Year 12
Year 12

VCE Media Units 3 & 4

VCE Media provides students with the opportunity to develop critical and creative knowledge and skills. Media texts, technologies and processes are considered from various perspectives including their structure and features, their industry production and distribution context, audience reception and the impact of media in society.

This aspect of the study is integrated with the individual and collaborative design and production of media representations and products.

The media have a significant impact on people’s lives. They influence the way people spend their time, help shape the way they perceive themselves and others, and play a crucial role in the creation of personal, social, cultural and national identity. The media entertain, educate, inform and provide channels of communication. This takes place within the broader context of industrial organisation, political and market structures, professional practices, creative processes, traditional and contemporary technologies, statutory regulation and the need to attract and maintain audiences.

All these considerations determine the nature of media products.

Media products are representations of social, personal and cultural reality. The media represent the world in a way which is different from direct experience. These representations have been constructed through a process of selection, using codes and conventions. From this perspective media products can be examined as the expression of creative ideas, specific symbolic languages and the ways in which the media comment on culture and values and reflect the society in which they were created.

The study of media includes:

Media forms including

  • Audiovisual media (film, television, radio, video, photography)
  • Print-based media (newspapers, magazines and related publications)
  • Digital media technologies (the Internet, computer games and interactive multimedia)
  • Media and cross media processes and developments such as advertising, news and current affairs production, popular music, popular culture, cyberculture and virtual worlds, convergence and hybridisation, information dissemination and retrieval technologies
  • The media and its interrelationship with society and culture.
  • The Media study is relevant to students with a wide range of expectations, including those who wish to pursue further formal study at tertiary level or in vocational education and training settings, as well as providing valuable knowledge and skills for participation in contemporary society.

UNIT 3

This unit provides students with opportunities to develop their understanding of production and story elements and to recognise the role and significance of narrative organisation in fictional film, radio or television programs.  In this context students also consider how production and story elements structure narratives to engage an audience. Students also develop practical skills through undertaking exercises related to aspects of the design and production process. They design a media production for a specific media form with the relevant specifications presented as a written planning document with visual representations.

Outcome 1

On completion of this unit the student should be able to analyse the nature and function of production and story elements in fictional media texts and discuss how combinations of these elements structure the narrative to engage an audience.

Outcome 2

On completion of this unit the student should be able to use a range of technical equipment, applications and media processes to present ideas, achieve effects and explore aesthetic qualities in production design plan specification areas appropriate to a media form.

Outcome 3

On completion of this unit the student should be able to prepare a media production design plan incorporating the specifications appropriate for the chosen media product.

UNIT 4

This unit allows students to further develop practical skills in the production of media products and to realise a production design. Organisational and creative skills are refined and applied throughout this process. In this unit students also analyse the ways in which media texts are shaped by social values and the influence of social values in the representations and structure of a media text. The role and influence of the media is also critically analysed in this unit.

Outcome 1

On completion of this unit the student should be able to produce a media product for an identified audience from the media production design plan prepared by the student in Unit 3.

Outcome 2

On completion of this outcome the student should be able discuss the ways in which social values shape the content of media texts and analyse how social values are reflected in a text.

Outcome 3

On completion of this unit the student should be able to discuss theories of media influence and analyse debates about the nature and extent of media influence.

Assessment

Satisfactory Completion

Demonstrated achievement of the set of outcomes specified for the unit.

Levels of Achievement

Units 1 and 2

Individual school decision on levels of achievement.

Units 3 and 4

The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority will supervise the assessment of all students undertaking Units 3 and 4.

In the study of Media the student’s level of achievement will be determined by School-assessed Coursework, a School-assessed Task and an end-of-year examination. Percentage contributions to the study score in Media are as follows:

  • Unit 3 School-assessed Coursework: 8 per cent
  • Unit 4 School-assessed Coursework: 12 per cent
  • Unit 3 and 4 School-assessed Task: 35 per cent
  • End-of-year examination: 45 per cent

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