Media Magazine Conference

As part of a way to enhance our Media A2 Coursework and research to gain access to higher levels we attended a Conference at London University which was here and organized by Media Magazine. We were one of the smallest groups as there were just nine of us, and there were about 300 Media AS and A2 students there in total. The conference was running from approximately 10 until 3 which included a lunch break, in which there was the chance to talk to students from different universities who studied Media courses. There were also different stands from the two leading Media Universities handing out prospectus’ and giving advice on courses.

Itinerary:

First off we had a talk from David Buckingham which included this presentation about the riots.

Riots

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This presentation gave us lots of statistics on how youths are presented in the media, especially in light of the London Riots.

We also had speeches from Julian McDougall [insert link to video], Steph Hendry and Christine Bell who all talked about different elements of Media A Level...

A few of our group, about 70 students in total stayed behind for fifteen minutes during the lunch break to speak to current Media University students at Hertfordshire, Leeds, and Goldsmith Universities. They gave helpful pointers on what choice you should choose and how you can better your chances on getting accepted. They also did a short Q & A session in which they answered questions posed by the A Level students. One of these questions was how they intend to get into their desired career path after they have left University. This session was very useful in helping me to decide about my future career.

After lunch we had a very interesting and useful speech by Pete Fraser. This is the presentation that he used to motivate us:

Presentation nov 4

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To help us more he showed us different examples of some coursework which has been submitted as A2 final products and asked us all how we could improve it all. The footage that we watch first of all was of a short film opening, and it had many problems with it, which we all picked up on and included:

- You could hear the wind over the speech

- Unrehearsed

- The 'costume' didn't looked planned

- Shaky cameras

- Bad Quality

Tayler and I decided that we would make sure that none of these problems applied to our own production. We have since decided that we will make costumes for our actors to make them over exaggerated and make them stand out. We decided that we would not contain much diegetic speech in our movie trailer, but instead we would make a narrative at the radio station where I am a volunteer. However, we would definitely check that the actors involved know what they are doing, and run through any actions that they need to do to make sure that they are comfortable and aware of what they are doing. Also, for all of our shots my camera, which records in HD format, will be on a tripod for the duration of the shot.



Pete then continued to tell of his 9 key words and to explain them fully to help us to create a high graded media production, whatever brief we had chosen.



Next up to speak to us was Garth Jennings, who has produced and directed many moving images such as The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. He told us about his journey from being a young boy, to a Hollywood director by showing us several of his films that he had made himself when he was our age.



Lastly, we had some speeches from Babita Sharma and Paul Lewis. Paul Lewis is a journalist for the Guardian, and he talked to us about some difficulties and highlights of his career in the Media. Babita is a newsreader for BBC News, and she also talked us through the positives and negatives of working in the Media. They both told us how they got the where they are now in the Media, and what we could do to make ourselves look better for Universities and employers in the future. At the end of the conference, after everyone else had left, a few of us were also lucky enough to meet Babita, and have a picture taken with her.

Overall, the conference was very useful, and I am very grateful that I was able to attend. The speeches made me realise how it wasn't that difficult to get high marks in our Media coursework, we just had to have high standards. This helped both me and Tayler to realise that we had to expect the best from ourselves; otherwise our teaser trailer might be of a lower quality than we want. It also made us think about all the different aspects of filming our trailer, and how we could get to the high end of all of them. In addition, the speeches from the people who are working in the Media helped me to see that I need to put myself forward for every opportunity that is offered to me at this stage of my life, as everything will help make me more employable in the future.

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