Evaluation Question1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (I.e. of music magazines)

The title

My title is not very unique and is quite plain compared to other magazine titles but this; I think works well with the genre of my music magazine. Although the font is quite formal unlike some magazines such as ‘Kerrang’ which is quite un-tidy for the font; but works well because of the genre of music it links too.

Photos and Images

I have developed photos further into editing compared to other magazine pictures. My photographs and edited by using filters to contrast or make them bolder or fainter. Although magazines such as Interview have used editing using black and white but also added a tint of another colour such as the example below of singer Ellie Goulding there is a slight colour of blue within the photo rather than plain white and black. Yet I do think Interview magazine does show a lot more modelling photographs. My magazine also has a lot of images which have been taking outside which shows a difference to the normal pictures in magazine’s being took inside on sets.

Colour schemes

The colours I used for my magazine were quite neutral, for example the cream and the gold/green colour which all created quite a calm colour scheme for the magazine cover. Although I did use black a lot in my magazine as I wanted parts of the text to stand out rather than be too soft with the cream background. Many other magazines seem to keep to all bold colours or all neutral colours whereas my colour scheme has a slight twist with both sharp colours (black) and mellow colours ( creams, light browns and greens and blues).

Page Layouts

The pages are presented in similar ways to the normal magazine. For example the double page spread; the writing is shown to be in columns with images and quotes around the information. The images however are overlapping and I have used various editing to make them fade into each other. The front cover is also conventional; the masthead is at the top of the page with quotes, band names and other various cover lines around the main picture, although it is not very common to have a full picture as the cover background. My contents page is pretty much the same as any normal contents page of a music magazine. It has the list of things that are included in the magazine, although the layout of this is quite unique as I have more or less put it into the paragraph style which is quite squashed together.  There are also photos to show what is going to be involved in the magazine with numbers equivalent to the page numbers they are on.


Front Cover


Acoustic Magazine is of a simliar genre to my magazine, although the layout and designed, compared to my own is very differntly set out. Acoustic Magazine uses quite bold colours, such as red white and black whereas my own magazine, Unplugged has a more softer tone for the front cover as i have used quite neutral colours shown in my colour pallet in the above section. I think my magazine creates a more female effect to the magazine, but Acoustic magazine seems be for a more male and female target audience. I have used more handwritten style fonts unlike the bold fonts on the Acoustic magazine.
Although my magazine does have the usual conventions of a magazine, such as the eye-catching coverlines, the price and also a single image on the front.

Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My magazine can include a variety of social groups. I have included music and also there is a hint of creativity with editing of photographs. The double page spreads below are examples of similar music genres (Taylor Swift). They are alike my magazine because both of the musical artists are young females, attracting a more female audience. The neutral colours that I have used throughout my magazine present a stereotypical soft acoustic feel to the spread and also the way the photographs have been took in the examples and in my own magazine are simliar. For example the musical artist is often not looking directly into the camera; making the photograph look more natural and not asif it was an actual photoshot. 

I wanted to use simliar photographs to ones of Taylor Swift as  I think the images of her show what my genre of music is. I tried to use natual light- sunlight, to create the summer effect to my magazine. For my mock I used similar style clothing to represent the almost 'country' or 'folk' style. Yet in my second photoshoot i wanted the images to abit more bolder and more casual to attract more of an auidence, not just young girls.

Evaluation Question 3



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

Code and Theory are an independent institution which would work well with for my magazine. The company has worked with magazines, fashion industry, consumer products and various others. Because my magazine is quite unique and also has a lot of elements of fashion within my magazine it would help with the fan base because the company already have links to fashion magazines also. They also produce websites for the magazines which means that as the magazine becomes more known to the public, and site can be produced to introduce more fans and people that are interested. Although it is a independant company it is becoming more and more popular and has won awards for their offices in New York and San Fransico.

Evaluation Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Ella is 18, studying art, music and English literature.  She is very creative and is interested in photography and using it with her art work. She also enjoys going to festivals, rather than gig and single band concerts; she prefers to have a variety of bands and artists to listen too. She enjoys going to gigs because not there are well-known bands yet also un-known bands that interest her and that she likes to find out about the listen too. On her Ipod would be bands such as Mumford and Sons, Frank Turner, One Night Only, The Strokes, Taylor Swift, Snow patrol and also less known musical artists such as Neon Trees. There will also be music that is more well known and more than likely in the top 40 charts to keep up with the present music. She will enjoy acoustic versions of songs rather than the original and also will be interested in older classic rock and folk music. For example Dire Straits, The Eagles and Bryan Adams.
The flowered patterns on my magazine would target Ella because they are feminine. Although, Ella can be quite the tom-boy she still is the 'girly' girl underneath.

