Media Studies A Level Coursework

Today marked my first day of access to my primary location, and thus my first shoot. I managed to film over two thirds of my footage, meaning I'm happy I'll be able to finish off tomorrow. Here are some photos from the shoot. I also decided to experiment and see how I'm going to grade the footage. The strong green grading is going to be one of the things that ties my extract and my magazine piece together stylistically, and as such I thought I'd try it and get a feel for how the final piece could look. My first test is shown below - it hasn't been stabilised or sound edited yet, so ignore the squeaky dolly.

I now have official permission to shoot in my primary location over half term, which is definitely good news. I've completed a risk assessment for the shoot, which is as follows:

Learner Name: Jack Larkin Word Count: 499 words My drama will emulate the cinematic, Scandi-noir feel of many of ITVs greatest successes, such as Broadchurch, by using a range of media techniques. The show will be heavily graded, emphasising in particular the greens and blues, while still keeping the colour palate fairly muted. As the scenes from my extract are quite intense, with a lot of strong emotion on display, the shots (particularly those of the DS running to the warehouse) will have handheld-style camera movement and a shallow depth-of-field, alternating between medium shots and close-ups on the faces of those involved, or important props. Regarding characters, the lead DCI and DS will be male and female respectively, reflecting many modern ITV crime dramas, providing cross-gender appeal, and upholding ITV’s commitment to gender parity. The reason I’ve chosen a male DCI is because the audience are more likely to believe that a male cop could be a corrupt crime king t...

Aside from the audio-visual piece, I also have to create a front cover and double-page spread about my show for a lifestyle magazine. As such, I've been looking at several of these magazines to see how they're designed and laid out. One thing I've noticed is that practically all the covers are more about the star than the show itself. Take the following examples: All of them have a celebrity taking centre stage on the cover, usually with their name in the strapline or main cover line, always either looking into the camera or slightly off into the middle distance, surrounded by several cover lines promising to drastically improve your life, entertain you, or both. As this format is shared by practically every lifestyle magazine under the sun, this is the format I'll use. Originally I was planning to have a cinematic-looking still from the show as my cover, perhaps the opening shot of DCI Griffin tied up in the chair, but that's not really right for lifestyle ma...