc
– Think about layout
– Use labels (Research/ Audience Research/
Construction/ Editing/ Evaluation and YOUR NAME)
– USE A LOT OF TECHNOLOGY
– Vblogs (but know what you want to say!)

9. What should you do?
• Time management is excellent
– Post consistently throughout the project – even
when at the editing and evaluation stages
– Post after every class and every time you do it
outside of class (4 - 5 hours……)
– Work hard in class – I get a say!
– Gather evidence of the work you are doing

10. The Good and the not so good….
• Example One • Example One
• Example Two • Example Two
• Example Three • Example Three
• Example Four
• Example Five
• Example Six