Media Evaluation
My media product develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media products in many ways. When I first began my project, I wanted to try and follow some of these conventions as I thought they would help get my product across for what it really is. For example I was following the rock genre for my magazine, so I wanted to include some bits of material that would make it clear to my audience what genre I was aiming for. At first I analysed other magazines to discover the colour schemes that seemed most appropriate, and as a result of this I found that dark colours such as black, dark green, red etc. were most popular. Personally, I found it difficult to come up with my own colour scheme so I decided to follow the conventions of magazines such as NME and Q. I have played it safe with my media product by sticking to the conventions of rock magazines as I did find it challenging to justify some of my own thoughts, which is why I worked better developing on other magazines ideas. I did this by applying the idea of violence and despair to my images. I found that rock is often associated with these types of things as that is what my survey showed. This lead to me taking my images in a cemetery as it showed loss and despair which is the feeling I wanted to get across to my target audience. Many of these ways are examples of how my media product used forms and conventions from other successful, real life rock magazines.
My media product represents certain social groups (mainly the younger generation) as people who really like to express their feelings and emotions through music, and certain rock artists enable them to do that. My magazine portrays the fans as people who have a real passion for the music that is produced through these rock artists, which would explain why rock is one of the most popular types of music genre around. I have enabled this social group to be represented in this way by giving my made up artist Jessie Jones the type of story that engages them and displays some of the emotions of the fans that they may feel on a day to day basis. through my article this social group is represented as being thoroughly engaged with the music and the story that comes a long with the artist. Rock does not tend to follow Richard dyers star theory as much as pop for example, because all of the top name rock artists don't need to. Pop however tends to follow it more as pop fans are more engaged with the story behind the artist than in the actual music they produce, which would explain why there is more merchandise from stars such as Justin Bieber and movies about his success rather than The Rolling Stones who are purely known for their quality of music. this is how I have tried to represent social groups through rock music, as people who care a great deal about the quality of music produced.
The audience for my media product would have to have a certain level of rock knowledge to be able to have an interest in my magazine. As stated in my last paragraph, I am aiming for a younger audience as my research showed that audience would be the most appropriate to target. My reasons for making this my target audience is because most of the major fans are ranging from ages 14-19. I found this out due to y research, and even when I was asking people of these ages questions from my survey, all of them were aware of some of the big rock artists that are currently on the scene. This is the type of information that lead me to aim for this age group as my audience, so I adapted my magazine to suit their particular interests.
In order to attract this audience to my magazine, I had to constantly bare in mind the many forms of the rock genre that would be appealing to people within this age group. When thinking of ideas, I concluded that rebellious material and dark colours would be most appropriate to display on the front of my magazine as that is what the reader first looks at before actually reading it, so is therefore possibly the most vital part of any magazine as if the front cover is bad, it won't matter if the content is any good as they will not be drawn in in the first place if the front cover is not appealing to them. Taking all of this in to consideration, I decided that I wanted to address my audience in an informal manner. For example, I wanted a font that looked distorted and destroyed to represent a rock genre feel, and in the final result it seemed to work quite well as feed back from my audience was fairly positive. However, I feel that I could have improved my main image as all it consists of is one person, when really I could have had a picture that had scenery to represent something you would expect in a rock magazine. Originally I had taken pictures in a cemetery, and I am now starting to regret not including that in any of my magazine as I feel it would have been a good idea to draw in audiences not just of ages 14-19, but people in general who like the rock genre. I also managed to attract my audience with my questionnaires, which established what type of things my target audience look for in a rock magazine so I could use them.
This project has taught me a huge amount about different programmes and software within a computer. Before I began constructing my project I knew absolutely nothing about serif page plus, but now I feel it has given me the confidence to use it again whenever I want. I have never been very knowledgeable when it comes to computers, but after this project I feel I can say that this is one bit of software I am actually able to understand and use with confidence. I also believe that if I were to do this project again, it would be a lot better the second time around. This is because when I first came across serif, it took me a few weeks to get familiar with it and work it properly. I believe that that is time I wasted that could have been used to work on my project. However I think that once I got my head around it all, I used it as best as I possibly could and worked it to my advantage. I was pleased with my magazine not only because of the quality, but because I felt a sense of achievement because I never thought I would be able to use a piece of computer software to create a music magazine. Even though this was definitely not my strongest point in media, I still enjoyed the task once I got going and it has encouraged me to get more familiar with the different types of software that is available on computers.
Looking back at the preliminary task, it is clear to see I have progressed a huge amount. I have discovered a new website called 'dafont' that has enabled me to use a variety of fonts for my media product, and they are better suited compared to the fonts that are available in serif. the picture quality is also a noticeable change. Firstly, the picture in my first task was basic, and you could see that no real thought went in to it. however when you look at my final product, the pictures I have taken have been well thought through and show many different camera angles. When I took my first photo for the first task, I took the first photo I thought would look ok and just used that one picture for the entire magazine. However when it came to taking pictures for my final magazine I considered a whole range of things such as setting, camera shots, make up, clothes, lighting etc. just so I could get the full affect out of my pictures. This is the major advancement that can be seen when comparing both tasks. I also found better techniques to use for my contents page. Once again for my preliminary task it was just a list of what pages were available, with boring colours and no pictures. But when you look at my final magazine, you can see that the contents page is a lot more vibrant. My use of colour helped me make it look more professional and like something you would expect to find within a rock magazine which I found very useful. I was also able to change the font to a more appropriate one that was popular with my audiences. I also found it very useful that I was able to put a picture in to my contents page because it made it feel more realistic, and also showed that a lot of thought had gone in to creating it. I would like to think that I have advanced greatly from my preliminary task to something that is of a rock genre standard.
