8 Top Tips from Chief Examiner at this week's Media Studies Annual Conference

Some tips to bear in mind as you complete your AS and A2 studies:

1. Organise your blog to make it 'examiner-friendly'. This will gain you marks before you even start! Put your finished work at the top, with links to your three tasks if you're doing A2.
2. A2 - if you're doing a magazine cover or advertisement, look at REAL magazines (I've bought some to bring into class this week). If you Google these things, you'll get lots of previous student work, and much of it is not very good!
3. Look back on your research and make sure it feeds into your finished work.
4. AS - make sure your title sequence task is on your blog - examiners LOVE it and it informs your own film opening.
5. Take screenshots of your progress EVERY DAY from now until you finish, and post each day.
6. Bear in mind that the examiners have HIGH expectations, so go the extra mile - if creating a webpage, do the whole site (Well done, Holly and Lizzie). A2 - use Photoshop and, if possible, InDesign or Quark for your magazine layout - it needs to look professional.
7. A2 Exam - remember the examples you use must be CONTEMPORARY - mention Kony, the Levison Inquiry...
8. AS and A2 evaluations - really REFLECT on what you have done, and make your evaluations varied and interesting. Avoid PowerPoint and text documents - use podcasts, video, greenscreening...

Enter the Young Film Critic of the Year 2012 Competition!

The competition for Young Film Critic of the Year, run by Film Education, has just opened. Click the link to download an entry form. Your review can be in writing, video or podcast and there are lots of previous winners to view and give you ideas: http://www.youngfilmcritic.org/?utm_source=Edlines&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Edlines_2012-03-23

Closing Date is 21st December 2012.

Don't miss...

Melvyn Bragg on Class and Culture
Melvyn Bragg takes a look at British culture through literature, art and music.
Friday 24th February (and another 2 weekly episodes)
9:00pm – 10:00pm
BBC2



... a review of the first episode in 'The Guardian' Saturday 25th February... and an article by Andrew Anthony in 'The Observer', Sunday 26th February, on the week's TV Drama.

Give your blog the A* treatment

If you really want to succeed in your production work, don't neglect your blogs. You need to have your production 'journey' clear and well-documented, with intelligent observations and plenty of planning shown. If you haven't done so yet, make yourself a dedicated Coursework blog (see Shereen's for example) so that you can post you planning and people can comment on it as you go along. It's just not the same if you put it all on to a page.

Blogger of the Week

Has to be for the last week's prodigious blogging: Shereen! Well done for making marvellous inroads into your production planning tasks.

Did You Know?

When you post a video on YouTube, the thumbnail that's displayed is the exact centre of the video (timewise). So make sure you have a particularly good shot there to maximise potential viewers!

Blogger of the Week

goes this week to Kayleigh, in fact the only blogger over the holidays. Well done to her for her thoughtful essay on the representation of British people in three films.