Drafting
the evaluation (Draft) – Rebeca Wallis
1) In what
ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of
real media products?
My media product’s front cover, double page spread and
contents page follow the conventions of professional magazines in various ways.
Firstly, my front cover follows these “rules” by displaying similarities to
magazines like “We love pop” and “Smash Hits!” two of which I had case studies
of in Task 2
Masthead:
The masthead for my
music magazine follows conventions of real music magazines, primarily inspired
by ‘We love Pop’ and ‘Smash hits’ also referenced earlier. The masthead must be
the first thing that the readers and audience see; it must be attractive to be
able to appeal to the target audience immediately and persuade them to purchase
it. Regarding the attraction, I made my masthead big and bold to stand out
whilst the colour scheme reinforces the statement. The colour scheme of the
masthead is reflected throughout the whole magazine itself. I made the colour
scheme be a representation of the UK and it’s national flag of ‘Union Jack’ I
wanted to illustrate the slogan of the magazine and represent it as it’s
claimed that my magazine is the ‘UK’s hottest number one Pop Magazine.” I
decided that because the magazine is aimed at young, teenage girls – I thought
it would be a smarter idea to substitute the red of the union flag and make it
a hot pink, a shade closer to red to keep a fraction of the original flag, but
the other half of the masthead is reflected through white and blue, the other
2/3’s of the union Jack. I thought this would be a good idea to be able to
engage not only with the female teenage audience, but generally British people
over-all as it’s a symbol of the country. I decided that I didn’t want to place
my masthead behind my models as I thought that I wanted both separate elements
to make a statement on their own.
Photography: (Front
page)
Another way that my
magazine follows codes and conventions of professional music magazines is
within the photography aspect. I chose to shoot my models in a way that
reflected the pop genre for the magazine. I decided that alluring and
provocative style poses wouldn’t suit well with the target audience, so I
decided – much like ‘We love Pop’ and ‘Smash hits!’ That “cheesy”
posing was much more appropriate. Also, “Direct mode of address” is much more
appealing on front covers as the audience feel engaged and more obliged to buy
the magazine if they feel a “connection” with the models on the front page. I
also chose to shoot a Medium-long shot as I found that these were popular shots
used by professional media products. I wanted my models to portray the teenage
audience by wearing clothes that are deemed fashionable
and appropriate choice of attire for young teenage girls. Also, I thought
that the matching outfits also displayed a level of “cheesiness” that displayed
the Pop genre perfectly.
Contents page:
The contents page
of my music magazine follows some rules and conventions of professional music
magazines in various ways, for example – the numbers are in chronological order
but may have page numbers missed out. This sorts the main topics of the magazine
from the adverts between pages. Also, sub-headings before the small blurbs of
information often is seen throughout professional magazines to allow the
audience to read what they feel are more interesting to them. The colour scheme
also reflects the colour scheme of the front page as the scheme is fluent
throughout the magazine. This is seen throughout many professional magazines
like Vibe, We love Pop which often have very minimalistic use of colours. The
situation of the images also represent formal codes and conventions by
spreading various images around the contents page and lining the pictures up
with the appropriate sub-heading.
2) How does
your media product represent particular social groups?
My media product defines the audience with a particular set
of social attributes. My media
represents the particular social groups by reinforcing the traditional
stereotypes of young teenage girls. Generally, young teenage girls are thought
to be innocent and introvert. The models of the front page of my magazine show
exactly this; they are not “in-your-face” displaying introvert personalities
with innocent faces and poses. Whilst, the media product also challenges new
stereotypes. As the image of young teenage girls have changed recently, they
are thought to be loud, extrovert and generally indecent on magazine covers
which is in complete contrast to how the image of young girls used to be. Also, my media product also gives the audience
the assumption that it is one-ethnicity dominated as White Caucasian models are
shown throughout the magazine. This wasn’t an intentional idea, but I had found
that in my case studies in previous tasks, the Pop genre is often dominated
with one ethnicity which reinforces stereotypes whereas music magazines such as
VIBE displays a different dominating ethnic group such as
African-American/Caribbean young females and males.
