The document analyzes how the author's media product, a country music magazine, uses, develops, and challenges conventions of real country music magazines. It finds that the author's magazine follows many conventions, such as using bold mastheads, taglines, and articles about up-and-coming artists. However, it also challenges some conventions by using a colored contents page to appeal to younger audiences and having the background of a cover photo rather than a plain color, a rare approach for music magazines. Overall, the author aims to create a magazine that feels modern while still clearly being a country music publication through its use of stereotypical imagery and language.

1. In what ways does your Media Product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real Media products?

2. In what ways does your Media Product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real Media products?A good example of a magazine that is of the same genre and style as my magazine is the Country Weekly magazine pictured below. This example of a real Media product similar to my own is a good magazine to compare mine with as they both demonstrate the same conventions as they are aimed at the same demographic of people. Different to the real Media product, my magazine does not have a strapline, and also my magazine has a picture of a guitar on it, the real Media product does not feature any otherimages on the main body of the magazine other than on the strapline. The magazines are similar in that they both have very bold, predominant Mastheads and theyboth make it very clear who the main feature is on. Most music magazines do this too. They also both include lots of taglines to get the readers interested highlighting out the keywords that will hopefully grab the reader in the first place. The magazine challenges conventions slightly with the background image, as the background of the photo is the real background rather than a plain colour. Lots of Country Music magazines do this such as the magazine pictured, but they wouldn’t do this with every issue.

3. In what ways does your Media Product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real Media products?Having the real background of a photo kept as the background on the front cover of the magazine is very rarely done by any other genre of music magazine, so I chose to do it because this makes it very clear what kind of genre my magazine is. No one would look at my magazine and think it was a rock music magazine, even before reading the name of it. The name of my magazine is very realistic in that Country music magazines are generally quite obvious in their naming, with names such as: Country Weekly(pictured), Nashville Country, Country Line Magazine and Country Standard Time. The Mise En Scene in the image also fits with conventions perfectly, the girl is blonde (typical), wearing floral, pictured with trees aroundher, the way the sunlight is visible on her fact and an acoustic guitar on the cover, these, especially the pictured with trees, you are all very stereotypical of Country music. This establishes well what type of magazine this is. The artist on magazines is an indication to readers if they will be interested. My magazine has an artist supposedly aimed at female teens though because Country Music is more of a niche market (in the UK) it would still appeal to anyone who has an interest in Country music.

4. In what ways does your Media Product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real Media products?

5. In what ways does your Media Product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real Media products?My Contents page is the page that differs most from the real Media product example that I have pictured. The one I have pictured is your stereotypical Country music magazine contents page. With my magazine I challenged forms and conventions as I wanted to try and make it appeal to more people. As this would be a Country Music magazine in the UK (a niche market), I wanted to make it bright and make it stand out to try and grab readers attention and then in time it would build up an audience for mymagazine, as when the magazine would first come out, being in a niche market, it would have a very small audience. Adding more colour also makes my magazine look much more modern and as if it is aimed at a younger targetaudience in comparison to the real Media product pictured.My magazine follows conventions as it includes lots of writing, which is common of music magazines of this genre, it also features a guitar and pictures of the feature artist advertising a follow up article as well as pictures of other artists who are also featured within the magazine. Listing the music charts as I did also modernizes the magazine, and makes it appeal to a bigger demographic as that is common in all genres of music magazines.

6. In what ways does your Media Product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real Media products?

7. In what ways does your Media Product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real Media products?

8. In what ways does your Media Product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real Media products?My Double Page Spread follows conventions of a Country music magazine because the Mise En Scene of the pictures used are perfect, they would not make the artist mistaken for another genre of music. Again the use of the outdoors in the background of the main image makes this clear. The language used in the article is typical of a Country music magazine also. The article waswritten like a mini biography. Direct quotations are made, facts are listed and pictures documenting the artist’s life are featured. The article is supposedly a way of introducing the artist to readers, as she is said to be like an up and coming superstar “who’s taking the Country Music scene by storm”. This is common in lots of different genres of music magazine when there’s a new artist around.