evaluation question 1

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
During the planning stages of my work I drew from current magazines such as NME and Q magazine as these are both examples of products that I enjoy and would use for inspiration. As well as these I looked at some magazines that were not necessarily music orientated such as Front and Wired, I did this to see what conventions were popular in all genres in turn this also showed me what kind of layouts and juxtaposition would not be appropriate for my magazine. For example in Wired they use mainly text on their double page spread with smaller pictures due to its purpose being more informative whereas Front had mainly pictures to illustrate text with less reading needed as it is a ‘lads mag’. Therefore it was my intention to find a medium of these to create a piece that was enjoyable as well as useful for indie music fans.

One main convention that I tried to imitate after looking at real magazines was the use of one large single image on the front cover. This figure in almost all cases was the person featured in the main article of that issue. To do this I shot my main image as a mid-shot and shot the model from a slight angle as this is what I had seen during planning and I felt it gave a good effect. A criticism that I would give myself for my front cover picture is the fact that lighting had not been considered as it was originally an outdoors shot but then cropped to look as if it was in a studio at a later date also I would have preferred the model to have been wearing a slightly more smarter outfit such as trousers and shirt as it would fit the contextual requirements of my article.

On my contents page I included a quote from my double page spread underneath my main image this is because I had seen this convention used in NME. To do this I chose a quote that was interesting and would be likely to draw the reader’s attention to that article and be a lure to buy the magazine. Through my planning I found that many consumers judge a magazine based on its contents along with the front cover mainly, therefore I tried to get the best marketability onto that page.

A convention that I challenged was on my double page spread, my main image was a location shot at a mid-shot angle whereas in most real magazine double page spreads the main image is a studio shot of the person either posing or acting as part of a naturally staged shot. It was my thought that to have a location shot would have an effect that gave it a rural look however ultimately I feel that the result is unprofessional and I would gain more from taking a better studio shot the cropping and manipulating on photoshop.

A convention that I rejected was the inclusion of a house style banner or border this would be down to failure during the planning stages and in my next piece I would definitely like to include something like this as it is something that is shown in most magazines such as Front.