Question 1

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media products?
My media magazine mostly uses and conforms to general conventions
of a real media product. Some ways in which it does this is through the
use of the layout, through aspects such as the masthead, the camera
shot, the direct eye contact, position of coverlines and themes. A lot of
my inspiration came from ‘Billboard magazine, which has a very
simplistic yet fun approach as seen previously in my magazine analysis.
As my magazine is aimed at young women, I didn’t want it to represent
the same social groups that ‘Kerrang’ or ‘NME’ might, as it wouldn’t be
appropriate for my target audience. As with the majority of music
magazines, I have kept my masthead at the top of the page right in the
centre. A lot of magazines that are extremely well known can get away
with their model or feature covering the majority of their masthead
because people automatically recognise it from the typeface and/or
colour. However, because my magazine is new, it wouldn’t be
appropriate to use this convention. I’ve included lots of coverlines over
the front cover so that my audience are attracted, which corresponds to
the genre of my magazine. As well as this, I have been continuous with
my use of colour throughout my magazine including over the contents
page and double page spread as it is an important element that ties the
magazine together. Throughout the magazine I have ensured that my
model keeps direct eye contact with the camera because this is an
important and widely used convention to a magazine, and alongside
this I have been consistent with a medium close up shot.

2. The conventions that I may have challenged in my media product can be
found through my double page spread and contents page. In my contents
page, I have kept it extremely simplistic for a reason. Many magazines will
have the contents page as their most active page and it will usually be
crammed with information, buzzwords and images. However, when a
reader is interested in reading what is inside the magazine, I think it may
be a tendency for them to skip over the contents and flick through the
magazine to find what page they are after. Mostly I think contents page’s
are much too busy and therefore do not attract the sought after attention.
Therefore, I have amended this by listing the appropriate page numbers for
the cover stories and adding some images. I think this will be much more
effective because the reader doesn’t have to search through mountains of
information to find what they are looking for. In my double page spread,
rather than having one page as the interview and one of a full bled image
of the artist, I have decided to dedicate both pages to a full blown
interview whilst including the images at the top of the page. The reason for
this is because I want my audience to feel like they are getting their
money’s worth by having a full two pages of interview and some images of
who they are reading about. Whilst some magazines may also do this, I feel
that some often include larger images to compensate for the lack of
information. Therefore I am breaking this convention so that I can include
both aspects of the magazine. A lot of magazines may also decide to have a
background or may position their images so that they are bigger or fuller. I
want my magazine to look crisp and precise, so I have kept it on a white
background with one image against the paper and another of my artist at
an awards ceremony.