1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
My media product does a mixture or break and stick to the conventions of a rap magazine. It is in black and white and that is a main factor that breaks the conventions of a magazine. Most magazines you see usually use a couple a colours to attract the readers. By using a range of colours it allows the magazine to stand out to the readers and draw their attention. I thought that if mine is different and does not use as many colours as other magazines it will stand out in its own way as it is different and your eyes will automatically be attracted to my magazine cover and be tempted to pick it up and then it is the job of the sell lines and stories to sell the magazine to the reader. The ways that my magazine sticks to the conventions of a real media product is that on the front cover it has a masthead, main image, sell lines, bar code, price. All of these things are things you would expect to see on a magazine cover. Also on my contents page it has the main features you would expect to see such as the pages that the articles are on, an image, and an editors comment. And finally on my double page spread it has a good blend of text and image which makes it look professional but the image gives it a 'hard' look which fits the conventions. Also the language used on all 3 features fit the conventions of rap as they all use swearing and slang which is associated to rap and the genre.
2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
My media product represents social groups such as teens around 16 - 18. It gives of a stereotypical view on teens and the way they act. It does this by advertising smoking and hanging around on street corners. But if you read into the article on the double page spread it tells about how life is not always as the media shows it and that the media does give rap and this particular social group a bad name and not enough credit is given to the good things that actually happen to teens today and what good they actually do to help society. Smoking is just an image given off by this social group and not everyone does it, only a few but it gets taken out of hand and gives all of this social group a bad representation. If I'm honest, my media product does not help with this representation and this means it is sticking to the conventions of rap because if it went against this, it would be another way that my media product was breaking the conventions of rap.
3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I would leave a few free copies lying around in the sixth form common room for students to pick up and read. By doing this I am hoping to get people interested and maybe convince them to buy the magazine in the future. Also sell my magazine at Rap Shack in Clapham. This is a specialist rap store that sells rap products such as magazines, CD’s, DVD’s and so on. I would target a specialised store because I don't want my magazine to be like every other magazine that you could just pick up from supermarkets such as Tesco and Sainsburys. I think by just targeting specific stores gives my magazine a prestigious status as it can be difficult to find. This shows that this is mainly to a niche audience as I would mainly be targeting specific audience and not just anyone as it would not be suitable and fit some people taste.
4) Who
would be the audience for your media product?
The target audience for my media product would be mainly
aimed at males aged around 16 – 18 who are into the rap genre. This would be
because my whole media product (magazine cover, contents page, double page
spread) are all heavily into rap and would be suitable for this audience. Males
between the ages 16 – 18 are more into rap than females aged 16 – 18 for
example. Also it wouldn’t be targeted at the older generation because they may
find it offensive as it contains some strong language and images include
smoking, all of the stereotypes of teens now and by targeting this at an older
generation, it would make their image of teens even worse than it already is. I
think that my media product is suitable for my audience that I tried to target
when I was planning my magazine out. I said I wanted to attract teens that were
mainly males.
5) How did
you attract/address your audience?
In my media product
the features I have used to attract this audience is things such as the colour
scheme and the articles inside of the magazine. The main colour scheme of my
magazine cover and contents page is black and white as you can see. This would
attract my audience because males between the ages of 16 – 18 would not really
be interested in a magazine with lots of bright colours that stands out from
the rest as it would give them a negative image and that they would not want to
be seen with, this image would be quite girly and against the image that young
males would be going for. That is why my magazine cover and contents page are
mainly in black and white with a few bits in a dark red. I have used the red
because it goes quite well with black and white and it also represents danger,
fear and hell. If my magazine had lots of bright colours on the front cover it
would maybe appeal to females of a lesser age a bit more and that would be the
wrong audience and that was not my aim. So I think that my media product has
been successful in attracting my audience. The use of black and white on the
front cover does break the conventions a little bit as most front covers you
see do use colour, just not bright ones… mine does not use colour in the
background or image at all. However, if I was to improve on my media product I
would use a bit more colour on the front cover by making the sell lines a
different colour and by having my image in colour, not black and white as it
maybe a little bit boring and dull. Luckily this fits into my genre and doesn't look too bad. My double page spread has a good use of colour as it includes
red, green, white and black. This has stuck to my main theme of red, black, and
white but also has used more colours with the green. This stands out more but I
have not used bright colours as it would not fit my theme, it is still quite
dark and gives a sense of the rap genre on it. This attracts my audience by the
use of the image as ‘Audacious J’ is smoking and that is a stereotypical thing
to do within the rap genre and that’s a big feature on the double page spread.
