The brief for my media coursework was to create a front page, contents page and double page spread which had to include images which I had taken myself. For me to be able do this, I researched various magazine conventions on all of the pages which I had to produce. I identified what I had to do in order to make the conventions of my magazine effective to my target audience. The majority of the music magazines which I researched all included images and text which represented the magazines genre and target audience. To ensure my music magazine productions reflected my target audience, I gathered all of the conventions of a similar music magazine of the same genre as mine and used them as a starting point for my coursework. I attempted to make my magazine effective for my audience by trying to make it look like other magazines in forms of it’s conventions and the ways in which I used my text and images.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. music magazines)
http://prezi.com/a9cwf7r0adma/in-what-ways-does-your-media-product-use-develop-or-challenge-forms-and-conventions-of-real-media-products-ie-music-magazines/
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
My magazine represents similar social groups to magazines such as mix mag and DJ mag because the content of them are similar to mine. As you can see from the mix mag and my electro mag you can see that the two people within the photographs are showing very similar styles and are both holding decks and are facing the camera in the centre focusing on them.
A difference between the two photos is this mix mag artist is facing the camera and smiling showing he is having a fun time whereas in my magazine my artist is focusing on the decks showing he takes his work seriously when performing.
My camera angle and shot type is a little different from the mix mag as mine camera looks slightly down on the artist whereas mix mag is level and a mid-shot similar to mine.
The lighting in both photos highlights the artist showing they are the key centre of attention. Although mix mag show natural light mine shows that I needed to use lighting to focus on my artist mainly on his facing attracting the audience.
The costumes in the two images are essentially the same, this really reaches out to the target audience and shows social representation. One thing to note in terms of different social groups is that fact that the man on the right is wearing designer ray ban sunglasses which are known to be expensive, however, I don't think it changes the social class too much.
The hair in the images looks quite different mainly because the person on the right has an afro however In terms of length and style they are reasonably the same and shows that the model is not high maintenance and is quite down to earth.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
I created a set target audience for my music magazine for people between the ages of 16 and 24. I did this because I felt as though it would be ideal for me to make a target audience of a similar age to me because I could relate as to what they would expect to be in a music magazine. I did things to differentiate my magazine from magazines with a higher age target audience, for example, less informal language compared to magazines like ‘Q.’ Another factor which contributes to my target audience was the genre of music represented in the magazine. My genre was ‘hip hop/electric/dance.’ My front cover, my contents page and double page spread were fairly basic and contained nothing too fancy because fancy would represent someone which an audience of a higher class would purchase. I set a particular colour scheme, and I did this to benefit my target audience because I didn’t want them to find it hard to find their way around my pages but I wanted to use some conventions which made the magazine appeal to them.
Target Audience
Click this link to see my reader profile.
-My person’s genre of choice is mainly based around the hip hop dance style of music.
- My person has a love of house and dance music and enjoys creating music tracks and using the decks as they are interested in Djing.
- Favourite shops for my person would be ranging from shops such as top man to sport shops and also shops such as apple for music accessories.
Starting off as a prelim task the magazine front cover was very basic with just a title, main image and some extras along the bottom of the cover. After researching into magazine covers I found that a lot of detail is needed and that you need to keep the conventions of your genre throughout.
I have learnt the style that other magazines use and some simple techniques to attract the readers to your magazine.
I started with the preliminary task when I didn't even understand how to work with photoshop. I created my preliminary task on paint. However since then I have learnt how to use photoshop and have progressed my skills 100%. I used a bad picture which was stretched across the page and typed my title with an ordinary font as I didnt know anything different. Whereas for my Final piece I used photoshop and understood the importance of photos in focus and not stretched. I also understood how to use different layers to put on top of each other making it easier to edit seperate parts. For my title I created it and edited the settings to make it look like neon light effects in the settings and by filtering it.
This was my original work where I thought the front cover was my strongest. However that was the piece that I spent the most time on. My double page spread I thought was very weak as I didn't spend much time on and didn't really follow the conventions of the magazine.
As you can see i kept the front cover the same as i was happy with it but i changed my contents page and double page spread.
My contents page is more simple and easy to read. The first time I did it I had too many different colours on the page and things were not very structured. However after doing it again I kept my columns easy and the colour is one colour making it easy to read.
I am really happy with my double page spread and feel it is 100% better. Last time I croped my picture of my artist as I didn't like the background and felt it didn't fit into the magazine. After re-doing the DPS I used a full size image thinking about the mis en scene and the plain background.
I then thought of an idea to use my logo of my magazine throughout in the bottom corners of my pages. This linked each page to my magazine and looked good throughout the continuity.
