Introduction

Hello! My name is Ali and I am an A2 student at York College. This blog is for my media coursework, but I also study Sociology, Business Studies and Film Studies at the college.

On this blog, I will be presenting my A2 Media Studies coursework. For this coursework, I will work in a group of four where we will make a music video, a digipak and a magazine advert. I will publish these on my blog and also enter my written analysis here.

I am doing this coursework in order to gain 50% of my A2 media grade. I require a good overall grade in Media in order to continue my education with a progression to university next year. Once there, I hope to study media once again in order to one day teach media at GCSE and A-Level.

I have chosen to use Blogspot for this blog as I am familiar with how to use it, having published blogs here in the past. I also believe Blogspot makes it easier for readers of my blog to comment, as you do not necessarily have to be a member unlike some other blogging sites. Also, as Blogspot belongs to Google, search results for the blog should appear quickly, unlike other sites I have used in the past such as Livejournal.

I have until Christmas to finish this coursework. I intend to use all the time given fully in order to gain the best grade possible on results day. I believe there will be plenty of time to complete all the tasks fully, so long as the time is used wisely, and lesson time is devoted to what we need to do as a group.

In order to complete the coursework to the best of my ability, I believe I will need to use a wide range of resources to help me with my initial research. In order to make the best video possible, I will study other students' videos on YouTube, and the videos of famous musicians in order to gain a grasp of what sort of techniques work and which do not.

In order to find suitable locations to shoot the video, we will probably go out and visit possible locations, in order to be able to compare them at the end and choose the best. Those locations that we do not get the chance to visit before deciding where to shoot, we may look for images on Google Earth, so we are able to see what they look like.

When choosing actors and performers for the video, we must first consider what we want the star of our video to look like, as not everyone will be suitable, and those chosen will not only need to look right, but will also need to be confident in front of the camera. It may be possible to ask people from the Performing Arts section of the college to star in the video, or to ask friends.

For getting the video “out there” when it is finished, there will be a number of possible ways of doing it. One way to do this will be to upload the video onto YouTube and then embed it into my blog. I also intend to share it as a link on Facebook, and possibly ask some of my friends to do this too, in order to gain maximum feedback, which should help with analysis on how I felt the project went.

I hope that the project will go well and that everything will run smoothly throughout the course of the next fourteen weeks. For this to happen, careful planning will need to take place as soon as are placed in our groups, as it is important that all aspects of the coursework are finished on time.

From this project, I hope to gain an understanding of new areas of the media. These will include how to make and edit music videos, and also how to create a digipak and magazine advert. Aside from what I will learn about the media, I also hope to gain more skills that will come from working in a group, such as teamwork skills and working to deadlines together.

I hope to ensure that the project runs smoothly and finishes on time by setting deadlines and meeting them. I will also ensure that I check all of my work, and in the case of the video, watch it repeatedly, in order to make sure that all of the work has been completed to the best of my ability.

Thank you for reading and I hope you will continue to check out my blog in order to see how I am getting on with my coursework!