My name is Charlotte Woollard and this is my blog for my A2 Media Studies project! After gaining an A grade at AS level, I was looking forward to studying Media Studies for A2. I am extremely interested in TV and film and was looking forward to making a 5-minute film for my coursework. In our first lesson we wrote notes on the 5 key concepts examined at A2: media language, audience, genre, narrative and representation.
To start the year, we began to talk about the first key concept, media language. For our A2 project we are focusing on short films. I was interested to find the definition for a 'short film' and found that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits". Longer films were rare before the 1920's due to the lack of technology and programmes, therefore, short films were particularly popular. The audience for short films in the modern day is probably those who enjoy a diverse variety of films without the exhaustion of concentrating on a film for 2 hours. Short films also include morals which are particularly useful for showing to a large audience such as the effects of drinking.
For our research, we watched a short film on the BBC Film Network called 'Smashed,' a drama about four friends drinking on a night out. We were given the task to analyse the short film, applying technical and analytical terms from the key concept of media language. I found this task useful, however, I did not realise how many different things producers and directors took into account when making a film. We analysed the smallest details, including what the characters were wearing and how camera angles can make someone look superior or inferior. This made me think of the little things we will have to think about when making our own film for Media Studies this year.
Here is a link to the BBC Film Network in order to see the film we are analysing:
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