Ellie created a highly successful blog to document her work on a music video project. She used a wide range of media platforms to display research, production processes, drafts, and evaluations. This kept the blog visually interesting and showed her skills. Ellie's blog followed her process closely from research to finished products. All elements of the blog were cohesively tied to her music video. The high quality and detail of Ellie's blog demonstrated her strong skills and effort, earning her full marks.

1. Analysis of a Student’s Blog

2. Ellie Zambikidies
• The student’s blog that I’ve decided to analyse is Ellie because she was
a full mark student and her music video was the best one from last year,
in my opinion. I’m going to be following a similar narrative layout to my
music video as she did in hers.
• Just by looking at Ellie’s blog you can see the huge amount of effort she
put in due to the number of blog posts. Moreover, she has tried to use
a range of different media platforms to display her work such as:
emaze, sound cloud, word documents, blog posts and videos.
• The navigation and layout of her blog is simple and easy. There are
instructions on this on her home page ensuring that every visitor to the
blog can use it with no difficulty. The tabs at the top allow the examiner
to see her progress and how her work has developed from the start to
the end of the year.
• All of her work is such a high level that it inspires me when doing all my
blog posts. Also, I can now see how important all the first steps are in
order to make a successful music video.
• The visual aspects of her blog stand out well and link nicely to her music
video. The colour scheme corresponds with that in all her print work
and her video.

3. Research
• This section of Ellie’s blog was detailed and informative. She definitely
thought carefully about presenting these by using a range of media
platforms to present these highlighting her strengths as a media
student. Although there aren’t many videos of Ellie sat in front of the
camera which would make her blog more personal for the user.
• Her similar product research was vital in allowing her to be aware of
what she can achieve in her time frame with the recourses accessible.
This will help her develop her own work and make it like the real life
success products she has analysed.
• The genre sub-category of the research allows Ellie to look in depth at
her chosen song and the conventions that this genre has for music
videos meaning that her product will be successful if she follows these
ideas. Also, it helps her to decide on Mise-en-scene that could be
relevant to her music video so her genre is more recognisable.
• The final sub-category of her blog is Institution which is one of the least
exciting section of her research due to the lack of videos however for
these 4 posts she has used a different media for each one. My favourite
post here is her ‘Research into Directors’ because of the prezi used and
the detail she goes into when describing each one.

4. Production
• My favourite section of Ellie’s blog is the production because this is
when her blog becomes to come alive. This section definitely uses the
widest range of platforms for the different posts which is why it’s so
interesting to read/watch.
• Shooting is the first in which Ellie has 4 videos under ‘raw footage.’ This
suggests her dedication to her video as she got so much footage in
order to see what works best with her song. She uses so many different
locations and shots which I believe is why her video got full marks as
well as her editing and performers used.
• The drafting section is when the examiner sees the video put together
for the first time. Ellie’s video uses both black and white and colour
which creates an emotional aspect to it. All her shots link nicely with
the song which adds more success to her video. Moreover, this draft
allows the examiner to compare this with her final video and see how
Ellie has made progress over the term.
• Image manipulation suggests how Ellie changed her photos for her
digipak and advert to make them suit her video and link together. She
obviously thought very hard when deciding what colours to use as they
link back to her final video well.

5. Evaluation
• When I thought about this section of the blog I assumed it would be
heavily worded and not appealing to the eye however Ellie’s was the
complete opposite making this stand out to me.
• Ellie used a magazine in order to present her evaluation questions. She
did this in a programme called InDesign which allows you to easily
create a magazine. This is quite unique like the whole of Ellie’s block
and her video.
• By looking through this, I can see she’s used both images and text so it
isn’t too heavy with either. She doesn’t cut anything out of her analysis
and goes into lots of detail which makes her evaluation well-built. It
kept me involved throughout and I didn’t get bored which shows she
didn’t say anything irrelevant which she did by constantly referring back
to the question.
• But Ellie didn’t stop at the magazine, she also created a video
answering her questions. This is the only video of Ellie being herself and
talking in front of the camera which makes it very exciting for the user
as they can finally see the person who’s work they’re looking at. She
could’ve looked at the camera more rather than looking at written work
but overall her evaluation was very strong.

6. Why Ellie’s blog
successful?
• I believe Ellie’s A2 media coursework blog was so successful due to
how relevant every post was, she didn’t go off on tangents or cut
corners. She did a great job in making sure her journey from the
research to her final products was dramatic and highlighted her
development as a media student.
• Ellie went way above the expectations of the specification which is
one of the many reasons her blog was successful and got full marks
like some tasks that weren’t compulsory such as 4 raw footage
videos.
• The range of media platforms she used for the posts makes her blog
go that extra bit in terms of success and detail as it ensures the
examiner wouldn’t get bored. Moreover, it shows her experience
within the media field.
• Her music video and blog are both unique and she makes sure they
both link as her blog features screen grabs from her video.
• I believe that I can learn so much from Ellie’s blog including the
variety of formats she’s used to present her work as before looking at
her blog I wasn’t aware of scribds or sound clouds.