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AT THE CINEMA |
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Year 10 Session log: October
Look left for September's lessons!
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| Session: |
How do we identify genres?
Yesterday's lesson over-ran into today's, so we began with a plenary reviewing yesterday's lively TV schedules. It prompted an interesting discussion about audiences, and whether popularity was the only (or best) influence over scheduling decisions.
BUT we had to move on, to a definition of Genre. We introduced the idea of genres having codes and conventions, sometimes known as the repertoire of elements. Students name some of the common features of television sitcoms, and then settled down to review an episode of Friends, taking notes on the worksheet I provided. |
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Homework: |
Homework: Is Friends typical of the sitcom genre? Write a 200 word explanation. |
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Who controls our access to the media?
We began a whistle-stop journey through media institutions by learning a little about the ways different media are regulated. We then continued with our look at television scheduling: this week, groups of students planned their own TV schedules, aiming to produce the most popular Saturday evening of television they could! |
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Audience: Are we in control of what we watch?
We began by completing yesterdays' task, discussing the kinds of TV programmes that students felt should be kept away from certain audiences, especially children. Most of the class could remember a time when they had watched something they had not been ready for. They also already knew about the "nine o'clock watershed."
This led us on to a discussion about audience segmentation, and the ways in which TV channels, magzines and websites had proliferated to address more and more specialised audience segments.
Students chose a TV channel from the listings magazines and started creating a rundown of products that might be advertised during a two-hour period in the schedule.
Unfortunately, we didn't have time to consider the Conditions of Consumption in any depth, but students did go away thinking about this question:
Is the media a force which brings people together, or separates them? |
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Audience: What role do we have in the media we consume?
As a starter, students reflected on their own media consumption, and after we'd swapped their notes around it was entertaining to see who could identify their fellow students from their media consumption alone.
We extended this by students taking on the role of a relative from a different age range, and answering on their behalf. We ended up with three age groups in the room: young, parent-generation and grandparent-generation. Comparing notes revealed a number of commonalities, but some individual differences too. From this we were able to agree that grouping audiences in categories could be useful up to a point.
We then took a look at some TV listings magazines, with students identifying which programmes might be inappropriate for certain kinds of audiences. We'll continue with this tomorrow
I also spoke to students today about the state of some of their exercise books. It was a pleasure to hand out merits for some work well done, and a pain to have to hand out detentions as well for missing homework. |
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Homework: |
Unless you have already done this, stick your worksheets into your books, labelled, and buy covers for them. |
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Stereotypes
We finished yesterday's topic by discussing the origin fo stereotypes (something truthful that has become exaggerated) and exploring whether stereotypes had to be negative, or built only around people we mistrusted or feared.
Institutiuons
With time against us, we went on to explore the nature of the 'star', and identified that people with star status tend to have power - to sell media texts, to get them produced or changed etc. We then expanded this to more conventional institutions, considering the role of different big media and commercial businesses, and their connections with each other.
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Homework: |
Read the handout on Multinationals.
Complete the research task: Popularity and Success. This will be a challenge, so start now and be ready to ask questions next week.
DUE: Thursday October 19 |
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Representation: Stereotypes
Now that we all understand that the media re-presents people, places, things and ideas, we could see that some representations are very narrow and biased. We looked at a range of different pictures and discussed the different ways in which they seemed to present stereotyped views of different groups of people. Producers were part of this process, but so were audience expectations. |
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Homework: |
Complete a content analysis of a tabloid newspaper, focusing on the representation of either women or children and young people. DON'T DO BOTH! Work your way carefully through whichever of the worksheets you wish.
DUE: Thursday October 12 |
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