In the past 5 months I have been asked to create my own magazine cover, contents page and double page spread. Below you can see a PowerPoint of the ideas I had for my evaluation. But the following are the same questions just in more detail.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Whilst comparing my own product to real media products I thought about the ways real media present theirs. As you could see I analysed 4 covers, 2 contents pages and 2 double page spreads, this helped me interpret many magazines and help me with my own. One or two of these covers were inspirational to me, like the KERRANG magazines because they attracted my eye and I liked the way they were done. Whilst working through my product I mainly took ideas from KERRANG magazine because as I said it is inspirational to me and it is my favorite music magazine so I thought if that appeals to me similar ideas will appear to my target audience. A ‘typical’ magazine sticks to convention which is what I aimed to do – have a big title across the front, a main picture and all other features in smaller writing. I created a few unconventional magazine covers by placing features in a different position and not using the appropriate font. As I created front covers that were unconventional I did challenge forms of real media products by doing those weird, different styles. But in the end I stuck to conventional as it appeals to more people. The genre of my magazine was intended to be rock, but I used conventional ways to show that I used hybrid genre because my rock theme also blended in with a metal theme.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
My media product separates social groups through mainly age and gender. This is because it has a 19 year old on the front and also rock is more of a male thing. If I used a 20-30 year old then teenagers/young adults most probably wouldn’t be interested as an older person may imply it’s for older people. Also the way the person on the front is dressed could attract the audience and this would show that people who choose this magazine would be socially similar. When constructing my media product I used a particular theme – black, white, green and yellow which could represent the attitude of the audience and whether they are socially compatible. Also the font I used was bold and simple which would show if they are attracted to it they are into similar things. The reasons why I chose to use these features is because I wanted to make sure it would appeal to my target audience and show what people are into these days.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I think newsagents and mainly convenient stores would be most likely to distribute my product because that’s where teenagers go to pick up drinks and sweets so whilst they are there they could see the magazine and pick it up. I wouldn’t choose supermarkets because 16-20 year olds do not go food shopping so they are less likely to go to supermarkets. Newsagents and convenient stores are good places to distribute my product because they are popular with young adults and easy access for teenagers as most teenagers go to shops like that after school. Digital publishing would a big part of distributing my media product because 17% of media these days come from digital publishing. I could offer merchandise with my product to distribute it even further because then it would be more appealing. I may use some thing like a website to help it become distributed quicker.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
When first starting my media project I decided the main target audience would be 16-20 year olds because that’s my age group and also my friends around me so it would be easier to get more accurate feed back. Also with myself being 17 I could use my own preferences to get me started and what I like could be similar to people of the same age as me. I was choosing to aim it at people interested in rock and maybe a bit of metal. This is not a big genre compared to pop but it is some thing I am interested in and all my friends are too so I thought it would be a lot easier to do. Also not many older people buy music magazines any more because they don’t listen to the latest music so it would be pointless in aiming the magazine at them because no one would buy it.
How did you attract/address your audience?
First of all I decided to use one of my friends as the main picture. This was because he is 19 years of age and is in the age group I am aiming at. Where as if I used an older person like my brother – in – law then that wouldn’t be appropriate because teenagers/young adults would think it’s not the latest music and the person’s appearance wouldn’t be the ‘in’ style. Talking about appearance, that is another reason why the audience would be interested in my products because he isn’t wearing old clothes, baggy clothes, tight clothes or anything stupid, he is just wearing normal tops which would attract people with the same type of attitude and style. I attracted my audience by also using Guitar Hero 4 as my subject on my main double page spread because my target audience is also the same as GH4s’ target audience and with GH4 not out in the UK at the time I thought it would be a brilliant attraction as they always want the latest news on some things big like that. On my front cover I also advertised a lot of competitions which would attract my audiences attention because they are for latest CD’s and one says ‘5 COMPS INSIDE’ which would make them look in the magazine and they would be able to see that they are for upcoming gigs. That means they would buy the magazine even if it was just for the competitions. Also the colours I used were simple – black, white, green and yellow. As I said about using this to distinguish social groups, I also used it because it’s bold and attractive to catch the reader’s eye.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
When working through this project I have come across some amazing software and learnt many new things. The main thing I have learnt is how to work fireworks! When I was in year 10/11 I did try to use fireworks but I gave up because at the time it wasn’t something I really needed, but now I needed to know how to use it because I wanted to get the best possible result, and without fireworks I wouldn’t have been able to do that. From that I have learnt how to use the magic wand tool, how to fade images, how to change colour of titles that are bitmaps by using hue/saturation option, how to use the polygon lasso tool and much more. Other things I have learnt is how to use blogger because I had never used or heard of it before but now its easy to operate and find my way around. I have also learnt how to edit photos using particular software because I had a new camera and had never used to software before, it was Kodak Easyshare. First time I didn’t have a clue but after 5 minutes I knew exactly what to do. Some pictures I took I wanted to convert into black and white. I knew I could do it on fireworks by selecting commands > creative > convert to grayscale but I wanted to do it on the software and I figured out how to do it and it only took 2 minutes – it was so easy, even if I did just have to use my initiative.
Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Going from my prelim to my final product, I feel as though I have learnt and realised a lot. I feel the progression I made was really good and that’s because of the planning and feed back I did and got. I realised you need to plan because to get the best result you need to improve on your previous effort and also getting feed back helps you get the best results because if you just rely on your own preference then it won’t suit the audience and no one may be interested. At least if you get a lot of feed back you can use ideas from each point, put them together and end up with a really good product. Another thing I have learnt is how to operate a camera properly to be able get the best shots and outcome. As my camera contains many functions like iso, auto and high reso, I learnt what each one meant and how the use them correctly under the correct circumstances. Another thing I have learnt is that you have to experiment to get the best outcome and you have to do something different to see what’s best. This is because if you stick to something plain you don’t know if anything else would work and people could think the plain way would be boring and no one would like it. At least if you experiment and it’s not right you don’t have to use it but at least you tried.
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