media evaluation

1. Media
evaluation
Mary Morgan

2. 1. In what ways does your media product use,
develop or challenge forms and conventions
of real media products?
 I think that my magazine is very different to those that are on the market nowadays. You
don't see that many folk/hippie type magazines anywhere in shops, not popular ones
anyway, and so I tried to make it as modern as possible to appeal to the younger
audiences by including polar artists such as Ed sheeran, Paloma faith etc. These artists
have very popular songs that are in the charts at the minute but they still have a folky feel
to them, like Ed sheeran who constantly is performing with his acoustic guitar, which is
one of the sections of my magazine; top 40 acoustic albums. I think that this challenges
current forms and conventions of normal magazines because it is technically not a pop or
RnB magazine, which are the most popular type, but it still contains information about
popular artists that are seen as popular by many of the younger generation. My magazine
goes against the norm of a typical magazine as it has two in one: things that the older
generation would enjoy and also the younger generation. This means that my magazine
would reach a huge target audience and hopefully sell a lot of copies, resulting in the
magazine being a massive success. I have included a new up and coming artist on the
cover and contents page, Emily Alderson, who I have included to fit in with the naturalistic
side of the magazine. She is not the typical blonde haired, big bobbed girl that you would
see on a typical music magazine cover, which is used as a marketing technique to draw
people in and get them to buy it. My magazine does have a woman on the front but it is
not a conventional picture as she has sunglasses on so you cannot see her face. This
gives her a mysterious quality and is a technique I used purposely so that people would
become intrigued and want to buy the magazine to learn more about this mysterious girl.

3. 2. How does your media product represent particular
social groups?
 My magazine is aimed at a particular social group; those who enjoy music that
enjoy acoustic/indie music. The way I represent this is through the type of
pictures I have used, the clothes that the models are wearing and also the
scenery in the background of the cover photo, contents page and double page
spread. This is a difficult social group to try and get to buy the magazine as the
genre varies and includes lots of different artists and songs that it is hard to just
focus on one particular social group. For example, Ed sheeran is seen as a pop
artist but also an Indie artist, so including him in my magazine would attract not
just indie/hippie fans but also pop fans. He makes a lot of pop music but uses
his guitar in almost every single song, classing him in the acoustic genre of
music. This is definitely a bonus for my magazine as it means that it will appeal
to a lot more people than just indie lovers. Pop music is the most popular genre
of music, therefore meaning that my magazine will become even more popular
with artists like him on the cover. It is important to add things like that on the
front cover as that is the thing that people will see first and the whole reason that
they buy the magazine. The social group that this magazine represents would
definitely be more Indie than pop and this group is represented as a group that
enjoys listening to calm, peaceful music, not the head-banging, raving music
that most teenagers listen to today. Most adults do not want to listen to this kind
of music, they want to be calm and relaxed as they will have jobs and want to
listen to something calming at the end of the day.

4. 3. What kind of media institution might distribute your
media product and why?
 I would like my magazine to be published by either 'Bauer' or 'Future.' There are
many reasons that I would choose these two, one of them being that they are
the two biggest media distribution companies that there are. This is a huge
advantage as this means that they have the power and the money to distribute
my magazine all over the country, potentially all over the world. They distribute
magazines such as 'Kerrang' or 'MOJO' which are incredibly popular these days.
Also, because they are both such popular distributors individually, if they worked
on their own then they could create something even better than if I just used
each of them on their own. They could use cross media convergence to
advertise one magazine onto the other, creating more popularity for both of the
magazines. Bauer media reaches nineteen million UK adults across multiple
media channels and Future sells 3.2 million magazines each month and host
27 annual life events that attract hundreds of thousands of people. As they
already have a worldwide fan base, my magazine 'Peace' would be seen by all
of these millions of people, therefore making it more likely for them to be
purchased. As my magazine is slightly unusual and not really the typical
teenage music magazine, using a less well known distributor would not be the
best choice as it definitely would not be seen as nearly as big as an audience as
using Bauer and Future. Also, Bauer contacts adults as well as teenagers, which
is the exact target audience I am trying to reach; adults who enjoy calming,
relaxing music and also teenagers.

