IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND

CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

Question 1

INFORMATION GATHERED THROUGH MY RESEARCH..

• The very first thing I had to do was to find my target audience. Who was going to buy my magazine? I did this by creating a questionnaire on a website called survey monkey which let me email it electronically and also receive data electronically. I then put my results into pie charts to make is visibly simple to see my results. It concluded in my audience liking bands such as ‘Rage Against The Machine’, ‘Pink Floyd’ and ‘Muse’. To find out how magazine production companies represent bands like this is there magazines I had to do some more research. This enabled me to included the forms and conventions into my own individual design.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Z7853BZ

THIS ALLOWED ME TO FIND..

That the main key rock bands where being presented on magazines such as NME, VIBE, and KERRANG. They had been successfully promoted and the brands of the magazines are huge and well known.

BECAUSE OF THIS BASIC RESEARCH I DECIDED TO..

• Look into more depth and start looking inside the magazines. I looked at the contents pages to gain an idea of some of the conventions.

FURTHER CONVENTIONS RESEARCH..

• To research just that little bit more around the main forms and conventions of a rock and roll magazine I created a brainstorm of words on a software called ‘Wordle’ to help me gather all my ideas together.

BY CONCLUDING MY RESEARCH I FOUND THAT..

• The main colour used are RED, WHITE, and BLACK. These simipilsed colours allows all text and images to be seen in a clear and professional way. I also noticed the magazines liked to use large imagery dominating pages. Especially on double page spreads. Therefore I felt the most appropriate for me was to have a very large interesting dominating picture.

• This is a mood board I created to help me focus on the colours and how they can work with each other.

CHALLENGING FORMS OF REAL MEDIA.. FRONT COVER

I wanted to create an original mast heading so when researching some ideas I did have to come up with a few. In my questionnaire results I found that ‘PULSE’ was the most popular. I also found that other music magazine used music related words for there mast headings. I also wanted to do this.

I also noticed when researching rock and roll magazines that images where often dramatic and had high key lighting for the background. I thought this would be an interesting idea for my magazine. I think this has been successful because all the text is clear to read.

Rock and roll is all about the music. I therefore needed to make sure my front cover symbolises this. I made sure my model was holding a guitar.

CHALLENGING FORMS OF REAL MEDIA.. CONTENTS PAGE

I made sure I carried on the theme on music and carried on using instruments in the images.

I have still included the iconic gold stars to make the page look eye catching and glamorous. I got this idea from looking at NME magazine.

I wanted to keep the running theme of red, black, and white. I think this will keep my target audience interested. I also think dividing the two sections of ‘cover stories’ and ‘featuring’ makes the made clearer to read. I also think it makes it look more professional because this is what I found in ‘VIBE’ magazine.

CHALLENGING FORMS OF REAL MEDIA.. DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD

I first of all looked for inspiration of how rock and roll stars represented themselves. I found that all the pictures where of them live onstage playing at a gig. Because I didn’t know a model who would be playing at a live gig I couldn’t do this. However I still wanted to give off the element of action movement and happiness.

The running theme of black, red, and white has been present throughout my magazine. However I had also wrote the text in black. So I therefore thought I needed some variation and made important quotes stand out in a large red font. I noticed that NME magazine did this in all there interviews.

Again the running theme of the gold stars found in NME magazine to glamour up the page

CHALLENGING FORMS OF REAL MEDIA.. PHOTO EXAMPLES

I got my idea for this shot from the first image. However I felt that some of the mise-en-scene was wrong. I didn’t like the low key lighting so I chose to make the background light. And I didn’t like the expressionless face. I chose to make my shot a lot more interesting but still kept the main ideas of the close up shot and guitar.

MY VERSION <<

PROFESSIONAL VERSION >>

CHALLENGING FORMS OF REAL MEDIA.. PHOTO EXAMPLES

PROFESSIONAL VERSION <<

MY VERSION

From the professional picture I liked the how the drums looked so symmetrical and I wanted to make sure my drum kit look symmetrical too. I wanted to make sure I made my model where contrasting colours to the drum kit so she could stand out. Just like in the professional picture.

CHALLENGING FORMS OF REAL MEDIA.. PHOTO EXAMPLES My

versionProfessional version

I liked the individual idea of a girl sitting onto of a amp. However I didn’t like the low key lighting because I felt the amp and the girl did not stand out enough. I made sure when I took the picture myself that I had very high key lighting and an amp was used.

CHALLENGING FORM OF REAL MEDIA.. PHOTO EXAMPLES

Professional version

my version

I liked what the original image looked like because it kept to my could theme of black, white and red. But I didn’t not want to copy this exactly and therefore put my picture into black and white to give it some variation from the others.