Y11ATAR S1 Popular Culture

The focus of this unit is popular culture. Students analyse and respond to a range of popular culture media, identifying techniques, purpose and meanings that are created and audience interpretation. Students develop their own ideas and learn production skills to produce media work in the context of popular culture.

Students have the opportunity to explore and respond to many aspects of popular culture, including how audiences consume popular media and the meanings created by codes and conventions.

Students work through the stages of production and communicate ideas based on their understanding of media languages by experiencing a variety of roles in specific production types.

The foci for this semester will be Zombie Films, Music Videos and Internet Videos.  You should decide on what kind of screen product you want to make early on, so you can tie your learning to your goal of producing an excellent screen product by the end of the semester.

Unit content

This unit includes the knowledge, understandings and skills described below.

Note: The dot-points below cover everything you can be examined on, so learn them well and practice writing cohesive essays and short answers.  You may find ChatGPT helpful in creating exemplars.  Click on each dot point for a short and long an

Media languages

System of communication

• relationship between media, popular culture and context - see two short answer exemplars and an extended answer exemplars.

• trends in media use, genres and/or styles 

Narrative, codes and conventions

• narrative structures

• narrative elements in different genres and styles, including characters, settings, conflicts, resolutions

• codes and conventions used to construct meaning

• construction of theme in media work

Representation

• the process of constructing representations

• linking representations to the values of mainstream audiences

• the effects of using stereotypes

Audience

• how mainstream audience values inform media work

• how meaning is encoded by the producer and decoded by audiences

Industry

Media producers

• factors that affect media work produced in a large-scale institution

• the role of media producers in the commercialisation of media work

Production contexts

• the influence of globalisation on media work

• effect of controls and constraints on production

Production

Ideas and reflective practice

• investigating and analysing examples of media work

• developing proposals, scripts and plans

• reflecting on the production process

• evaluating own and others’ productions

Controls and constraints

• independent management of time, technologies, safety procedures and resources

• negotiating and adapting production processes

• identifying problems and applying appropriate solutions

Skills and processes

• applying production skills and processes based on proposals, scripts and plans

• fulfilling defined production roles

Purpose and content

• producing purposeful and/or popular culture content

• using codes and conventions to convey theme, genre, style and narrative