Media evaluation

Mary Morgan

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

forms and conventions of real media products?

I think that my magazine is very different to those that are on the market nowadays. You don't see that many folk/hippie type magazines anywhere in shops, not popular ones anyway, and so I tried to make it as modern as possible to appeal to the younger audiences by including polar artists such as Ed sheeran, Paloma faith etc. These artists have very popular songs that are in the charts at the minute  but they still have a folky feel to them, like Ed sheeran who constantly is performing with his acoustic guitar, which is one of the sections of my magazine;  top 40 acoustic albums. I think that this challenges current forms and conventions of normal magazines because it is technically not a pop or RnB magazine, which are the most popular type, but it still contains information about popular artists that are seen as popular by many of the younger generation. My magazine goes against the norm of a typical magazine as it has two in one: things that the older generation would enjoy and also the younger generation. This means that my magazine would reach a huge target audience and hopefully sell a lot of copies, resulting in the magazine being a massive success. I have included a new up and coming artist on the cover and contents page, Emily Alderson, who I have included to fit in with the naturalistic side of the magazine. She is not the typical blonde haired, big bobbed girl that you would see on a typical music magazine cover, which is used as a marketing technique to draw people in and get them to buy it. My magazine does have a woman on the front but it is not a conventional picture as she has sunglasses on so you cannot see her face. This gives her a mysterious quality and is a technique I used purposely so that people would become intrigued and want to buy the magazine to learn more about this mysterious girl.

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

My magazine is aimed at a particular social group; those who enjoy music that enjoy acoustic/indie music. The way I represent this is through the type of pictures I have used, the clothes that the models are wearing and also the scenery in the background of the cover photo, contents page and double page spread. This is a difficult social group to try and get to buy the magazine as the genre varies and includes lots of different artists and songs that it is hard to just focus on one particular social group. For example, Ed sheeran is seen as a pop artist but also an Indie artist, so including him in my magazine would attract not just indie/hippie fans but also pop fans. He makes a lot of pop music but uses his guitar in almost every single song, classing him in the acoustic genre of music. This is definitely a bonus for my magazine as it means that it will appeal to a lot more people than just indie  lovers. Pop music is the most popular genre of music, therefore meaning that my magazine will become even more popular with artists like him on the cover. It is important to add things like that on the front cover as that is the thing that people will see first and the whole reason that they buy the magazine. The social group that this magazine represents would definitely be more Indie than pop and this group is represented as a group that enjoys listening to calm, peaceful music, not the head-banging, raving music that most teenagers listen to today. Most adults do not want to listen to this kind of music, they want to be calm and relaxed as they will have jobs and want to listen to something calming at the end of the day.

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

I would like my magazine to be published by either 'Bauer' or 'Future.' There are many reasons that I would choose these two, one of them being that they are the two biggest media distribution companies that there are. This is a huge advantage as this means that they have the power and the money to distribute my magazine all over the country, potentially all over the world.  They distribute magazines such as 'Kerrang' or 'MOJO' which are incredibly popular these days. Also, because they are both such popular distributors individually, if they worked on their own then they could create something even better than if I just used each of them on their own. They could use cross media convergence to advertise one magazine onto the other, creating more popularity for both of the magazines. Bauer media reaches nineteen million UK adults across multiple media channels and Future sells 3.2 million magazines each month and host 27 annual life events that attract hundreds of thousands of people. As they already have a worldwide fan base, my magazine 'Peace' would be seen by all of these millions of people, therefore making it more likely for them to be purchased. As my magazine is slightly unusual and not really the typical teenage music magazine, using a less well known distributor would not be the best choice as it definitely would not be seen as nearly as big as an audience as using Bauer and Future. Also, Bauer contacts adults as well as teenagers, which is the exact target audience I am trying to reach; adults who enjoy calming, relaxing music and also teenagers. 

4. Who would be the audience for your magazine? The audience for my magazine varies as I am trying to meet a mass audience.

