Question 1

1. Question1:
In what ways do your media product use, develop or challenge forms
and conventions of real media products?
My media product is an R&B, music magazine. I have produced a total of 5 pages in the form
of 1 front cover, 2 pages of contents and a double page spread. After analysing existing
media products, I got a feel for which conventions I wanted to follow and which I wanted to
defy.
Conventions of R&B magazines:
 Colour palette: Grey scale, black, white and red;
 Provocative images;
 Obstructed masthead by the artist;
 Sans serif font;
 Black/mix race artist;
 Rule of thirds on the front cover;
 Short, comedic cover lines.
First of all, I set out to deliberately defy a few main, certain conventions within R&B, and its
subcultures. These include using provocative images of women on my magazine, this links to
Laura Mulvey’s male gaze theory, the idea that women are presented in a way which
appeals to men and how men view women. Also, not going overboard with props and using
things such as knives which promote violence, this particularly creates issues for men in the
media – as Earp and Katz theorised, men in the media are directly linked to a steady stream
of images that connote violence. This allows me to aim my magazine at younger readers, to
gain their interest in my magazine and hence broadening an already niche audience.
I also had a larger list of conventions I wanted to follow. Perhaps the main one is page
layout throughout the magazine. This is so I had a template to work off of, so that I could
structure my page. Furthermore, I wanted to follow the convention of the quizzacious
language used, hinted with idiomatic swearing. This is because it closely connotes the style
of music from R&B songs. Furthermore, the colour palette is complementary to our style of
magazine so we kept the red, white, black and grey scale colours. We decided to stick to this
convention because the colours are often linked to contemporary styles, specifically grey as
futuristic items are often in a shade of this colour. On the other hand, it appeals to my
target audience as they are perhaps used to seeing this convention and almost expect to see
it.
The way that my product links to these specific examples of conventions that I wish to
subvert or follow are; I used a male artist as my main star without any props that directly
link to violence, but rather props like an expensive watch and gold chain which connote
wealth to further increase the depth of the story I am telling about him. I also followed the
convention of obstructing the masthead by the artist on the front cover, this shows
importance to the artist and makes him superior to the rest of the components on the page.

2. Using sans serif fonts throughout the magazine is another convention my group and I
followed, this font gives a contemporary feel to those reading it. Finally, minimalism is a
convention strictly refined to the R&B genre and although the other group members didn’t
follow this convention all that closely, I stuck to it. Minimalism is another attribute that
directly links to modernism.
Now transitioning to the conventions I did not follow, I will begin with ‘provocative images’.
The use of provocative images is not only a very easy way to accumulate a {stereotypically}
male audience, but it directly links to the costumes used by female or, rarely, males. I did
not follow this convention because I only used one female artist and she wasn’t on the front
cover either. Also, institution regulations for my A level specification prohibits the use of
such images. I decided to not use props which connote violence (as mentioned before). Not
following conventions was a difficult thing to do because conventions of existing R&B media
products gives me a medium and template to work from but some as mentioned above can
be deliberately subverted from.
During the photoshoot process, I took many photos from different angles, the model in
different clothes and in different locations. I chose the images which were most natural in
portraying the story I wanted to tell about the character. Choosing the mise en scene
pivoted around the R&B genre, for example I chose a background for the images based on
existing R&B images and their locations. The costumes shown in the magazine were chosen
based on my preliminary costume analysis, I chose them because of their links to the R&B
genre.