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

How does my magazine attract the target audience? on Prezi

Pattern- The flowered pattern has a lot of influence on my target audience. It introduced the female audience to my magazine, which is what I want. Because of the thought of flowers being feminine, females will automatically be attracted and think ' wow that’s pretty' therefore it has caught their attention which is the idea.
Photographs/Edits- The range of photographs in my magazine will attract an audience which is interested in the photography side of art/media and also because of the included edits this will attract the more creative person. Therefore even if the person interested in photography is male he would look at it for that inspiration rather than just the female information/style to the magazine. Although on the downside the pattern could put the male audience of my magazine before they look at the creativity side of it.

Evaluation Question 6

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

For the majority of my magazine I used Adobe Photoshop Elements to produce the pages I needed for my magazine. I had not had a lot of experience with the programme but with practice and help I managed to learn the basic’s to develop my product. With Photoshop I learnt how to ‘cut’ out an image such as a person and then use another background for the image to lie on. Within my magazine I also included the opacity tool to create the effect photos were fading out into the background and so to make them less bold. After experiencing the programme for several weeks I became a lot more accustom to it and found it easier to work with. I also found out how to do various other effects on Photoshop; such as the enhancing and brightness tool, and changing the filters of photos.

I also used various online editing sites (Picnik and Rollip). I used these for the filters on my images. I learnt how to use the contrasts and brightness on these sites to get the filters to look how I wanted them to look on the photographs.  

I also used my mobile phone to transfer the work I did at home to the computers at school. I Have never tried this before but I found it quite easy and simple; like using a memory stick.

 

The camera I used was DSLR which i borrowed from a friend. I had never used a camera like it before and found it incredible to use. I tried out different effects and focusing which made the photographs look professional. I did learn about the compositions and positions of the model when taking the photograph and how to focus on different elements of the shot.

It was quite difficult to take a show when outside and using sunlight because of the shadows and in many of my shots I could see my own shadow over my model which did not look very professional, so it took some time for my sort out the perfect place to stand and take the picture effectively for the shot. Here is an example of a shot that i struggled to take of because of the sunlight.

Evaluation Question 7

Looking back at your preliminary task (the school magazine task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

For both tasks I used,mainly Photoshop to construct the magazines. For my school magazine prelim I learnt to use the eraser tool, which helped to make the image look smoother on the background and therefore i could use a block coloured background. For the front covers of the magazine i used totally different camera shots. For the school magazine i used a more zoomed in shot, but not a close up and also used the eraser tool. Whereas for my final front cover i used a more mid shot photo on a more detailed background of the picture.

For the contents in the school magazine i used simple fonts and did not use the full potential of photoshop, although for my final contents i used techniques such as changing the opacity and learning how to use layers and how to bring photos,writing and other objects forwards or behind other objects. I also used many photo editing sites such as Rollip and Picnik which i did not use for my school magazine.

Overall these programmes have helped my knowledge to improve my magazine to get it looking professional. With practice with Photoshop it has helped to improve my final magazine look well finished and neat.

The shot in my prelim magazine is a side/mid shot, and also my final magazine is a similar shot.

In my prelim the image was quite small and left a lot of blank space for my to write cover lines, although this was good in one way because it was easy to see it also made my magazine cover look quite bare and boring looking. Although for my final magazine because i used a full image for my cover it made it easier to make it look not so boring and dull. Although it look some time to fit the cover lines of effectively so they were not covering the main image of the model. And also it was hard to find a coloured font that showed up on the background that was eye catching.

The title for my prelim was not very bold or noticeable and was quite a dull font for both the title and the cover lines. The contents was quite bare and not very eye-catching for the reader and left a lot white plane space which did not look professional or realistic. Whereas my magazine showed a variety of colours and fronts to make it interesting and effective. Although there is still some plane space in my contents I have used the flowered pattern to cover up this and make it look more professional and smart looking.