A2 Media Evaluation

1. In what ways does your media product
use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?

2. CONFORMING

3. Main Task:
In the Malibu music video, there are shots of
the actress twirling and smiling at the
camera. She’s also moving away from the
camera and looks directly into the lens. I
really liked this and decided to have the
actress in my video do this as well.
In my video the actress moved slowly
backwards and has eye contact with the
camera; then in another clip she skips around
and twirls herself a lot faster, still moving
away from the camera.
In the Malibu video the only person in the
video is the one girl, I liked this idea so
decided to do the same in my video. My video
centres around the one actress and her dog.

4. Goodwin’s theory is relevant to my
music video, I often made links between
the music and visuals as well as the
lyrics and visuals. On the lyric,
“walking”, I cut to a shot of shoes
walking across the screen. This
emphasises the lyrics, the low angle on
the shoes also exaggerates the actresses
isolation throughout the video.
On the guitar solo in the music, the
actress plays air guitar linking the visuals
and the music. Her playful character is
conveyed through this and the guitar
solo is also emphasised.
Finally, on the lyrics “sunshine, the
camera pans across the sun on the sky
and the light reflects of the lens. Not
only does this look nice aesthetically,
but it also an example of Goodwin’s
theory.

5. Ancillary Task:
My Ancillary Tasks conformed to
several conventions I discovered when
researching other digipaks and
promotional posters. Promotional
posters often advertised the most
popular tracks and singles on the
advertised album. They often use
vocabulary such as ‘Including the #1
hit’, ‘Top hits’, as well as
‘featuring…’ a well named artist. A
great example that used this was the
Ariana Grande and Jessie J
promotional poster. I used many of
these conventions myself as they’re
great marketing strategies. By
highlighting the success of the song, it
interests the audience.

6. Another convention is the release
date of the album, often at the
bottom of the poster in large,
bold, capital letters. Again this is
a marketing technique so the
audience can instantly see when
the album is on sale, one of the
first things they see.

7. Digipaks that I had researched all
had management and record label
logos on the back of them. They
also had a chunk of small print
including the copyright rights. I
chose to use these too because it
made my digipak look as authentic
as possible.
I took elements specifically from
the Little Mix digipak, using some
of the same logos and also using
their small print as a template for
my own.

8. DEVELOPING

9. Main Task:
I researched music videos so that I could
understand the codes and conventions of music
videos in my particular genre.
My media product conformed to a number of
these conventions in order to create a realistic
video. For example, my video featured many
tracking shots of the actress walking around,
twirling or dancing. Shots like this were found in
Malibu (left). This video also featured shots of
the artist lip syncing on the grass, I developed
this by taking the footage from birds eye view;
rather than an extreme close up from the side
with the actress turning her head to the camera.
I think this angle suited the style and genre of the
music video much better, having a happy/playful
effect rather than a sultry feel, like in Malibu.

10. There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back provided
inspiration for various shots. The establishing
shots of the beach and the wide shots of the
actor/actress alone and isolated on the beach.
I developed this conventions by creating a
panoramic shot of the beach and having my
actress sitting alone rather than standing.

11. CHALLENGING

12. Ancillary Task:
Promotional posters typically use the
same photo as the album cover, this is
evident when I researched pop music
posters.
I challenged this by using a different
photograph for my poster than album
cover. One reason for doing this was
because the artist/model did not
feature on the album cover but I still
wanted to feature her on the inside of
the digipak and poster. Despite
challenging the convention, I still kept
the poster to the same theme and
setting so that it was obvious that the
poster matched with the digipak.

14. A very common convention throughout basically all
my researched videos, is the use of slow motion. I
took footage on my phone using the slow motion
camera, however, when moving this onto the
computer it had dramatically reduced the
resolution of the video. I only ended up using one
slow motion clip in the final cut but I would have
like to have added more. Shooting the footage
normally and then reducing the speed on Final Cut
would have worked much more effectively.
Therefore I challenged this convention and did not
include a lot of slow motion. Videos commonly
have slow motion of running, hair blowing in the
wind and other close up shots. My video features
clips similar to these but in normal speed. The song
I chose was very upbeat anyway so it was nice to
keep to the tempo of the music.
Main Task: