1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and convention of real media products?
My intention was based around producing a magazine that offers the reader information about artists of indie, alternative rock and metal which could help inspire them. In my brief I planned to feature artist offering articles and interviews from current artists. I wanted my target audience to gain a sense of sophistication, using informative language but also with that hard rock edge towards it.
I looked mostly at ‘Kerrang!’ and the ‘NME’ magazines. Both of these magazines have a very similar genre of music that mine features; being mostly present rock and metal band with some feature of indie artists. I want to look at this magazine to the left because I think that it has some similar aspects to my magazine and the photograph is in the same simple format with just one person in the picture and also the general tone that I wanted to utilize for my product. My magazines target audience is aimed at young adults/ university students. The ‘Kerrang!’ magazine is one that is issued much more regularly than NME, so needs to be much more visually exciting in order to reach an appropriate profit when compared with a monthly NME. ‘Kerrang!’ has a front cover which is very visually stimulating and is designed to attract a reader more easily than the NME might. I want to use a similar technique for my product because I like the idea of having a weekly magazine rather than a monthly one.
NME and Kerrang magazine use a photography style that produces photos which do not like manufactured, these photos are usual taken from a live gig or concert where the artist doesn’t look neat and pristine, but rather realistically featured with sweat and stickiness. The photos on a front cover of ‘Kerrang’ or ‘NME’ do not portray many artists smiling or looking ‘sexy’. The styles in which they edit these photos almost look like they have been unedited. This is conventional for a rock/ metal magazine.
Some examples for real current magazine which are similar to my music genre:
I chose these magazines for inspiration because they contained similar content and they break some codes of convention; I tired to incorporate this break in convention in my own magazine, my main source of breaking the rules of convention was used during the front cover image. I have also made sure that my artists’ whole body wasn’t in the image, by not showing the full image this is enhancing the convention.
In the magazine above there is contents which I have used for my target audience and featured artists which are similar to my target audience. These artists are similar to:
During this project I have learnt that the photograph used on the front cover almost always foreshadows the style or genre of the magazine, take Blender for example.
‘Blender’ magazine is clearly a pop magazine, this is clear by looking at the photograph used for the front cover straight away. Nicole Scherzinger is a pop singer and the editor of blender has produced her accordingly. Nicole Scherzinger is looking very ‘sexy’ and clean – this photo is clearly taken in a studio, because this photo is ‘sexy’ and clean young girls interested in pop would buy this magazine because they want to look like these superficial pop artists. There is a clear difference in music genre with ‘Blender’ and a magazine like ‘Kerrang!’ or ‘NME’.
The difference here is clear, in the ‘Kerrang!’ magazine the artist is not smiling and the photograph looks quite serious, whereas in the ‘Blender’ magazine Nicole Scherzinger is being seductive and ‘sexy’. This really highlights the significance in the different music genres.
My ‘artist’ was photographed outside in a graffiti tunnel. I wanted to represent my artist in this setting to replicate an ‘everyday’ life of having fun. I have looked at some images taken my ‘Kerrang!’ and compared them to my photographs for inspiration.
Kerrang! Images:
I wanted to take some photographs that appear as though they are live shots, how I still wanted them to have some originality in them – I wanted to concentrate particularly on the Mise-en-scene for the images.
Using the photographs above for inspiration, I tried to make my model look and dress similar to the photos. I changed the style accordingly, as I wanted as much diversity in my photos as possible. These images show a young ‘wasted’ teenager dressed as what society might redeem as ‘inappropriate’, although I think that the clothing used is appropriate for my music genre and for the photograph itself. In ‘NME’ and ‘Kerrang!’ they both contained specific sections of content that was consistently used in every issue of the magazine; for example news, reviews and so on… By categorising the magazine this is a very conventional thing to do within a magazine. Even though I don’t want my magazine following the rules of convention, I did use the idea of these separations in my magazine because a contents page is for convenience. I wanted my readers to be able to find their desired pages easily and efficiently without being distracted too much by other concepts within my magazine. To create my contents page I used the information from my polls to see what my target audience liked to see in a magazine and what they would find interesting to ensure that they do not lose interest due to unwanted content.
I chose colours that hint at rock/metal but also stayed on the simplistic side; black, greys and white. These bold although quite dull and boring are actually very bold and can set the mood. The photo used on the front cover above is an example of rock/metal because the artist doesn’t care what she looks like. The artist is dressed how society would redeem ‘inappropriate’ and the image gives off this vibe that she doesn’t care about what people think about her this suggestion complements the music genre very well. In the double page spread the artist is walking into the light, you can’t see her except her figure, this is unconventional because you can’t see the artist at all, but just by looking at the photograph you can see what genre the magazine is. The image is foreshadowing her personality, and more importantly the music. The layout of my magazine mostly uses a conventional grid because I wanted the content of my magazine to have a larger impact on my target audience rather than the layout.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Hopefully by reading my blog you have quite clearly tell which one of these images belong in my magazine. In my magazine I have tired to make it very obvious to which style it should be appearing; Alternative rock/ metal.