The language I have used to attract my audience contains a lot of slang and
swear words. This attracts my audience because people of this age would find it
easy to understand as it is around them as part of day to day life so it is nothing
new to them and it would not be hard to understand. Also the use of swearing in
the text is again part of the image that rap gives of as being ‘hard’. You
would not see the use of swear words in a politics magazine as it is completely
un-professional and against everything they stand for. That is different in my
case as it fits in with the genre and goes with the conventions of a rap
magazine. To attract my audience I have done a mixture of stick to the
conventions and also break them in some areas. I think this gives a bit of an
edge to my media product as it is not too old fashion but it is not completely
strange and people have no clue what it is about or why it is like that.
6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
From constructing this product I have found that we now rely on technology far too much in my opinion. Technology has moved forward a long way and this allows us to be able to make our media product using computers and it may help you in future life because a lot more jobs now require the use of technology but more and more things are starting to rely on technology and when it fails, it can be disastrous. You could quite easily loose all of your work if technology fails and this is a massive issue. An example of this is that a student in my class who was working to a high level almost lost all of his AS level course work and this would have been a major problem for him. I think that as much as technology is important, we should not rely on it as much in order to provide safety and also it would improve people grammar as there is no spell check when it comes to pen and paper.
7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
When I look back at my preliminary task I feel that I have learnt about how to make my work look professional and how to plan things better. If you look at my preliminary task, you can see that my planning for my magazine cover is no where near as good as where it needs to be. Also, my magazine cover on my preliminary task is awful and very tacky. From then I have definitely improved how my work looks and make it look like it could be sold in stores. I have learnt how to use programmes such as Photoshop to allow me to do this and this has been a major part of my improvement because it had let me edit stuff really well to make it look up to standard. It has allowed me to add layers into my work so it gives it that professional look where things are on different layers and not all just merged into one and looks messy. Now it looks good. So I have learnt how to use technology a lot better than I did before and this is a key part of me improving my work.
6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
From constructing this product I have found that we now rely on technology far too much in my opinion. Technology has moved forward a long way and this allows us to be able to make our media product using computers and it may help you in future life because a lot more jobs now require the use of technology but more and more things are starting to rely on technology and when it fails, it can be disastrous. You could quite easily loose all of your work if technology fails and this is a massive issue. An example of this is that a student in my class who was working to a high level almost lost all of his AS level course work and this would have been a major problem for him. I think that as much as technology is important, we should not rely on it as much in order to provide safety and also it would improve people grammar as there is no spell check when it comes to pen and paper.
7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
When I look back at my preliminary task I feel that I have learnt about how to make my work look professional and how to plan things better. If you look at my preliminary task, you can see that my planning for my magazine cover is no where near as good as where it needs to be. Also, my magazine cover on my preliminary task is awful and very tacky. From then I have definitely improved how my work looks and make it look like it could be sold in stores. I have learnt how to use programmes such as Photoshop to allow me to do this and this has been a major part of my improvement because it had let me edit stuff really well to make it look up to standard. It has allowed me to add layers into my work so it gives it that professional look where things are on different layers and not all just merged into one and looks messy. Now it looks good. So I have learnt how to use technology a lot better than I did before and this is a key part of me improving my work.
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