Preperation work before summer holidays and start of term 1

Week 1
Ms Rappel
In our first lesson we looked at the overview of the course and then are coursework unit.
We then looked at question 1b and started off by looking at genre in detail, identifying the different sections (Hybrid, Repertoire of Elements, Iconography, Style, Setting, Narrative, Themes and Audience Response). We also picked a couple of genres and split them up into their sub-genres.
In our next lesson we moved onto Representation. We looked at good and bad stereotypes and talked about dominant beliefs, for example, notion that Native Americans were uncivilised which made their killing and taking of their land seem justified in western films. We created a set of 6 questions which are worth asking, “Who/What is being represented and How?”, “Who is representing them in this way and why?”, “Is it fair and accurate?” and “What opportunities exist for self-representation by the subject?”.
The last thing we did in week 1 was look at the “Public Enemy” movie trailer and “T-pains – Freeze” music video and evaluated the stereotypes and how they are being represented themselves and their music.

Mr Dignan
In our first lesson we looked at an “Adidas Originals” advert and accessed the genre and purpose. We then looked at the regulations of the advert and a complaint that had been made towards it.
We also made a movie trailer checklist of what we thought should always be in a movie trailer. An example of some of these is Movie title, release date, plot (overview), and the stars and so on.
Week 2
Ms Rappel
In this lesson we began to look at Narratives and the difference between plot and narrative. We examined Tzvatan Todorov’s Theory of the basic 3 part structure for all stories. We then applied this theory to a film of our choice and a short Pixar animation.


Mr Dignan
We have now started to look at previous A2 music videos. We looked at the different features and the positive and negatives of each one – reviewed each one.
We also looked at a number of local newspapers and accessed the features. We made a list of what we thought every local newspaper should have and then mind mapped what we found from looking at real ones from different areas in England. We looked at very local newspapers like Portishead “The Mercury” and big city local papers like Manchester.

Week 3
Ms Rappel

We continued to narratives and explored a few more peoples theories (Vladimir Propp’s Theory, William Labov’s Theory and Roland Barthes’s Theory). We tried to apply each theory to a couple of films each.