Students must meet the minimum entry requirements for the Vocational or Combination study pathway. There are no additional specific entry requirements for this subject.

This practical course is ideal if you have an interest in the media and new media technologies. The units of the course are designed to help you progress into higher education or employment by developing your practical media skills and knowledge of film and film pre-production. To be successful in Media you must be willing to work hard and be well organised, especially on production work as this involves thorough planning and collaboration with others.

YEAR ONE

Unit 4 – Pre-Production Portfolio

You will develop your understanding of the essential pre-production work that takes place as part of a creative media production. You will gain an understanding of the requirements of the planning stage, from finance and logistics to regulations. Your investigations will help you develop the pre-production skills and experience needed to carry out your own tasks and to produce the planning for a digital media product. You will create a portfolio and manage the pre-production for your own creative media production. This is an internally assessed unit.

Unit 1 – Media Representations

You will explore the ways in which people, places and ideas are represented in the media across a range of moving image, print and interactive products. This is an external exam based unit in which you will analyse the representations and how they are conveyed in an online exam.

YEAR TWO

Unit 10 – Film Production – Fiction

You will investigate how conventions of narrative storytelling are used by filmmakers, looking at formats and generic conventions. You will prepare and produce a piece of film production work, creating and gathering the materials and preparing the cast and crew for this. You will need to bring together a range of elements to successfully produce your final moving image product including camera, lighting, acting, direction and sound.

Unit 8 – Responding to a Commission

You will understand how to respond to a commission brief with ideas based on the required content, style, audience, purpose and approach proposed by the client. You will work within the requirements and constraints of the client’s specifications and consider your response in terms of ethos, format, budget, platform and duration. This is an externally assessed unit.

Students will work to a brief and be given clear assessment criteria so they can be confident on what is expected to achieve a Distinction* / Distinction / Merit / Pass. Your final grade will be calculated from a culmination of the points collected across all units. Throughout the course, students will be well supported by teachers who will give feedback on progress against the key assessment criteria.

Across the course students will complete units that are assessed in a variety of ways. There are three different types of assessment: coursework (internally assessed), tasks and written examination (both externally assessed).

YEAR ONE

Unit 4 – Pre-Production Portfolio

• Assessed through assignments and tasks in coursework

Unit 1 – Media Representations

• Externally assessed task

YEAR TWO

Unit 10 – Film Production – Fiction

• Assessed through assignments and tasks in coursework

Unit 8 – Responding to a Commission

• Externally assessed task

The BTEC National Extended Certificate is a Level 3 qualification which is the equivalent to one A-level and widely recognised by universities and employers.

Students have progressed their study of Media to degree level at a range of universities. A range of options exist from production based courses to analytical / theoretical courses such as Film Studies. Beyond higher education, former students have gained employment in the media industry, such as working for the BBC or freelance.

What our media students said they enjoy:

• “I enjoy the feeling of accomplishment when a production task is finished.
• “Everything can be a challenge but everything is fun!”
• “The chance to be creative and develop my own ideas to fruition.”

What our media students said they find a challenge:

• “Meeting deadlines for production work.”
• “Working in production teams with others who have different views as to how we should progress.”
• “The workload – there’s a lot to do when researching, planning and constructing a production.”