My media product uses, develops and challenges forms of conventions of real media products through representation of genre and stereotypes. Mise-en-scene represents genre, and the genre targets my chosen audience: a teenage age group. My media product is a music magazine of the rock genre. Both of these concepts determined the actual appearance of my magazine, which are shown within the mise-en-scene. The parts of my mise-en-scene which I’ve made to represent the genre of my magazine are my female model 'artist' named Abi, famous bands and artists names which are listed with the other artists featured on the contents page. Their image, such as the alternative clothing they wear, the skinny jeans, the t-shirts, vests, a denim jacket and most importantly-the leather jacket (content page image) is a theme of the rock industry. Rock and roll is about being different, individual, rebellious and ‘out there’. I believe my front cover model represents the keys of this inspirational genre to the audience, because she doesn’t have a stereotypical image of a natural hair colour, a tan, too much eye make-up and a pretty dress which accentuates her breasts or shows off her legs. Instead I went against the stereotype of women on most front covers of music magazines, but of course kept her looking beautiful in her own individual way (non-pretty women on covers do not sell music magazines well at all-It’s not appealing to most audiences) I also went against the stereotype how rock and roll’s image is highly represented via a leather jacket, yes it is a good representative prop to add to the mise-en-scene, but I think my audience can understand there are many different types of rock music, just like there are different types of people. Rock and roll gives me the incentive to have my artist featured on the front cover, brandishing a boastful orange hair colour, with no need to try so hard with leather jackets and studded accessories to let the audience know they’re looking at a rock magazine. The audience should know that new rock is becoming more and more alternative and the image of new artists more and more diverse.
Throughout my magazine my colour-scheme consisted of three main colours; black, white and orange. I chose to use these particular colours because I wanted to intertwine two light colours with a dark colour to create a sense of diversity to highlight the mainstream readership of the magazine, but also because the orange is too bright to have another colour present, the colours would probably clash and fight for domination, leaving the reader over-whelmed. All of the fonts are typical of a rock magazine as they are in bold and stand out on the page which attracts the reader to the specified article. All of the fonts are typical of a rock magazine, as they are in a bold font and in capital letters, therefore stand out on the page which attracts the reader to the specified article. My other pages (the contents page and double page spread) feature articles are all coherent of the colour scheme. All of the images of Abi are Medium close-ups (which is a common convention of rock magazines) this shows how the focus is on Abi because the most populous article in the magazine is this particular artist-alone. The images featured on the contents page are taken with a long-shot. I decided to use long-shot images on the contents page because I wanted to draw attention to my artists outfits, which represent the rock/alternative convention. Many colloquialisms are utilised in my feature article which also is another principle of rock magazines.
An Inner directed audience would be the probable group of people to have an interest in the rock genre of music, because it's much more expressive through lyrics than other types of music. The sub-cultures which have spouted from the influence rock music's influence that rock music’s sub-genres built is very important to my magazine's target audience. Studies show that males are more interested in rock music magazines than females, this could be why when a girl is on a front cover, she is exposed to look attractive, and a male is stylistic to inspire other men. This makes me use a girl for my model on the front cover. The social groups I have chosen to attract as my target audience are people who appreciate both new and old original pieces of rock music and will enjoy reading about famous stars of the rock genre’s life experiences, because they will be fans who like to know about an artist whose music they care about. The age range I aim for is from 13-30 year old people mainly. This age range includes all teenagers and the young people who may want to know about new music more than elder/middle aged people. 13-30 year old people are more likely to buy a music magazine today. Because the age range includes teenagers, this means it includes students, students don’t generally have disposable money, so my magazine is monthly and costs only £4.50 for a month’s worth of rock news reading material, therefore my magazine is affordable for the social classes I'm aiming for, which are B, C1, C2, D & E, it only has a slight contrast between NME magazine’s target market of social classes A, B and C1, but I believe it is better because it targets a wider ranging audience by including a lower class of people. It is strange that NME doesn’t directly aim for social classes D &E at all because I see music magazines as not only informing the reader about new music and artists, but also inspiring them in the process, the unemployed would be able to afford it, and could be potential musical stars who could follow a similar path to many wealthy rock music