LESSON 120415: KEY CONCEPTS

The objective of the lesson is to ensure that students are prepared for the next lesson in which you will present the two minute clips to the rest of the group [a reminder here that the clips ought to be uploaded to blogs for ease of access in the lesson and to enable staff to assess the work later]

Objective [1] To understand media texts we need to apply a series of criteria that we call The Key Concepts

We must begin any study of the media with the key concepts – these are the basic tools of the media students knowledge and understanding as to how texts work with audiences.

If you are able to ‘DE-CONSTRUCT’ media texts you will find that your own texts will work better and will be much more effective in putting across your ideas to audiences.

We’ll begin by looking at an image from the Michael Caine gangster film ‘GET CARTER’ to see how the key concepts can be applied to understand the purpose of showing Carter in this way – the location, the costume, the construction of the shot and what this might tell us about the audience it was intended for [grades E-C]

We will also see how it contributes towards understanding the institution that created it and the audience’s own understanding of themselves. [grades A/B/C]

We'll be working from the PowerPoint The Key Concepts for the rest of the lesson so be certain to access this if you miss today's lesson.

Remember – without understanding the theory your own work will be much less effective and your final examination performance will be poor 

Media Representations

Media Language

Media Audiences

Media Institutions

Media Values and Ideology

Task : In what ways [Q/A] does the image from Get Carter utilise these to create a reading and an audience?

[2] Representations: 

We'll next look at some further images that require some de-construction to fully understand them and whose meanings tell us something about the ideologies that underpin them [and our society].

Next we'll look at a video clip that tells us something about media forms as well as carrying some ideological messages that that the product [orange phones] wanted to be associated with in audience minds.