1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media product? (Powtoon)

When I finished my construction and the research and planning parts of my media product, I think I can clear understand the convention and the publication of the media product. I did my primary research on survey monkey, there were 20 people wrote my questionnaire although just some basic questions, it still impact me. Billboard is one of the most influential magazines in America with a variety of music genre. I found out in their country genre magazines, they not only chose some typical colors of country music(such as light yellow and blue), but also some relevant media texts to attract the target audience. I want my magazine can have a really clear country style, so I try to show it from:-My font: -I chose a very vintage and classical font to be my masthead, it seems a little bit complicated, I tried to make it big enough in order to attract more the reader. For me, country music means happiness, natural and degage, so there are some leaves and butterfly surround the cover line. I chose simple and decorated letter as the four important singers in my magazine, it can stand out well.-Media texts: -one of the puff on the top left corner with“ BIGGEST COUNTRY

MUSIC GUIDE” can let the readers know the genre of my magazine. I listed more than four very popular country music singers in different areas of the cover page as well.-Small images: -I shoots some images outside with natural scene and the model with a wooden guitar for implying the music genre. In the other hand, I think it need to be international and popular in order to attract my target audience from 14-25 as well, so I use the elements from billboard magazine to incorporated in to my product. such as:-Put some important (feature) singers on both side of the Cover Page -Add the revision section that can help me attract more groups of customers, such

as people who likes collecting articles about LIVE concert.-No.1 chart on the content page provide some popular country songs with singers during the month.-Exclusive—This part I have used the idea from Kerrang Magazine. I know Kerrang is one of the most popular rock genre magazines in England, so it must have the strength elements. After addding this element on my cover page, I think it is more abundant than before. Here are the elements include in my magazine:-Cover Page: Skyline, Masthead, Features, Cover Line, Bar Code, Cover Image, Puff, Date Line, Revision Section, Exclusive, Headline.

-Content Page: Cover Date, Volume Number, NO.1Chart, Page Numbers, Story Headline with short description underneath, Tips, Title-Content, Images related to stories, Feature Images, New Event& Activities Online. -Double Page: Headline, Sub-headline, Drop Cap, PULL Quote, use different colours to separate the article, Text in equal columns, Magazine Website, Feature

Images, Sound Effect, Background: text wrapped around images, The related sentence from character, Tips: something make people looking forwardI have been unconventional in: I tied to make my magazine unconventional in these ways –The Chart Heat. It is a list of the rest of the singers (except the main four). The reason why I created it is because I think customers want to know in this magazine whether have the singer that they’re interested in. So role of the chart is help me attract customers in order to buy it. -The meaning of the colors on No.1Chart. I used yellow, blue and red to represent unchanged, rise up and go down in No.1 Chart, so it is like a ranking table that can help people knows the fashion cycle of country music. Overall, you can see my flat plan and layout is quite similar to Billboard because it’s really has been inspired me a lot and I think these kind of details and convention can appeal my target audience as Billboard has done.

2.How does your media product represent particular social groups? (Glogster)

The social groups I was chosen are the teenagers and young adults aged 14-25. I’m in the target age range so it’s really helpful, as I know what can appeal my audiences in a magazine. Typically people who like listening country music are stereotyped as being facetious, active and optimistic; they like to wear a cowboy hat, clothes with latticed and jeans. So regard to this, I tried to make my product appeal these categories; based on the feedback of my primary research (a questionnaire on Survey Monkey), my magazine focus on some young country singers and bands, so this feature represent our audience are almost teenagers. I tried to make my magazine unisex, so I won’t follow stereotype like men dominant and women passive. I tried to keep balance of these two genders, so I did some efforts in:-Colours. In my media product I tried to use both warm (eg. pink,orange) and cool colours (eg. blue,grey ) to represent men and women.-Clothing Style. I chose two kinds of clothes for the main model of my magazine,Sherry. One is very formal shirt with black laciness represent man or young adults, the other is a black and white jumper with hollowed flowers represent woman and teenagers.In addition, CMB are added Exclusive Stories and Revision Section in order to make my magazine more diversification and competitive, as my target audience would like to something popular and special. I tried to create my product looks like a real, professional and personality music magazine, so I used fonts like light, bold, rough, graffiti in different parts, they worked well together and can stood out important details. The vocabulary I was chose often come up from feelings of listeners, some are obvious like teenagers talk to each other at ordinary times, in order to match the standard stereotypes that audience aged 14-25. For example, the language use of the headline on my Double Page— “I MAY BE ICE COLL BUT MY ALBUM IS REALLY HOT ” with a subhead “ MY SECOND ALBUM SMASHED THE RECORD BOOKS”. From ethnicity, my cover star is a Chinese at this time, but the main language we chose is English so I think our target audience can be global.