icons who started at ‘the bottom’, such as Ozzy Osbourne, Marilyn Manson and Kurt Cobain. All of these artists are rock artists who are all known amongst many young people, including those from under-privileged backgrounds who are often inspired to become famous by these types of superstars. Furthermore, many people believe that the idea/concept of newer rock music is ‘Giving something back to the community, Rags to Riches and trying to encourage young people to deter from crime, sex, drugs…’ This is why many young people seek hope and inspiration through such artists. Although on the other hand, in fact, according to behind the scene feedback, all of these particular artists have been using drugs, abusing alcohol and having unsafe sex at some point, and Marilyn Manson apparently still does take drugs, therefore many of the stars are privately hypocritical. From this I came to the decision of lowering the price of my magazine, to make its availability quite easy for all classes of people-meaning everyone, if there’s a wider audience able to buy it, and then more people will buy it altogether. I have based my media pack on NME magazine’s. Their pack is more expensive than mine, as NME's media pack show the price is price £2.20 and the frequency is Weekly. My target audience is focused on males since statistics show that NME magazine’s male/female audience majority of readers is 73%/27%, with the average readers age at 25 years old. Their target market is also men. Because of this evidence, I decided in my planning that I would use a female for the front cover’s main image and the magazine’s mainly featured artist. Men would find this more appealing because the model is an attractive female who has talent in a rock music genre, which could make her even more appealing because she’s individual-not many female singers/artists are featured in rock music magazines in general. Those who do make it to the cover are often a role model for alternative girls because they’re usually attractive in an alternative fashion.
The choice of music genre is the most important factor which will attract my target audience. The music genre is rock. I chose rock because it opens many doors to lots of sub-genres and therefore different types of rock fans. The sub-genres I would include will be progressive rock, alternative rock, heavy rock, blues rock, folk rock, metal, punk, death core and glam rock. I chose these rock sub-genres in particular because I think these sub-genres spread across a wide variety of young people the most. The representation of these sub-genres can be seen in my magazine with the bold type of colours and fonts involved throughout, the bold contrast in the colour scheme represent the individuality of rock music’s fans, who aren’t afraid to be different and in many ways eccentric. These were achieved through techniques used in Adobe Photoshop. On my front cover for my splash I decided to involve a download festival ticket give away as it tied in with my genre, my predicted audience are the types of people who go or would like a free opportunity to go to Download Festival, therefore my audience would find this splash particularly appealing.
My magazine definitely represents the younger generation. In ways of youths today respecting and praising older fashioned music and embracing new types of these genres. Part of my magazine’s destiny is to encourage today’s youth to make their own music. This influence was brought upon me by going to local gigs and the theory of real punk music’s culture via two ‘rockumentary’s’ called Punk’s Not Dead and Teen Spirit-punks. The development of an independent record label; Rough Trade was my final inspiration. To sum up what I’ve learnt from these documentary’s is that not only does the majority of punk music rant about society issues within their lyrics, but it is also about the sub-culture’s attitude-a ‘do it yourself’ one, meaning both ‘gather your mates who love the music we play and create your own punk rock band-follow us or do it your own way, it’s a great laugh’ and ‘why not tweak your clothing style at home to make it represent your individual culture, instead of buying what big labels tell you what to wear (fashion)’. Obviously this is a very strong view and not all teenagers follow this pathway, but the beginning of the punk generation before it went underground apparently because of ‘sell outs’, inspired a nation of youths and lives on today within teen spirit. My model is a teenager, she inherits a teenage image via the mise-en-scene supplied, including her t-shirt, her hair style and colour and even her make-up, which are features that you generally wouldn’t expect a middle-aged adult to have. It also represents the groups of the younger generation who are in their own band (the images of artists playing on stage on the contents page are from two different gig’s in Hull City), the type of clothing, instruments they use and body position can influence the younger generation. It can give them a sense of power and tells them they can achieve what they want, they can do this themselves. This impression is seen in many music magazines companies because they make their models look this way, for example Kerrang Magazine. I believe my music magazine challenges other music magazine stereotypes, because I noticed a majority of the music magazine’s I’ve looked at have a domination of male artists on the covers, examples include Kerrang magazine, Classic Rock Magazine and metal hammer magazine. And in some ways it can represent that not all rock artists are in a band, there are solo artists out there too, that are as good.
