1. Media Coursework Evaluation
Daniel Jones
Candidate No. 4492
Media A2
Question 1
In what ways does your media product USE, DEVELOP,
or CHANGE forms and conventions of existing media
products?

2. Our media products are based on a docu-soap called The
Only Way Is Essex (TOWIE) This is basically a scripted
reality TV show about a group of men and women who lead
relatively boring lives revolved around glamour and money.

3. We chose to create a parody of TOWIE. We called it ‘REEM’
as this is one of the main, most recognisable word overused
in TOWIE. It just means ‘good’ and because its used in the
programme so much we decided to play on this convention
and massively overuse this word in our trailer.
‘Reem’ will be a well known word for the audience who watch
TOWIE and they will all know what it means it needs no
explaining.

4. We made our product into a parody by looking at
how the characters in TOWIE are structured for
example, there level of intelligence, or how vain
they are. And taking these factors one step further
and exaggerating everything as much as possible

5. We tried to make the characters recognisable to the audience so
they’d know who we were supposed to be. We did this by following
the dress codes and vanity of the original cast as you can see above I
was constructed as Joey Essex.
Some of these characters such as Joey or Mark etc who
we tried to construct into a parody version, are actually
idolised by some of the viewers and will actually go out
and fake tan, or get the newest Ray Bans

6. Throughout the trailer we developed a clear gender divide between the
characters, the girls were proper bitches and the men are real manly
men, who like cars and getting girls. However we challenged these
conventions, for example when I was dressed in the Pauls Boutique
leopard print hoody, it isn't normally something one of the characters
would wear, more like something a 12 year old girl would wear.

7. We also challenged the convention of the characters
wearing very highly branded clothes, by drawing on an
‘Armani’ logo onto plain white t-shirt that I used scissors to
make it low cut as well.
By drawing this logo on it shows that the character clearly thinks he's cool as
he has an Armani top on however the fact its so tacky and obviously fake it
challenges the conventions of the highly branded smart clothes that are so
well known in TOWIE

8. Metro Sexual – A male who spends a lot of time and money
on shopping for his appearance, showing his feminine side
but is still masculine at the same time
Inspiration Our trailer
For our parody, we played on the metro sexual aspect of the
male characters and parodied it by exaggerating the expensive
clothes with drawn on logo and excessive fake tan smeared on
the characters faces, which relates to how the male characters
such as Joey and Harry etc like to fake tan

9. REEM TOWIE
Looking at really Looking at buying a
cheap car brand new expensive
BMW
This is an example of how our product challenged the existing
convention of glamour and money etc as nobody from TOWIE would
be seen near a car that is so cheap. This also ties in well with the
glamour convention and the fake brands our characters were wearing
in the trailer.

10. We used similar shot types to follow the regular conventions of the
programme for the montage edit of the characters getting glammed
up and ready for a night out.

11. We used the regular conventions to replicate shot types, to show the Mis en scene and scenery of the
locations we filmed at. As you can see here we used the exact same over the shoulder shot of the girl in the
mirror getting ready. However in our shot , the scenery challenges the conventions. Because as you can see
in the TOWIE scene, it has cream walls with a dress that has diamonds on it hung up on the wall, it shows
how well off and vain these characters are and how they think they are sophisticated Where as our own take
on this shot, the girl is caked in makeup stood in a childish pink room with a chandelier painted on to the
wall to try and represent the fact these characters are all about their money.

13. The song we chose for our trailer was at the time a
popular well known pop song that the viewers would
relate to according to our audience research, the title
‘Sexy and I know it’ also relate to how the trailer is
about vanity and glamour