Research and planning exemplars

1. Research
and
Planning
Exemplars
June
2010
Question
Describe
the
ways
in
which
your
production
work
was
informed
by
research
into
real
media
texts
and
how
your
ability
to
use
such
research
for
production
developed
over
time
Examiners
Comments
Section A
1(a)
Whilst Candidates were typically able to discuss research in general terms, there was a
distinction between those that could focus in on the precise ways in which their work was
influenced by or responded to specific media texts/products and those that dealt with
research and planning in a less applied and relevant manner (to the question set).
Candidates in the latter category were restricted to levels 1 or 2 for use of examples.
Terminology was utilised with variable conviction also – the stronger answers used
appropriate theoretical or technical language to explain how creative decisions were
informed by research into real media at the micro level. Candidates are advised against the
‘scattergun’ approach – merely listing every instance of research and planning. They are
also urged to be clear about the outcomes of research – reporting that they used YouTube
to watch trailers, for example, is not sufficient for credit at A2. The words ‘informed by’ in the
question were important. Evaluation/critical reflection is required here and the question
demands explanation. Many Candidates provided description only – Centres should share
the wording of the mark scheme as well as this report with Candidates ahead of the next
series.
Equally, progression is an important part of this section and this was another neglected
element. The higher level answers were able to synthesise all of these aspects – specific
examples with emphasis on the outcome of the research in relation to creative decisions;;
critical reflection on the process of the research;; and an awareness of progress made from
AS to A2 and with reference to other media production work where relevant – the distance
travelled. There was a little overlap with 1(b) due to genre conventions being a feature of
research but the stronger Candidates were able to provide a broader answer here. They
dealt with genre conventions along with a number of other aspects of real media texts,
including narrative, media language and more technical and institutional/professional areas
of media production related to several of their own productions and then go on to ‘zoom in’
on theories of genre for the next question with a more sustained discussion relating to just
one production.
Finally,
it
is
important
that
Candidates
can
be
specific
and
informed
about
real
media
conventions
but
there
are
a
range
of
ways
of
relating
their
own
work
to
real
media
–
these
might
be
more
institutional.
For
example
the
institutional
information
in
magazine
contents
pages
or
the
title
sequence
of
a
film
–
these
are
equally
conventional
to
the
more
genre
ingredients
examples
that
proliferated
in
answers.
Or
they
might
be
more
technical
–
observing
industry
practice
in
a
particular
medium.

2. G325 Section A June 2010 45/50
1a)
Over the two year media course we had to produce both a foundation portfolio of a
school magazine and music magazine as well as an advance portfolio of a horror
teaser trailer, film magazine – developing foundation skills further and a poster to
advertise our trailer.
In the first year we researched existing music magazines and analysed each one so
that we could gain knowledge of particular layouts, fonts and key elements that need
to be contained in our production to make it successful. Research and planning
allowed us to recognise ‘mastheads’ on magazines as being the most important and
therefore the need to focus on a font more detailed to keep continuity with the
contents page and double page spread which we also had to create. Personally I
researched ‘Rock’ magazines such as Kerrang, NME and others because I had chosen
after carrying out a questionnaire to use Rock music as my theme. The real life media
texts allowed me to visualise my favourite parts from each magazine – wripped
sticker graphics and broken font on my own work which I then attempted to recreate
within Photoshop CS4. In year one we were limited to what we could research
because magazines were the only theme however, in the second year I was able to
develop my ability to research real life media texts much further because we had a
range of products we needed to create all under the ‘horror’ genre this time. I was able
to research teaser trailers analysing my favourite and least favourite parts allowing me
to plan with a mood board which I produced from a range of stills from previous
horror films my ideas for my own trailer which helped me to develop my production
of my products in relation to real life media texts and techniques such as restricted
narration and handheld camera found in the ‘Blair Witch Project’ trailer which
inspired my trailer ‘Laquem’ which is also set in the woods. Research into film
documentaries like the ‘American Nightmare’ inspired me to create a product which
reinforced fear and went against usual horror conventions to make it more interesting.
Over the second year research became so important to achieving a product which was
realistic and is now like my own distributed on on youtube as a real life media text of
its own.
Real life media texts like advertising film posters were able to help me develop my
Photoshop skills further because I was able to push myself with the ‘colour burn’
filters and want to create the scary atmosphere of my trailer from just an image and
text which I found really fun.
Research into film magazines allowed me to develop my work from AS level so much
further because I was able to produce a high standard piece of work in two weeks this
year when the magazines took over 3 months last year which shows how much my
skills have improves just by being able to constantly refer back to real life media texts
for inspiration and even colour schemes that work well together such as black and red
which in the first year I just found experimenting with. Research into horror trailers
allowed me to recognise different styles of film and how we like Alfred Hitchcock
could be an auteur creating new angles and ideas using generic conventions as well as
unconventional representations that I have picked upon when watching films and
analysing certain techniques which I have then attempted to do in Final Cut Pro when
editing certain shots together to create collision cutting and changes in pace which my
trailer does extremely well. I was inspired initially by the hand held camera in the

