Question 7: Looking back at your Preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

When looking back at what I did for my preliminary coursework, I think there is a noticeable change in what I did. For instance, when I first started the process of my preliminary magazine, I didn't know how to use Photoshop, Quark Express or any other programme like that. I can see that I have created a less messier look to my final product, and that I can confidently say that my final product looks alot more like a magazine than my preliminary one did. I planned a lot better in the final production, in my preliminary task I didn't really take it seriously, and was unaware of how much I really needed to do in order to get a good magazine. In my main task though, I planned each step carefully, as I knew that it was important for my product. Both magazines are very different though, so its hard to base a difference on them as they are generally going to be very different anyway. The photography in the magazines are very different. My prelim magazine was rushed photography, taken in an hour and rushed to be put on my magazine. But my main task, I spent a good five hours taking and experimenting with my pictures, and I took a good amount of time editing all of them, seeing which ones worked best for the magazine. I think I did alot better in the main task, rather than in the preliminary one.

Question 6:What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Photoshop:
Photoshop was a very new programme to me when i first started media studies. I had obviously heard of it but never used it, and didnt know all the advantages it had. But after using it for art and photography purposes, and then the preliminary task we did for media, i became very cmfortable with my skills in it. It became a very big part of my media product, and without it I think it wouldnt of been as succesful it has been. It helped me to edit, refine, transform and compliment photos that needed it, and this in turn made everything I did look that little bit better. I found photoshop alot easier to use than Quark Express, and this in turn made it my main programme whilst making my magazine. There is a wider variety in everything on photoshop, down the the text, the colours and the image manipulation. I learnt alot about the layering system whilst doing this project, something which I hadnt taken much notice of before now.

Quark Express:

I used Quark Express for my contents page, as it let me easily do what I needed to do and create two pages next to each other. This was a tool Id never learnt about before, and so after using it I became a bit more comfortable with Quark Express. Its not something I find very enjoyable to use, as I do with Photoshop, but it is a very useful tool, one which I did need to complete my magazine.


Blogger

Blogger has been the main log, and online record system when showing all of my media projects, preliminary to coursework. This has been an essential piece of technology that I couldnt of done my work without. I have blogged my research and planning, production and finally my evaluation. You are able to add pictures, videos and edit them on blogger, and it gives you a variety of layouts.

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product? and Question 5 - How did you attract and adress your audience?

My media product was a magazine of rock magazine, fitting in with the genres of magazines like Kerrang! and Rocksound. I researched into my audience, and into the genre of music i wanted my magazine to be about.
My target audience are both male and female of around 15 to 25. I did however realise some people may be in some rare cases younger, or even older than 25. For instance, people in bands may reach the mature age of 60 but still read the magazine to see what the competition is. I said that the audience would be probably students, and in a stage of their life where they have a lot to say but not much idea as to where they want to be in life. On the jicnar scale they would be around the C's with a few D's in the audience. They would take a great time investing on their social life, but still spend time with their family. I think they have a sense of individuality, but still be quite mainstream in the sense that most of the music they listen to, so does everybody else, so it cant be that different to everyone.

I think that this is a stereotypical image of the perfect person of my target audience. He's trendy, he wears expensive clothing and he spends alot of time going out to gigs and social events. But he goes to college full time and is enrolling to university, and has good GCSE's. He loves music, and loves unknown bands and most mainstream bands. He reads magazines like Kerrang! and Rocksound and has a job.







In attracting my audience, I firstly had to make sure everything visual was fitting in terms of my audience. For instance, I couldn't put in lots of pink and glittery images if my audience was for males aswell. I made sure everything fitted, and looked like belonged to a rock magazine. To guide me I used the magazines Rocksound and Kerrang! They really provided me with a good layout template and a good idea as to what I needed to do.




In these two covers, you can see the similaritys and the differences clearly. Looking at my front cover firstly, we can see that I used a sans serif font all te way through my magazine. This was to suit my audience, and it connotated friendliness, and casuality. I also used a simple font colour, keeping them all complimentary and stylish. I chose light brown for my main font colour because it was a colour rarely shown on magazines, and I thought it looked good with the background of the main image. Everything I wrote was in a casual, yet grammically correct way. I did this because the people reading my magazine wouldnt be too worried about the formality, but I was very conscience of the fact that the text was the main thing people brought the magazine for, as it provided the information they craved. So i made sure everything was spelt right, and that is was all easy to read. The photograph I used as my background was one I had taken of my friends Kiall and Emily. I used my own SLR camera, and I took around a 100 photographs to get this main one. I also feature these in the contents page, and on my double page spread. I think that the picture looks very typical of a rock magazine, as it doesnt portray very much emotion, and they are stood next to each other in a powerful sort of way. I feel like it appeals very much to the audience, as they look like teenagers, but that means they could be inspirational to everyone, as they have made onto the front cover of a magazine. I also had pictures Ive taken of bands before, the first one being a picture from the band LOSTPROPHETS signing. I took it on my friends digital camera, and at the time I was just taking it because I wanted to. But as i took on this project, I realised it was something I could use to fit in with my theme. The other picture was taken at a gig of the band The Blackout. It was also another unintentional photograph but i realised I could use.




