The Brief

Main Task – A short film in its entirety, lasting approximately five minutes, which may be live action or animated or a combination of both

Ancillary task 1 – A poster for the film

Ancillary task 2 – A film magazine review page featuring the film

In the end we decided to choose this task for the brief for our A2 coursework and to work on this throughout the year. After much discussion on this topic, we felt that as we produced something similar to this for AS already, it would be better to advance on the skills that we learned last year and produce a more improved production work where we will be able to look back see where we did well and where we needed to work on which will help us in creating our work.

Choosing this brief has both its positive and negative sides to it as we are just doing the same type of work that we did for the first year which some could say that we may get bored of it and not complete the work as well. However in the end, we all felt that we enjoyed doing the filming and editing part of the work and that we really enjoyed put the opening scene together and would enjoy producing a whole film. It is also quite beneficial to us to carry on in that same area as we already have experience in it and know what to expect, where things could go wrong for us and etc as we have already gone through this. I also think that once the work has been completed, I will be able to look back at our work from AS and see whether or not I have improved which will show to me if have been able to progress in the two years of dong media studies.

First meeting together as a group

Today we met up for our first group meeting to discuss the briefs that we were given by our teacher. We were given a list of different briefs ranging from advertisements to film making so that we have a range of different areas that we can work on for our A2 coursework. This is because this year it’s more independent work within the different groups rather than the whole class doing the same thing and getting ideas from each other. This is useful as it gives us the opportunity to choose something different from the rest of the class and use the skills that we picked up last year to create something unique and original which would not only impress our teacher or the exam board but other people around us who don’t usually interact themselves in the media area.

We were given a list of 14 briefs to work from however this year we also had to pick two ancillary tasks that went with the task to choose and create as well as the main brief. This is quite nerve racking as well as exciting as we are put under more pressure to do a lot more work than last year but also its giving us the chance to expand our work further and in more depth and also motivates us as we are working on more than one thing so it doesn’t get boring.

Looking at the briefs, there were many which appealed to us that we felt that would be interesting to do such as the advertisements which I have done before in ICT at GCSE and felt that it would be quite appealing to produce however when looking at past A2 blogs, we weren’t able to find anything that would help us in producing our work and so decided not to do this as we wouldn’t know where to start. Other briefs that we thought that we could complete was where we would have to produce a newspaper article however as a group we felt that this would be quite boring and we wouldn’t feel that motivated to do this which decrease the quality of the work. Other briefs such as a new computer game or a music video, we felt that they would be difficult for us to produce and would be complicated and so again felt that this would de-motivate us to do the work.

One brief that seemed to appeal to us quite a bit was where we have to create a film lasting for 5 minutes which seemed reasonable for us to be able to complete however we thought for AS we produced something similar to this and thought maybe we should try to produce something different than last year.

My Group

One of the first tasks that we had to do in class for the start of A2 coursework was choose the people we are going to work with throughout the year or if we wanted to work individually. This is because it was important we get started on the coursework as soon as possible as the A2 coursework is going to be much harder and we are going to produce a lot more work than the AS coursework.

The group that I worked with for my AS coursework consisted with three people; two girls and myself. At the start of the year it was only two of us working together however once we started the course, another girl who joined the class late also came into our group. However though it was three of us in the group only two of us mostly contributed to the production side of the work which was very stressful as we had already planned the tasks between each other and so it slowed us down. This also lead to us starting the filming part of the production very late due to many reasons such as we didn’t have frees at the same time, we weren’t that organised and that when we made plans to meet up one member of the group never really showed up. This put a lot more pressure on the rest of us and so this year we decided not to work with people who would not contribute with the work.

My A2 Group:

v  Aabidah Ali

v  Safina Rashid

v  Sonia Ahmed

For my A2 coursework, I am still going to be working with one member of the original group. This is because I am comfortable with working with her and also that I know that she won’t back out halfway through the course or leave all the work to another member of the group to do. Communication within the group is necessary and as I see her everyday and am in most of her lessons, I will be able to talk to her about the work regularly and keep on top of things and won’t fall behind which was a factor in our late start last year. As I worked with her last year, I am also confident that if needed to meet up outside of school she will which is important as there is a lot more work to complete this year and getting together to talk about it is essential. This year we have a new member to the group who has decided to join us as she wasn’t happy with the group she was working with for AS. Looking at her AS blog and the work she did throughout the year with her last group, we felt that she is determined to work hard and will also work fairly within the group which is beneficial to all of us. We also see her regularly outside of lessons which is important as we are going to have to meet up at several times outside of lessons and school to discuss the coursework.  I am quite confident that with the group that I am going to work with, I will be able to complete the production part of the coursework to a high quality extent.