G321 Media studies Evaluation

By Tom Grant

Sound board Contents page and front cover

Soundboard double page spread

1) In what ways does your media product, use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

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Codes and conventions

Mast Head

Main cover Image

Main Cover line

Direct mode of addressDate and price

Additional cover lines

Lighting and colour

Throughout my magazine I used various conventions to create an effect that will lure the viewer into buying my magazine. I learnt this in the codes and conventions task which I then combined with other magazine influences to help me to find the right base for my magazine. www.tomgrantsmediablog.blogspot.co.uk The conventions listed to the right show the way I have followed typical media products as I have used: the ‘left-third’ rule for my mast head, drawing the attention to the main cover line instead of my additional cover lines and bar codes/prices in the normal position.

Blocking

Symbiotic relationship

How my product challenges real life media products

My media product challenges standard media products through various ways. One of which is the colour. As you can see I have stuck to a 3 base colour scheme of: Red, black and white. By doing this I have made my magazine stand out from the all the other magazines on the shelf and also I created an effect which gives it a vintage/Indie look which relates to my target audience. The style/Layout of my magazine has a very classy and rebellious feel to it as the font style appears to be very mature the main image expresses a fair bit of attitude to the audience. This strays away from the standard magazines as very few magazines follow this indie style. A few features my magazine didn’t bother with was: PUGS and PUFFS as I felt they added immaturity to the magazine as they would take the attention away from the main front image and make it feel clustered together.

Magazine influences

The magazines above are some of the influences that provided me with the inspiration to create the magazine in the way I have done so. www.tomgrantsmediablog.blogspot.co.uk

As you can see, I have used the black keys magazine as my inspiration for the band being a Duo, I have also used the black keys magazine as a key influence as they are also using a direct mode of address to attract the audience into buying the magazine. The next Influence was the Q magazine and this influenced me to abbreviate my mast head from ‘soundboard’ into just ‘-SB-’ as it was a lot catchier and easier to fit onto the magazine. www.tomgrantsmediablog.blogspot.co.uk The last influence was the NME magazine as this influenced my colour scheme.

Contents page influences This was my original magazine influence as I set out to recreate having a model down one side of the picture and the contents down the other. Unfortunately I had to adapt my presentation as I had to involve other support artists and bands and not just ‘Placebo effect’ www.tomgrantsmediablog.blogspot.co.uk

Because I needed to bring in other artists as well, I found a new influence which is the picture to the left. I then decided to combine both images together so I kept the main artist down one side and contents down the other. But I also involved more pictures of other bands and used the boxed in numbers from Q magazine to identify what pages each of them would be on.

By combining both images together I have constructed a magazine contents page that has elements of both making it very unique and catchy.

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups? “ ”

Representing particular social groupsMy magazine targets the audience of predominantly teenagers but also general lovers of rock. The magazines: Q, NME and Rolling stones helped me to understand rock magazines and helped me identify the aspects that people love about these types of magazines.

Cover star The cover star is a young male who represents an indie culture as he doesn’t follow the normal represented culture and follows his own opinion. This made him perfect for the role of the main cover star of the band. This style can represent some teenagers in society as it challenges some aspects of the stereotypical males.

Representing social groups – Other photos

Other photos represent the culture of the artists and continue the theme of rock as it creates a rebellious feel to the pictures. Also these pictures gave the magazine a youthful mysterious feel to it thus attracting/tempting the audience into buying the magazine.

3) What kind of media institution might distribute my magazine? “ ”

Distribution of magazine There are various magazine distributors that I feel will distribute my magazine. The audience of SB magazine is similar to Rolling stones, NME and Q magazine thus meaning I can see SB magazines being distributed by a company that provided new opportunities to magazines.

I did various research on major magazine distributors that could potentially publish my magazine. Some of which were Bauer and IPC media.

Bauer Bauer magazine is a very large corporation that distributes well known magazines such as Q magazine and Kerrang magazine. They are involved in all types of media such as TV and magazines.

IPC mediaIPC media is the UK's leading consumer magazine and digital publisher. They distributed magazines such as NME.

Chosen distributor My chosen distributor is IPC media

I have chosen IPC media for there diverse range of media products and there ability to advertise on different platforms such as websites and other modern technologies. Also the fact that IPC media is the UK’s largest distributor is very attracting as it shows that my product will do well on the market.

4) Who would be the audience for my media product? “ ”

My targeted audience

My targeted audience is general lovers of all aspects of rock. Both males and females between the ages of 16-20. Below is the link which takes you to the spread sheet which contains charts and data expressing what proportion of students preferred each genre of music. http://tomgrantsmediablog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/analysis-of-questionnaire-graphs.html The spread sheet helped me to identify what genre my magazine should be based on and how effective my choice would be. NME and rolling stones magazine have a similar targeted audience as there audience consists of modern rock fans and a similar age base.

