Wednesday, 11 April 2012

EVALUATION.

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


How does your media product represent particular social groups?
My magazine is aimed at teenagers aged 11-15, at this age they will look at the way celebrities look for inspiration. I wanted to make my main model on the magazine attract the attention of young girls, and to do this I chose a young model aged 16. I wanted to show that she was just an ordinary girl who had became a pop star, I done this specifically through the article as I showed her in ordinary clothes and had the main quote on the page as “I’ve tried so hard getting where I am today”. This means teenage girls can relate to her from the lower and middle working class as she was just like any other ordinary girl but she got where she wanted to be.
On my front cover the photo I used of my model represents a stereotypical pop star, as she is dressed in a black dress and has a lot of make up on and her hair is perfectly curled. She is standing with her hands on her hips which has connotations of power; this reflects her story in the article how she has fought to get where she is. The images which accompany the interview are different to the front cover, I decided to dress her more casually in a checky shirt and flat boots, I thought this would work well as the target audience are only young girls and this is how they will dress, it shows that you can keep your own style and ‘Kelsie Jo’ is a pop star and she dresses normally but still looks nice.
The other photo I used which goes with a story line on my front cover is of two teenage boys, I used this picture as it will attract the attention of young girls. They are dressed trendy, one with a cap and the other a body warmer and headphones; this photo gives off the feel of the whole magazine up to date and new to the market like “Jordan and Mark”.

What kind of media institution might distribute your product and why?
Ideally I would like a media distribution such as Bauer to distribute my magazine (http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/); they are a multinational media company and are well recognised for many big magazines including music ones e.g. “Q”. They are very popular for gossip magazines so I think my product will fit well as the target audiences are the same; young females. With Bauer being such a huge company they can afford to take risks in distributing magazines; so ones like my own which is aimed specifically at girls aged 11-15 they will try and see how they sell. Whereas smaller companies would not do this as they can’t afford to take risks, they would want magazines which would attract a wider audience.

Who would be the audience for your media product AND how did you adress/attract your audience?
In order to find out what the public thought of my magazine I decided to do some research; I gave out both open and closed questionnaires to get feedback. I asked people of both genders and ages as although I knew my magazine target audience, I wanted to see if a winder range of people would actually be interested in buying it.

What have you learnt about new technologies from the process of creating this product?



Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to a full product?
From my preliminary task I think it is evident in my work that I have learnt a lot about the development of making a magazine look professional. My music magazine “JIVE” looks a lot more realistic than my previous school magazine, and this is down to carrying out a lot of research before creating this magazine. I looked at many different magazines before making my own so that I got an understanding of what makes them look professional and what attracts people to buy the magazine. For example on my school magazine the front cover has hardly any writing on and when I looked at existing magazines I found it worked better having more story headings, as this showed people what they were going to read when they purchased the magazine. Also the contents page does not look professional as the writing is too big and there are not enough stories, however when creating my music magazine I made sure the writing was smaller and added a lot more stories making It look a lot more like a professional magazine. From doing my preliminary task I have developed a lot more skills. I have improved on using a digital camera and equipment which allowed me to get much better photos of a higher quality, this is important as the front cover image is large so it cannot look blurred or it spoils the look of the magazine. I also improved upon my photo shop skills, which enabled me to edit my photos and try out more layouts for my magazine.
Overall I think my music magazine would sell a lot better than my school magazine as this was only targeted at pupils from Heworth Grange, whereas my music magazine has a wider audience as it’s targeted at all teenage girls ages 11-15. It also looks so much more professional as the quality is considerably better as my skills advanced over the course and also my research gained me knowledge into what made a magazine more realistic and sell better.

Tuesday, 27 March 2012

Images


From carrying out research looking at exsisting magazines, I found that the main image is very important to the front cover of a magazine as this is what is used to draw the audiences attention. The image above is the one I chose to use on my final pop magazine cover; I thought it suit the genre very well and would attract the target audience as it is a young girl. Although this photo is good quality and a good angle I still made some adjustments which will be visible in my final piece. I changed the brightness and contrast of the photo to make it have a sharper and brighter effect and I also covered the gap in her hair using the clone tool.