Section B

4. Who would be the audience for your media product? FINAL

The people who are the audience of my magazine would do a lot of shopping at HMV, because they are mainly music fanatics and HMV is the biggest place known for music, they are also likely to shop at smaller, more independent music shops, as HMV is very mainstream, whereas my magazine promotes a lot of smaller bands who are less well known, and may not be sold at HMV, and more likely to be sold at independent shops, such as Rockaboom. My magazine is a rock/metal magazine much like Kerrang magazine, so the readers are likely to listen to well known rock bands such as Foo Fighters, Green Day, Slipknot and Nirvana, however the magazine is aimed a lot towards small bands, so the readers will listen probably to a lot of independent, unknown, underground new bands, such as Hawk Eyes and Dangerous! The readers music is not likely to be limited to only new bands, but more than likely they will listen to a lot of new music, is that is probably the magazines main appeal. On television the readers of my magazine are likely to watch music television stations such as Kerrang! Tv and Scuzz Tv, as it is aimed towards people who are big music fans, rather than casual listeners, meaning they will listen to music whenever they get the chance, including on tv. When they want a break from music, the television they watch probably would consist of comedy programmes such as ‘Mock The Week’ and it is unlikely that they would watch any reality tv shows such as the x factor or any gossipy television, as rock music is part of there life, it is a more rebellious genre than pop music as it pushes more boundaries, so the readers are probably looking for some outrageous, boundary pushing comedy to laugh at rather than chatty, gossipy tv programmes.

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

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups? FINAL

My magazine photo is of the singer of a band who I once saw, and took pictures when I saw them. I thought that he was a fitting model for my magazine because the way the genre of the magazine links in with the look of my model. Often the rock music world is associated with youths who dress slightly different to normal people who dont listen to heavy or rock music. One way that my model represents the group of people the magazine is aimed for is with his clear on show Tattoo's. If you looked at a picture of this man normally, you would probably be able to tell that he listens to rock music just from his tattoo's or by the clothe's he wears. This could also draw people in because of his fashion, even if they don't know the band, because they think he looks cool. He also wears a vest, which is often associated with rock n' rollers, and skinny jeans, and this shows that he dresses very young despite being about 25 years old, showing that he is a good man to represent the magazine as he fits in with the genre and with the people who may be likely to read it. The image here next to the image next to the photo I used for my cover is a photo of a more well known rock star to my cover star. He is the Singer of Metal band BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE, Matt Tuck. Within my target audience, I think a lot of the people will be fans of Bullet For My Valentine because they are a well known rock band and I am aiming towards an audience who have open minds so like all kinds of music. Therefore I wanted a person who represented this audience, someone who looked like Matt Tuck, but I had no photo's taken of him, So I feel my model is fairly similar, as they are both wearing vests, skinny jeans, and have arm tattoo's. Also Matt Tuck is wearing ripped jeans, as is the person in the background of my cover photo. Although this is not used on my cover it goes to show the scene that these people all fit together in.

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of music magazines) FINAL

As my magazine is a rock music magazine, I felt that I should use some of the design on my front cover as other rock magazines as the front cover is where you need to attract people so it is important to have a good looking front cover. I chouse the most successful and well known magazine music, Kerrang!, for my inspiration on the front cover. Kerrang! uses black, red, white and yellow as its main colour pallete, in my magazine I used the same colour pallette, apart from the colour yellow as I didnt think there was enough on my cover to spread between 4 colours to a good effect. Another way which I was inspired by Kerrang! magazine was with the usage of sub titles and then a small description of article down the left hand side on the page, above the title. This gives the reader a good idea of what is in the magazine without revealing too much. The main cover line of this magazine is also similarly represented too mine, a qoute is givin underneath a slanted title. This quote gives the reader an idea of the attitude of the artist or the content of the interview/article. There is also a banner at the bottom of this magazine, as their is similarly in mine, this gives readers who aren't already attracted by the content of the magazine further information and more advertisement. Fans of the bands listed in this banner may now opt to buy the magazine. As well as this for my double page spread I also took Kerrang as my inspiration. Again I used the same colour pallette of red white and black that is often used throughout Kerrang! magazine. I also used small caption boxes that I saw on Kerrang! as these help explain the picture and can give a comical edge to the magazine and entertain the reader. I also had the main writing of the article on one page, and a photo of the model taking up the whole of the other page, this is a formula often used in Kerrang! also. With the contents page I took NME magazine as inspiration because I didn't want my magazine to seem just like a clone of Kerrang! I wanted to aim it at a group of people who are interested a lot in new music and trying new things, and NME is a lot about advertising new bands, so I took them as inspiration too. For example my contents page is similar to NME contents pages I have studied by the fact that the page numbers and listings are down the right hand side of the page, with titles seperating articles into sections to make it easier to find what you want, as well as page numbers being highlighted in red so they stand out against the white writing. Also the red white and black colour scheme is used in NME too, showing it is a successful and clever scheme to use, as the big magazines use it, so I decided it would be wise to use it as well.

 

7. Looking back at your preliminary task (the school magazine task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product? final

Things I think are a weakness of my prelim task are the fact that the front cover and the contents page do not look like they come from the same magazine, using different fonts, and colour schemes, therefore on my final music magazine I learnt to do certain things that would make sure they looked similar to each other. For example I had a photo of my cover model as the photo in my contents page, as well as the double page spread. More importantly thought fonts used on the front page are used in the contents and double page spread, but avoid using the main masthead font, as this should be reserved for the recognition of the magazine. As well as this there is a consistent colour scheme of red white and black throughout the my front cover contents and double page spread, with all the backgrounds being black with mainly white font and the occasional red. Also in the prelim task photos on my contents page were not very well proportioned to the space they were given and are therefore slightly stretched out, so in my final task, the photos have not been stretched at all and the proportion has been thought about carefully. On my prelim front cover, the models shirt is very colourful and takes away a lot of the attention from other areas of the magazine so I avoided this in my final task, with the colours on his shirt either being hidden or very small, and in one picture his shirt is not bright at all. Also I learnt how to make the feel of my magazine feel more like an actual magazine, for example adding features such as banners to add extra advertisement to the cover, subscription information, page numbers and caption boxes, things I may not have considered when making my school magazine.

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

From the designing of my magazine I have learned various things about technologies that can help you to make a magazine. A website I have used largely to help me, is www.dafont.com which has various different fonts, which are often more bold and outstanding than the ones that you are limited to use on photoshop. These can be print screened onto photo shopped and cropped, and put onto their own layer so you can experiment them on your magazine cover. I learnt a lot about using photoshop, I had previously used it at gcse to make a collage which involved cutting out using the magic wand and lasso tools to cut out pictures and add on top of a background layer so this gave me a headstart as this is what a lot of making the magazine depends on. A new thing I learnt on photoshop in the magazine making process was how to use a grid view, so I could make sure everything was lined up straightly and everything was pristine. I also used the features in different ways, for example I learnt how to use the box making tool, the text tool, and the fill tool, to make a caption box, and also banners, something I hadn’t previously made. Also in the planning and research stage I learnt how to use animoto, which I discovered was a brilliant and professional looking way to cast out ideas, and more effective than a powerpoint and talking throught your ideas.