Media Evaluation Questions 1&2

By Ella Brown

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge

forms and conventions of real media products?

• It is important to use some conventions when creating my magazine to keep in pattern with what audiences recognise music magazines to be. By following the stereotypes adheres to what audiences expect and may like which would appeal more to the target audience.

• My media product both challenges and uses conventions of the real media product - one way that it challenges the real media product is that all female artists are used in my magazine - this is different to the normal convention of acoustic guitar being more of a male orientated niche genre with the stereotype of older men being conveyed on the cover of the magazine. The magazine shown is a key example of how my chosen niche genre is mostly male dominated - by choosing younger female artists I challenged this convention.Another way my magazine challenges conventions is that I used famous artists who crossed over into the pop genre so my magazine was not completely acoustic guitar e.g. on my front cover I featured artists such as George Ezra, James Arthur and Passenger who have been in the charts and can be seen as more pop artists. This crossover would appeal to a wider target audience and would mean my magazine is not as niche as if it was completely acoustic guitar.

• I took inspiration from another acoustic guitar magazine and used key components from the magazine to incorporate into my own to ensure that I was following the typical conventions

• The actual layout and different editing aspects of my magazine follow the conventions very closely. My masthead sits behind the

main image which is a main convention of music magazines - letters of magazines such as on magazine such as Acoustic and Kerrang. It shows that the magazine is very well known and even with letters covers the masthead is instantly recognised by audiences due to brand identity of the font used. I did not completely cover my masthead but I small portion of the ‘O’ is covered by my models sunglasses in the main image

My coverlines also use the conventions - my coverless are displayed either side of my media product. I have more/bigger articles displayed on the right as readers would read from left to right so would have their attention drawn to the right. I incorporated my colour palette into the coverlines to create a brand identity.

I took inspiration from the Ed Sheeran cover and chose to incorporate some aspects such as the horizontal angled coloured band going across the front cover. It was eye catching to me when I first saw the Acoustic cover so felt it would have the same impact for my target audience. I used the colour red throughout my front cover as it contrasts between the white aspects of the models t-shirt and masthead and also stands out against the green aspects such as the leaves of the background image. I originally had the colour scheme as a light purple lilac colour but after consideration I felt that a less gendered colour would suit my magazine better and appeal to a wider target audience.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups? • My media product represents a variety of

social groups. My magazine has a young woman on the front cover who is around the age of 20. Age is represented as the majority of other acoustic guitar magazines I researched mostly had older men as the cover and featured within. This challenges the dominant hegemony for this niche genre and I chose to go against the stereotype. Gender is therefore also represented - I only have female artists pictured in my magazine which again challenges the stereotype. This represents the social group of women under the age of 25. My research from my target audience said that showed that 53.3% of people who took my survey believed the front cover artist was 18-20 which fits my target audience so the audience can relate more - if I had used an older artist for my front cover the target audience may have been different.

• Class and status is shown as I have an article about ‘supermarket worker to national star’ which shows aspirers the ability of changing your life and experiencing social mobility. My magazine does not overly glamourise the artists and they appear simplistic but effective with a down to earth kind of appearance. I took inspiration from Ed Sheeran to make them appear in this down to earth way as he is represented as not being glamourised and is represented as being normal. He also reflects the social mobility that can occur as he moved from busking to being a house hold name now. This reinforces the social group of class and status as my images dictate those not flaunting their wealth.

• My front cover image was also taken in front of trees - not a high class photography studio. This portrays the image of ‘anyone can do it’ creating ambition to aspirers. It also shows normal people working hard achieving big things. Race is not well represented in my media product as all of my photos show white young women.

• Regional identity is touched upon and is shown in my contents page as I included an image of my artist in front of the O2 arena in London - this conveys the dream and goal to preform there connoting that London is an area of possibilities.

• Subcultures: My media product does not appeal to some main youth subcultures such as punk, skinhead, metal, emo etc as my magazine is more mainstream and doesn't adhere to the typical stereotypes of youth subcultures. The representation is very simple and down to earth happy, positive guitar music. The image being portrayed is down to earth with artists not overly glamourised and doing their music because they enjoy it not to make money. My media product represents big musical fans who don't necessarily do it for the money but rather because they enjoy it and have found fame through their natural talent.

• My representation of my artists is mostly positive - there is a cover line mentioning an alcoholism problem which would be interesting for readers to read about famous artists struggles and how they over come them - therefore getting more insight and gossip details about their lives. This would act as another selling tool by the magazines with the promise of ‘insider gossip’.