In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The way in which my media product develops and challenges real media products is when it combines elements from many different R&B music magazines, all onto one magazine. My magazine uses many different conventions, images, etc. on the front cover, contents page and the double page spread, which was expressed from my examples and research which was conducted on my blog and from the internet.
Examples from my blog:
My Magazine:
As you can see from the examples above, my feature article photograph is the same as how both of these are presented, in a medium-close up, so that the image is not too far away and you can see the artist clearly. In the other magazines, the artists are looking directly at you (also known as the ‘direct mode of address’) However, on my front cover, the artist is looking away from the reader to give a creative appearance, to explain to the reader that she is laid back, flamboyant and does not abide by these rules. She is also looking up, which makes her look innocent and wondrous, with the dazed look that she has in her facial expression, rather than the masculine male photographs which are used in the other examples by giving the men a stern and edgy look, to make them appear more big and dominant to the magazines, and the R&B industry, therefore I have developed the front cover photograph of R&B magazines. This helps to challenge real R&B media products, as it abides by the conventions of most R&B magazines, as from several research studies, it was found that many R&B publications of today continue to choose men to display as their feature article photographs a lot of the time, rather than females, misleading the audience to believe that males are the more dominant artists within this industry, which they are not as it is mixed gender. This also means that my magazine is representing that the women also share this industry, just as much as the male artists do, even the ones who have only just began their R&B careers i.e. Rita Ora, who is the feature article photograph on my front cover.
My front cover shows aspects from conventions of R&B magazines, as my mast head is a convention of a music magazine because it is at the top of my page, towards the top left, and spreads across my page. It has a certain font, which is kept throughout my front cover. My feature article photograph is overlapping the mast head, using the same convention as other R&B magazines, to fit in with this on occurring theme. However, I made it so that the mast head was not entirely covered, because I wanted to keep a bit of the back ground in, helping the black mast head stand out more against the white and blue background.
My magazine is called Chillin’, as I thought this was appropriate for my age range as it is catchy, modern and explains that the magazine is laid back and flamboyant by the connotation of the word. My font style is called ‘Onyx’, and I used this because it was unusual, and different to other usual fonts for these magazines. Also, because I am a young adult myself and this is my target audience, I thought that this font was appropriate as it caught my eye and therefore it should catch someone else’s eye that is of a similar age to me. I made the font black to display neutralism and to ultimately tell the reader that the magazine is not gender-biased by using a plain, dull colour, rather than a stereotypical one, such as: Pink. Black is my house style on my front cover and is kept throughout.
The mise-en-scene of my photographs is kept throughout. In my photographs there is a teenage girl, and she represents female R&B singers and my target audience as she is a young adult herself. She is stylishly dressed, earphones in, and with a hood over her head etc. to keep in with the coolness which the R&B artists of today represent from their look and their music, sticking to my genre throughout and using similar conventions to other magazines. My lighting in my photograph is bright; this is because my model is young and bright. Dark would create a connotation that she is neither innocent nor cheerful, whereas a young adult should be cheerful and chirpy, as this is part of their personality. My model is situated in the centre of the magazine, to explain to the reader that she is the main feature as her photo is large, in the middle, and very dominant.
In my images there are a few props such as the clothes, make-up and earphones. These help contrast with the other music magazine covers in my genre, as they all use the same technique. In my image the model has a certain outfit; she is dressed modern but laid back. She is in a woolly hooded coat, wavy hair, and looks wrapped-up and lost in the world of music with her headphones, explaining that the winter season is upon us as she looks nice, warm and the magazine is the December issue. When I looked at other R&B music magazines in the December issues, they all tended to use the same styles etc. for both males and females.
The model on my music magazine is of a similar age to my target audience, therefore they can relate to the styles which the artist displays in the cover, as the artist will be in with the trends that the rest of the teenage public pose. She is dressed trendy and also looks trendy, with fashionable clothes on, with a modern day hair style and the way she looks when she is standing and posing is modern and cool.
