The method is on Media Forms and Techniques.
1. An advertisement shows a family at a kitchen table, shot slightly from below, in warm light, no music, with the product out of focus in the foreground. Name three techniques and one effect each.
Answer 1
Low angle: the family is given stature — this is aspiration, not instruction. Warm grade: nostalgia and safety. Shallow focus with the product foregrounded: the product is present in the memory without competing with it. And the absence of music tells you the target audience is one that distrusts being told how to feel.
2. Two front pages cover the same protest. One leads with a photograph of a broken window; the other with a wide daylight shot of the crowd. Neither has published a false fact. What is the difference called, and what does each argue?
Answer 2
Selection and emphasis, not falsehood — see Bias and Perspective. The first argues that the event is a threat to order; the second, that it is a public expression of a position. The choice of lens made the argument before any word was written.
3. A documentary about a factory closure interviews eleven former workers and no executives. Is that bias?
Answer 3
It is a perspective, and it may be a justified one — the film may be about what closure does to workers. It becomes bias if the film claims to explain why the factory closed while systematically excluding the people who decided. State what the film can and cannot support.
4. What is left out of a thirty-second advertisement for a food product? List four categories.
Answer 4
Price, labour, supply chain, and everybody who does not fit the intended audience. Also: the product’s competitors, and any measure by which it is worse.
5. Take one advertisement you like and write ninety words of analysis on it.
Answer 5
No fixed answer. The check: does every claim point at something visible or audible in the text? Analysis that could have been written without watching it is description of a genre, not analysis of a text.
Curriculum connection
D1.3
evaluate how effectively information, ideas, issues, and opinions, are communicated in media texts, including increasingly complex texts, and decide whether the texts achieve their intended purpose (e.g., determine whether they get more information about a news story from a TV clip or a newspaper report; determine how accurately an animated children’s film featuring animal “characters” depicts aspects of human societies)
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D1.5
identify the perspectives and/or biases evident in media texts, including increasingly complex texts, and comment on any questions they may raise about beliefs, values, identity, and power (e.g., explain the perspectives evident in the covers of a selection of novels featured in the school’s English program; comment on the point of view evident in a television news story, identifying other possible points of view; analyse the text and images in a major department store’s website to identify groups and occupations that are represented and those that are nowhere evident)
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D3.1
describe the topic, purpose, and audience for media texts they plan to create (e.g., a web page presenting a personal anthology of poetry to their peers), and identify significant challenges they may face in achieving their purpose
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D3.2
select a media form to suit the topic, purpose, and audience for a media text they plan to create, and explain why it is an appropriate choice (e.g., explain why a posting on a videosharing website would be the best way to promote a new song)
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D3.4
produce media texts for a variety of purposes and audiences, using appropriate forms, conventions, and techniques (e.g., a sports magazine cover for a teenage audience; posters promoting their independent reading selections for display in the school library; a commercial promoting the contributions of Aboriginal people)
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