1. In
what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
I feel like my magazine does develop
other media products as it is a free magazine and will make its revenue from
adverts and therefore become a more accessible and popular as people are not
having to pay each other and I have also turned simple conventions such as: colour
schemes, slogans and images into an attractive product as well as qualitative
one. The genre of my magazine is rap/hip-hop.
First of all I will show and give
examples of how my front cover, contents page and DPS follow the rules and
conventions like: Bold titles
or mastheads are used to make the words stand out to the reader, Basic colour
schemes are usually used to make it easy on the eyes and consistent with the
front covers colour scheme, it usually shows a clear genre etc.
For my front cover I am going to analyse elements such as the masthead, cover
lines, skylines, pull quotes, splashes, puffs, gutters, columns, house style,
and colour scheme.
Secondly I will refer to my case
studies in task 2 with examples of magazines such as Billboard, Q magazine… I
will also analyse my shots used the shot size, angle, composition, props,
lighting, location. Also what inspired the images I have taken. From the case
studies I didn’t take much from them so I used other magazines to inspire like
XXL magazine…
For my DPS I will make sure I am using
the correct and key media terminology: denotation, connotation, narrative, intertextuality,
anchorage, icons, and metaphor.
2. How
does your media product represent particular social groups?
My
product represents the teenager/young adult social group (male), who are in
college/university who enjoy rap/hip-hop music.
My
model also reflects the social group as he is around this age and uses slang
within his language, as well as wearing clothing of the typical college student
but I felt like no props were needed. In my contents page I have 2 pictures of
people one black person and the other Asian however my intentions are to aim
this magazine at everyone but this just reflects the diversity of east London.
My
colour scheme is really aimed at men as the writing on my front cover and
contents are black and white. Whereas if where to be aimed at females as well I
might add slightly lighter colours.
So in
summary this product is aimed at any male including any social, ethnic and
cultural background.
3.
What kind
of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I want my media
product to be distributed by Shortlist Media as they are a very well-known
publisher in the UK and Scotland. They are experienced in publishing free
sheets and one of the company’s they sponsor is Shortlist magazine which
specialise in music as well which is perfect for me as my magazine is both free
and based on music so I believe that this institution would do well for
publishing and producing my magazine. My magazine is different from other
professional magazines as it is aimed at a much younger audience which is
reflected through my model. I will not start off with a website for
distributing my magazine online however as the magazine gains popularity I will
think about this to increase the amount of readers.
4. Who
would be the audience for your media product?
My
audience will have a taste for rap/hip-hop music and age range between 16-22
(college/university). *
I
intend on aiming this magazine at as many males as possible so the social
class, ethnicity and age don’t really matter although I have a specific age
group targeted there will always be people who are older and possibly younger
who will still buy this magazine. I know this because some of my friends who
buy magazines which aren’t specifically aimed at their age group.
5. How
did you attract/address your audience?
The feedback I have received was
that I need to add more photos on my magazine contents page which is currently
in progress, also I needed to choose a different image for my front cover of
the same model as it wasn’t suitable for the genre of music my magazine was
based on. Moreover in class we were recorded while presenting our presentation
and feedback from that was to be specific about how I would gain revenue if my
magazine was free and I have now explained that I will include a lot of
advertisements in my magazine. My audience is mainly attracted by the use of
slang which is included in the DPS and also the street name of Yusaf Sahall aka
EZ-Saf would give people a better idea of who this magazine attracts. “You get
me?” this is one piece of slang included within the DPS.
The colour scheme of red and
black I feel do attract the audience as younger people are often influenced by
what they see and if they see a well organised colour scheme they will want to
choose that over a bad choice of colour scheme.
6. What
have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this
product?
To get the images of the main
cover star I used a DSLR camera and adjusted some of the images on Photoshop
and for producing the DPS I used InDesign which is often used by professionals
to produce magazines. I use blogger to blog my day to day work based on my
magazine to see what improvements I made and what improvements I need to make
which can be decided from comments I received. I used a popular website called
Prezi to plan my evaluation.
This has taught me a lot about
technologies as I had never used InDesign before and I was new to Photoshop and
Prezi.
DSLR cameras:
We were taught about 3 point
lighting and about all the props in the photo studio which create different
effects.
Photoshop:
I didn’t know how to use a lot of
the tools in Photoshop such as the magic wound tool and adjustments such as
brightness and contrast which can give my original image a better look to it. I
was able to choose my 3 colour schemes from Photoshop and produce things like
my skyline tec.
InDesign:
I didn’t know anything about this
technology and have adjusted to it quickly and will know how to create a DPS
from scratch on this software.
Illustrator:
Masthead, titles…….
7. Looking
back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the
progression from it to the full product?
I feel that now I really
understand how to create a magazine and there conventions.
Based on feedback I have received
from:
“This doesn't look like a magazine contents page, use of columns would
make it look way better at the moment it looks like a jumble sale. The pictures
used are stretched and look like they have been taken from a poor resolution
camera. Layout should follow a conventional cover which you have analysed and
should stop trying to experiment with such necessary features of a contents
page. Overall the context such as the writing is good and the display of page
number, still using the three colour scheme from your front cover.”
I have really taken on bored this advice and have made big changes to my
current magazine contents page. From when I had created my college contents
page and put columns, and good quality images rather than “stretched” images
and followed the layout and conventions of a professional magazine.
Some action points for me on the
college magazine were to have better quality images from a high resolution
camera and follow the correct layout and looking at my final product I do see that
I have followed a professional layout and high quality images taken from a DSLR
camera and I believe I have followed the conventions of a real magazine a
produced a good quality product as well as making some huge improvements.
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