Media Studies WJEC MS4 Help.

Yeah it's Friday 15th AM
Im doing music indusrty too!
I couldn't find any past paper either but they would be useful, only one ive seen is last years which our teacher showed us

Doctor Who's the only one we've got in common lol Im also doing Miss Marple :/ and CSI
and film we're doing Paul, Slumdog millionaire and the kings speech

2 sides and a half is normally the amount my teacher accepts as a good effort for each question so over all should be about 8 sides ish

Do we need to bring theorys into our answers? Because we havent learnt any :/

Yeah theories would be important. These are what I'm using for Film, TV & Music.

For film, genre- conventions, narrative- Todorov structure, Strauss' Binary Opposites, Propps Character Types, Vogler's Hero's Journey, Barthes' Codes, Representation- how/stereotypical/whose/postive or negative

For Television- mainly just for audiences, Hall/Morley's Audience Responses, Fiske's Positioning, U & G Theory, Young & Rubicam's Consumer Groups.

For Music- basically the same as audiences for television.

I thought the magazine for our year's entry was a music magazine? That's odd, since I did the Jan entry, and it was concerned with the music industry, more than anything else...

Unless you're talking about coursework? Our exams should be the same, since I took WJEC Media too, but can you layout your course; seems to be different to mine.

This is somewhat belated, but here's my school wiki; you may find it useful in terms of theory!

http://www.esfmedia.com/page/GCSE+Media

I'm sorry about confusing you, it is rather odd...
Either way, I wouldn't worry! Media is underpinned by two or three base concepts, and the rest of the theories are built up around it.

These are, unfortunately... the ones you're having trouble with.
To put it simply,
Text: the actual thing, or product viewed by people- i.e: Slumdog Millionare, The Daily Telegraph, Nicki Minaj's "Stupid Hoe"

Audience: The people themselves that view the text- they can be divided into various social classes

Industry: The media industry provides, and creates text in order to satisfy the audience, and obtain money from them.

It's not too difficult to link audience and text together, but the high points come from linking the INDUSTRY, and the TEXT to each other, and HOW the industry therefore affects the text.

For example, if a text say, Telephone by Lady Gaga was made by an indie music company, rather than one of the 'Big Four', this would affect the amount of people that Gaga reaches that is, her audience. This would mean that her star persona would be perceived quite differently in context.

As for the exam, try your best! But it's okay if you mess up a little- I dropped a 10 mark question and still managed to come out with an A*; it's very important to have good coursework!

Ahh man... my teacher hasnt even mentioned any theories at all... And i need an A grade :/

A lot of you guys seemed to have studied Doctor Who as one of your texts, think I would have actually self-combusted if we'd been taught that. We did Sherlock and it was hard enough containing my inner fan-girl for that, especially when you know more about the show than the teacher

My other texts are
Film: Burn After Reading, True Grit and Touching the Void
TV: Sherlock, 24 and Gavin & Stacey
Music; Britney, Radiohead and Lana Del Rey.

It's a good thing I find Media relatively easy compared to my other A Levels, because we were given a revision guide to basically teach ourselves the end of the Music section, we had 2 lessons on Radiohead before term ended and just about listened to a few of their songs. And I've only got 3 days to revise for this exam. Fingers crossed there won't be any difficult questions!

Can someone please explain what a "narrative" actually is, say the question is on narrative, because i kind of get what it means but not fully and it seems pretty important..

Technically speaking the narrative is the story itself, and what it's composed of. To analyse this narrative we use narrative theory's. For example the propp's theory, we'd analyse the role of the 'hero' or 'villain' within the narrative(story). With the enigma code i.e 'Who killed Jane Doe' we'd analyse the impact it has on the narrative (other characters actions perhaps) and the impact on the audience. One way to analyse narrative specifically is Todrov's narrative theory; 'Equilibrium, disruption, recognition of disruption, repair and new equilibrium'. One here would analyse each section throughout the film and how that effects the plot and the audience.

(Sorry I can't explain it better >< )