A2 Media Studies: Coursework

Evaluation
[Question 1]
In what ways does your media product use,
develop or challenge forms and conventions
of real media products?
In order to know if our media product has used,
challenged or developed the forms and
conventions integrated and employed throughout
existing media products, I need to compare and
contrast my media product to one that currently
exists in order to answer this question to the
highest standard possible.

As

you
can

see, my media product uses the conventions of

similar shot types throughout the documentary.
This shows how as a group, we have incorporated
elements from real media products and followed
the codes and conventions set in order to create an
authentic documentary. The documentary above,
called Our Mobile Lives, was chosen as a
guideline to follow as it had a similar topic to our
documentary, as well as being presented in a
smooth and effective manner. By having a range of
shot types like Our Mobile Lives did, such as
medium shots, over the shoulder shots, close-up
shots and establishing shots, as well as title
screens, we were able to effectively follow codes
and conventions for documentaries rather than
break them.
TV Listing Double Page Spread

For the magazine double

page spread, I tried to
make it look as real as
possible by following
conventions from the magazine double page
spread shown above. The article, titled Youre the
boss, is used to show a clear reference between
the subject of the article and the main image.
Likewise, I linked my title and main image to the
article by writing One month. Zero technology.
Think I can do it? Lets find out. By writing this, I
have successfully conveyed an aspect of the
documentary to the reader, which, in combination
with the main image, will make them want to read
on and find out. Once they have read the article,
they will want to watch the documentary.
I also followed the format of using one page for the
main image, and the other page for the title and
article. By doing this, I have achieved a
professional look for my magazine double page
spread.
Radio Trail
For the radio trail, I followed the convention of
making my radio trail last 30 seconds, which is the
minimum standard length of a radio trail. Most of

the radio trails I listened to, such as the

McDonalds Fish-O-Fillet ad, and the Coke Summer
ad, kept their trails near 30 seconds in length,
which actually proved to be a good length, which
avoided becoming boring. Some of the codes and
conventions of a radio trail are voice-over, sound
effects, music and extracts from the documentary.
However, I broke the convention of having extracts
from the documentary since I wanted the radio
trailer to be generic and not give too much away
about the documentary itself. Therefore, I used a
voiceover with some upbeat music in order to
make the radio trail seem fast paced and
appealing.