3.What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? (Powtoon)

Publishing house is a company that takes the written work for a writer or a musician and makes it available to the general public. I have been a research 3 publishing house for my magazine; they are Bauer Media, IPC Media and Future Media With Passion. I chose Bauer Media to distribution my media product is because it has different groups of target audience that aim different genres of magazine, it means they have a widely customers resource as teenagers, male and female. They also have many ways to spread their brand such as on the Internet, radio stations and TV. Bauer Media sales 300 magazines in 15 countries like Germany and America, they have over 80 inflectional brands covering a diverse range of interest, so it’s international institutions and these features bring them a huge successful in world wide. Bauer Media has two really well-known music magazines called Kerrang and Q magazine. Let’s use Kerrang as example: Kerrang is a rock genre magazine. During 2013, they sold out about 37,000 issues, each issue is £2.20, so the revenue will be over £81,000, therefore, I think they have rich experience in how to manage a music magazine. For Bauer Media, they don’t a popular country genre magazine yet, and I tried to build my magazine become the “ UK’s BIGGEST COUNTRY MUSIC GUIDE.” If my product can join Bauer Media, this decision will help Bauer Media exand their market and increase their market share. Depending the strength of them, I believe CMB will have a bright future I have set a price of £1.50 for a monthly CMB and my target is to sell at least 9,000 issues in the first year of my product going onto the market, which would gain a revenue £13,500. Besides, I found out some people would like to subscribe magazine online. It’s can provide to people who can’t buy your magazine for some reasons in a shop and save the space for their house, l decide to offer this service to readers, hence you can subscribe CMB on your laptops, iPads and smart phones.

4.Who would be the audience for your media product? (Emaze)

After I finish my market research (involved making a questionnaire on Survey Monkey and discussing ideas with my friends), I’m sure my magazine would appeal people aged 14-25. I have chose this age range is because it’s really hard for a country music magazine to appeal target audience, which is a younger age group as under 14 in the market. For example, the target audience of Billboard is aged 16-26. They try to appeal their target audience by using a range of different languages, colour schemes, images and contents. For me, I focus on people aged 14-25. My confidence was came from an analysis of an America country music singer called Taylor Swift, and it’s about how she chose her target audience and market. It inspired me a lot because Taylor Swift has a very similar experience as my cover star Sherry---They released their first album at the age of 16, become more and more popular when they released their second album at 19. They write their own experience in the song and share with people. They are very similar so I

tried to find out Taylor’s target audience and market. Her original market as sub-20 females who believe in romance, and the writer sees it as teenage angst songs targeted to teenagers by someone in the demographic. In my opinion, the overlap between teenagers and young adults is about 90%. It can be Taylor’s target audience, Sherry’s target audience and CMB’s target audience. So for CMB, we try to save the older particular singer in order to appeal people who like listening classic, excavate new power in country music for those younger audience because I feel almost teenagers like to see something new, special which can catch their eyes. I want my magazine can be unisex, so I was very carefully in choosing colour scheme (use warm and cool colors to represent men and women) and the clothing style (use pretty and formal clothing style to represent women and men). I’m in the age range of the target audience, for myself, I won’t be interested in a magazine with lots of text and less images, it’s too common and boring. So in my Double Page, I did best effort in the snowy effect of the background. These features can help me to attract my audience interested in reading what I am writing. In order to appeal my target audience as well as keep their interest, I changed the original round puff into a toothed gear shape, which represents the development in country music, making the whole page more vernal. Again, young target audience like something popular and new, so we created Exclusive stories and revision section, you can only know it through CMB, hence it can be a reason for people buy your magazine. Otherwise, I want to build CMB into the UK’s biggest country music guide in order to attract my audience from reputation, in my opinion, we have chance as long as we can make it good enough. We also offer free posters to customers for people who would like to collect things; the Chart Heat on the cover page can directly make customers consider whether these singers they are interested in. However, I don’t think these reasons are enough because the market is competitive so I want to do something like a promotion. I decided to make a 5 digits code with something cover over it at the back of the magazine. If you buy the magazine and go to CMB website, there will have special column there and you type in your code, it will tell you whether win the prize. -1st prize– a ticket of a country music concert.-2nd prize– a chance become VIP of CMB or you can individually talk with a popular country music star.-3rd prize– get an object with a country music star signature on it.