My contents page had to be kept inline with my theme and style with my front cover. I couldnt change the colours or the font as it would make it seem odd and would really make the audience become confused and unattracting to my magazine. I looked at the contents pages of Kerrang! to see if they kept the same styling too. I found out that all the colours are the same, and pictures relate onto the contents page too. Everything fits in and keeps the magazine flowing. I took this upon myself to keep everything the same as my contents page, and i think that i did acheive this. I kept the colours the same, the font the same, the photographs similiar and I made sure that it would be visually exciting. I made some of the titles and subtitles slightly larger that other writing as it would become eye catching, and my audience would be intrigued. The connotations I got from Kerrangs! contents page is that it was simple, exciting and intriguing. The main thing about Kerrang! is that its almost like a small community, and everyone feels welcome. So i wanted to maintain that in my contents page. I used a very clean layout style, using no messy boxes to outline anything, just keeping everything in an order and simple.


My double page spread held not alot of text. I did this because whilst researching into my different magazines I found out that Kerrang! used a double page spread to introduce each feature they do on a band, and I thought to make my magazine as real as possible I would try and do this. It gives a dramatic enterance for tha band, and it does look very stylish. I think Ive managed to create a good double page spread, in line with everything Ive just said. I edited the pictures in photoshop to give them the right look, and to make sure that they fitted well with the pictures from the front cover and contents page. I then put the pictures onto my pages using Quark Express. I used the layout that Kerrang! used for the double page spread I looked into. It was stylish, yet very appealing to the target audience. I made sure the text I used was relevant for the band, and it put through the right kind of attitude i wanted my readers to feel when they read about the band.

Question 3:What kind of media product institution might distribute your media product and why?

My magazine is one where it is going to be distributed in most major newsagents, like WHSmith and supermarkets like Tesco. It wouldnt be hard to find, although it may be easy to run out quickly so therefore hard to find it that sense.
Distribution was a major thing that we looked at in media, the major distributors and the independant distributors and the strategies they use. I think that after looking at all of the distributors, the one I would use is Bauer Media Group.


They are a German based publishing company in Hamburg. They operate 15 countries worldwide, and they publish magazines like Kerrang! and Q.
I think these would be very appropriate for me to use, as they obviously know where to put my magazine and how to get it noticed, after following Kerrangs! success. I can build the sort of brand where its noticed my magazine features alot of unknown music, but features the new mainstream stuff that everyone likes. Brands build a connection between you and the audience: if they dont like the brand, they wont like you.

Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Alternative Representations:
My representation of my audience is one very different to the stereotype 'teenagers' have nowadays. For instance, most people would claim that my audience are drunken, unruly and violent, whereas I am portraying them as young, trendy and senstive to feelings and other people. Although rock music itself is not always the music of 'clever' people, it presents the idea that my audience are caring when it comes to music, and devote more of their time into listening and socialising with music rather than spending their time getting drunk and listening to the same generic music they are presented with.


I represent them as clever, talented students who take time when it comes to music, going to small gigs and trying out wierd and unusual music, just to gain a better knowledge. I represent them with feelings, people who belive its impartant to be yourself and take whatever stick you get for it. I do represent them as 'normal' teenagers though, getting drunk and going out is apart of their social life. But not the drunken vandals that most people would claim teengers are.



There are many other types of teenagers that I could of tried to appeal to, some 'stereotypical' ones being :

Chavs: The type of teengers that spend their time getting drunk, causing trouble and have no care for researching into the unknown. They take everything at face value and have no intention of looking deeper than what they get given. For example, they don't go to gigs,bcause they don't care enough, they don't invest in educations, because they are happy doing nothing all day.

Emo's : These are the type of individual who are very emotional, take everything to heart and try to be as different as they possibly can. They like to wear bright colours, and a lot of black, and most will wear make up, including the boys. They care about their music alot, but to the point of obsession. They will give everything up for music, and usually take alot of time going to gigs.

Punks: These are a very, very different type of individual. They wear anything and everything and the same with their music, they listen to anything with a statement, and nothing which has too much indepth meaning in its lyrics. The musics usually loud and fast paced. They like piercings, tattoos and all things which stand out.

Ermegent ideology.

The dominant ideology of teenagers today, and has been for a very long time now, is that they are always up to no good, always the bearer of trouble and don't care for anyone but themselves. They don't respect anyone, they drink too much and are ridiculously lazy. But recently, it is becoming ermegent ideology that teenagers aren't all as bad as they are being made out to be. They do have respect and manners, and not all of them cause more trouble than they are worth.

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

My magazine shows similaritys to most music magazines, but yet at the same time it does show difference in the use of conventions, parts and context and also in the use of design, layout and overall appereance.

The magazine my own production shows the most similarity too would probably be Kerrang!

There are obvious similaritys, one being that both mine, and professional magazines have a masthead, straplines, use of mise-en-scene to fit target audiences, fonts, editing, style, colour choices, layout, use of image, use of text etc. Looking at the differences, you can see that mine is still slightly undermined by Kerrangs! status in the magazine world: mine still looks slightly amatuer, whereas Kerrang! looks like a succesful magazine.

For example, Kerrangs! masthead is hidden behind the characters in the photograph, whereas mine is in the top left hand corner, hidden by nothing and standingout. This is because Kerrang! has such a recognisable face that it doesn't need the masthead to stand out too much, and mine would be new on the market, so therefore would rely on the masthead to be the thing people noticed.

Both have the same features and conventions of a magazine, but both are styled different to fit the needs and wants of the target audience. They both use different research methods to gain the knowldge they need, and in return, while very similiar, this is why the magazines are different. The two magazines would never be in the same class though, as i didnt devote as much time and money as they have done to create theirs, as they have to in order to survive.