5)How did I attract/address my audience “ ”

How I attracted my audience

My masthead

This is my masthead and it is quite a catchy abbreviation of my magazine Soundboard. The colour scheme consists of a 3 colour basis of: Red, Black and white which is another key way I attracted my audience.

Colour scheme

To the Left is the colour scheme which was maintained throughout my magazine. I stuck to this colour scheme as it is very attractive and eye catching thus meaning that people will be more enticed to buy my magazine.

How I attracted my audience

Reviews On the front cover of my magazine I have put a quote from a local newspaper saying how they thought the band was amazing. This would attract the audience in as they also might find the band amazing enticing them to read the magazine.

Cover lines In my magazine I have used tempting phrases such as ‘New’ and emphasis is applied on these cover lines through the Size and boldness of the words.

Images The images I used show a strong willed indie male who is committed to his music. Most of my pictures use a direct mode of address which stares deeply into the audience expressing his strength and commitment to music.

6) What have I learned about the technologies from the process of constructing the product? “ ”

Technologies used to construct my product When constructing my product I used various programs which were: Microsoft publisher, Paint.net and page plus. They were all good software's but each had various strengths and weaknesses.Here are the strengths of the technologies

Microsoft publisher Paint.net Page plus

Easy to save into any format such as JPG

Cropping is extremely easy with the rubber tool

Easy to use effects on the software

Spell check is available Good layering system allows you to easily choose what layer you want to edit

Easy to crop and remove unwanted parts of the image

Accurate print previews available

Able to add text and shapes Lots of tools enable good quality details

Easy to add images and fonts onto the product

Able to save as JPG and other formats allowing you to revisit the file when ever suits you.

Crop tool is very easy to use Able to use a variety of texting tools

Easy to select images

Unfortunately there were some weaknesses to each program

Microsoft Publisher Paint.net Page plus

Not many effects available Very fiddly and frustrating Likely to overuse effects as there are so many

Very basic and lacks detail Not as good quality or detail in effects

Cut out studio leaves rough edges

Very tricky to use and was hard to get used to

Unable to edit text after deselecting the layer

Each of these software's played a part in the creation of my product as: Paint.net allowed me to remove parts of the image by hand as some colours clashed together and wouldn’t work in page plus. Page plus allowed me to add serious detail and effects onto the picture and Publisher allowed me to easily add text onto my document. Page plus took a lot of time to get used to but eventually was the software I used most to construct my presentations. I had to practise quite a lot as shown here Eminem page plus

Technologies used

One way which I stored and processed every detail of the construction of my magazine was with the use of Blogger. Blogger was a really reliable and useful tool as I could upload my work at any time and it saved me from putting my work into hand held folders which could easily be lost or damaged. All my work was protected with a password thus meaning no one could enter my work which offers a lot more protection. Additionally I could edit and rewrite my posts which was really useful as if I made a spelling mistake, I could easily correct it with no hassle. If my work had of been in a paper based folder then it would of made life difficult. Furthermore Blogger was a free resource which cost nothing to make as I only required a Gmail account. This was a lot more beneficial as folders and printing paper in colour cost more.

Drafting and planning

Templates Before I constructed my

magazine, I created a template in which would be the basis of my magazine. This allowed me to easily interpret my pictures and fonts into the documents

• Double page spread • Front cover template

• Contents page template

Photographic choices Throughout the construction I took a variety of pictures in order to see what picture fitted best with the font colours and the template. This provided me a diverse range of images and through trail and error I found the pictures that were best suited for my: magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread. Here is a link to some of the photos I was planning to use. Picture plan.

7) Looking back at my preliminary task, what do I feel I have learnt in the progression from it into the full product

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7) Looking back at my preliminary task, what do I feel I have learnt in the progression from it into the full product

Front cover

In the preliminary task the mast head covers the main image, There are very few effects to make the image stand out and the cover line isn't very effective.

7) Looking back at my preliminary task, what do I feel I have learnt in the progression from it into the full product

Contents page

In the preliminary task the contents only go up to 20 which isn't magazine worthy, The writing is very hard to read and there are very few effects of the images. My first attempt was on publisher and considering it was only preliminary it doesn’t look to bad but in comparison to my page plus contents page I can really see the improvements made in the detail and quality.

8) How successful do I feel my end product is in full filling the task? How well does it fit the brief “

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Overall Overall I am really happy with my final products and I feel I have completed the task of recreating a music magazine. With the use of research into professional magazines and target audiences, I have made an a magazine that really appeals to an indie audience through the use of an: Unique appearance, mature/rebellious style and flowing theme from page to page. My favourite page is the front cover as I spent a lot of time making the lighting perfect so it wasn’t to bright or too dark and I feel the photography was very efficient and effective in enticing the audience in.