This document provides guidance and reminders for an A2 evaluation assignment. It emphasizes illustrating work thoroughly, varying presentation methods, using filmed presentations and podcasts, breaking answers into shorter parts, properly labeling answers, and completing all work on time. It also stresses using coursework to earn marks if the exam is difficult.

1. A2 Evaluation
A REMINDER:
DO NOT HAVE A LARGE CHUNKS OF TEXT
ILLUSTRATE PROFUSELY ALL THE WAY THROUGH
VARY PRESENTATIONAL METHODS – OR YOU WON’T PASS
USE FILMED PRESENTATIONS – OR YOU WON’T GET A C OR ABOVE
USE PODCASTS
USE SPILT SCREEN WHERE POSSIBLE
BREAK UP THE QUESTIONS INTO SHORTER ANSWERS AND MORE
BLOGPOSTS
MAKE SURE YOU LABEL ALL ANSWERS TO MAKE LIFE EASIER FOR THE
EXAMINER
THE EXAM MAY BE EXTREMELY DIFFICULT – BANK MARKS WITH GOOD
COURSEWORK
GET IT DONE ON TIME!!!!

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media products?
• Your product may well have done a little of each. Clearly, you need to refer here to
the existing products that you researched and analysed, referencing them against
what you have done, explaining why you have followed (or otherwise) the
conventions). You must refer to your ancillary product as well as the main one.
Use screen shots, possibly an excerpt and, for the ancillary tasks , compare your
visually with the products that inspired you.
•
• This next point isn’t a question but you would do well to consider it under the first
point or the seconds – or a bit of both…
•
• How did you attract/address your audience? You need references to theory here –
Naomi Wolf, Marjorie Ferguson, Uses and Gratifications - you are exploiting the
theory of Uses and Gratifications because your target audience will identify
(though it may only be wishful thinking) with the lifestyle it promotes. Some of
you have used people of a similar age to your audience to add to this appeal. Your
audience will look to your product for a sense of personal identity and possibly
aspire to be like some of the people featured or their lives and problems may
reflect the lives and problems of people you know. Your theories need dates.
Google them

3. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media products?
• Think about representation here – particularly the representation of
gender and class
• The presence of women is often solely for the purposes of display
and the purpose of this display is to facilitate a voyeuristic response
in the spectators, which presumes a male gaze, regardless of the
actual gender of the spectator i.e. a powerful and controlling gaze
at the female, who is on display and is, therefore, objectified and
passive - paraphrasing Laura Mulvey (1975).
•
• “Is the female flesh on display simply a cynical; exploitation of the
female body to increase (predominantly) male profit margins, or a
life-enhancing assertion of female self-confidence and sexual
independence?” (Pete Fraser, 2005)

4. How effective is the combination of your main product and
ancillary texts? Part 1
• You need to consider what you’ve learned about the way the media produce,
distribute and share material. You need to consider the synergy between the
products and remember, your work will constitute only part of a promotional
campaign for the product/artist and you will need to stress how this works – i.e.
the need to buy advertising on television or radio; the need to have a PR
department that can push your artist to radio and TV stations so they can get
airtime and their work played; the use of the kind of posters and print advertising
you see in magazines and billboards. Your artist or movie will have a website
created by the production which will feature song samples, trailers, video extracts,
photographs, interviews, features, competitions, opportunities for fans to air their
views so they feel they are being given some kind of ownership of the product so
they’ll be more likely to buy it. You will absolutely definitely need to say in the age
of Media 2.0 that you world will be promoted virally on the Internet and on mobile
phones, particularly as your target audience is of an age range that favours this kind
of technology. You might release your work in advance to specific outlets – e.g.
exclusive music video on…? Or how about a teaser trailer campaign leading up to a
special screening of the movie (or even just the trailer) to a popular horror site like
http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/ so they can post reviews that you can feature
on the trailer? Or arrange for the trailer to be shown with popular movies in the
same genre. Your movie may be low budget, but so was Paranormal Activity and
this is what the filmmakers did there.