After the magazine has been completed and produced, an Editor of a company will have to think how to distribute the magazine to the target audience, So this means a Publisher will come in and help distribute the magazine. Big name publishers are Wenner Media LLC the publishers of the magazine ‘Rolling Stone’, also IPC Media is a leading magazine publisher who also publish the hit music magazine ‘NME’. The Institution I would use for distribution of my music magazine is Bauer Media Group, this is because they are the biggest rock music magazine publisher in the UK. They have also published many music magazines such as ‘KERRANG’, ‘Q’ and ‘Mojo’. My magazine would hopefully become popular in the UK and the US because classic rock and originates from the US and some in the UK, classic rock has been a hit since 1970’s and there are still many classic rocker’s out there who would buy my magazine. So hopefully the Bauer Media Group would be able to get high enough sales around the UK and the US to then start to distribute it to other countries.
Audience feedback
Ways in which my media product develops or challenges forms and conventions of real media products
First edits on Adobe Photoshop for main cover image
I used Adobe Photoshop to create the layout, editing, image manipulation, structure and input the text into the magazine.
I also used an interactive blog to register my progress and explain how far I was getting on with the creation on my magazine. Additionally, the blog allowed me manage my time as it allowed me to see what needed to be completed and any rooms for improvement.
To be honest, I think I improved a great deal from the Preliminary task, especially with the use of technology. During the Preliminary task, I really did not know how to manipulate photos on Photoshop and it was quite complicated to use. However, after much practice and self-teaching, I began to test out various commands and edited all of my images featured in my magazine.
How I've improved using Photoshop and matching conventional magazine trends
College Magazine Cover Music Magazine Cover
College Magazine Contents Music Magazine Contents
Final Front Cover
Final Contents Page
Final Double Page spread
Photoshop Editing for Double Page Spread image
After Before
Double Page Spread Draft
Draft 9
On this draft I had totally changed the layout as I intended to. The Q Magazine cover featuring Adele was my inspiration for this draft, but I still felt I needed something else, as you can see on my final front cover I had inserted a teasing contents along the bottom and altered the layout a little, but not changed it too dramatically.
Draft 8
The page looked too empty and I had been researching other magazine covers to inspire a layout style for my cover. The section along the left hand side of the page which is the new text was the result of my research, I wanted something basic which would suit the colour scheme. I eventually decided to change the font of the text and change what it said so it could successfully match my contents page, and my double page spread-subject and colour scheme wise. I went off the gold colour and the whole layout of the information, so I decided to change most of it, I kept the same text as the draft's sub-heading, headline and then even later on re-included a splash. I have no more draft images because of technical difficulties, but you can see the difference through the changes made on my final front cover
Draft 7
Decided to insert a splash to make my cover seem more promotional. And edited the main image further by highlighting certain parts of her face and defining her features using the quick selection tool, all on Adobe Photoshop.
DRAFT 6
I was happy with my front cover's main image after experimenting with different images I had taken from the same photo shoot. I used Microsoft Paint to create the 'ABI' headline, but then later decided after a couple of drafts that I disliked its appearance. I have taken some images at local gigs which take place at Hollywood and Vine and Ringside in Hull. I decided to change the images to a black and white style because I didn't want the house style to be effected by different colours. I based my first draft's layout on this Kerrang cover
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