3) What kind of Media institution might distribute your media
product and why?
I had originally chosen IPC to
publish my magazine as they had a variety of different magazines published for
many things such as TV, Lifestyle, Health ect. And many masculine music
magazines but, it was clear they only published one teen magazine, which wasn’t
necessarily music based as it focused more on teenage life overall. This then
prompted the decision to choose IPC to publish the media product based around
the idea of having a teenage music magazine to fill in the missing category. Whilst,
the smaller publishers like Dennis publications seemed the more appropriate
choice for the distribution/publication of my media product as they distribute
both hard and digital copies but, neither Dennis nor Shortlist Media deal with
music magazines. I also thought that ShortList may be a better option to
publish the product, although they are “freemium” based company, they have won
30 industry awards, branding the company a popular and successful publisher.
They recently launched a new women magazine which has an excess of 50,000
subscribers. The popularity of each magazine could prompt the idea of a new
edition and new category to Shortlist media in which it’ll be music and be for
a younger audience; in this way the publisher will cover all fields regarding
age. As Shortlist media hire 500
merchandisers every week in 12 British cities for their own existing magazine,
my media product would be better suited being distributed electronically via
the ShortList website, ezines or apps on Ipads and smart phones to be more
accessible and more appealing to the younger generation as many of the
teenagers now spend much more time on their electronic devices rather than
purchasing and reading hard copies of magazines.
4) What would be the audience for your media product?
My media product target audience
would be for young teenage girls, aged between 11-18. The music magazine is
based around the type of music interest of the audience which is primarily the
Pop genre. The magazine mainly focuses on young girls who still attend comprehensive
schools or colleges who are focused more around the working-class or a small
minority in the middle class. The house style and front cover symbolises and
reflects that the magazine is aimed at British girls instead of a global unisex
magazine. Due to the type of artists and clothing that the models wear in the
magazine can reflect that the magazine is mainly read by White British or
Caucasian audience, which may be reflected by magazines such as ‘We love pop’
and opposed to magazines such as ‘Vibe’ which mainly focuses on aiming their
magazine at the African-American audience.
The press packs of ‘We love Pop’
and general knowledge of ‘Smash Hits’ (The magazine had ended in 2006) but
primarily gained popularity of the younger audience, showed that both magazines
were mainly read by young female readers this then influenced my media product,
and the audience.
BURST – UK’s hottest music magazine
Category COMP%
Gender
MEN
10%
WOMEN
90%
AGE
11-18
75%
18-24 15%
24-30
6%
30+
4%
Education
Comp. School
60%
College
25%
University
15%
Employment
Employed 10%
Unemployed
70%
Part time
20%
Race/Ethnicity
White British
69%
Caucasian 20%
Black/Afro-American/Caribbean 5%
Asian
4%
Other
1%
5) How did you attract/address your
audience?
For my magazine, I used various
elements to attract and address my audience. I wanted to gather feedback from
members of my target audience to be able to see if my magazine would appeal to
the certain audience.
For my magazine, I wanted to use
certain elements that would appeal to my audience. For instance, colours such
as pink and white – or together, appeal to the female audience. The bold
hotpink statements on the front cover is attractive to the reader, as feedback
had stated from surveys and blogger. Also, the models that I had used on my
front cover is another form of attracting and addressing my audience. I wanted
to ensure that my models were dressed in maroon jeans and a white vest-top that
represents casual wear for today’s female teenagers. This is attractive to the
reader because it creates the assumption that the magazine is focused around
teenage girls the same age as the audience. I also intentionally used two
teenage girls, roughly the same age as my specific audience to gain attention
and appeal for the reader. Also, not only will that appeal to the girls, but
also develop a broader range of audience as it may stretch out to the teenage
male region.
