1. AS Media Studies induction lesson
• Course overview
• Blogs and setting one up
• Coursework unit overview
• Teen movies – expectations/ codes and
conventions
• Effective opening sequence presentations
• Story types
• Summer project

2. What is Media Studies?
• What are ‘the media’?
– The term ‘the media’ is an umbrella term for the industries of
TV, film, newspapers, magazines, internet, radio, videogames
– The word ‘media’ is the plural form of medium
– For example, TV is a medium of communication where a small
group of people can produce a TV programme that is watched
by millions – Big Brother, Coronation Street, X-Factor
– The technology of being broadcast pictures and sound through
radio waves or via satellite or cable, is the medium – the ‘piggy
in the middle’ between sender (producer / institution) and
receiver (audience)
– The media forms listed above are mass media – because they
are intended to communicate with great numbers of people. It
is these mass media which are the focus of the academic subject
of media studies at A-Level and beyond

3. What is Media Studies?
• Media Studies at A-Level centres around the
study of 4 key concepts
• Everything we do in this subject relates to these
4 key concepts
• The 4 key concepts
– Media language
– Media audiences
– Media representations
– Media institutions

4. What is Media Studies?
• AS Media Studies
• 2 units – 1 coursework (50%), 1 exam (50%)
• G321 Foundation Portfolio – the production of
the opening sequence to a film, plus evaluation
in the form of a blog
• G322 Key Media Concepts – 2 sections of work –
TV Drama and representation, Audiences &
Institutions
• A2 Media Studies – 2 more units – coursework
and exam, but harder still…

5. OCR A-level Media Studies
• This is a ‘joined up’ course
• What you do at AS has knock on effects
for A2
• The road to the final exam starts today
• 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.

6. Coursework unit
• Unit G321 Foundation Portfolio
• Preliminary filming exercises
• Teen movie opening sequence production
• Thriller opening sequence production
• Evaluations on blogs
• 1 session per week from September – April
• Minimum target for all – grade B

7. Teen movies – expectations, codes
and conventions
• Key terms – codes, conventions
• Code – something that stands for something
else, e.g. M8 = Mate
• TV / Film – black clothes / facial hair – code for
villain
• Convention – codes repeated so often that they
become part of our expectations for that genre
• E.g. – in teen movies, teens are cool adults are
stupid

8. Teen movies – expectations, codes
and conventions
• Task: What do you think are the codes
and conventions of teen movies?

9. Effective opening sequences
• Task – in groups, present to the class your
ideas about what the ingredients are for a
good opening sequence t for a teen movie
• Refer to the extracts watched and also
other teen films you know