INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the AS Media Studies course OCR J4. Today we cover aspects of the four key concepts: representation, media language, audiences and institutions. 

• Using photographs taken by Marc Riboud, whose obituary appeared in The Telegraph today, we deconstruct the representation of a 16-year-old girl holding up a flower to the serried ranks of US soldiers, taken in Washington, 1967, during the Vietnam War.
• Introduction to semiotics: Roland Barthes, semiotics and the deconstruction of visual imagery
•  Key terms: denotation, connotation

• We look at television drama, our exam topic, and how to use media language to analyse representations, such as the representation of gender, through camera work, mise-en-scene and sound.
• We touch on audiences and institutions, such as by discussing our own film viewing habits, a topic that forms part of your response to questions on the film industry in your summer exam. 
• You are encouraged to go the cinema as well as watch film online. Please keep abreast of current films, how they are marketed and how they do at the box office. Issues surrounding the success or failure of different film genres, how audiences consume films and how social media promotes films underpin your exam answers.
• Audiences consume media to gratify needs, according to Blumler and Katz's uses and gratifications model of audience behaviour (1975): the need for escapism, diversion and entertainment; the need to find out about what is going on in the world (surveillance); the need to form personal relationships in society (on screen and off); and the need to define our personal identity. (Useful sites: MediaEdu; MediaKnowall)

 

Welcome to 1960 and the France of Charles de Gaulle, a country whose colonial power is in rapid decline, despite the Gallic pride and delusions of a grandeur gone by.
In Paris the French Secret Service hire the good-looking, properly-raised, and intelligent but impressionable 23-year-old André Merlaux (Hugo Becker, Chefs, Gossip Girl) as their new recruit. His boss is Moïse (Christophe Kourotchkine, Match Day), the Director of Operations, and three agents are tasked with training him in spy-hood.
They are Moulinier (Bruno Paviot, Détectives), the head of African affairs; Jacquard (Karim Barras, Daedalus), whose responsibility is Algeria; and Calot (Jean-Édouard Bodziak, Yves Saint Laurent), a specialist in Eastern European countries. What André doesn’t know yet is the head of the spy agency is none other than the intimidating Colonel Mercaillon (Wilfred Benaïche, Nicolas Le Floch).

A Very Secret Service (Au service de la France): (L-R) Marie-Julie Baup as Nathalie, Joséphine de la Baume as Clayborne, Hugo Becker as André Merlaux, Christophe Kourotchkine as Moïse, Jean-Edouard Bodziak as Calot, Karim Barras as Jacquard, Bruno Paviot as Moulinier
Photo © Luc Roux / Mandarin TV / Arte

André’s training is to prepare him for tackling the most delicate of missions, from becoming friends with the Germans and keeping Algeria French, to figuring out America’s obsession with communism and preserving the colonial empire. And lest I forget, the one thing the French do better than anyone: going on strike.
What he learns about being the crème de la crème in the world of international espionage is the devil is in the details. France’s superiority comes down to its brilliance in administrative intricacies. Cases in point: answering the telephone and getting the proper rubber stamp.
But while on his way to elite secret agent status, André pulls a no-no by falling in love with the wrong woman. She is Sophie (Mathilde Warnier, Caprice), a wannabe modern woman who happens to be the Colonel’s daughter…(Source: The Euro TV Place)