3. trailer REC and the fact I want as an auteur to change the stereotyped representations
to be able use a female psycho killer.
Research also allowed me to produce text and intertitles that shook in order to capture
my audience but narrating the story slightly so the shots when together made sense.
Research into types of camera movements needed were really helpful and allowed me
to completely change the pace with tracking shots and handheld camera which I
noticed was used in Silent Hill and American Werewolf in London which I analysed
and placed on my blog for reference as some pieces of footage I wanted to recreate
including the final girl representations.
EAA 8
EG 8
T 4
(20)
1b)
The media production I am going to write about in relation to genre is my favourite
piece from the whole course which is my horror teaser trailer.
The genre of the trailer is obviously ‘horror’ and this in itself allowed us to be creative
with narrative etc but limited us because we had to stick to a certain amount of
generic conventions in order for it to be recognised by it’s existing target audience.
Steve Neal said that ‘genre is a repetition with an underlying pattern of variations’
which meant certain generic features had to be included and repeated which in my
case was the use of a creepy location of the woods as well as hand held camera and
restricted narration to cause disorientation and suspense within our trailer. However,
the pattern of variation Neal describes also links to my horror teaser trailer because
we were able to creatively push the boundaries by twisting some generic features in
order to make the trailer interesting and therefore cause the audience to want to watch
the full movie. For this my group chose use a female psycho killer I order to subvert
the stereotypical male dominated role. This female identification through point of
view shots etc captured our female audience because were providing them with power
and this is unusual for the horror genre although it is known for its forward thinking
approach as it often attempts to focus on subcultural views instead of targeting the
mainstream. Genre encompasses many parts and the trailer links to it in more ways
than one. Its use of enclosed location and the fact the woods attempts to reinforce our
society’s fear of loneliness and isolation which the woods creates when the three
friends get lost. In these sections of the trailer we used a lot of heavy cross cutting
between the female victim who is running anxiously through the woods in order to
find her friends and get home safely. We also used the Kuleshove and collision
cutting methods as the pace began slow as the friends head our in the car unaware of
the danger before them and once they are in the woods we deliberately quickened the
pace of editing to cause tension and to show that something is not right, keeping the
audience on the edge of their seats.
Editing and mise-en-scene is really important to genre and reflects very quickly
certain moods and atmospheres. Levi Strauss and Roland Barthes argued that the
horror genre like many others used ‘binary oppositions’ in order to show the contrast
between good and evil in order to force the audience to be constantly questioning the
trailer for example; in my trailer I used light and dark to connote their happiness and
carefree attitude in the daytime and the darkness to emphasise their fear and reliance

4. G325 June 2010 39/50 Section A
1a)
I feel that my production skills from foundation to Advanced have greatly improved.
My thriller opening sequence was about two men who prey on suicidal teenage girls
on the internet, titled “Caught in the Web.” The men rape and murder their victims
but frame it as a suicide, using the suicide support website (where they preyed on
them) as evidence of this suicide. It is a dark enigmatic and gripping film which
captivates the audience (according to my feedback). My music video (Advanced
Portfolio) is to the song “Voodoo Child” originally by Rogue Traders, but our
girlband uses the name The Vixens. We used 4 girls and our video transports the
audience to the mind of the main girl, where her alter-egos (dressed as the deadly
sins) corrupt her. It is a racy funky video that creates a strong band image.
My research for both projects included researching genre conventions (horror/thriller
opening sequences such as “Se7ev”, and electropop-rock/dance/glam music videos
such as Lady Gaga and Katy Perry) and was expanded to include components that
didn’t specifically relate to genre. For my thriller I researched films where they have
internet conversations (as in our opening sequence, the girl is talking to who she
thinks is an agony aunt over an internet forum) which led me to films including “The
Holiday” and “Something’s Gotta Give”, showing me how to successfully change
from filming the person typing the words on the screen and then reading their
message aloud. I developed this skill in my music video research by looking at other
media texts, not just other music videos. I started with trying to be inspired by original
music video concepts such as Radiohead’s video for “Just” in which a man lies down
in the street and the audience can’t hear what he’s saying to explain himself to passers
by. This inspired me to create ambiguity in my video which differs from standard pop
videos where a lot of the visuals illustrate the lyrics. I expanded my research to
fashion magazines and photographs of different eras, since a major concept in this
video was the power of women as confident, independent, sexual beings. Our costume
was very important in constructing meaning and without in-depth research into the 7
deadly sins the audience would not have grasped why we had girls dressed in bold
outfits to symbolise the sins; red, velvet leotard and back combed hair for “wrath”, a
Marie Antoiinette inspred look of a pale blue and pink corset, white face make-up, an
[cannot read text] with one long curled piece of hair, and a chunk of chocolate cake
that signified “Greed”, a black corset with leather leggings to signify “Lust”, and a
green dress, heavy green eye make up and glittery diamond jewellery connoting
“Envy”.
I think that without doing research into character types, character costume, and genre
conventions for my thriller I wouldn’t have known what to look for when researching
for my music video because they can be so abstract and there aren’t many constraints.
I also learned to be open minded.
Since I was one of the performers in our music video, it pushed me to think more
practically – our ideas had to be creative yet do-able on our small budget and time
constraints. After watching several videos on YouTube of thriller opening sequences
and music videos I realised that it is good to have layered meaning a production
because it makes it more interesting for the audience as it challenges them to come up
with their own interpretations and gives the production playability. In the Thriller
project, after researching storylines and narrative themes, my group and I had a strong
idea of what our film was about. Despite the fact we created enigma, we still wanted

