media coursework evaluation
- 1. Evaluation
- 2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? My media product uses forms and conventions of real media products because I have put my writing on the double page spread in columns and lots of magazines have writings in columns. And I have put a big Picture of a person on my front cover. This is the same as many other magazines because they have a big picture of a rap artist or someone at the front as well. And I have used big writing on the front cover for the name of the Magazine/ the masthead this is because lots of magazines have the title of the magazine/ Masthead on the magazine front cover and they have it in big bold letters at the front.
- 3. How does your media product represent particular social groups? My media product represents young males mainly teenagers as being trendy people. This is because on my magazine I have a picture of a young male who is wearing quite trendy clothes, and is wearing a bit of jewellery like the silver watch on his wrist. The silver watch kind of connotes the bling that gangster rappers wear. For example when 50 cent is on a concert or just hanging around, he wears lots of bling, Lots of jewellery. For example silver and gold chains around his neck, chains on his wrist, silver and/or gold rings on his fingers and silver or gold wrist watches. I have also shown young males as being trendy and fashionable because the person on my magazine has quite a fashionable hair style. A lot of young males now are trying new and different hair styles. I have made the person look quite trendy with some jewellery on. This challenges the dominant ideology of teenagers being troublemakers, scary and hooded hooligans. This is because the person on my magazine does not have a hood on, or any type of clothing that a trouble making teenager would wear. The ideology that I have shown of teenagers as being trendy and fashionable could be an emergent ideology because more and more teenagers are like this and you could say that the ideology of teenagers being troublemakers, scary and hooded hooligans is now a residual ideology because not all teenagers are like this in fact only a small minority is like this.
- 4. what kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? The media institution that might distribute my media product could be supermarket companies like Tesco, Sainsbury's, ASDA and Morrison's. This is because these supermarkets distribute many other magazines some of which are the same type of genre as my magazine hip hop/rap. Because these supermarkets get many different customers everyday who buy different magazines they might sell my media product as well. This is because most of the customers they get, are young teenagers or males who like to listen to hip hop/ rap or just might like to be kept informed about what is going on in the media industry. And these type of people might buy this type of genre magazine and so these supermarkets might distribute my media product. also the magazine could have a website which keeps the people informed about what is going on, when the next magazine will be published and things like that. And on this website we could have media 2.0 this is when the audience participate in the making of the texts. So we could give the audience a chance to give ideas for the kind of things that could be on the next magazine, we could have a fan mail page where people can leave comments which could be published in the next magazine. Also the audience could be given a selection of ideas for the front cover of the next magazine and they could vote for the one that they like most and the idea with the most votes would be the new front cover of the next magazine that is going to be published and distributed.
- 5. Who would be the audience for your media product? How did you attract/address your audience? The audience for my magazine would be young males around the age 13-25.They would be people who like to listen to hip hop/ rap music and they would be the kind of people who like to wear and buy fashionable clothes or trackies, trainers and jewellery and they might be the kind of people who like to go out and socialise with their friends a lot. They might be the kind of people who like to go to parties and have a good time. Might drive a Honda or a Peugeot 106. I have tried to address this audience by using dark, strong and bold, quite mysterious and danger connoting colours like black And red because rappers are gangster type people and gangsters are looked at by society as being dangerous, troublemaking and mysterious people because they have their hoodies up most of the time and so you cant see their faces and you don’t know what they’re going to do next this is the dominant ideology people have of gangsters. And the hip hop fans might look at the colours on the magazine and say “this is a hip hop magazine lets buy it 50 cent might be in it”. These types of people look up to these gangster rappers and they aspire to be like them. And they might buy hip hop magazines to keep up with their favourite rappers to see what they wear and so they can be like them. And because of this these kinds of people might buy my magazine.
- 6. Audience feedback One person said that the “camera shot types used were good” and said “the colour scheme used on the magazine is good” and they said that “the colour contrasting against the text and photography was good”. Some people said the “red writing was hard to read”. I used the colour red because I wanted to use dark colours to connote danger and mysteriousness like gangsters and rappers because they are these kind of people and in many other magazines like the rolling stone they use these type of colours because they are a rap magazine targeting young males who like this kind of music and who might like or be apart of a gangster type lifestyle. Some People said “the double page spread looked separate”. For my double page spread I tried to do an interview on one side and then I did the top ten tracks of the month on the other. It looked separate because I was planning on continuing the interview on to the other page but I was told by the teacher that the writing on my magazine was too big and so told me to change the size of the font from twelve to 7 because real magazine fonts are small as well so I changed the font to make it look similar to real media magazines. so that’s why I was left with quite a lot of space on the double page spread and I couldn’t think of anything else to put on it and I didn’t have any more photos that I wanted to put on so I hope this answers the people who said “ too much space left on the double page spread” and I hope it answers the people who said “ the writing is too small and space not used as effectively as you could have”.
- 7. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? I have learnt how to use digital cameras and how to do the different camera shot types and I have learnt how to use professional software like adobe Photoshop to edit my photos like cropping them and getting rid of the background and quark express to make my magazine look like a real magazine by putting mastheads, puffs, cover lines, freebies etc. the blogging I did for my work on blogger helped me keep track of where I was because I put in everything in order and every time I went on my blog I quickly looked at it, found out where I was and carried on from where I left it. Blogging also helped me keep my research and planning in a clear and coherent way because I typed everything in and I put some pictures In as examples to demonstrate what I meant and everything stayed in order it all stayed together every time I typed in another piece of writing it didn’t mess up the writing in it didn’t move all over the place it stayed in the same place.
- 8. Looking back at your preliminary task what do you think you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? Looking back at my preliminary task I feel I have learnt how to use adobe Photoshop better because I have used it to get rid of the background of my photo for the double page spread. I also feel I have learnt how to use different shot types when I was using the digital camera and some people did say that I had good camera shot types in my magazine.