I believe it can have a great influence to audience, leading the consumption enthusiasm of customers. I made an advertising poster as well, I offer customers if they subscribe CMB for a year just for £15 and they will get-Digital Download-50% off of rock records.-Get £20 I-TUNES voucherI also decide provide small presents during daily packaging and when some special days come up such as Christmas and New Year’s Day we will also give customers a special gift.

5.How did you attract/address your audience? (Popplet)

My target audience is teenagers and young adults aged from14-25, they are facetious, active and optimistic, some of them are keeping on the rails as well. I tried to make my product follow the stereotypes in appropriate manner in these ways: - Small images on cover page (a girl posed with a red wooden guitar) can clear and definite show the genre to readers with a natural background. This group of photos is very implicitly as our target audiences aged 14-25; I tried to make resonance between these two in order to attract readers to read more.

- Colour Scheme: Used cool colour like blue to represent man and used warm colours like pink to represent women.

- Small Images: I put some small images on Cover Page like other music magazines did. It helped me fill in the blank space as well as provide more information to the readers. It can clear and definite show the music genre to readers with a natural background. This group of photos is very implicitly indicated our target audiences aged 14-25 from the clothing style and the method of image-capturing.

- Clothing Style: My model Sherry wore a quite formal white shirt on the Cover Page, it would more closely to the male gender, looks terse style; The picture which is on the right is on the Double page. It's a normal jumper with a snowy effect in order to make the whole page looks soft, so female might prefer it.

- Particular Features: I added Exclusive and Revision Section into my magazine. Especially the Exclusive Section, the articles and details inside you can just find in CMB, so if readers want to know it, they must buy my magazine. I think these two Sections can help CMB attract people who like to know the latest interest news about country singers/bands and who like to revision LIVE concert and know the stories behind the concert.

I tried to challenge in these ways: - Language: I tried to make there is no grammar or spell mistakes and make

my language more locally. I think the language use is quite informal in my magazine. I made the headline of my Double Page quite obvious like teens talk to each other in normal times. I want when people read my magazine can be really relax and follow my texts, not felt the grammar is wired and boring.

- We chose different poses for model Sherry. These poses we chose represent characters of people who likes country music- active, facetious and optimistic. The pose that is on Cover Page with a very cool facial expression acts as a message for readers-country music can be cool, it can be international!

- I’m agreeing with color and font choice is very important. All kinds of font I was chose is I think it can relate to my music genre and appeal my target audience. I went for “KellyAnnGothic” to be my masthead. This font is really crooked that effect like a retro stamp. I felt this font is the best choice for me because if I choose a kind of scrawl font, people will be confused about your music genre. “Black leafs” is the font of my cover line. This font is special because these are leaves around each letter, make the whole page lively and reiterate the genre of magazine in order to appeal target audience aged 14-25. I know it’s maybe a little bit dull to use black, but if I use colorful font, it can’t stand out well because of the color of background. So I deiced to use

colorful font in other details to make it up. Back to Billboard, I felt we both use one rough the other regular font to performance our masthead and headline.

My audience feedback came back from people aged 14-25 as wanted CMB released once a month. I also took their advice in the feedback—become VIP of CMB or have an individually talk with a popular country music star if you won the 2nd prize. For teenagers, it’s a great experience undoubted. This advice can make my magazine become competitive. We had a briefly evaluation in class as well, the feedback from my classmates are make the masthead bigger and add some small images in order to provide more details for readers. Their advices gave me more opportunities to appeal my target audience.

6.What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product? (Padlet)

