How has your understanding of real media conventions developed over the past two years?

Instruction	Essay Plan
Explain the tasks you have completed over the last two years.	·         AS – Creating a music magazine – its front cover, contents page, and double page spread. Had to follow a certain genre of music. ·         A2 – Creating a music video for a song of our choice, and two ancillary texts: a digipack for the music video’s album, and an advertisement for the album.
Discuss your first big project – the music magazine – front cover, contents page, and double page spread. How did you use real conventions?	·         Front Cover – Masthead, cover lines, one main image, principle of thirds (text, artist, puppet), barcode, black and white fonts, variations of font. ·         Contents Page – “Contents” title, hotspots, eye-catching colours, pictures, captions, page numbers, editor’s welcome. ·         Double Page Spread – Title line, big images, introduction paragraph, coloured background, quotes, interview style of question and answer.
Did it make a difference understanding the conventions? How did your knowledge help to inform your decision making?	Understanding the conventions allowed me to make my magazine appear more realistic and professional, as I understood what makes up other magazines of my genre, and how to replicate their designs. It was also important however, to not follow certain conventions, as this allowed me to make my design more unique in certain aspects.
Discuss the A2 coursework – how did you establish conventions? How did you use them in the construction of your music video? Include work on the digipack and advert. Compare this to AS – has your level of understanding developed? Explain.
Which conventions did you challenge, and which did you follow in the making of your media product, and why?
Conclusion – How important are conventions? How significant have they been in developing your ability to create media texts that have meaning? Include the extent to which your understanding of conventions has developed.