How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Heather Allso

How does my main image show meaning to my target audience?

The image shows a solo female artist. The image is very much focused on her as she fills up the entire cover space. As it is the first issue of the magazine the mast head covers the top of the artists head as the magazine needs to be recognised by the audience before it can be partially hidden by the main artist on the cover. The artist is called Alice Sutton, she is the main feature in the magazine so it is important that she fills the entirety of the cover to elaborate her importance to the issue. Also, the way the main artist is posing is quite seductive due to the (almost) pout and messing with the hair.

How does the camera angle and camera shot represent your magazine to your target audience?

The importance of the artist has already been established by the fact that she fills the entire frame of the magazine. The camera shot is a close up of the artist as she is essentially the person that is selling the magazine due to being the only person featured on the front of it. In the picture you can see that she is looking at you, this is direct address as she is engaging with the target audience to persuade them to buy it.

How does the use of mise-en-scene represent your magazine?

The make-up the artist is wearing is quite heavy and dark- the dark eyeliner is a conventional aspect of rock/punk bands. The foundation on the artists face is quite pale as many rockers aren’t usually associated with ‘tanning’, yet it gives the artist more of a flawless look. The hair the artist has in the picture is quite messy, reinforcing the conventional aspects of rockers being messy and slob-ish. However the costume she is wearing (an Alice in Wonderland dress) doesn’t represent any other genre, but represents a feature of the artists personality, that she is mad and creative like Alice.

How has lighting been used to represent your magazine?

Lighting has been used to represent the sophistication of the magazine. I placed the artist in front of a white curtain which had natural light coming through, and then I turned on the flash on the camera which caused the porcelain/flawless look the artist has in the picture. This is an element of the pop genre however when studying other magazines such as Q and Rollingstone, many of their magazines feature Pop artists despite it being a rock magazine. So by taking advantage of featuring Pop artists in some of the coverlines, I have used only very few elements of the genres use of representation to help represent the minority of the genres I’m trying to represent, whilst still representing the rock genre.

What are the colours representing?My housestyle mainly consists of Black, Red, Grey and White.Black is commonly used to represent the rock genre and has connotations of elegance and power; red is featured on a lot of the rock magazines as it has connotations of passion, energy and power and that is one of the things I wanted to represent in my magazine. Grey is used to represent formality. The black and white image represents sophistication within the magazine.