Key Media Concepts

Key Media Concepts

Media Studies revolves around seven key concepts 

Media Forms, institution, genre, representation, audience, ideology and narrative.

There are institutions which govern each sector of media, whether they be big major companies or smaller independent ones. This applies to all forms of media which are:

Internet (Google, Firefox, Bing, Yahoo)

Film (Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, Scenario Films, Film Independent)

Print (Little White Lies, The Independent, The Sun)

Music (Sony Music, Universal Music Group, EMI)

Broadcast & Radio (BBC, Radio 1, TFM)

Genre is one of the most important thing in marketing and production of a piece of media. The Genre establishes a target audience which the product will be most suitable for, allowing marketing products like magazine adverts, tv adverts and other products to be distributed and made so that they will target that audience the best way in order to sell their product.Genre can provide structure and form which can allow a great deal of creativity and virtuosity and links in with a number of the seven key concepts. Once a genre has been decided in this case we are producing a pop music video, we will have to consider what our audience will be expecting from a pop video, and then create a video containing these conventions but not being placed into the group of 'they're all the same'. Narrative will then also follow, how do we want our music video to look, we will have to consider whether we want it in chronological order or a non-linear one. 

When unpacking a narrative in order to find its meaning, there are a series of codes and conventions that need to be considered. When we look at a narrative we examine the conventions of genre, character, form and time and speed. Looking at whether our narrative is going to be suitable for the genre and will it be in pace with the song itself, not being too fast or slow to keep up with the music, most of all being suitable. We wouldn't produce a slow pop song with lots of performance and flashing lights as it wouldn't fit with the conventions and work well. Also to consider is characters, do the characters develop through the video or are they purely there to be the star image. Also looking at time, this includes the use of flashbacks, dream sequences, repetition, flash-forwards, these will all have to be considered to fitting with the genre.