Audience
feedback from my blogger regarding my final media product illustrated to a
certain extent how much my magazine engages and attracts my target audience. On
my DPS, feedback such as the masthead on the DPS as being “Vibrant and Snappy”
which attracts the audience automatically also feedback reveals that my use of
questionnaire makes it easier for the audience to read as it’s quick and easy
as teenagers find it difficult and boring to read huge chunks of writing. The
feedback also reinforces the idea of using the colour scheme to represent the
genre and target audience which I assumed would be a popular decision. Whereas
contents page, feedback said that although my house style was different from my
final product, my final product attracted audience and engaged audience as the
colours and types of artists had displayed a clear relevance to the genre of
the magazine. My contents page is said
to look “organized and clean” which pulls the audience into reading the
magazine as they can clearly see what is labelled and which most is interesting
to them. Regarding my front cover, the feedback that I received was largely
positive. The feedback stated that my magazine would attract the target audience
because of the young, teenage female models that are on the front of my
magazine. This attracts the audience because it represents the popular youth
culture and relates to young females the same way that young male models would
attract young females.
For
the creation of my media product, I had to use a variety of different media
technologies. For the photo shoot for the main images, we used DSLR cameras
which were Nikon D7000. This made the shoot much more professional and easier
as the DSLR Camera captured the images beautifully and more professionally.
These were later transferred to Indesign and Photoshop for touch ups and fixing
and to construct the first drafts of the front cover, contents page and
double-page spread. My skills developed over time for Indesign and Photoshop as
I’ve rarely used either outside of the classroom and my skills were
underdeveloped and lacked knowledge of many aspects in both software. I had
learnt how to manipulate images by airbrushing images as my models
disapproved of some of the images, but I learnt how to manipulate the images
into having a more professional appearance and not appearing false or too
altered for the magazine.
Blogger is a main source to
construct and receive feedback from and for the media product, as comments
regarding progress are received via blogger and help to create an overall
evaluation of the final product. I recently developed skills on blogger as I
used the website before for my Performing Arts progress but, I had recently
learnt that if I had missed a certain task or that I had to rearrange posts,
that I could alter the time scale for the post to place it with the appropriate
month and related topics and tasks.
The photography studio was also a
new experience. I had learnt skills regarding the use of Umbrella Lighting that
helps brighten or darken the lighting in the studio which gives you the desired
effect for your shoot. Reflectors also played a role in the photography studio
as I needed to use the silver reflector to reflect more light onto the models
themselves as I found the studio was dark that day and I needed the models to
be in as much light as possible to ensure I gained my desired effect regarding
my shoot for the magazine, in which I wanted the models to be in severe light
to contrast against the black background which to me, would perceive a more
“pop” feel to the magazine.
7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you
have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
For the preliminary task we had to
create a college magazine in preparation to the final music magazine product. From working preliminary task then working on
the main product, I feel that I have learnt a variety of important things. I
realized that alignment of cover-lines and teasers were important into
maintaining a professional look to the magazine front cover instead of looking
cheap and dull, for instance – the college magazine. Also, the length of the
cover lines and teasers drew fine lines between professionalism and amateur. I
found that on magazines I analysed, the cover lines were much shorter than I
had expected after producing the college magazine. After referring back to my
preliminary evaluation, I saw that I needed to continue working on layout of
images and front – cover lines, mastheads etc. It took some time choosing an
appropriate font for my final media product as many clashed with my genre of
music or didn’t fit well with the colour scheme. Whilst with my college
magazine I chose any font that I thought looked appealing to myself, rather
than the audience so I had to ensure that my final product was appealing to
both myself and my target audience. The second point that I think I had
improved on and which was a focus point in my evaluation was to ensure that
colour scheme of the house styles was appropriate. For my music magazine, I
chose a simplistic style such as red and black as the colours suit together
but, I thought of no other reasons to the colour scheme whereas on my final
product, I thought hard about the colours that I used to portray my certain
audience and to reflect the nation and the type of genre the magazine
highlighted.
