Evaluation

By Charlotte Prangnell

In what ways does you media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of

real media products?

Masthead

One convention is having your masthead across the top of your magazine. Here are some examples:

< this one is mine

As you can see all the existing magazines have their masthead on the top of the magazines and does my magazine. There fore I have used the convention and not challenged it. The magazine below has not followed the convention at all, they have put there mast head over the whole page, even though it does not follow the convention it still looks very good and very unique. Even though it goes over the whole page it does not cover a lot of the image at all. You can still see the woman's face very clearly. This is a very good example of not following the convention. I really think my masthead looks good and I wouldn’t change it if I could.

Coverlines

Coverlines go on the front page, normally on the sides or at the bottom and the main cover line is normally in bigger writing than the rest.

< this one is mine

These magazines again do not challenge the conventions at all but they all still look very good with this. This is such a well known convention that I could not find any that do not follow it. Although everyone uses this convention it still looks really good and is a basis for every magazine, using this convention means that you wont get writing all over your image and then it leaves more room for your headline also it doesn’t look too messy and all over the place.

Double Page Spread

The double page spread normally has pictures of the person or people that the article is about. It also has some columns of writing and some pull quotes.

< this is my mine

As you can see all the double page spread above all follow the convention including my own magazine. Yet the one below does follow some of the conventions but also doesn’t because it doesn’t have the pull quotes that the other ones have, so this one challenges the convention. Even though it does go against the convention it still has the columns of text and the image is of

the person the article is about. I really like my double page spread and I don’t think if I had to do it again I would change any of it.

Images

The images that music magazines usually use are of very high quality and are extremely well posed and thought of.

< this one is mine

All of the magazine images have just collected they all follow the conventions, but saying that in my research there is one contents page in there that did not have really good quality images. But my magazine also has high quality images and I thought a great deal about how everyone would stand and where they would stand and who would be in my images.

Contents page

Contents pages normally have what is in the magazine and the page numbers they are on. They also have images on them.

< this one is mine

As you can see they all follow the convention and so does mine. A difference between mine is that it doesn’t have as much on it as the rest. I couldn’t find a contents page that goes against the convention so that means that most if not all music magazines use the convention. If I did it again I would put more things on it, more images, more text and maybe a letter from the editor.

How does your media product represent particular social

groups?

Characters and male and female representation

My characters are represented by the clothes they wear and the genre of music they are representing. They all wear dark clothes and clothes that stand out. The music they represent is rock and this is shown in the clothes and their hairstyles. The only one that does not represent the theme is the band image at the bottom of my contents page. This is because they are a new band just starting up. They play rock music and they will change their image the more famous they get and more well known they get. My main person, Chad Wearing, Definitely fits in with the theme because of his clothes, the guitar and his hair style. The poses he does also add to the rock star image I was trying to represent like smashing the guitar, this is because most rock stars do some things that are completely outrageous like that and they have a “hard” image to show. The female, Emily Howland, shows a good example of an up and coming rock chick who is trying to be a bit different to everyone else and still has her own style. The clothes the female used is her own style and does listen to rock music a lot so she definitely fits in, also her pose shows that she can be emotional and that she also has something to hide. This is to get the audience want to read more into the magazine.

Ethnic groups, teenagers and adults representation

Ethnic groups are not really represented in my magazine, I have not specifically chosen to aim it at a certain ethnic group. This way it is better because people can not complain for racism. People could take the fact that I only have white people in my images the wrong way but I did not intend for it to offend anyone, so a change I would make is put some people of different race in my images too.

I have represented teenagers in my magazine although if this was a real magazine and I had more issues then I would put other bands in it, some older ones like rolling stones. My magazine is made for adults and teenagers. If I made the whole magazine it would have aspects for both teenagers and adults so it would appeal to a wider customer basis and sell more copies. Also it was easier to get really good images from teenagers and wear the clothes I would like them to have worn, also I find teenagers easier to work with.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media

product and why?

