Evaluation of my music

magazine

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

real media products? My front cover follows the conventions of a real rap magazine. I have one model in a strong pose looking direct into the camera in a medium close up shot. I really followed the conventions in my front cover, with cover lines and the masthead which is behind the main image. This is done in every front cover I have ever seen. I challenged the convention a little bit by putting a selling line at the bottom of the cover. In most magazines it is at the top and usually there is none if it is a rap magazine, but I did it because I wanted to fill the space in the bottom and give something new to it.

My contents page is well organised and everything has a purpose. You have the images on one side, the content on the other side and more information below. It has a nice layout on it is balanced. To get it balanced I looked at other contents pages and looked ,why do they look good. Unlike other rap magazines I had a bit of colour in my background.

My double page spread challenges the forms of real magazines, because it isn't a typical layout, but it still looks real. The reason for that is that I followed the important parts but challenged it in a way that it is something new which I brought myself.The article follows the outline of the images and it is organised and the right page is in columns so it looks professional, but I didn’t put one large image on one side and the article on the other side. Instead I connected these two elements, image and article. I put in a quote because this was in every magazine I have seen, so I decided to follow this convention.I had the feeling that this would still look a bit flat so I had the idea to put large images in the background with a low opacity. This challenges the normal form but it follows it, because of the pose of the models, which I have also seen on rap album covers. So even though I brought in my own ideas, it still follows most of the conventions of a usual rap magazine.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My magazine represents the social groups by the images, the language and colour.So lets start with colour. I mostly used black and white, and I didn’t went crazy with colour, because in rap it is more black and white. The other colours I used for example yellow and blue, I saw in a different rap magazine so I decided to use them as well.The images show young people dressed in a hip hop way with headphones and caps and jeans. Also the poses and angles are made in a way that they represent the hip hop culture. I used low angles and close ups, to make the models look strong and superior.The language isn’t formal and it gives this more relaxed feeling. I also wrote a lot of slang words like: beef, fresh, dropped, stuff, real, game etc.Old people wouldn’t talk like this so they wouldn’t read it as well. By this young people, which are into this kind of music, get attracted by my product.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

First of all it would be a publishing company, which distributes magazines.It is also possible that a digital magazine company would distribute my magazine if I decided to make it available online.I also could distribute it myself by making a Facebook page, twitter, own website and sell it online.The publishing companies which would distribute my magazine could be:

• Future Publishing, because they have a wide range of magazines including music magazines.

• Intermedia Vibe Holdings, LLC, because they publish content related to hip hop generation.

• Harris Publications Inc., because they have a whole range of magazines and publish stuff like the rap magazine XXL

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Who would be the audience for your media product?

• Mostly young people from the age of 14 to 25

• Mostly male, because more boys are into rap music

• Students and unemployed people

• Hip hop/Rap artists who want to be informed

I know this because I did a questionnaire before I started the production stage of my media product.

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How did you attract/address your audience?

To address my audience I mostly used mise en scene. The images are filled with stereotypes, by clothing, camera angles and image placement.I gave my models headphones hats and caps which shows the hip hop culture.If had given them a suit it would have been very tricky to attract my audience, because a suit would work if I wanted to show that the artist is rich ,like 50 Cent, But I had to combine that with hip hop culture by pose and facial expression.So I decided to attract my audience at the maximum level, instead of challenging stereotypes.The camera angles are very low and most of the images are medium close ups,So the artists look more powerful, more confident which attracts everybody is into rap and hip hop.Like I said before, I was very picky with the colour, because the colour scheme shows the mood of the whole layout and I wanted to have a serious mood, so I picked mostly black and white.The language is also very attracting to my audience, because they can relate to it.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

The most important thing I learnt about technologies is how to use Photoshop to its full potential. I know the basics very good and I am getting slowly into the advanced stuff.I also learnt how to use a camera for taking pictures and recording videos, because I took the pictures for my magazine myself and recorded interviews for my blog.I gained some experience in how to set up a photo-shoot using a lighting kit and blue screen.Another software I know how to use now is Adobe Premiere Pro, that is the software I used to edit my interviews.The importing of pictures from camera to Photoshop is now something very common for me.Other valuable skills I learnt are how to set up a blog, how to upload stuff to slideshare.net, how to upload videos on YouTube and how to get my ideas and products out into the world wide web.

Looking back at your preliminary, what do you feel you have learnt from it to the full product?

Looking back at my preliminary task, makes me see what I have learnt. I have learnt that, to produce a media product, so that it looks good, professional and real, you have to do a lot of research into this field.Everything has to be planned and if it is not planned it will fail.Now I know how to target an audience and follow conventions and stereotypes, or how to challenge them.I learnt how to research something, for example institutions.All in all I have learnt quite a lot, but the most important thing I learnt is, how to research, work and produce fast and effective.I do believe that this will help me in the future.

That was it for my AS Media Coursework.

I hoped you enjoyed it.

A2 will be starting soon.

Thanks for watching.