5. the audience to understand our dominant reading, however in my music video, I
realised that it is better to- people to have different interpretations as I found that the
most popular current music videos are those that are quirky, different and weird, like
Lady GaGa.
In conclusion my foundation portfolio greatly aided my advanced portfolio because
my skills were refined and I have produced an ever better end product.
EAA 8
EG 8
T 4
(20)
1b)
Genre is often used as a way of distinguishing one style from another; it categorises
works so that the audience can more easily choose what they want to experience. For
my music video, the genre of our music was a hybrid of electropop/rock/dance, which
come mostly from the original song and from our personal tastes. Since our genre is
modern and not common, we drew conventions from artists that had similar styles to
ours. The conventions we found for music video for our genre are; editing often cuts
to the beat; for female artists – costumes are bold, they wear high heels, ands the
performances are strong and full of attitude. Examples of artists’ videos that do this
are Beyonce (through her powerful dance routines and sexy costumes) and Lady
GaGa (who wears extreme hair, costume and makeup).
My music video consisted of my group members (4 girls) giving powerful
performances with sections of dance routine. We stuck to these conventions because
we wanted the audience to recognise it as belonging to a genre and looking back at it
now I think we succeeded. The genre has postmodern influences as does our video. It
starts with a short narrative to no music, where a girl looks at a picture in a locket of
her and a guy, slams it shut and looks in a mirror – which transports her into
‘subconscious mind’. We filmed the bulk of our video in an all-white studio and with
our powerful costumes that intertextually referenced the deadly sins and Marie
Antoinette the audience can quite clearly see that it is not reality.
You can see that our video promotes strong women by their feisty performance and
this is emphasised by the use of a male, white headless, mannequin with a ‘perfect’
torso. In the video the sins are corrupting the girl (but they are all just facets of her
personality) and they dominate the mannequin. This is in contrast with Laura
Mulvey’s theory of the ‘Male Gaze’ whereby media is predominantly made with a
male or masculine audience in mind. Our target audience is 14-25 year old women,
and this is obvious because the audience immediately identify with the main girl since
she is the focus of the narrative and on the mannequin’s torso is a kiss mark, showing
the women ‘marking their territory’ on him. If we were targeting men we would’ve
used a real man, but by our production decisions the target audience and genre is
clear.
We followed the convention of cutting shots to the beat, however we challenged the
convention of keeping lines of the song in one shot. We cut midway through words
and phrases in order to quicken the pace, which is often fast for this genre. An aspect
of the genre which we developed is comedy. In some of the music videos artists take
themselves very seriously, however we combined the sexy performances with the
comic editing and cut aways to five the characters a ‘human feel’ in the make believe

