Product Research - Film Posters

Click on the title above for a great starting point for film poster analysis.

Be a Proper Media Student!

Many of you have given me that blank "what dat man talking 'bout" look whenever I mention certain classic films and directors in class.  If you click on the link in the title of this post, you will be taken to a previous post that contains the titles of some great films, TV drama and comedy.  I strongly recommend you start viewing some or all of this stuff.  It will make you a better Media student and, more importantly, a better person to meet at parties.

A2 Production Work - some useful samples of work

Go to the OCR blog to see some thought provoking examples of student blogs for Advanced Portfolio. I think you should pay close attention to the quality if presentation in the blogs.

Putting It All Together - Social Media and News Reporting

 

Riot Cleaner Flashmob (Photo courtesy Guardian/Matt Dunham/AP)

 Pete Fraser's blog is a great place to start when thinking about the impact of social ("We") media on news reporting and consumption.  He focuses particularly on the events of Summer 2011 but all of the ideas are relevant to most contemporary news story.  Go read now and get a jump on the We Media unit.

EXAM ALERT - Trusting Social Media

I hope to god that some of you actually check this blog out every now and then, especially in the run up to Thursday's exam.  This morning a massive news story broke that is a brilliant example to illustrate issues around trust and authority when it comes to We Media.

With reporting on events in Syria being hampered by banning of foreign journalists from the country, many news organisations have been relying on social media reports from within Syria.  One such source was a blog, alleged to have been written by a Syrian-American lesbian living in Damascus (the capital of Syria).  The traditional media even reported her capture by Syrian authorities last week.



A picture that alleged to be the author of the
blog but turned out to be that of a
London resident



Then what happens?  Turns out the blog is written by an American student studying in Edinburgh.  He claims that while his identity may have been false, what he wrote was fact.  This is reminiscient of when the Daily Mirror published false pictures of Western soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners and the then editor Piers Morgan defended their publication by claiming that while they didn't capture a true event it did represent what truly happens in Iraq.

Click on the title above and here to read more about the Syrian Blog Hoax

Can being 'networked' really change the world?

If you haven't been watching Adam Curtis's excellent new series "All Watched Over by Machine's of Loving Grace" - BBC2 Mondays at 9pm - you should try to catch up on iPlayer (click on title above).  In tonight's episode he questions the thinking that underlies much of the belief that the internet will make us free and change the world for the better. If you can't cope with the whole doc, at least watch the last 20 mins of episode 2 where he looks at what has happened in the post Soviet nations and like Georgia after their 'internet organised' revolutions had promised great change and democracy.

Will our virtual and real selves merge?

Click on the title above to find out more about the possibilities of Web 3.0.  What effect would the merging of our virtual and real selves have on our democratic rights?  Think Minority Report!