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

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

My magazine will follow the conventions of some magazines. It will be similar to NME however it will be more informal and more informative.

It will have a similar headline and will follow much of the layout.

I think that NME’s layout is a bit to ‘busy’ and I want to change that and make mine simpler.

I mainly have used images of men in my magazine, although most stereotypically men like to see images of woman, the truth is that they like to see images of men to relate or aspire to.

I have a similar main page to this issue of NME’s. I have chosen to emulate this because I think that the colour scheme for this issue is very good and attract the male audience because it is bright and attractive.

As you can see my magazine is similar to this copy of NME’s magazine. I really liked the black and white image on the bright yellow background. I decided to use this for my magazine as the old black and white images goes with the retro look of the cover band.

Also, I decided to copy the way that NME have the column widths not the same. I think that it uses space efficiently and it looks more natural because the article isn’t made just to fit perfectly onto the page. My contents page is not similar to any on the market because I do not think that they have got it right. On the NME’s contents page, I do not think that there is enough information shown, I think that there are too many photos.

For my contents I decided to copy the way that they have different column widths but that is it.

As well as this, I really liked the way that NME used the ‘Polaroid picture look’. It looked more vintage which is the look that I wanted to go for.

Although I wanted the retro look, I also wanted it to be modern. This is very contradicting but I think that it can be achieved by using modern technology to make the older look. This would mean high resolution photos but with effects to make them look older and graphics to copy the older grainy feel of the images.

I also copied the idea of having the article as text at the bottom in a large banner.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

 How does your media product represent particular social groups?

 

Here you can see that i have used similar techniques to this copy of NME magazine. I really liked the black and white image in the bright yellow background and i thought that i would use it for mine. I chose not to have as much text as this cover because my target audience prefers to see more than to read a lot of text. I also chose to put up two more pictures of different artists rather than focus on one man like this issue.

I am trying to aim people that like older more vintage music and have made the image black and white to attract the common 60's and 70's photographs.

I have used other techniques to attract my audience like the Polaroid pictures on my double page spread. They are placed wonky which shows a casual relaxed attitude to the music.

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

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

I think that an independent publisher will distribute my media product. I think that there is a gap in the market for my magazine and by distributing my magazine, they will find an audience easily and the magazine will continue to grow.

I also think that magazine will get passed around and recommended once it has began circulation, making the audience grow further.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Primarily the audience would be people who want to listen to the latest music. My target audience is males aged 14-25 however I think that more people will read it than just that. According to my survey, males and females will read that magazine. This was a shock to me because I didn’t target it towards females at all. 

I also prepared a number of questions to ask people in my target audience what they thought of my magazine. The questions were:

-Do you like the magazine?

-Would you buy this magazine?

-What would you say is the worst thing about this magazine?

-Would you pay £3.50 for this magazine?

-Would you say that hearing the latest indie music is something that would appeal to you?

-Would you recommend this magazine to your friends?

How did you attract/address your audience?

How did you attract/address your audience?

Most people that will read my magazine will read it because they have a strong interest in indie rock music. I will mainly attract my audience by keeping ‘up-to-date’ with the latest indie music news.

The magazine’s articles are informal but informative so basically readers will learn a lot but from a chatty, friendly text.

I will use a lot of images as there is only so much that you can say about a band. However I do think that a good article is important in a magazine.

I will use a number of bright contrasting colours in my magazine to make certain features stand out more but I will make it so that it still looks professional.

I had also got a number of members of my audience to give some feedback on my magazine. Many people really liked it and said that they liked the look and feel of my magazine. I made no further major changes.

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

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

From the project the main thing that I have learnt is how to use photoshop. I am now fluent in using photoshop and can edit photos efficiently. I have learnt how to to many different effects on photo shop and can now use it fluently and with ease.

I also learnt how to use Sony Vegas pro video editing software. I used this to edit the videos that I made.

Before the magazine, I had never used Sony Vegas or Blogger. I can now use them both easily.

Here is my laptop that i used to make my magazine. I did a lot of the magazine work in class but there are a lot of restrictions on school computers and it was a lot easier to do that work at home. There is also a picture of the memory card that i used to transport the files back to and from the school computers to my laptop.













This is a picture of the camera that i used to take the photo's for the magazine. It was very easy to use and had loads of different camera modes that made it easy to take the photos in different environments.
I also figured out how to use Song Vegas Pro video editing software. The programme is very good and it was very easy to edit that videos into one big video.

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

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 I have learnt a lot of new skills since doing the preliminary task. My skills using photoshop have greatly improved and I am a lot more comfortable using it.

As you can see, I can now ‘lasso’ images better and can apply shadows and glows.

An example of this is on my double page spread where I put a shadow and a border around the images to make it looks like that have been placed on top of each other.

I have also learned a lot more about the layout of magazines. Instead of just making a magazine of what come straight to mind, I have now planned my magazine and have specifically aimed it at a certain audience.

As you can see, the school magazine was lacking any order or structure. I think that in my music magazine I have researched and created a realistic music magazine.

As well as all of this i have learnt how to order layouts properly which i think is crucial to using photoshop.

The school magazine was lacking any order or professionally and i think that my music magazine is a great improvement on it.