MEDIA STUDIES AS EVALUATIONEvaluation of my media product

By Luke Berry-Dagnall

When I started drawing out my first drafts for my front cover I was thinking about what conventions should I use and which ones wouldn’t be necessary and also about how I was going to create the house style of my magazine. The house style was a very important factor of the design and is effectively the biggest part in how my magazine would look as it determines what colours and fonts I used which might not sound much but if you take these magazine pages and turn the house colours I have chosen into say for example purple and orange then people are not going to think at first glance that this Is a heavy metal magazine because those two colours do not represent or even associate with heavy metal whereas the colours I have chosen (which are white, red and black) all represent the heavy metal music genre. The style of font that I have used throughout my magazine especially on the front cover is all designed to represent heavy metal by using such features on the typeface as dripping blood, bloody hand marks. This all creates continuity throughout my magazine and allows it to have a much more professional look to it. You can what I am talking about on the images shown on this page, these are my final designs for all three pages and as you can see I have kept a consistent colour theme throughout, even on the pictures that I have used, for example on the double page spread shown to the left the colour balance has been edited to make the use of red lighting seem even more vibrant and effective. I have also achieved continuity by using photographs of the same band throughout my magazine designs.

CONVENTIONS ANALYSIS OF MY PRODUCTS

Showing why I did and didn’t use conventions in my three final designs

Contents page analysis of conventions

FRONT PAGE ANALYSIS OF CONVENTIONS

DOUBLE PAGE ANALYSIS OF CONVENTIONS

CLICK THE LINKS ABOVE TO GO TO MY PREZIS’

Double page spread journey

Contents page journey

Front page journey

My media product represents particular social groups in a number of ways, one of them being how I have used models in my photographs in the magazine. The age of these models are young, my target audience is also young people, so by including this age range in my magazine I am establishing a link between the audience and the band featured in my media product which means they will in turn feel more connected with the magazine and want to purchase it to know what this band is doing at their age. I know that people that mainly by rock magazines such as Kerrang! Are around 25 years old, this is from the research I have obtained from their reader profile.

Another way I have represented social groups in my media product is how I have chosen the content that I have included in my magazine, such as advertisements and what the articles are actually about. On my front page I have chosen to include an advertisement for free tickets, my target audience has a demographic grade of C2 which means they are mainly skilled manual workers who cannot always afford luxury items such as concert/festival tickets, so by including advertisements for such things in my magazine I am representing my target audience and by doing this they will be more inclined to by the magazine. Another way have represented this particular social group of people who enjoy listening to rock music is by including articles that relate to their age. I have done this by basing my double page spread around a young drummer who has a tough decision to make and has chosen to leave his friends band and go professional. Many young people today that enjoy this genre of music are in bands or at least play an instrument, so their social lives often revolve around changes in their band or their friends band and so by including an article in my magazine about this change in a young band I am not only representing my audience I am also establishing a strong and even emotional link between the article and the reader of it because it talks about problems that this young drummer is having which are the same sort of problems that this social group are often faced with.

All of the photographs used in my media product were taken by myself at one of my friends local gigs at a venue called ringside. I chose to do this as I was told by my teacher to use mise-en-scene in my photographs to represent the heavy metal genre. This meant I would have to use clothing that represented this social group of people and I would have to bring in loads of clothes that I didn’t even have to get people to wear and pose and all at the same time make it look realistic, well I soon figured out that the results I would of got from going along with that method would be awful and instead chose to go down a more imaginative route and go and photograph real people at a real heavy metal gig. The results from this idea turned out brilliantly as all of the people there could not have represented the heavy metal social group/genre any better as they themselves were it. Also from the photographs I have managed to capture atmosphere as well as emotion in them which I would never have been able to do in a studio setting.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION MIGHT WANT TO DISTRIBUTE MY MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY?

WHAT IS A MEDIA INSTITUTION?

A media institution is a business such as Bauer who distribute and market a media product such as Kerrang!

Their job is to make sure that the magazines reach enough retail outlets to make as much profit as possible

They are also have some control of marketing the media product

Media institutions such as Bauer distribute magazines such as Kerrang! All the way to bird watching magazines to make sure that they have expanded their target market enough to make as much profit as possible, because a larger target market means a larger number of people are more likely to buy your media products

EXAMPLES OF MEDIA INSTITUTIONS

WHO DISTRIBUTES KERRANG?

