Deadlines/Brief

Music videos are so 80s/90s, right? They belong with the era when MTV screened wall-to-wall vids instead of 'reality' TV? Try telling that to the millions who bought Gangnam Style; were they really simply loving the music? 1.6bn (and still climbing) have viewed the video on YT, not to mention the many re-makes (school eg, eg2), viral ads + celeb link-ups (even political protest in Seoul) - and it doesn't matter how legit it is, this nightmare for daydream Beliebers is making a lot of money, even from the parodies + dislikes. All this for a simple dance track that wouldn't have sounded out of place in 1990 ... but had a fun vid. This meme itself was soon displaced by the Harlem Shake. Music vids even cause diseases it seems!
This blog explores every aspect of this most postmodern of media formats, including other print-based promo tools used by the industry, its fast-changing nature, + how fans/audiences create/interact. Posts are primarily written with Media students/educators in mind. Please acknowledge the blog author if using any resources from this blog - Mr Dave Burrowes

Sunday, 16 October 2011

Act History: superb eg + showcase work

There were some excellent posts on this last year you can look at, but also Rob's on the history of Muse is exemplary. Very well detailed, with a blend of his own words and quotations (which are clearly identified), well presented with illustrative imagery and embedded vids.
I've had emails asking about use of Wikis, which this post largely relies on.
Basically - its okay to use Wikis as the primary resource for SOME posts, but if your blog continually relies on this you are showing weak research skills. Do general googling, try Amazon book searches (and use the 'Look Inside' to access some sample pages) in conjunction with google books (again, you can read some sample pages), newspaper searches (eg Guardian), magazines, blogs etc You could also do a quick index search of Lib/F6 books.
If you want to make it clear not just to me but to the exam board how wide your research has been, start a Links List called Sources Used For Research. Put a link and description in for every source you use (so Amazon links for books). This would overlap with more specific Links Lists but:
make it easy for credit to be awarded for your work; make the evidence very easy to spot. 

When I'm justifying my marks to the exam board I have to write detailed summaries; use what you learned from marking 2011 blogs to put the evidence of your work (not just research but ticking every box - aud research/feedback, drafting etc) in a prominent space.
Imagine you're an examiner with 300 blogs to mark - which is the approx number many will be assigned. Now imagine marking two blogs: one has used links lists/summary posts to summarise work, learning and blog content, handily fitting in with the assessment criteria. This blog can be skimmed through and marks verified quickly. But a second blog hasn't done this; an hour later, after you've trawled through just some of the posts looking for evidence of excellence/proficiency etc on each criteria you think its a borderline case, but thankfully you're feeling so happy at having to spend all this time that naturally you'll award the most positive mark...

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