Slide Share is a programme which you can create Power Point online and put the related links on blogs for people to see it. I uploaded my power points and coursework on Slide Share first then put the links on my blog for my exam. I felt it’s very easy to set up and nothing complicated here. I’m very pleased to use it show my progress to teacher and examiner but I don’t think it’s good to upload something with a specific font because sometimes it will be changed. For me, Blogger is a programme that can upload my course work on for teachers and examiners to mark it. It’s very easy to use, you can upload lots of things— texts, images, Power Points, you can also linked a website with an underneath. You can put whatever you want to show what skills you are learnt. I create “Pages” and I found out it can make you blogs have a clear method, make teachers mark you work easily. I’m quite happy to use that and it can also bring me fun and interest when I do my media work. Photoshop is a useful editing software. When I use it at the first time, I found it’s so hard—not the software, it’s language problem. I consulted my teacher and classmates, they are very patient, taught me how to use it step by step. I downloaded a Photoshop on my McBook for practicing in my free time as well. I think the order of the layer is really important when you use it, or you will be struggled. “Magnetic Lasso Tool”, “Rectangle Tool” and “Line Tool” helped me a lot when I created my product. I used “Magnetic Lasso Tool” to cut the image out and use refine edge to make the edge of my image more natural. “Rectangle Tool” and “Line Tool” you can see the great progress on No.1 Chart, which is on the content page. InDesign is a desktop publishing software which can be used to create works such as magazines, posters, newspapers and so on. It’s very tricky for me but I have to admit it can make you layout more accurate. The tools are similar between InDesign and Photoshop, but in InDesign you can create columns and drop your texts in, it can improve your layout. Another helpful tool is called “text warp”, it can make your texts warp around your image automatically and make your product more professional. The problem I met is about the layer, the layer won’t create

automatically and I’m careless sometimes; I put several things in one layer and I found out if you want to move one of them to the top layer, it’s really troublesome. I also used a Canon camera for shooting my image. It’s a single lens reflex camera. To be honest, I’m confused in how to use it when I've got it. I knew the basic usage of the camera after watched the tutorial on YouTube and I’m quite surprised with the high quality of the image when I upload photos onto the computer via a USB lead. During the shooting, lighting could be a big problem. I don’t know how to control the time of exposure at that time, so the images we shot are always dark, hence I asked my host for help, who can be the expert in using camera. We changed the focusing ring and zoom ring but it didn't work. Luckily, we found the answer on the Internet at last.

7.Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I can clear remember when I started my media course on September. I can’t manage well with the Apple Mac as well as the Photoshop with my poor English. I’m really nervous and not confident at that time.But now, I’m proud of myself on the technology and creativity that can be showed on my media product. The planning stage for my magazine is very important. I can’t imagine if I didn’t do the research before how my magazine will be looked like. I created several flat plans about the layout and color choices by comparing with a real magazine, it’s the key point of my planning. It helped me draw the best conclusion. Before the planning stages, we did some conducting research as well:

-Publishing Houses; this research make me feel that I will put my magazine on a real market and you need to consider and make a decision which publishing house is the best choice for your magazine, understand how the business work.

-Audience Research; I make a questionnaire of my magazine with very basic questions such as the price they would like to pay for a music magazine and the frequency of the publication.-Generic Conventions of a Magazine; I’m not sure what it is before. If I didn’t do the research, I won’t be focus on this part and put it into my magazine.

-Mind Map; this is a research about the artists you want to introduce in your magazine, it helped me consider the component of my magazine.

- Evaluation; we have a briefly evaluation during class and it helped me know the weakness of my product, gave me ideas on how to improve that can make it attract my target audience for me.

The Call Sheet and Risk Assessment are very necessary during my construction. Call Sheet make me have a clear goal (the place of shooting; shooting types, what I want to achieve and the date) or I don’t know what can I do next. Risk Assessment helped me think a lot about what troubles we might meet during the shooting, so I

will be more careful to avoid the risks which I mentioned in the Risk Assessment as well.

Comparing my prelim task to my final product, you can clear see the development of my skills in using Photoshop and InDesign. In my prelim task, I didn’t edited my image and I just use the type tool typed some words in with the same font even the masthead. Some words on the background were folded the introduction as well as a big bar code in the corner; it’s very basic. But in my final product, I have learnt that the connection between audience, magazine and the publishing house, so I used various font styles with different size and colors to attract my target audience aged 14-25.I have learnt about camera techniques and the effects they have as well, so I followed the shot types in Billboard, pay attention in the generic conventions and used Photoshop to edited my images, such as improved the lighting and refine the edge, then drop them into InDesign.

Thanks to Sally, online tutorial and people who helped me, I have enjoyed the process of creating and working with this topic. I hopefully have produced a good product that is worth a good grade. I think my product can suit the brief as well as my target audience. I will continue read magazines and look at the same elements that I have produced in my work, I’m quite enjoy the work I uploaded on my blog like what I am writing here. And Finally, these websites helped me a lot and I have become familiar with them: -Blogger -Slide share -Prezi -Padlet -Emaze