My media product represents certain social groups (mainly the younger generation) as people who really like to express their feelings and emotions through music, and certain rock artists enable them to do that. My magazine portrays the fans as people who have a real passion for the music that is produced through these rock artists, which would explain why rock is one of the most popular types of music genre around. I have enabled this social group to be represented in this way by giving my made up artist Jessie Jones the type of story that engages them and displays some of the emotions of the fans that they may feel on a day to day basis. through my article this social group is represented as being thoroughly engaged with the music and the story that comes a long with the artist. Rock does not tend to follow Richard dyers star theory as much as pop for example, because all of the top name rock artists don't need to. Pop however tends to follow it more as pop fans are more engaged with the story behind the artist than in the actual music they produce, which would explain why there is more merchandise from stars such as Justin Bieber and movies about his success rather than The Rolling Stones who are purely known for their quality of music. this is how I have tried to represent social groups through rock music, as people who care a great deal about the quality of music produced.
The audience for my media product would have to have a certain level of rock knowledge to be able to have an interest in my magazine. As stated in my last paragraph, I am aiming for a younger audience as my research showed that audience would be the most appropriate to target. My reasons for making this my target audience is because most of the major fans are ranging from ages 14-19. I found this out due to y research, and even when I was asking people of these ages questions from my survey, all of them were aware of some of the big rock artists that are currently on the scene. This is the type of information that lead me to aim for this age group as my audience, so I adapted my magazine to suit their particular interests.
In order to attract this audience to my magazine, I had to constantly bare in mind the many forms of the rock genre that would be appealing to people within this age group. When thinking of ideas, I concluded that rebellious material and dark colours would be most appropriate to display on the front of my magazine as that is what the reader first looks at before actually reading it, so is therefore possibly the most vital part of any magazine as if the front cover is bad, it won't matter if the content is any good as they will not be drawn in in the first place if the front cover is not appealing to them. Taking all of this in to consideration, I decided that I wanted to address my audience in an informal manner. For example, I wanted a font that looked distorted and destroyed to represent a rock genre feel, and in the final result it seemed to work quite well as feed back from my audience was fairly positive. However, I feel that I could have improved my main image as all it consists of is one person, when really I could have had a picture that had scenery to represent something you would expect in a rock magazine. Originally I had taken pictures in a cemetery, and I am now starting to regret not including that in any of my magazine as I feel it would have been a good idea to draw in audiences not just of ages 14-19, but people in general who like the rock genre. I also managed to attract my audience with my questionnaires, which established what type of things my target audience look for in a rock magazine so I could use them.
This project has taught me a huge amount about different programmes and software within a computer. Before I began constructing my project I knew absolutely nothing about serif page plus, but now I feel it has given me the confidence to use it again whenever I want. I have never been very knowledgeable when it comes to computers, but after this project I feel I can say that this is one bit of software I am actually able to understand and use with confidence. I also believe that if I were to do this project again, it would be a lot better the second time around. This is because when I first came across serif, it took me a few weeks to get familiar with it and work it properly. I believe that that is time I wasted that could have been used to work on my project. However I think that once I got my head around it all, I used it as best as I possibly could and worked it to my advantage. I was pleased with my magazine not only because of the quality, but because I felt a sense of achievement because I never thought I would be able to use a piece of computer software to create a music magazine. Even though this was definitely not my strongest point in media, I still enjoyed the task once I got going and it has encouraged me to get more familiar with the different types of software that is available on computers.
Looking back at the preliminary task, it is clear to see I have progressed a huge amount. I have discovered a new website called 'dafont' that has enabled me to use a variety of fonts for my media product, and they are better suited compared to the fonts that are available in serif. the picture quality is also a noticeable change. Firstly, the picture in my first task was basic, and you could see that no real thought went in to it. however when you look at my final product, the pictures I have taken have been well thought through and show many different camera angles. When I took my first photo for the first task, I took the first photo I thought would look ok and just used that one picture for the entire magazine. However when it came to taking pictures for my final magazine I considered a whole range of things such as setting, camera shots, make up, clothes, lighting etc. just so I could get the full affect out of my pictures. This is the major advancement that can be seen when comparing both tasks. I also found better techniques to use for my contents page. Once again for my preliminary task it was just a list of what pages were available, with boring colours and no pictures. But when you look at my final magazine, you can see that the contents page is a lot more vibrant. My use of colour helped me make it look more professional and like something you would expect to find within a rock magazine which I found very useful. I was also able to change the font to a more appropriate one that was popular with my audiences. I also found it very useful that I was able to put a picture in to my contents page because it made it feel more realistic, and also showed that a lot of thought had gone in to creating it. I would like to think that I have advanced greatly from my preliminary task to something that is of a rock genre standard.
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