Many of the artists that I include in my magazine are liked from all different ages. From doing some market research, I asked 20 adults and 20 teenagers if they liked the artists that appear on my front cover and my contents page. 27 out of 40 answered yes when I asked them. This market research is what made me add the artists onto my magazine, knowing that they will be liked by all age groups and therefore be purchased by more than just young teenagers. You have magazines such as 'Girl Talk' and 'Sugar' which are only aimed at young teenage girls. I wanted to change that. Obviously you are not going to have 35 year olds buying that kind of magazine but using doing some research I discovered that my magazine covers a whole load of age ranges. The only people who would maybe not be so interested in my magazine would be young teenage boys but then again, looking at the statistics of what gender buy magazines, females obviously dominate over males. However, artists like Ed sheer an are liked by both females and males as millions of people download his songs and they can't all be females. This leaves some leeway for boys/men to buy my magazine in the hopes of reading about an artist that actually like that isn't just about artists like Nicki Minaj and Rihanna. I purposely did not include artists like that because they are liked more by females rather than males and I wanted my magazine to be uni-sex. 

5. How did you attract/address your audience? I attracted my audience in many ways. For example, I only used artists

that I believe are not targeted at a specific audience e.g. Ed sheer an. From looking at statistics of the gender of people that buy his music and albums, the results were that not one gender dominated the other, and so I thought that this would be good to use to aim both men and women. I asked many older woman, between late 30's and 40's, if they liked Ed sheeran and everyone except one person said that they did. Considering I asked around 15 people, I would say that he has a strong fan base for people aged over 25. If I can aim my magazine at various genders and age groups, I have a much stronger chance of selling a lot more of my magazines and gaining a huge profit. Not only have I included artists who I think are widely liked but I have also chosen artists who are hugely popular, for example Taylor swift. On one of her most recent music videos, she had 600 million views, so including her on the cover ensures that lots of people will read about her and want to buh my magazine. Not only have I included popular people like taylor swift but also less popular people, like Paloma faith, who has a smaller fan base than Taylor. I have purposely done this to attract what I believe is a gap in the market of people who are actually not as popular but still have a big enough fan base to want to buy a magazine with them on the front cover. This taps in to all of those little groups who do not buy very popular magazines such as 'Billboard' or 'Q.' I think that including artists who are very widely known but also not is the main attraction of my magazine as it is going to attract more than just one group of people but a huge variety. 

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this

product? I have learnt many things about technology just from doing this media

course. When I first started this year, I had absolutely no idea how to use websites such as blogger or photoshop but having nearly finished I believe that having these skills will definitely help me later on in life if I decide to pursue media in the future as a career choice. Society is advancing at a fast rate nowadays and using a computer is becoming essential for most jobs. Technology is also becoming a fast growing for people e.g. IT technicians, who get paid a lot of money to fix all kinds of technological equipment, which would be important if somebody wanted to do that for a living. Another important thing I have learnt about technology is definitely the device that you use to take the photographs. At the beginning, I was only using my phone to take the photographs for my magazine and I soon realised that was a huge mistake. The quality was horrendous and when I made my mock up magazines they looked like something someone in primary school could have made. To take the photographs, I used my uncles 'Nikon D3200' is one of the best cameras around. These added high quality to my photographs and started to make them look a bit more like the photographs you would see on the front of magazine covers. This was definitely very important in the construction of my product because I tried once and learnt from my mistakes and so from now on will never make that mistake again. 

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

Overall, I have learnt a huge variety of skills to do with computers and photographs. A woman came into one of our lessons to teach us how to take professional looking photographs and that inspired me to start to take mine in a different way and therefore improve my magazine as a whole. It has definitely progressed through the months that I have added to it and changed it, which you can see in my first draft through to my final. It took a lot of my spare time to get my magazine to how it is now and even then I believe that a lot of work could still be done to it to make it the best that it could possibly be. If I have learnt anything that will help me with future tasks is that timing is crucial and you can't leave it till the last minute. I thought that I had plenty of time to finish this task and so I left it until I had the least amount of time as possible and it ended up not being as good as I could have made it. This is a good lesson to learn now but maybe it is a little bit too late to learn it as I could have got a much better mark on my work than I have only using the least amount of time as possible. This is not a good habit to get into, especially if you want to carry the subject on, and I believe I have made a mistake in estimating how much time I thought I had and how much time I actually had. Through the progression of the product that I have made, another thing I have learnt is that being able to use photoshop is the main thing that you need to have a good set of skills in. I had no idea how to use it but I used the internet to search how to use it and eventually it became easy and I was able to use it. Many things are obtainable using the internet and you can improve your product by a huge amount just by doing little things like that, which is what I learnt through this process.