Evaluation of my AS Production Work

Taytum Cotton

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of real

media products?I have included a duo on the front cover, which is unconventional for magazines, as there is not a large amount of artists which are duos.

This type of front cover is unconventional as the duo is a boy and girl, addressing both of the potential readers, which magazines such as NME and Kerrang! Ignore.

The colour scheme is conventional, with 3 typical colours of red white and black, although I have added some extra colours to create some bits to stand out.

There is not often a duo seen on magazine front covers, although this is because there is not a large amount of duo music artists.

The rest of the elements on the page are conventional such as the centred headings, the coverlines being aligned to the side of the page they are closest to etc.

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

• How it represents the artists as well as the audience

• My magazine represents a group of unsigned artists, from the upcoming music scene, although my magazine does not focus on one specific genre just New music, it represents the music industry as a whole and therefore they are mostly youth acts, and this represents them as hard working and talented as this is what it takes to become part of the music scene.

• The youth of today, are represented in my magazine as being hardworking, although also like to have a good time, as the artists are all trying very hard to get into the music business. You can tell this from the quote on the front cover “If we had knew it was this hard we wouldn’t have bothered.” which gives the impression that they have worked really hard to get where they are today.

• It also gives the impression that the readers of today are passionate about music, otherwise, they would not be interested in buying the magazine, they also would like to keep up to date with the current trends as this magazine promotes new and up coming music artists.

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

• Bauer Media • Bauer Media is responsible for music magazines and channels such as Kerrang!, KISS, Aloud.com, Magic, Smash Hits!, Q, as well as 4Music andMOJO, therefore they have a lot of experience in themusic industry, and know how to create a successful and popular magazine.• Large multinational corporation• Large focus on music• Although Bauer music is a German company, and I am focusing on

mostly British music, I would rather have these as they know a large amount about the music industry and I don’t not feel that having a German company would affect the quality of the distribution of the magazine.

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

Would like to consider

themselves alternative, pride

themselves on their image.

Enjoy festivals and concerts, a large amount of their disposable income goes on this.

Listen to music every where they go, and are very passionate about it.

They pride themselves on being up-to-date with new music artists, songs and

fashions.

This magazine could appeal to both male

and female readers of magazines, which

other magazine such as NME ignore, this

would give the magazine, a largest

target readership as possible, and

therefore more possible sales.

They enjoy many different types of music available, and often listen to channels such as NME, and would most likely have subscriptions, to streaming sites such as Spotify.

Age 16-24

They perhaps want to be in the music business in the future, or trying to get into the music business and want some pointers.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

The Models have eye-contact with the camera, addressing the

audience directly

There is a rhetorical questions ‘why so Glum?’ which is directly talking to the audience and they would want to know why.

My audience is 16-24 year old males and females, I have therefore included this demographic, on the front cover

I have included a pop-out on the front cover and included the yellow, so that it stands out on the black background and

catches the potential audiences eye.

The magazine suggests that the target audience already

knows a large amount about the artists featured. As for

most of them just the name of the bands are mentioned

A quote is featured on the front cover, they are addressing the readers directly.

Making the artists seem like normal people by saying they have couch surfed, and now are living the dream, enticing people to buy it to find out how they managed it and how they can do it themselves.

The title is on a slant which is unconventional on typical music magazines and would be eye-catching for the potential buyer. The title is almost like a comic book, which might lead the readers to wonder why they are being represented as super-heroes.

The language on the front cover is not chatty, which would most likely appeal to a younger audience, although, not a formal or likely to be above their reading level as am newspaper such as the Times.

The title is bold, modern and simple, attracting audiences

which are mostly likely going to be used to this style, as they spend a

large proportion of their time gaming or on the computer

The style of the double page spread is an editorial, with snippets of an interview incorporated within. Which gives it an

informal feel, although it still contains some

element of formality and structure.

The page contains the same colour scheme and fonts as both the contents page and front cover, containing continuity through out the entirety of the magazine, the contrast of black white and red catches the readers eye.

The page includes 2 pull quotes, which address the audience directly and could grab the reader attention, if they are flicking through, it also entices the reader to continue reading the article to find out why the artist Is “still in shock!”

I have included large, bold tabs the catch the readers attention if flicking through the magazine quickly.

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

product?• Publisher- before creating my music magazine, I had little knowledge of the Microsoft

windows program publisher, I had briefly used it in the past, although not in nearly as much depth. I had to create shapes, text, insert images change the backgrounds etc. although the biggest challenge when using publisher is to work out how to get the images in the right order, as many had to be overlapping, and working out how to get the pictures seen, although after working out how to control the order, the rest was relatively straight forward.

• Weebly – I had never previously used Weebly, there was a small amount of trouble to

access Weebly to begin with on the school computers,

and this often took a large amount of working time to log in

each time I wanted to use it. I found Weebly to be straight

forward, the website was easy to use and step-by-step

instructions as how to create my blog.

• Slide share – Again I had never used slideshare previously, and this was more complicated to use, creating the slides where simple as I have used PowerPoint a larger amount before, although uploading them to slideshare.net was a bit tricky and the uploading them to my Weebly blog was difficult as the embedding codes wouldn’t work, I had to use the older embedding codes and then after a couple of attempts it was successful. I think Slideshare is a useful website, and I think this is good knowledge which I could use in the future.

• Camera equipment- I have previous experience in using photography, and programs such as Photoshop therefore I did not learn a large amount about the technology, although it did make me think about the studio photography used on the from the and composition used to portray theartists.

7. Looking back on your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it

to the full product?I have learnt that to create a successful image the models need to be more clearly instructed, for the school magazine I just said ‘act as if you are having fun’, I did not instruct them on eye-contact, costume, I did not take into account costuming, colours, or how the final image would look on the page. I acted upon this by creating costumes for the models in the music magazine, I told them how to stand, about to

look at the camera, and I planned what the

overall front cover will appear before I’d taken

the shots.

From the feedback I received on the preliminary task I was told that the page needed filling up further, so when planning the cover for my music magazine I researched further into the codes and conventions of magazines and found that they actually contain a large amount of text, in the for of cover lines and taglines, and therefore this as necessary for me to act upon this.

My preliminary magazine also contained a weak variety of colours, the colour scheme was very similar to the colours in the photo, and therefore, many of he cover lines were lost.