Sunday, October 07, 2018

October update: Textbooks and more

It's been an action-packed start to the year in Media and now is a good time to take stock and go through some key messages and updates.

Media Awards

As we have mentioned in class, this year’s Media Awards has been moved to March as a result of the new specifications in GCSE and A Level Media. The good news is that the March show looks likely to be jam-packed with amazing work including:
  • Last year’s GCSE music videos 
  • This year’s GCSE science fiction TV drama extracts 
  • This year’s A Level film trailers 
We’ll have more information about the Media Awards nearer the time but it’s looking likely to be our best event yet!

Twitter

Don’t forget the Greenford Media department runs a Twitter account that tweets and retweets useful articles, links and questions that A Level Media students should be keeping up with. You don’t need to join Twitter or tweet yourself but follow us @blogmacguffin or simply visit twitter.com/blogmacguffin to look at the account from any web browser.


A Level Media Textbooks

After long delays, there are now two textbooks available for the new specification AQA A Level Media Studies course. We would strongly recommend you buy both textbooks as collectively they cover the whole course in terms of subject content and also feature many of the CSPs that will come up in the exams.

Note: the 20% discount doesn't seem to be working on the A Level texts at present. We'll investigate this but the books are available on Amazon for around £23 in the meantime.

The details:

AQA MEDIA STUDIES FOR A LEVEL YR 1 & AS: STUDENT BOOK
  • NEW SPEC: AQA Media Studies for A Level Yr 1 & AS: Student Book 
  • AUTHOR(S): Stephanie Hendry, Elspeth Stevenson 
  • AWARDING BODY: AQA 
  • LEVEL: A Level Year 1 & AS 
  • ISBN: 978-1-911208-03-7 
  • SUBJECT: Media Studies 
  • PAGES: 272pp 


AQA MEDIA STUDIES FOR A LEVEL YEAR 2: STUDENT BOOK
  • AQA Media Studies for A Level Year 2: Student Book 
  • AUTHOR(S): Stephanie Hendry, Elspeth Stevenson 
  • AWARDING BODY: AQA 
  • LEVEL: A Level Year 2 
  • ISBN: 978-1-911208-09-9 
  • SUBJECT: Media Studies 



Creative Mentor Network

The Creative Mentor Network is an incredible opportunity for post-16 students to make connections in the creative and media industries by shadowing a professional for several weeks. We’ve had a number of students complete the project and develop a fantastic range of contacts and experiences that will help them to get a job in the creative industries in future.

You can find more details on the CMN website or watch the video below (featuring our very own Hussein!)





Bank of England film competition

The Bank of England is once again running a film competition for A Level students. Bank, Camera, Action asks students to make a short film in response to a brief and there are Amazon prizes (plus cash to the school!) for winners. Any medium is acceptable – fiction, documentary, news report, music video… it’s up to you. The brief is simple:

What will money be like in the future?

You can find more details and how to apply here.


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