1. How to analyse a
Print Media Text
AS Media
MS1
Exam

2. What could come up on your exam
Magazine Front Cover
or Articles
Website CD Cover

3. What could come up on your exam
DVD Cover Film Poster Video Game cover

4. What could come up on your exam
Advertisement Newspapers

5. Plan!
• Before you start any introduction! Before your dash into an answer.
• You must plan what you are going to say (make sure you draw a line through
your planning)

6. Plan
• A plan can be a
• simple check list of things
• that you need to discuss.

7. Plan
Or a brainstorm
Just getting
Your ideas out of
Your head and
Down on paper

8. Starting your intro (Key phrases)
• “Polysemic” – This means that media texts have a range of different
meanings.
• “Purpose and Effect” – Everything used in a media text is there for a reason

9. Starting your print analysis
• Layout and Design
• Camera Shots and Angles
• Lighting
• Using Colour
• Graphics

10. Remember it this way
• Lucy = Layout
• Caught = Camera
• Louise = Lighting
• Using Colour
• Gracefully = Graphics

11. Layout and Design
• Colour
• Font
• Positioning of the Text
• House Style

12. Camera Shots and Angles
• Certain camera angles give certain meanings.
Shots:
• Establishing shots, Long Shots, Mid Shot, Mid close up, Close up, Extreme
Close Up, P.O.V, Over the shoulder etc.
Angles:
• High Angle, Low Angle.

13. Lighting
• High Key lighting • Low Key Lighting

14. Colour
• What connotations do the colours convey?
• Don’t just write
“the font is purple and this could relate to royalty as purple is a regal colour”
• What purpose and impact does this have on the reader or viewer?

15. Graphics
• This can be anything from little logos to illustrations.

16. Graphics
• What does this tell us about a
magazine?
• What might it say about the
readers?

17. Graphics
• Why are these logos
used?

18. What about post production?
• If the image looks photoshoppped or air brushed talk about it – discuss
what purpose and impact that might have on the reader or viewer.

19. If the question asks you about Visual Codes
• Clothing
• Expression
• Gestures
• Colour
• Iconography
• Use of certain images
• Graphics

20. Clothing

21. Expression and Gestures

22. Iconography and Images

23. Language
• Hyperbole – Use of exaggeration – Try and make something look exciting
• Imperative – is an order or command and suggests urgency
• Ellipsis – Use of incomplete sentences. Sentences are finished off with….. To
create a form of enigma.
• Colloquialism – Informal language
• Quotes – Used to suggest a hint of realism.
• Alliteration – Repetition of sounds in a word or phrase
• Assonance – Repeating vowel sounds

24. Mode of Address
• Informal language –
Used to engage the audience.

25. Mode Of Address
• Formal – Suggests that the
Target audience are sophisticated.

26. Mode of Address
• Direct mode of address –
appeals directly to the reader

27. Narrative Codes in print
• Enigma Codes – A tease, a question, something that makes you inquisitive to
see what the text is all about.

28. Narrative Codes in print
• Headlines create a narrative to attract readers to the story.

29. Narrative conventions
in print
• Cover lines and Jump lines
are used in order to attract
the readers attention and will
them to read on.

30. Narrative Codes in Print
• Images can be used to create a
narrative. By the way someone
or something looks in a picture
determines how the audience
interpret the story. An image
without any type of caption is
an open image and we as an
audience can come to our own
conclusions about what the
story is about.

31. Narrative Codes in print
• The blurb on the
back of a DVD
cover can use
enigma codes to
give some details of
what the story is
about.

32. NEVER!
•Describe what you can see! Explain the
purpose and reason it has been used or
the desired effect it should have on the
audience!!!!