5. Finally, some key points:
• From past experience, don’t be too critical of yourself. If
you say, “I could’ve cut out a particular photograph better,”
my reaction would be: “Do it now and don’t be so
complacent.” If you say, “I didn’t have enough time to do
such and such,” then it’s clear evidence you’ve wasted time
and you’ll be docked marks. In other words, if there’s
anything you haven’t done, get it done now – and quickly.
•
• This response MUST be illustrated all the way through with
examples from your work or existing product when you
make reference to it and it must included filmed responses.
If you don’t have a filmed response, you won’t get a mark of
C or above and we will be reluctant to enter it in case it
results in the marks of the other students being pulled
down.

6. How effective is the combination of your main product and
ancillary texts? Part 2
• Google Paranormal Activity and see the way it was promoted and became
the success it is. See http://movie-
critics.ew.com/2009/10/07/paranormal-activity-marketing-campaign/.
http://www.chud.com/articles/articles/21095/1/PARANORMAL-
ACTIVITY039S-MARKETING-HAUNTED-BY-THE-GHOST-OF-WILLIAM-
CASTLE/Page1.html. You would hope this kind of publicity and
releasing the trailer on YouTube would lead to the word being spread on
the internet, especially amongst horror fan sites and blogs and influential
message board sites like http://www.aintitcool.com/. However effective
the combination is, you need to point out that what you’re doing would
only constitute part of a larger campaign. Even if most people download
music, people who do this still make use of cover art (which comes with
the download anyhow, so the cover art is still relevant in the age of
downloading. You are providing cultural meaning for the music/film trailer
through commercial images and aesthetics.
•
• Where possible link to real-life products and campaigns.

7. What have you learned from your
audience feedback?
• You need to devise another questionnaire to help you with
this - one that you could post on your blog. Is your audience
one stable and easily identifiable group? Has the audience
reacted in the way you expected? What has it found
particularly effective about the product (include both tasks)?
Why is feedback important in the media industry; how has it
helped you construct your productions and how could you
learn from feedback after the production is finished? Talk
about the way your final product has been affected by
showing the progress of your work to your target audience –
i.e. make it up or pretend I’m your target audience and think
about what I’ve told you to change.
• Remember, if you don’t keep the customer satisfied, you
don’t get financial reward and that could jeopardise a small
production company or your career in the industry.

8. How did you use new media technologies in the construction
and research, planning and evaluation stages?
• It’s important you consider the blog itself as a media production.
Unlike previous years, you are not just creating a production that will
only be seen by colleagues, teachers and examiners – you have
actually published your work on the web where an audience of
millions can see it. Using your blog, you have self-published and
some, perhaps even many, of your audience is capable of doing the
same, thus breaking down the idea of what constitutes an audience.
In the age of Web 2.0, new digital media “have fundamentally
changed the ways in which we engage with all the media” (David
Gauntlett, 2007). Don’t forget the planning/preparation stage –
YouTube, Google etc. Don’t forget to talk about your use of different
platforms to present your information.
• You also need to talk about your use of cameras and still and moving
image editing software to create your media production, giving some
specific examples of how and why you constructed particular images
or scenes, texts, edits and so on, to reach your target audience.

9. • If you’ve worked as a group, your contribution and that of
your partners must be made clear.
•
• You MUST use subject specific terminology – i.e. using the
correct terms when writing about the processes you went
through on iMovie or Photoshop; talking about the camera
angles/distances correctly/ discussing conventions and what
colours etc have connotations of, especially in terms of your
target audience.
• Ensure that you haven’t used ANY images that you’ve
downloaded from the internet; this includes backgrounds or
background patterns.
• www.emusu.com - a promotion and digital distribution
resource. It will help you consider your music promotion
work in the digital age