Bauer

The media institution I would choose to distribute my magazine would be Bauer. Reasons for this is because it has loads of experience already with my genre of music because they distribute Mojo and Kerrang!. This would be very good for my magazine as they would know where the best places would be to sell it and also they could try put them next to Kerrang! And Mojo so that could always boost popularity. Also if the magazines promoted my magazine or you got leaflets inside theirs about mine. Another reason would be because they work very well in a mass market and I would like my magazine to be mass produced. Other options I could choose would be IPC media and future. Hopefully I could also advertise my magazine in other aspects of media, for instance a television advert or maybe a newspaper.

Who would be the audience for you media product?

The audience for my media product

The audience for my media product will be for teenagers and adults. My main audience will be teenagers people in their twenties. The gender that I mainly aimed for is male but there are aspects that are also for women too. I aimed for working and middle class people. I aimed for these kind of people because they are most likely to like the bands I put in my magazine and the genre of music I chose and research I did from existing magazines is that is the kind of people that mainly buy the genre of magazine that have made. I originally aimed for twenties but it has worked out that it will also appeal to teenagers and adults from the people that I have asked if they would buy it, so my audience ended up changing. The type of bands I have put in my magazine will appeal to the rock fans and the dress code that my models are wearing will also appeal to them.

How did you attract/address your audience?

Colour scheme, language and stereotypes

The colour scheme I chose to you fits in with the whole rock theme. I chose black and red because they are main colours that you see in rock. The female I chose to use in my magazine is wearing all black and red and even has black and red in her hair, Also the male I chose had a lot of black on which also fits in with the theme.

The language I chose was quite simple and easy to understand, it wasn’t to intellectual so everyone would be able to understand what is being said. I didn’t choose to big of words so that the teenagers will be able read the magazine properly without asking people all the time what words mean. Another reason why I chose the language I did is that other magazines such as Kerrang! use a similar language that I did.

I used the rock stereotype as much as I could so that it will attract my readers attention so they realise it is a rock magazine and will be interested in buying it. I used the clothes my models wear, how my models look and the bands I used.

Fonts, layouts and mise-en-scene

The fonts I used are very easy to read and plain just like in the magazines I used in my research. I did this to work with my simple language so that it mixes together and works well with each other.

The layouts in my magazine work with the rest of my magazine as they are also simple and easy to follow. This will work with any age range because anyone can follow my simple design.

The models and props I used in my photos help with the mise-en-scene because the clothes that they wear and the guitar that my male used may be what the audience wear and in rock they obviously use guitars and really nice guitars and the colour of the guitar is dark and looks really good and also helps with my mise-en-scene. The place wear I took the images also works really qitht he mise-en-scene because nothing attract attention away from the models so they are the centre of attention.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of

constructing this product?

What I learnt

Photoshop – with using photoshop I didn’t learn anything because I had already learnt everything I used in another subject that I take, it just developed my skills and recapped things that I had forgotten.

Blogger – I learnt how to use this from scratch. Before blogger I had never used a blog so I had to learn everything. I found it quite difficult at first but I got the hang of it.

Camera – I learnt how to use a professional camera, it was really easy to use and the quality of the images was amazing compared to normal digital cameras!

Microsoft – I already knew how to sue everything on Microsoft suck as PowerPoint and word. So doing this project just recapped all the things I already knew.

Computer – I just recapped all the things I already knew. I did learn some new shortcut keys though.

Internet – I used a lot of the internet. Such as google images, dafont.com, google, wikipedia, blackboard and survey monkey. I found them all every simple to use, the only one I had a bit of trouble with was dafont.com because I didn’t know how to download and image.

Memory stick – I already knew how to use a memory stick as I have been using one for 5 years now so I didn’t learn anything now.

Slide share – I learnt how to use slide share to put my slides on my blog. That was quite hard to start with but I got the hang of it really quickly.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what did you feel you have

learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

What I learnt in the progression

When I did the college magazine I did know what I knew now, I just learnt to make it look better put in different fonts, better colour scheme. Get a better camera and better models. It was much easier to do when I had a theme to go and knew exactly what to do. The difference in quality in my college magazine to my music magazine is immense. I much prefer my music magazine. I learnt if I put more time and effort and use more of my photoshop skills I can get a much better result for my final product. Also all the research and planning I put into my music magazine also made it so much better than my college magazine as I didn’t do nearly as much planning for that.