This document summarizes how a student's media project for an A2 Media Studies course utilized conventions of real music videos, CD packaging, and advertisements to create an original work. Specifically, the student created a music video for the song "The Boyz" by Nicki Minaj and Cassie that incorporated typical elements of pop music videos like colorful imagery, dancing, scene changes, and camera angles seen in videos by other artists. The student also designed CD packaging with Nicki Minaj on the cover and track listings on the back that followed common conventions. An advertisement for the album replicated real ad elements like release date and purchase details.

1. A2 Media Studies
Evaluation Questions
By Monique Fearon

2. 1. In what ways does your media product
use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
For my A2 Media Studies
coursework, we used conventions
of a real music video, CD digipak
and an advert to create something
new. We choose the genre pop as
we thought it would suit us more
and it would be more commercial.
The song we chose to do was Nicki
Minaj and Cassie- The boyz.
The actual video was very colourful
and fun, so we tried to keep that
element the same for our music
video to.
The conventions for a pop music
video is meant to be
colourful, fun, have loads of
dancing, singing and have scene
changes. This is seen throughout
my music video as I wanted it to
be made obvious that it was a pop
music video.

3.  Most importantly, I researched how
to make a music video and what was
needed to be in a music video. I
found out that it good to plan
everything before you record your
music video, so you don‟t end up
wasting time making the video. I was
able to put this forward into my
planning and research, so when it
came to doing our music video, I
already knew what to do. I analysed
a lot of pop music videos such as
Rihanna, Britney Spears etc. to gain
an understanding of pop music
videos. I also looked at gender
representation of woman as stated in
the video (down below) and found
out about the male gaze.

4.  My artist Nicki Minaj was on the front cover of the
digipak (at the centre) to show that this was her
album and that she should be the main focus of
the album cover. Her name Nicki Minaj was
written in front of her with her album name
written in bold pink capitals to reflect her
boldness, (like I have seen in her other album
covers). At the back of the CD package features
common conventions like the track names and a
bar code. Something that we added was a little
message to her fans thanking them for their
support.
 The advert used many conventions, that you
would naturally expect to be on a advert such as
when the CD is coming out (21st January), where
you can buy it from (itunes) and where you can
find more information e.g. twitter (#CANDY).

5. On the back of the album
cover, I used the copyright
note telling people who buy
the CD that it is owned by
Sony and that they are not
allowed to copy the CD and
sell it. I also used the bar-
code so people can purchase
the CD in stores
I developed the
album cover by
adding more girly
images to
represent what
the album was
about and who it
was more
targeted for.
Even though boys
can like it.
Spine repeating the
album title

6. Camera angles
When research and planning I looked into a number of
different pop music. For example, artists I looked at were
Rhianna, Azealia Banks, Nicki Minaj, Cassie etc. I looked
into these artists in particular as they are all female and
represent the stereotypical „sexy‟ females in music videos.
I have taken a print screen of my video (on right) and
Azealia Banks video- Van Vogue (on left). Both videos
have the exact same camera angle; which is a mid-
shot, showing both the artist from the waist up.

7. Editing
 When researching different genres of music videos, I
found out that there are different types of editing for
different genres. In both Azealia Banks and I‟s video,
there are a lot of edited effects. In order to use and
develop this convention, we decided to include this into
our video.
Above ,you can see how we used the same editor effect.
We developed it and challenged it by having her stand up
instead of having just a „side head shot‟ like in Azealia‟s
video.

8. Mise en Scene
 Just like Azealia we used a very simple set (location).
We developed and challenged it by using more than
ONE location.

9. Lighting and Colour
Lighting and Colour can make a difference to a music video,
for example bright colours can make the song seem happy
and joyful. Using different levels of lighting and colour can
portray different emotions to any song. This technique is
widely used within real media products. For example in my
video and Rihanna- rude boy video below, we both use
bright lighting and bright colours to attract our audiences.

10. Sound
 Often in narrative videos where they introduce the
characters or the artist in the videos, there are diegetic
sounds at the beginning of the video and at the and of
the video. However, in my video I did not include this as
it wasn‟t a narrative song. In addition, I did have non-
diegetic as the music of the song was added in
postproduction.

11. Representation of women (watch our
YouTube video below)
 In my research I found out that the female stereotype,
in music videos are “Women portrayed as decorative
objects that dance, pose and do not play instruments”.
This is made evidently true in my music video. I decided
to go and use the stereotypical representation of
women, as it matched with the song „The Boyz‟.

12. Performance Video-Theory
 According to Sven E Carlsson our video is a Performance
Video as the “audience are able to see the artist(s) singing
and dancing throughout the video.” This is true. I used
this, as I thought it would be more entertaining to watch
and this is what my target audience would want to see.