10. • Genre quotes:
• (Tom Ryall, 1998) “patterns/styles/structures which transcend individual films, and
which supervise both their construction by the film-maker and their reading by an
audience”
• Steve Neale (1990) argues that Hollywood’s generic regime guarantees meanings and
pleasures for audiences
• Neale (1980)- much of the pleasure of popular cinema lies in the process of
“difference in repetition” – i.e. recognition of familiar elements and in the way those
elements might be orchestrated in an unfamiliar fashion or in the way that unfamiliar
elements might be introduced e.g. Scream and its sequels: certain elements are
similar in all three films, yet new ideas and material are incorporated into each
sequel.
• Neale (1990) – Genre is constituted by “specific systems of expectations and
hypothesis which spectators bring with them to the cinema and which interact with
the films themselves during the course of the viewing process.”
• Jonathan Culler (1978) – generic conventions exist to establish a contract between
and deviation from the accepted modes of intelligibility. Acts of communication are
rendered intelligible only within the context of a shared conventional framework of
expression.
• Ryall (1998) sees this framework provided by the generic system; therefore, genre
becomes a cognitive repository of images, sounds, stories, characters, and
expectations.
• Genre has come to represent, as John Fiske (1988) has said, “attempts to structure
some order into the wide range of texts and meanings that circulate in our culture for
the convenience of both producers and audiences.”

11. • There is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals (with
visuals either illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics).
• There is a relationship between the music and the visuals (again
with visuals either illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the
music).
• Particular music genres may have their own music style and
iconography (such as live stage performance in heavy rock).
• There is a demand on the part of the record company for lots of
close-ups of the main artist/vocalist.
• The artist may develop their own star iconography, in and out of
their videos, which, over time, becomes part of their star image.
• There is likely to be reference to voyeurism, particularly in the
treatment of women, but also in terms of looking (screens within
screens, binoculars, cameras etc).
• There are likely to be intertextual references, either to other music
videos or to films and TV texts.
(Andrew Goodwin, 1992)

12. • Music video quotes:
• “They now provide pictures for the songs in our heads. Goodbye,
imagination… No need to think, to embellish, to create, to imagine.”
(Joe Salzman, 2000)
• “Often, music videos will cut between a narrative and a
performance of the song by the band… Sometimes, the artist… will
be a part of the story, acting as narrator and participant at the same
time. But it is the lip-synch close-up and the miming of playing
instruments that remains at the heart of music videos, as if to
assure us that the band really can kick it.” (Steve Archer, 2004)
• The presence of women is often solely for the purposes of display
and the purpose of this display is to facilitate a voyeuristic response
in the spectators, which presumes a male gaze, regardless of the
actual gender of the spectator i.e. a powerful and controlling gaze at
the female, who is on display and is, therefore, objectified and
passive - paraphrasing Laura Mulvey (1975).
• “Is the female flesh on display simply a cynical; exploitation of the
female body to increase (predominantly) male profit margins, or a
life-enhancing assertion of female self-confidence and sexual
independence?” (Pete Fraser, 2005)

13. Links
• As ever, look to successful work by previous students to help you.
• I would recommend blogs by Hannah Wood, Sarah Dick (music videos),
Alex Thompson, Callum York, Taylor Johnston, Jayme Hudspith (short
films), Taylor Cowton, Tilly Mitcham-Rowell (music videos), Laura Bruce,
Amy Oughton and Ashley Billingham (horror trailers)
• http://amyoughtonmedia.blogspot.co.uk/
• http://hannahwoodmedia.blogspot.co.uk/
• http://sarahvictoriadick.blogspot.co.uk/
• http://a2mmitcham-rowell.blogspot.co.uk/
• http://callumyorkmedia.blogspot.co.uk/
• http://jaymelouiseh.blogspot.co.uk/
• http://alexandrathompsonmediastudies.blogspot.co.uk/
• http://tcowtonmedia.blogspot.co.uk/
• http://ashleybillinghamsmedia.blogspot.co.uk/
• http://laurabrucemedia.blogspot.co.uk/
• http://taylorjohnstonmedia.blogspot.co.uk/