AS MEDIA STUDIES: COURSEWORK

EVALUATION

QUESTION 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and

conventions of real media products?

I wanted my media product to be as authentic as possible and this required

me to follow a lot of the conventions of normal magazines to ensure

that it does look like a real magazine. The conventions I decided to

follow were conventions similar to that of a magazine called Kerrang,

this magazines main audience consists of people who enjoy listening to

rock music and this is a similar audience of people who I targeted my

magazine at. If I was to follow similar conventions to that magazine I

would have a better chance at my magazine to appealing to my

audience. I haven’t copied the magazine in any way as seen from the

pictures below but I have tried to use some of the conventions that this

magazine has used. Some of the obvious conventions that I used in my

magazine were one large image this isn’t the main focus of the

magazine but the model is looking directly at the camera and I used this

convention because I felt like It was an important part of the real

magazine and I thought using would make my magazine seem more

authentic.

The real magazine uses a lot of black, whites and reds and I decided to use a similar colour scheme to this a I felt that that colour of a magazine can greatly effect whether people from a specific social group will actually want to read this magazine or not, so I decided to follow the colour scheme quite closely but I did deviate a little but as my target audience is slightly different to the Kerrang target audience. Just to make my magazine look at real as possible I added things that all music magazine always have, I made sure I had pricing, barcode, some form of advertising and numbered pages, I did these things and other things that would be in every other magazine to ensure that my magazine looked more authentic.

I had looked at many different music magazines and a magazine called Q inspired me to make my masthead the way I did, I also gave me ideas on how I would set out my entire magazine. As you can see from the mast head of this magazine, mine is quite similar and you can tell that I took my ideas from it, I didn’t originally mean to replicate as closely as I did but after I had created it I felt like it fitted in extremely well with my ideas for the magazine and I kept it.

QUESTION 2

how does your media product represent particular social groups?

My media product aimed to represent the rock genre social group. I believe

it succeeds at doing this in many ways, one of which is the colour

scheme, as people from this social group are stereotyped as liking

leather and dark colours so I tried to use colours that would normally

represent this social group so my magazine could represent them. My

magazine has a lot of colours that are dark and this is what appeals to

this the social group and would represent them.

I also attempted to represent that social group through images on my

magazine; people from the rock social group are stereotyped as

wearing a lot of leather and have certain facial expressions more often. I

took advantage of this by using imagery of people that could be

considered to be part of the social group and this allowed my magazine

to better represent the social group, it does this because when people

see images of people that could be seen part of the rock social group

they would know that the magazine represents that social group. The

models on my magazine had to fit the part, all of the models in my

magazine are seen wearing leather and dark clothing because this

allows them to seem part of the social group, I also made sure that they

had serious facial expression and they were looking at the camera as

this makes them better represent the social group.

QUESTION 3

What kind of media institution might distribute

your media product and why?

A magazine institution such as IPC would distribute my

media product. This is because this institution is well

known for distributing magazines that have a similar

target audience to my magazine. This allows for my

magazine to be distributed to an audience of people who

want a specific type of magazine. Using this institution

would allow for my media product to be marketed and

distributed correctly as IPC understand how to distribute

magazines such as mine

Using this institution gives my magazines a better chance of

getting to its target audience and also give to it’s target

audience and also give it a better chance at success as if

it was a real magazine.

My magazine would be distributed in places where most

magazine would be sold such as newsagents but could

also be sold in places such as rock music shops as this

allows for my magazine to better reach people that might

like my magazine.

QUESTION 4

Who would be the audience for your magazine?

My media product had a target audience similar to magazines

such as Kerrang as this magazine is in a similar genre to my

magazine.

I had did some research to see what people from the rock social

group would want from my magazine. I question I asked was

about the age and from the results the most common answers

the ages that I would target my magazine at people aged

between 17 to 25 as this was the most common age group for

that social group.

I also used the questionnaire to find some other information about

what my magazine should be like, another question I asked was

about how often people would want my an ideal magazine to be

published and this allows me to adjust my magazine to better fit

my target audience.

From my questionnaire I found at that the majority of people

that from the social group are male and this means that I

would have better chance of making a more appealing

magazine to my target audience if I also tried to follow

conventions that would better fit a magazine for males.