The written content in my magazine is young and modern. My text is similar to other R&B music magazine articles as I researched into interviews and articles and used their conventions to create mine. I have questions and answers for my singer. The questions are personal which highlights the singer and all about what she gets up to behind the fame, which, through research, I found was the best way to attract an audience as they want to know the gossip around a famous celebrity’s personal life, and compare it to their own. With this, it also includes what the artist is into and likes etc. and when I looked at many magazines they used text and content which was similar to this, so I gathered different sources of information off magazine interviews that were on editor’s posts, magazines and internet magazines. The articles on my front cover are also catchy and would more than likely attract an older young adult, as the advertisements are much more controversial and scandalous.
My music genre is R&B, which is especially shown in my double page spread, by the mise on scene of my image, as the model continues to be dressed in a modern, hip sort of way, with a cool hair style, and facial expressions, while also keeping in base with the winter theme by placing her on a white background, with a large woolly coat on. My fonts are trendy with an edge which makes my magazine look cool.
Throughout my magazine I followed the layout well, my double page spread had the best layout, and I had my text neatly in columns. My page overall looked neat and tidy. This followed the conventions of other music magazines as every music magazine I looked at had columns for their text in interviews. Also, when I had researched into conventions of a music magazine, this was one of the main ones which were highlighted. The screen shot I have taken for this point is of my grab quote. These are supposed to attract the reader to the article. They may be shocking or seem much more dramatic than the article actually is, this draws readers in. They have bigger text and may even have a different font to stand out more. However they are kept with the house style For example: RITA ORA: EXCLUSIVE, that is on my front cover. Many magazines I researched into had a grab quote. Therefore I believed this was an important convention to include in my magazine.
My contents page has a neat layout. I have kept to columns so the text doesn’t get jumbled up and everything is clearly shown and numbered. This is how other magazines presented their contents pages, clear. I have certain images in my contents page which have captions on them to indicate which article they are related to. This helps the reader know more about the magazine. Even my photograph is neatly in a column I thought this was important for a magazine.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
The sort of media institution that will distribute my media product would be a music magazine/ magazine company.
A good magazine company to distribute my magazine would be the BBC, as it would be beneficial for them to distribute my magazine because they don’t already sell a music magazine specifically for the R&B genre and for the target audience that I have created, therefore they will make lots of money from it, because it will bring a fresh, new, creative product to the business. When I did my research for magazine companies and distributors in the planning section of my blog, I researched the company BBC and found out that they are one of the nation’s largest diversified media and information companies and therefore I would benefit from them distributing my magazine as lots of people know about the company, and they have a wide range of people buying their magazines and if the audience see that BBC have published my magazine, then they know it will be worthy of their time as it has been distributed by a recognized company. Although, I only want young adults to purchase my magazine, as they are likely to buy it from the BBC, rather than from another company as they are a big, well-known company, and have ways and money to easily advertise products such as R&B magazines, as they advertise over many different formats such as Radio, Television, and the Internet, and the more and more it is advertised it will quickly spread around with word of mouth and the BBC will already know about this from previous magazine sales etc. and will happily oblige. What I also found in my research is that the BBC advertise products for a much more mature audience, because most of the magazines which they advertise include: Classical music, gardening, cooking, and astrology, which would not attract young adults, therefore by bringing a brand new product into this line of advertisements, which is completely different to their previous topics, then it will attract many different group audiences to the BBC, which will help them become much more popular than they already are by attracting younger audiences, opening up their audience to a variety of different ages, and social classes.
Another company that would distribute my product is IPC Media as they are one of the United Kingdom's leading consumer magazine and digital publishers, with a large portfolio selling over 350 million copies each year, therefore if my magazine is distributed then they will sell very good as audiences will know that the company distributing it, is well-known. They would also benefit from distributing my magazine because IPC Media Music magazines are dedicated to music and music cultures featuring many different famous musicians, but also new musicians that specialize in certain types of music, and the R&B genre promotes new talents and has its own culture as well which the company would approve of. The music magazines which IPC Media own, include: The Music Magazines which they own are: NME and Guitar and Bass International Publishing Company. These two magazines are extremely well-known, so if my magazine was distributed by them then it would sell a lot because it is a different genre compared these two, and will attract many different audiences, particularly young adults.