The editor of Kerrang is called James McMahon

Bauer media distribute Kerrang magazines

The readership of Kerrang from July 2012 until December of the same year was recorded at 345’000

The magazine is released weekly

It is dedicated to rock music, being mainly heavy and modern rock

Its first issue was published on the 6th of June 1981as a one off in the sounds newspaper

WHAT COMPANY WOULD I LIKE TO DISTRIBUTE MY MAGAZINE AND WHY?

I would like IPC Media to distribute my magazines for the reasons listed below: Currently they only have NME that focuses on rock music and even at

that NME is not totally focused heavy metal, much more about more classic older rock, this means that there is a gap in the market for a magazine such as mine which in turn means a greater chance of my media product being successful as they will want to distribute a large amount of them, where as if I had chosen Bauer Media to distribute my media product then they would not order as many from me because they already have Kerrang who focus on heavy metal and rock

Also IPC Media ensures that all of there brands have their own websites and even radio shows

WHO WOULD BE THE AUDIENCE FOR YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT?

I chose to target a young audience of an age between 16 and 25. This is because the heavy metal music genre is something relatively new on the scene and is only really associated with young people in relation to age as the older generation prefer what is now called classic rock such as The Rolling Stones, Thin Lizzy and Black Sabbath. Another reason that I chose this to be my target audience is that because I am good friends with a few people my age that are in heavy metal bands or are at the very least been to a few heavy metal concerts I thought this would make it more accessible for audience feedback to improve reliability of the answers as they know what they are talking about.To find out about what my audience want I wrote down a few questions and asked them these questions whilst videoing them. I asked such questions as:Do you prefer more text than images in a magazine or the other way aroundDo you prefer weekly or monthly magazinesHow much are you prepared to pay for a weekly and a monthly magazineDo you prefer the adverts to relate to the magazines music genre or not This audience research helped me a great deal whilst I was drafting out my designs for my magazine and I kept referring back to the answers I obtained from that video to remind myself of what the audience wanted. In the video I chose to video one of my friends who was 16 at the time and was and still is in a heavy metal band and very frequently bought magazines such as Kerrang, the other person I chose to interview was my neighbour who was 25 at the time and only interested in heavy metal music (he only listened to it and occasionally bought the odd magazine). I chose to interview these two people as they are both at the ends of the target audience age mark, and they also offered a great contrast of person, what I mean is that these two people were both interested in heavy metal but one much more than the other which meant I was able to understand both persons needs which meant I was then able to cater for my whole target audience instead of just one area.The other form of audience research I acquired was by going to a few heavy metal gigs in the local area with local people to see what they dressed up in, what colours were dominant in the mise-en-scene and how they were representing themselves. This helped me to understand who my magazine was actually targeting and I felt I knew a lot more information about my audience than I would of done just by sitting behind a computer screen researching what they were like, the primary research proved to be much more useful throughout my drafting.

HOW DID YOU ATTRACT/ADDRESS YOUR AUDIENCE?Click here! It’s a go animate!

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT?Refer to the video included in this post

At the beginning of the media studies course I knew very little about Photoshop and had only a small amount of experience with it in the past. The technology of this program came in very handy once I had learnt how to use it effectively with ease. I found it useful how I could correct simple and major mistakes that I had made or found in my photographs from the initial photograph such as over exposure or too much shadow in the image. It also helped to know about how to use the camera that I was handling when I was out taking photographs such as the ability to capture images in a RAW format which provides the advantages of being able to manipulate the photographs attributes much more, I didn’t even know that you could change the cameras format for taking photographs in before I started this course. Photoshop also held technology that allowed me to insert and manipulate text to achieve astounding exciting results and really make the text come alive and provide its own atmosphere to the design it was within.

LOOKING BACK AT YOUR PRELIMINARY TASK

What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Spot the difference

Preliminary task Final product of front cover

I named this slide ‘spot the difference’ because the two images to the left that are compared against each other show just how far I have come from when I first started this course and what techniques I have learnt alongside with how I have understood conventions of magazines to how to get a great front cover photograph

Looking back at the preliminary task now I have realised how the simple conventions such as the sell lines are at some parts in bad places such as here (follow the arrow) because it covers up part of the models face which is unconventional. The photograph its self is also not a medium close up as it should be to follow conventions, and it was meant to be as well.

If you take my final front cover and compare it with this one then you can see how I have learnt new skills and developed them to achieve a final and effective outcome.

The preliminary task helped me to develop my skills:

• On photoshop• In taking good photographs(in the studio and on a live set)• In understanding how placing the conventions in specific

places helps to create an effective design• On how to know when to and not to place particular

conventions on designs