6. G325 Section A June 2010 34/50
1a)
At AS (Foundation Portfolio) I created the opening two minutes of a new feature film.
I chose the genre of Social Realism and the narrative of the film was about a teenage
girl (roughly 15) who ended up pregnant but who then after having her baby got in
with the wrong crowd of people who then lead her astray, causing all sorts of
problems for the young girl, her family and her baby. The main issue we wanted to
raise and explore through the world of media was teen pregnancy and the
problems/issues that come with it.
The main character in this film was a young girl (15 years of age) and her name was
Linda, there was also another main character who was Linda’s best friend, another
female character called Courtney; These characters were the binary opposition of each
other.
At the A2 (Advanced Portfolio) I created a teaser trailer for a new feature film, soon
to be released. I changed the genre of this production from AS work to the sub genre
of slasher from the genre of Horror. I did this because I wanted and was capable of a
whole different challenge.
The Teaser Trailer was about a young couple (aged between 17 and 18) who started
off their relationship well and full of love, until the arguments began they end up
splitting up while the young female is moving on with her life, tutoring a guy from
her class, her best friends start to disappear (and are murdered). The young girl thinks
its her ex-boyfriend, killing her friends out of spite but the twist actually is that it’s the
guy who she it tutoring who has a huge obsession with the girl. However the trailer
doesn’t show this and it portrays her ex-boyfriend as the killer.
There are a few main protagonists/antangonists throughout this production. To start
with there is ‘Carie’ the main protagonist (young girl) and ‘Ben’ the main protagonist
but the audience think he is the antagonist when really ‘Paul’ is the main antagonist
(the killer). Lastly there is ‘Carie’s’ best friend ‘Hannah’ who ends up getting killed
but she is a binary opposite to ‘Carie’.
I carried out a lot of research into real media texts, using digital technology such as
websites (eg. www.imdb.com); this website was very useful when carrying out
research into real media texts as I was able to research texts that would help me to
develop my creativity from my own productions: I used this website for research for
both my AS and A2 productions and it was very helpful. This researched had a big
impact into my own production work because I was able to find out what the key
codes and conventions were from real media texts and artificially inject them into my
own productions.
A real media text I researched a lot in my AS production was ‘wish you were here’
starring Emily Lloyd and set in the seaside town of Brighton. This film had the same
genre as my AS piece (social realism) and it was tackling the same issues (teen
pregnancy). From this research we decided to give our main protagonist the same
name as the main protagonist in ‘Wish You Were Here’ which was ‘Linda’ so the
name our main protagonist was informed by research into real media texts as we
wanted to intertextually link our production in with ‘Wish You Were Here’ which
inspired me greatly. I used research methods such as the internet for ‘Wish You Were
Here’ (www.imdb.com).
At A2 we worked on the genre of Horror (the sub genre of slasher) as this genre was
completely different to our AS genre we had to do all our research from scratch. One

7. way in which my production has been informed by research into real media texts is
taken from the film ‘Psycho’, we were really inspired by ‘Psycho’s’ famous shower
seen, which we researched through ‘YouTube’ and watched many different clips of.
We wanted to intertexually link this in with our production so we challenged this
convention and added a bath killing scene into our montage of killings. This basically
was a close-up-shot of a girl in a bath with a high angle a medium shot of the mirror
showing a dark figure which could trigger a narrative enigma next to another shot of a
shadow of a knife coming down. This is how proved that a killing was taking place
without showing any nudity or blood.
Research into real media texts was a lot easier as we had more resources and our
knowledge of where to find different resources was greater we were able to have
acess to a wide range of dvds in the library that were linked into our genre that were
not there when we were completing our AS productions.
At A2 we were also able to acess a wide range of books in the library which weer
linked in with our genre which we didn’t have at AS. So at AS we were very limited
with what resources we could actually use and I do feel that if I had had the books,
dvds etc that I had at A2, that my production at AS would have benefited.
It was harder to research for my AS task because we were looking at the openings of
films which were a lot harder to find on the internet but for A2 we were looking at
teaser trailers anf the web (including www.imdb.com and ‘youTube’) are absolutely
full of trailers.
EAA 8
EG 7
T 3
(18)
1b)
For my A2 production (Advanced Portfolio) I created a teaser trailer in the sub-genre
of slasher from the genre of Horror. The synopsis of this teaser trailer is about a
young couple (roughly 17-19 years of age) who are in love in the beginning but the
relationship turns sore and they split up, the girls moves on with her life and the boy
doesn’t like this and starts to follow her; The girl starts tutoring a guy in her class who
is struggling but who is a complete binary opposition to her ex-boyfriend in the sense
that he is a bit of a geeky character and her ex-boyfriend is a Jock (both of these
characters you will find stereotypically in horror films) one by one the girls friends
keep disappearing or are murdered and the suspision lies in the hands of the ex-
boyfriend due to spite. But the question is does he really love her enough to not kill
her? Throughout the trailer the audience thinks the ex-boyfriend si the killer but
actually as it turns out it’s the geeky boy who has become very obsessive over the girl
and wants her to himself.
The characters in this production are all very stereotypical of what you would find in
an American ‘slasher/horro’ film. The two main female protagonists are ‘Carie’ and
‘Hannah’ Carie is your stereotypical ‘final girl’ which you would find in of not all,
most horror films, this character is always brunette and seen to be ‘innocent’ we used
this key code and convention of the genre horror from the film ‘Halloween’ staring
‘Jamie Lee Curtis’, As she is the ‘final girl’, she has brunette hair, the same as ‘Catie’
and she also wears the coulor blue as throughout our production ‘Catie’ is seen
wearing the colour blue. For ‘Hannah’ she is our stereotypical ‘scream queen’ we
looked at a film called ‘Hell Night’ and from seeing this their ‘scream queen’ was