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Project brief

AS Media Studies Foundation Portfolio G321
George Nicoll candidate number: 0457

The set brief is as follows:

Print

Preliminary exercise: using DTP and an image manipulation program produce the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in medium close-up plus some appropriately laid-out text and a masthead.

Additionally candidates must produce a mock-up of the layout of the contents page to demonstrate their grasp of DTP.

Main task: the front page, contents and double page spread of a new music magazine

All images and text used must be original, produced by the candidate(s), minimum of four images per candidate.

Main task:

This unit is worth 50% of your AS and the marks are awarded as follows:

Planning and Research 20 marks

Construction 60 marks

Evaluation 20 marks

Total = /100

Evidence for these areas will be presented as follows:

Planning and Research production blog:

You will use a blog on Blogger to put together your planning and research materials. This will include:

•   Analysis of real media output examples

•   Questionnaires for target audience with results analysis

•   Industry research

•   Photographic ‘proofs’ of original images

•   Drafts of pages

•   Decisions about content

•   etc

In your blog you need to provide evidence which illustrates and pulls together your planning and research and comments on how these activities influenced your ideas for targeting your audience through design and content.

Construction:

As this section carries the most marks, this must be done to a very high standard and imitate real media out put. The preliminary task is not used in the mark for construction but it must be included in your submission to the exam board otherwise you automatically lose 15 marks.

In your blog you need to provide evidence and analysis of your use of technical equipment (camera, software etc) and discussion about your initial choices of location, actors, props etc as well as decisions made about font, colour, image manipulation, layout etc. In your evaluation you will also cover aspects of construction related to revisions and fine tuning of your pages.

Evaluation Section

The exam board have provided the framework for this element of your blog:

In the evaluation the following questions must be answered through detailed textual analysis of your production, references to your planning and research activities, reflection on the production process itself including discussion of the preliminary task.

·      In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

·      How does your media product represent particular social groups?

·      What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

·      Who would be the audience for your media product?

·      How did you attract/address your audience?

·      What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

·      Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

You should produce pages that address each of the bullets in detail. You can refer to the exam board mark scheme to check that you have covered all of the required criteria.

We will be contributing to your blogs throughout the production process and it is vital that you keep these up to date by working on them several times a week.