By putting my ‘model’ outside smiling wouldn’t represent a code of convention, serious face, not really posing, looking quite plain with her hair up and only wearing dark make up around her eyes. Although the simple image is saying its plain, reading past the image there is beauty giving a sense of natural and perfection in the image.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
There are many different media institutions which could distribute my product for a variety of reasons, however there are also a few setbacks which could cause a problem or questions which could be asked by the institution before they began to distribute my magazine. For example an institution such as Bauer might ask questions like ‘why should we distribute your magazine when there are already magazine within rock/metal genre’ to which I would answer ‘Wasted Youth may seem like another rock/metal magazine but there’s also more to it, this magazine is very versatile meaning it can suit women or men, also a USP (unique selling point) of my magazine is that fact that you can also read about music from the years past or find music from the present that you like.’ How my magazine promotes a sense of fun, and passion towards music therefore, I feel that high street shops like HVM and Urban Outtfitters would be a great area to start distributing my magazine, also promoting on Music channels like ‘Kerrang’ would have a great affect.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product
My magazine target audience will be aiming at teenagers thinking of going to university, students already at university and young adults looking to have a good time, ages varying from 16-25. This magazine doesn’t really have a specific gender in mind is unisex but it also might lead towards more men buying the magazine seen as there aren’t really many female rock/metal bands.
The clothing which my target audience wears should reflect on their personality. My target audience have the attitude of not caring about what people think of them and how they dress. Even though my target audience don’t really care about what they wear they always seem to end up looking nice though. My target audience are individuals and dress uniquely.
Their style might have a lot of black in it, wear Dr. Martins and band t-shirt.
Here are some examples of how my target audience might dress:
Shops and online shops that my target audience buy their clothes from:
- Topshop
- Yayer
- The Cobra Snake
- Drop Dead
- The Urban Apparel
- Beyond Retro
- Phix Clothing
- Asos
- Urban Outfitters
As said earlier in my ‘Music Magazine Cover, Contents & DPS Page’ brief for my target audience
As you can see throughout creating this magazine my target audience hasn’t changed in the slightest.
5. How did you attract/ address your audience?
I think that my magazine attract the correct target audience, this is because the styling of my magazine isn’t very conventional but at the same it isn’t rough so you can’t understand the magazine. The font and the colours in my magazine work well together and it does not make one gender feel that it isn’t for them. This magazine is unisex and the colours are neutral but also bold in the sense that you can still see everything from a mile away. I think that the photograph on the front cover is very unconventional which rock/metal fans would love and the double page spread photograph entices the audience into wanting to read the article. My magazine is offering ‘free poster’, and as my target audience are mainly students they feel that because the word ‘free’ is in front of poster that they are getting more for there money had just paying another magazine.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Technology was the main process of creating my music magazine. I have learnt a lot from the duration of constructing my media product. Firstly, I have created a wordpress account (wordpress.com) which I was unfamiliar with before, I had to gain knowledge of how to blog on this and also upload images and music videos. This was helpful as I could blog my progress for the tasks in school and outside of school.
I have also been using Adobe Photoshop CS3 to produce the structure, layout and the input of the text into my magazine. To begin with I only know how to do the basics and had little experience with Photoshop so I found it quite challenging at the start when working with Photoshop for my preliminary task. Doing out preliminary task having help from my media teacher improved my skills with Photoshop so I was a lot more confident using Photoshop for my main task.
The internet helped me a lot during the production of my music magazine. I used the internet to help research magazine that would be in the same genre as mine and also for inspiration. Looking at the other magazines I was seeing if they had any unique conventions and also what unique conventions hadn’t been used before.
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Looking back on my preliminary task, I have had more experience and learnt how to use professional technologies like Photoshop to create my media product. During this process I have learnt that my target audience were extremely important when I was designing my magazine – to create a successful magazine you have to create what your target audience want and need. The target audience and the music genre are always the main issues with a magazine. During my preliminary task I didn’t do half as much research as I have during my main task. For example during my main task I analysed other magazine to see what they were doing to make them successful. I also looked at how they used the rules of conventions and how they worked that with their music genre. Researching other magazines helped me look closely to their use of; font, colour scheme, image size and house – style. I also created a poll and got members of my media class to complete it so that I would analyse what the audience wanted. This research was extremely helpful as I was able to get a closer idea on subject choices.
Due to the fact that I had very little experience on Photoshop when I first started my preliminary task the quality of the images weren’t as good as they my main tasks images. The editing was very poor and inexperienced, whereas now the images are a better quality. I feel that I have made a huge improvement from my preliminary task; I believe that the final product was quite successful when relating to the genre and my target audience.
My Final Product
Here I have my final product. This is my front cover, I have very happy with it, because I feel like you can tell straight away what music genre it is.
I found the content page the hardest but I still think that I did quite well on it. If I had to change/improve anything on my content page I would add a little more to the background to make it look a bit busier. But overall I am happy with the finished product.
Here is my DPS. I think that doing the double page spread was the easiest and most fun element to do within this task. I also feel that it is one of my strongest elements of my magazine. Yet I also think that is anything was to be criticised, some people may have difficulty reading the text against the background. I have received very good compliment on my DPS and I am very pleased with the result.
emmasturgeon 