5. 4. Who would be the audience for your magazine?
 The audience for my magazine varies as I am trying to meet a mass
audience. Many of the artists that I include in my magazine are liked from all
different ages. From doing some market research, I asked 20 adults and 20
teenagers if they liked the artists that appear on my front cover and my
contents page. 27 out of 40 answered yes when I asked them. This market
research is what made me add the artists onto my magazine, knowing that
they will be liked by all age groups and therefore be purchased by more than
just young teenagers. You have magazines such as 'Girl Talk' and 'Sugar'
which are only aimed at young teenage girls. I wanted to change that.
Obviously you are not going to have 35 year olds buying that kind of
magazine but using doing some research I discovered that my magazine
covers a whole load of age ranges. The only people who would maybe not
be so interested in my magazine would be young teenage boys but then
again, looking at the statistics of what gender buy magazines, females
obviously dominate over males. However, artists like Ed sheer an are liked
by both females and males as millions of people download his songs and
they can't all be females. This leaves some leeway for boys/men to buy my
magazine in the hopes of reading about an artist that actually like that isn't
just about artists like Nicki Minaj and Rihanna. I purposely did not include
artists like that because they are liked more by females rather than males
and I wanted my magazine to be uni-sex.

6. 5. How did you attract/address your audience?
 I attracted my audience in many ways. For example, I only used artists that I
believe are not targeted at a specific audience e.g. Ed sheer an. From looking at
statistics of the gender of people that buy his music and albums, the results
were that not one gender dominated the other, and so I thought that this would
be good to use to aim both men and women. I asked many older woman,
between late 30's and 40's, if they liked Ed sheeran and everyone except one
person said that they did. Considering I asked around 15 people, I would say
that he has a strong fan base for people aged over 25. If I can aim my magazine
at various genders and age groups, I have a much stronger chance of selling a
lot more of my magazines and gaining a huge profit. Not only have I included
artists who I think are widely liked but I have also chosen artists who are hugely
popular, for example Taylor swift. On one of her most recent music videos, she
had 600 million views, so including her on the cover ensures that lots of people
will read about her and want to buh my magazine. Not only have I included
popular people like taylor swift but also less popular people, like Paloma faith,
who has a smaller fan base than Taylor. I have purposely done this to attract
what I believe is a gap in the market of people who are actually not as popular
but still have a big enough fan base to want to buy a magazine with them on the
front cover. This taps in to all of those little groups who do not buy very popular
magazines such as 'Billboard' or 'Q.' I think that including artists who are very
widely known but also not is the main attraction of my magazine as it is going to
attract more than just one group of people but a huge variety.

7. 6. What have you learnt about technologies from the
process of constructing this product?
 I have learnt many things about technology just from doing this media course.
When I first started this year, I had absolutely no idea how to use websites such as
blogger or photoshop but having nearly finished I believe that having these skills
will definitely help me later on in life if I decide to pursue media in the future as a
career choice. Society is advancing at a fast rate nowadays and using a computer
is becoming essential for most jobs. Technology is also becoming a fast growing for
people e.g. IT technicians, who get paid a lot of money to fix all kinds of
technological equipment, which would be important if somebody wanted to do that
for a living. Another important thing I have learnt about technology is definitely the
device that you use to take the photographs. At the beginning, I was only using my
phone to take the photographs for my magazine and I soon realised that was a
huge mistake. The quality was horrendous and when I made my mock up
magazines they looked like something someone in primary school could have
made. To take the photographs, I used my uncles 'Nikon D3200' is one of the best
cameras around. These added high quality to my photographs and started to make
them look a bit more like the photographs you would see on the front of magazine
covers. This was definitely very important in the construction of my product
because I tried once and learnt from my mistakes and so from now on will never
make that mistake again.

8. 7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you
feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the
full product?
 Overall, I have learnt a huge variety of skills to do with computers and photographs. A
woman came into one of our lessons to teach us how to take professional looking
photographs and that inspired me to start to take mine in a different way and therefore
improve my magazine as a whole. It has definitely progressed through the months that I
have added to it and changed it, which you can see in my first draft through to my final. It
took a lot of my spare time to get my magazine to how it is now and even then I believe
that a lot of work could still be done to it to make it the best that it could possibly be. If I
have learnt anything that will help me with future tasks is that timing is crucial and you
can't leave it till the last minute. I thought that I had plenty of time to finish this task and so
I left it until I had the least amount of time as possible and it ended up not being as good
as I could have made it. This is a good lesson to learn now but maybe it is a little bit too
late to learn it as I could have got a much better mark on my work than I have only using
the least amount of time as possible. This is not a good habit to get into, especially if you
want to carry the subject on, and I believe I have made a mistake in estimating how much
time I thought I had and how much time I actually had. Through the progression of the
product that I have made, another thing I have learnt is that being able to use photoshop
is the main thing that you need to have a good set of skills in. I had no idea how to use it
but I used the internet to search how to use it and eventually it became easy and I was
able to use it. Many things are obtainable using the internet and you can improve your
product by a huge amount just by doing little things like that, which is what I learnt through
this process.