MIGRAIN Assessment 1: learner response

 1) Type up your feedback in full (you don't need to write the mark and grade if you want to keep this confidential).

WWW:

A fair first Y12 Media assessment. We need to work on a few things to improve but your Q3 was very good. You managed to reference Schatz and Buckingham for the genre question.

Next steps:

1. Practise unseen media product analysis (Q1) not enough detail or media terminology included in your response.
2. Similarly, with Q2 think about how social + cultural contexts can be relevant to media products.

2) Read the mark scheme carefully (this will be posted on your Google Classroom. Identify at least one potential point that you missed out on for each question in the assessment.

1. Todorov: disequilibrium suggested by gun; character eyeline looking off-screen suggests danger or threat; tagline references ‘survival’; no hint of new equilibrium.

2. Nike advert is deliberately ambiguous with character’s anonymity allowing anyone to imagine themselves as the winner of the ‘Showdown’, working hard to succeed. This reflects dominant British values and ideologies concerning the importance of hard work, the possibility of social mobility and rising to the top. The ‘rising sun’ sky in the background reinforces this possibility of success.

3. Genre important for audiences: expectations of narrative, character, plot, style and content; selection and rejection of texts – audience pleasures/gratifications; allows comparison and discussion of media products; recognise developments and evolution in genres.

3) Read this exemplar response from a previous Year 12 (an A grade) - note this was a slightly different paper in terms of the question wording and also had an additional question 4 (we've updated it to better reflect recent exams). Identify at least one potential point for questions 1-3 from this student's paper that you could have mentioned in your assessment. 

1. The idea of the disequilibrium from the Ill Manors poster, where the guy is holding a gun and the Nike poster, where the setting seems to be in an urban estate. 

2. The use of different ethnicities for each poster. Ill Manors, using a white character shows how it is atypical of who audiences usually associate the locations with (estate style area). For the Nike one, it shows how the main character is black male which establishes a brand value, causing the audience to associate with Nike as an urban style. 

3. Applying Abercrombie's theory where it is clear to see that genre can build up a sense of loyalty with audiences. 

4) Did you get any media terminology or theory wrong in the assessment? Make a note of it here for future revision, including theories/terminology that you could have used but didn't.

-Tolson (1996) - genre mediates between industry and audience

-Todorov's Equilibrium

-Propp's character theory

-Use of more media terminology: disequilibrium, antagonist or protagonist

-Taglines

5) Identify your weakest question and write three bullet points that would improve on your original response. Use the mark scheme and exemplar paper to identify these points - particularly focusing on the anticipated content and the top level descriptors.

Q2 (social and cultural context)

• Both products hint at the role society can play in shaping people’s lives which reflects a key theme of British media and culture. In the Ill Manors poster, the tagline for the film literally alludes to this (“Some environments...”)
• Use of props for each posters, both the gun and the football. Comparing both props where the gun connotes negative connotations, leading to illegal activities. However, the football prop gives more positive connotations, where the football acts as an escapism for the male character. They also talked about the colour schemes and how their connotations contrasts each other.
• Nike advert is deliberately ambiguous with character’s anonymity allowing anyone to imagine themselves as the winner of the ‘Showdown’, working hard to succeed. This reflects dominant British values and ideologies concerning the importance of hard work, the possibility of social mobility and rising to the top. The ‘rising sun’ sky in the background reinforces this possibility of success.