Media evaluation
- 1. MEDIA EVALUATION KATE CARTER
- 2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? • I have used similar conventions as to those on existing music magazines on my front cover. For example my masthead is big and bold at the top of the page like on every other music magazine, this makes the name of my magazine more memorable as it would be the first thing people notice about the magazine. I put the masthead behind the main image as this is a convention that a lot of music magazines have, it makes the image the main focus of the page but you can still read the masthead and it still stands out. I used five different fonts on my front cover to make the page look more interesting and have more variety, all music magazines have a range of fonts, usually of around five. I used the word ‘you’ to relate specifically to the reader in hope of drawing them in to buy the magazine. I included anchorage so the reader will have a look in at what the magazine is going to include. I have a barcode on my front cover and the price in small print. Another convention of magazine front covers I have used is a medium close up image of the person I am doing an interview with where she is looking into the camera, this is a convention that the majority of music magazines have. I kept to a colour scheme of 4 colours, red, black, white and yellow, to keep it looking professional yet interesting at the same time, all music magazines stick to around 4 colours in their colour scheme. • The background of my front cover is a Union Jack flag therefore this challenges conventions of music magazines as the majority of music magazines have a plain background. • I used conventions of existing magazine contents pages for my magazine. The writing on my contents page is in columns which keeps it looking tidy and easy to read. I also continued with the colour scheme from the front page to make it look more professional. I also included an editors note on my contents page which not many music magazines have, this makes my magazine stand out more as it has something different to all other music magazines. I set the pictures out together and the text separately so the page doesn’t look too busy with pictures and text and so it looks clearer.
- 3. How does your media product represent particular social groups? My media product represents anybody from teenage years to their twenties who have an interest in alternative music. On my front cover there is a picture of a 16 year old girl which fits into my target audience, therefore this helps appeal to the audience as they can relate to the person on the front cover. The cover girl represents teenagers who have an interest in alternative music as her make up and hair is similar as to how these people would wear theirs.
- 4. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? are Immediate Media, Bauer • Three of the most popular media institutions and IPC media. Bauer publishes Q and Kerrang and IPC media publishes NME therefore I decided that neither of these would be appropriate to distribute my magazine as these are all popular music magazines which are similar to my magazine. • I think Immediate Media could distribute my media product as the only music magazines it currently publishes are BBC music and Top of the Pops and these magazine only include little, if any, information about British alternative music and this is what my magazine focuses on therefore there is a gap in the market for my media product. Also, as my target audience varies from young to middle age this is different to what TOTP and BBC music aims for as TOTP is for younger people and BBC music is for older people. Immediate Media produces lots of popular magazines of different genres such as Gardeners World, Hair Ideas and Match of the Day. Immediate Media is a new media institution which has combined former media institutions as one therefore it is a big company which would make my media product well known.
- 5. Who would be the audience for your media product? • The audience for my media product would be men and women aged 13 to 30 who are interested in alternative/indie music. I chose this audience as the information included would appeal to them as it focuses on alternative/indie music and the language used in the magazine may be slightly complex or unsuitable for people under the age of 13. Also, the cover image is more than likely to be in their late teen years or twenties therefore the target audience would relate to this. • For my magazine front cover I dressed my model in a fringed top and a bright, long skirt, this is because it is quite a quirky, alternative outfit therefore it attracts my target audience as the girls are likely to dress in a similar way to this. However, to fit in with the convention of medium close up images on the front cover I had to crop out the outfit but the red lipstick I put on the model put across the alternative image I was looking for.
- 6. How did you attract/address your audience?
- 7. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of • constructing this product? which I I used many new forms of technology when creating my magazine have never used before such as Photoshop, Quark and Blogger. • I used Photoshop for my front cover and I found it slightly difficult to use at first but eventually my skills developed and I could use it. It came in handy for editing my picture to make it better quality such as getting rid of the red eye and cropping the background from the image to make it more professional. Photoshop made my front cover look a lot more professional than if I was to use Microsoft Word or Publisher. • I used Quark for my contents page and double page spread and I found this very difficult to use and I didn’t like it, however it did make the pages look professional. • I used digital cameras to capture all of the images I used for my magazine and some of them are high quality however the main one I used for my double page spread turned out to be very blurry when I stretched it to full size, I think this is due to the conditions I took the photo in when I was at the gig as there were lots of flashing lights and a smoke machine which will have interfered with my picture quality.