Who would be the audience for your media product? & How did you attract/address your audience?
Link to my answer, for questions 4 & 5:
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I have used many different technologies that I had never used before when creating my media product. Examples of new technologies I used are; Microsoft Excel, cameras, video cameras, and Photoshop.
The
vital piece of software which I used the most when creating this magazine was
Photoshop CS6. This professional piece of software allowed me to design, create
and manipulate a wide range of images which were to be included in my magazine.
I also did some research and found out that the majority of magazine brands use
Photoshop in order to construct and bring to life their ideas. I found this
interesting as I had exactly the same software available 24/7 with more tools
than I would have needed. From this, I inferred that photo editing software is
a must in the magazine industry and without it, constructing a magazine is near
impossible. Additionally, this type of software allows the user to put
different twists into their magazines which other companies may not have ever
thought about doing. There were many tools that came in useful to create my magazine front cover, contents page and Double Page Spread, and one of the main features that I used was the Polygonal lasso tool. This tool allowed me to select the precise areas of an image by drawing or tracing the selection outline. This came in very useful when creating my front cover, because I was able to put my main artist’s image in front of the main heading of my magazine so it made my magazine look professional and conventional. Another very useful tool on Photoshop was the layering tool. The layering tool helps you to have different levels at which you can place an object or image file. This tool was very useful because it gave me the opportunity to be able to put images on top of text and also put text on top of images, this also added more professionalism to my product and made it very conventional. For my magazine front cover I didn’t want the background to be plain, but I still wanted a plain studio background like my target audience wanted, so I decided to use the fillers tool. The texture tool allowed me to give my magazine a graffiti type background, keeping with the cultural theme of R&B, and I was able to change the colour of the background aswell, to make it appear more dark to keep in with the conventions of R&B. All of these features, etc. have made me learn that it takes a lot of creativity with these technologies to construct up a final peice, and you have to get used to them in able to do so as there are many tasks to uphold.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
When I compare my music magazine to the preliminary task, which was my school magazine, there is a big difference in my technical skills. Firstly, my photography skills have shown an improvement, now I know the different functions on the camera, which can change the effect of the photog. I now consider the surrounding of the photograph and where the light is coming from as this can have a big impact on the quality of the photograph.
When I took the photograph from the front cover for my school magazine, I didn’t consider the lighting; I only considered the positioning of the model and the background. Although these are both major aspects, without good lighting, the photograph won’t be of a high standard. Whereas the photograph on the front cover of my music magazine shows a better understanding initially of lighting, positioning, camera angles (Rule of thirds, etc.) and many magazine conventions, such as taking my photographs in a medium-close up so that the reader can see the model clearly.
After spending a lot of time researching different music magazines to find out what the conventions were, my knowledge of the layout of music magazines certainly improved since creating my preliminary task. Although I looked at different genres, they all showed similar conventions, therefore these are what I focused on when creating my magazine front cover, double page spread, and contents page.
When I created my school magazine, I hadn’t done much research and used my own knowledge to create the magazine; therefore I didn’t consider the conventions of layout, for example: Rule of Thirds. My front cover is now a lot more sectioned into three separate parts, and although they don’t all contain the same amount of information, they are more appealing on the eye and the page looks a lot neater as a whole.
My contents page is much more structured because of the layout techniques I have used. I have again used rule of three. This technique adds a lot of structure to the page, but still allows the magazine to show a quirky side or something which distinguishes it from its competitors. For my double page spread, from the previous research that I have done, I used some of the same techniques. I particularly like the way that the photograph one half of the double page, splitting the text onto the opposite side.
My knowledge of Photoshop has also improved considerably; I know how to use many of the different elements and features to my advantage, and the use of layering. By having a wider range of knowledge on Photoshop, my music magazine is a lot more technical than my preliminary task, which makes it appear more like a professional music magazine like the ones that I had researched.
