J20 cats and dog advert, postmodern advert

I thought that this advert was pretty postmodern, as the hyperreal situation of cat and dogs on human bodies are partying together because of J20. 

Quentin Tarantino, a review (work in progress)

It has been widely debated that Quentin Tarantino's style of directing and producing movies is just other movies, never coming up with a fresh new idea for himself. Others debate that this is Tarantino's style and because he hasn't changed since he started to direct it is unlikely that he will change, which many will argue is a good thing.

We can tell that his inspiration from different films bleeds into his other films. in an interview about Kill bill, Tarantino describes kill bill as a 'revenge' movie, 'Revenge movies span all genre's, that plots been in kung fu movies, samurai movies, spaghetti westerns' these specific genre's tend to be used by Tarantino as a basis for a more complex movie. Kill bill for example draws on the whole 'Samurai Revenge' movie, where an individual would have 'a bunch of jokers screw them up really badly' and kill loved ones around them or 'beat the hell out of them' and then that individual tracks each person down and 'makes them wish they were dead'.

1a

1a. You need to write about your work for your Foundation portfolio and Advance Portfolio units.

1a. Explain how far your understanding of the conventions of existing media influenced the way you created your own media products. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how this understanding developed over time. [25]

In question 1b you must write about one of your media productions only.

1b. Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to the concept of audience. 




Existing media products helped me to plan my media coursework in both my preliminary and my advanced portfolio's. Planing my products around standard conventions of existing media products allowed me to view the tasks that I had been set in a more constructive manner, meeting different requirement's that past products had used allowed me to have a check list of idea's that I would include, going down the list and making sure that I had incorporated these elements allowed me to create an effective end product that met the requirements of the specification.


During my As media coursework I found that I tried to stick to many of the conventions that a normal music magazine would have. I started out in my preliminary task at the start of year 12 with no real experience in photoshop or the conventions that a magazine effective would have. this led to me creating a poor first attempt at a school magazine front cover and contents page, the resulting effort's were pretty poor, I had set the main image out badly and it floated in the middle of the page, this meant that the person in the picture was without legs. the colour's that i had used for the front cover were pretty bad, I had not yet met the convention that a media product should ether have a effective and simple colour scheme or the colour scheme should match the 3 colour principle, where the magazine would only use three colour's. My first attempts at trying to create a media product without meeting any premising media product convention's produced a pretty amateur result which looked very unprofessional and didn't offer anything aesthetically. 


My understanding of preexisting media convention's had started to expand during my AS coursework as i found that creating drafts of my first music magazine front cover, although due to limitations with my photoshop skill's i found that I wasn't able to produce any images to a very satisfactory level. Although my use of media conventions had started to expand I was able to include the three colour rule and the golden spiral, this paired with a new found knowledge of magazine layout through the post 'magazine analysis' allowed me to produce some slightly higher quality work. although these draft were a improvement on my original preliminary work they were not at the standard I needed to be able to complete a professional looking final draft.


With my development of my understanding of existing media products I was able to produce some work that included more elements of convention, for example the positioning of a title so that It was central or the use of contrasted colour's allowed me to improve on my original drafts. Therefore I felt that my understanding of conventions had allowed me to create a product that had a more professional style to it, therefore making similarities between existing products and my own products allowed me to create a more effective product.

Drive class notes

Drive Notes

post modern Artist Madeon

Post Modern Artist-Madeon on Prezi

Detail how your understanding of the importance of good research and planning skills developed throughout the pre-production of your AS and A2 coursework

Detail how your understanding of the importance of good research and planning skills developed throughout the pre-production of your AS and A2 coursework

During the research stage of my AS media blog I found that research was a very important part of the course, without the appropriate research and planning the task wouldn’t follow a set idea and any work that was created lacked a distinct style, therefore it lost marks. However I thought that I had improved vastly in my research skills on my A2 blog as I found that the more posts I did about planning and research the easier I found designing the work I had create, for example in my A2 Blog I did a number of posts on researching already existing music videos and posting about what I liked about them and which aspects I wanted tom include in my A2 coursework.

I found that I didn’t have to spend any money at all when came to the research stage of my coursework blogs, this was mainly because I found most of the materials online, for example on my As media coursework blog I found various different magazine front covers, content pages and double page spreads on Google images, and as I have free access to the internet it didn’t cost me anything, likewise for my A2 media coursework blog as I found all the videos and digipacks either on Youtube or Goolge images again. In terms of accessibility I found all of my research materials relatively easily, searching for the correct phrases on Google usual brought up the correct images or videos.

The research and planning stages of both of my coursework blogs did take a considerable amount of time, this didn’t change over the two separate blogs, I found that research also delved into justifying different images I had selected, it also brought into the matter what worked well on a previous product I what you could use from it to make your product, for example colour schemes on an NME magazine could be used on my magazine.

I feel that in some respects my AS coursework blog did lack in validity with the final product I had produced, for example for my magazine I changed the style half way through the course because the previous style of ‘grunge’ was seen as dead and I would have a hard time trying to fit my magazine to a target market that didn’t exist any more. Though in contrast to this my research and planning for my joint A2 coursework blog could be seen as much more valid, as every element that had been discussed and posted about had appeared in the final product, for example some effort went into designing and creating some t shirts that each member of the band wore in the final music video.

I found that the organization of research in my As media coursework blog was lacking, I didn’t really know how to use blogger straight away so some of my posts wouldn’t have labels on them so if I searched for Research on my As blog it wouldn’t come up with all of my posts. I feel that I have improved this in my A2 blog as every post I did about research I labelled ‘research’ for example my tube chop edit research about three different music video types, and my mood board were both labelled as research.

I feel that the drafts I created for my as media blog were not up to a good standard, I wasn’t using photoshop properly and I hadn’t had much experience in designing a magazine, so when I created my three drafts I had some very poor drafts on my magazines, so this was a problem when they came back as I effectively had to create the drafts from scratch to be able to get a better grade.

I felt that the research I did into the genre of my of music magazine was fairly in depth but the problem was I didn’t have enough consistent analysis of my genre so the posts became more of a list of bands then I did research. However in my A2 media blog I found it much easier to research the genre as Rupert and I had clearly set out which genre we were doing and we created a very detailed and thought out list of research idea’s on our genre.

I felt that goog planning and research allowed me to design and create a much better product, for example in my AS media blog both my planning and research were weak and this eventually let me down we it came to designing my magazine as weak analysis of magazine layout had led me to create a magazine that didn’t really fit with standard magazine formats. 

Jonathan Kramer Post modern music theories

Jonathan Kramer

• considers music not as autonomous but as relevant to cultural, social, and political contexts

•  encompasses pluralism and eclecticism