The (luiet Euoluti on

As one of several teachers who taught A Level Media Studies in the late 80s when it was first introduced, and truho is now WJEC's subject officer in tVledia and Film, ,leremy Points lollows Medla Studies' quiet evolution and asks - what next?
Media Studies is now well established atA Level. It's turned up on The Archers, the front page of The Sun (when some students filming an armed diamond heist got an unscripted armed police response), in a recent episode of Jonathan Creek and is still viewed with suspicion by The Daily Mail. lt's probably turned up in some shape or lorm on The Simpsons but (damn it) I missed it. What greater homage can any subject ask of its object of study? But it wasn't always like this.

and has this tendency to give prominence t0

others. Syllabuses at that time allowed for courses to be planned over two years, giving students the chance to study the mainstream they were familiar with as well as the ways that dominant ideologies could be challenged. Students also got the 0pportunity to produce challenging, alternative media productions as well as mainstream ones.

some points

of view rather than

What

next? There has been a lot of talk about dissolving the distinction between vocational and

Media gets a future

academic, which might have an effect on qualifications. Whatever does happen in

assessment terms, I'd personally like to continue with the emphasis on the contemporary, including new technologies, but informed by a genuine exploration of those areas central to studying the media - the ideological nature of representation, the commodification of culture and the media's r0le in creatlng dominant ideologies. Not in those

Media gets real "." and students

That was at least the theory. Anybody who can remember being mystified why an incoherent, apparently ineffectively edited but alternative video production should have scored substantially higher than a coherent but effectively edited mainstream video production an early moderation meeting saw some of the problems. The syllabuses were leaving the students behind. But by the mid-1 990s, all syllabuses had evolved

0f course, and n0t, crucially without wedding practical production to that exploration
words,

so that tomorrow's media practitioners

informed ones.

are

in

Have you ever been llummoxed by

Media and Multimedia Gourses

a

into something more student-friendly, with an important but not exclusive emphasis on the
contemporary, as registered in NEAB's'durational study', which allowed (or perhaps f0rced) students to make sense of media which was

lndoor soaps

(African) cinema
in

or outdoor

produced during their period 0f

A Level

study.

And all syllabuses importantly attempted to

incorporate production as a way of exploring the conceptual issues underlying the media, allowing students to develop production skills. By this time, A Level Media Studies was very popular and on its way to being one of the m0st popular arls subjects to study at university.

student asking where they could continue to study media at university? 0r perhaps you want to take a short course in some aspect of multimedia? 0r you're looking for an adult education class or distance learning course in media? Lavinia 0rton explains how this information is now just a click away. The bfi started producing guides to

Despite lhe Daily Mails equation of the subject

media courses in the eighties, first as

photocopied booklets and then in'1993 the

with wall-to-wall soap opera (actually,

O
CS

my experience), early syllabuses were extremely ambitious and more than a shade challenging for teachers and students alike. ln the University of Cambrldge Local Examinations' Syndicate's pioneer syllabus students had the opportuni$ t0 study African Cinema, alternative media, realism as well as completing a 3000word research essay and four production exercises. lf you ch0se t0 study with the Welsh Joint Education Committee, you could not 0nly
look at the music industry t0 1945 but also contemporary independent cinema and new technologies' impact on modern newspaper

not universally loved by students at A Level, at least

inlormation

Publishing giving a comprehensive listing

was produced by bti

and

of formal courses at further, higher

postgraduate level across the uk.

Media gets bit-mapped

Where are we now? l'm still positive about what all specifications offer at AS and A2 (well I would be, wouldn't l?). There is still an accent on the contemporary, on new media technologies and on more challenging topics and research skills" However, I can't help but think that the impact of the new specifications has meant fragmentati0n, a squeeze on practical production and a loss of impoftant (political) perspectives. ln other words, the chance to explore the ideological nature of representations and their implications (in my

ln 1992 the British Film lnstitute and Skillset decided to jointly lund a database of media courses in the UK. By ihe end of the first year there were 769 courses on the database. Currently, there are over 4fi)0 courses on the database including film, video, television, radio, journalism and multimedia courses and last year it
was decided to put the whole database on

the bfi/Skillset's website

s
5

c LU

c)

production. The

www.bfi.org.uk/mediacourses. This
means that searching

syllabuses were

not

only

demanding and (rightly?) ambitious

for

lor

particular
updated,

their

students but they were also informed by a strong and coherent ideological sense. A sense something like this: uncovering the way the media we're all immersed in shapes our thinking, turns us into the consumers the entertainment and information we experience

opinion, at the head of Media Studies) has become even more of a challenge, for teachers

the information is constantly

courses is much simplified and, because more up-to-date than the previous hard

all

of

and students alike, than coping with the demanding content 0f the early years. Media
Studies should never lose sight of the ideological!

copy versions. The site has been running for only a lew months, but already gets 2000 hits a day.