0. Points from the 2019 Examiner's moderation report to consider

   Websites were often either exceptionally detailed, demonstrating a great deal of commitment from candidates, or were lacking in content and seemingly created in a short amount of time; some were seen which included very little content, consisting of an animated background – clearly a template – and a couple of images.

   Most candidates used online CSS web-templates (e.g. Wix). This gave candidates a wider range of audio-visual features and a more contemporary and professional looking finish but, if mishandled, could be generic and not clearly linked to the house style/branding of the other product. 

   Generally the linked pages tended to be less successful than homepages, often lacking technical sophistication and, in many cases, lacking in content or being divorced from the larger project and so failing to take in the relationship between the other product and concepts like the target audience and representation.

   The best work extended the range of images and issues indicated by the magazine and added creative audio-visual material including ‘make-overs’, video ‘lookbooks’ and interviews with ‘designers’. Good examples of embedded audio-visual content for the music videos, television or radio briefs usually consisted of variations of behind the scenes footage.

   In general, less successful websites either demonstrated a lack of attention to detail or missed key elements of the brief/ codes and conventions of the form. Some examples included: Sites which did not include a viable/ visible menu bar Sites where the linked page (or in a couple of cases the homepage) was virtually blank or included text but no image Sites with two uneven pages: i.e. one strong page and one page that looked and felt as though it had been put together quickly Sites that did not have any linked pages – just two separate webpages Sites where it was difficult to find the second (linked) page or where candidates had only created a single scrolling page with internal links; although this is how some websites operate, it did not meet the precise requirements of the brief Sites that did not include embedded audio/ video, or where the embedded material was not original. Either candidates had completely omitted this from their design or they had included links to YouTube videos rather than producing some of their own content Sites which extended beyond the sides of a standard monitor screen Use of template backdrops/ failure to edit template materials rather than using bespoke imagery/ text Sites where the linked page was not specified and candidates had produced a number of pages; as only one linked page can be assessed, it was often the case that the first linked page the moderator looked at did not contain much content, the candidate having spread all content over a number of pages. This adversely impacted on the marks that can be given Sites which gave no indication of the relevant media industry context (Bauer for the magazine; BBC Radio 1 for the radio; Channel 4 for the television and Universal for the music video)

   14 © OCR 2019

   A Level Media Studies - H409/03/04 - Summer 2019 Moderators’ report

   • Images used on websites were often not of an appropriate size and were not always anchored by text

   • Banners did not always have the magazine masthead on them.

     Digital Convergence

     • Websites which did not link directly to the other product (mostly magazines, although one or two music videos sites did not include the video) or included little/ no imagery taken from the partner product

       • Models/ actors on the website who were not used in the partner product

       • Features on the website which were not mentioned in the partner product (mostly in magazine submissions)