Production Analysis

AS PRODUCTIONS - EVALUATION

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

·       How is the style and content similar to the convention of the genre of music magazines?

·       What rules, codes and conventions of magazines does the cover use?

·       What rules, codes and conventions of magazines does the contents page use?

·       What rules, codes and conventions of magazines does the double-page spread page use?

·       How does the title use conventions of magazines?

·       How does the text use conventions of magazines?

·       How does the language follow conventions of magazines?

·       How do the photographs use conventions of magazines

·       MULTIMEDIA:   Construct a diagram with a real text on one side and yours on the other, with arrows pointing out the similarities (for each of the three pages)

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

·       How do the photographs and text represent men and women? E.g. is it stereotypical? How are the following giving a certain way of reading their character – body language, hair, make-up, costume, setting, facial expression, colour, etc.?

·       How do the photographs and text represent young people or older people?

·       Are any of the following represented – sexuality, race, disability, nationality, religion, etc?

·       How is the genre of your music represented?  How have you equated particular appearances of people with particular genres of music?  What does this say about them?

·       Are any groups notable due to their absences i.e. they have not been represented?

·       MULTIMEDIA – you might create a PowerPoint about the representation of social groups in your magazine

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

·       Magazines are distributed by publishing companies (e.g. EMAP or IPC) that have numerous titles, targeted at a variety of niche and target audiences.  Explain this with detailed reference to specific examples and similar titles.

·       Magazines make money through selling (cover sales) but mainly through advertising.  Explain this with specific examples of who might advertise in your magazine and why (target audience, image of magazine, suitability of product, etc.)

Who would be the audience for your media product?

·       Which demographic would buy your magazine?  Why?

·       Which psychographic would be interested in your magazine?  Why?

·       How would your audience use the magazine (research and explain the Uses and Gratifications Theory) 

How did you attract/address your audience?

·       Using specific examples, explain exactly why your audience would be interested in your magazine

·       You should refer to specific images, the title, specific language and features

·       You should also compare your content to a real magazine and discuss their audience

·       MULTIMEDIA – you should do a video analysis of your magazine answering the two audience questions. You might include an interview with potential purchasers.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

·       Exactly what skills did you learn about photography during the process

·       Exactly what skills did you learn about using Photoshop and/or InDesign during the process

·       Discuss tricky challenges and how you overcame them

·       Explain what you did during the production process, using screenshots where appropriate

·       MULTIMEDIA – you should record a screen-recording using QuickTime of your product.  Make all the layers invisible, then put them back one by one explaining vocally how you made them and what they add to the product.

·       A script may help this process

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

·       Compare your final productions with the front cover and contents page of your preliminary work

·       Explain what the similarities and differences between the two and how you improved.

·       MULTIMEDIA – Create a diagram with the preliminary pages on one side and the final productions on the other showing the similarities

In what ways does your media project use, develop, or challenge forms ad conventions of real media products?

The style of the magazine emulates that of popular music magazines such as the Fly, NME and Q Magazine. With a colour scheme incorporating the red, black and white that is synonymous with the worlds leading music magazines and articles including interviews with musicians and bands as well as reviews and previews of albums and concerts.

The cover of “The RG” uses a traditional format of a topmost positioned masthead and a series of cover lines positioned in key points around a photo of featured musicians. The masthead is bold and in a unique thematic font with large underscore beneath to help isolate this element from the rest of the page and draw the readers attention to it first. The cover lines are split into categories depending on importance, genre and article category allowing the reader to know what is the biggest most exclusive article inside as well as group together the articles that would interest him/her. All this helps the reader to navigate the cover in such a way that they obtain as much information of note in the shortest and easiest manner.

The contents page has been divided into categories such as “Interviews” and “Reviews” which is traditionally used in most magazines. The colour scheme of this page has been altered to suit the images used, as most magazines have pictures that fit in with their contents page. The photos are pertinent to an article in a list beside them with each article category having a single equal sized picture beside it.

The double page spread of the article has been ordered into equal sized columns of text separated by dividing lines, columned text like this is a staple of magazine of all kind. Opening the article is a large title followed by a smaller sub heading announcing the coming article as well as providing some back info on the artist in question. A common convention of all magazines is to extract quotes from the article and use them to attract the reader’s attention by emboldening and enlarging these elements. Various pictures of the interviewed artist adorn the pages, fit in and around the columns. In some cases such as “Acoustic Magazine” a special column is reserved for a biography of the article’s author, in the case of my magazine; I have done so in order to place more importance on the value of this person to the magazine and therefore the reader. The various fonts and colours used are kept consistent with the rest of the magazine and there is a clear division between the questions of the interviewer and the answers of the interviewee. [438/624]

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The photographs of my magazine are mostly of males as this is a rock magazine, rock being a genre that is generally more synonymous with men rather than women. However some female artists have been featured in the magazine as evidenced by some of the article headings seen of the contents page. In addition, the cover image is that of a large group of mixed genders rather than a single artist; this helps the magazine to target a larger gender demographic and represent a wider variety of the rock genre and its fans. The photographs used in ‘The RG’ are exclusively of young people as they are more physically attractive and in vogue with the general population, some subheadings hint at older musicians being featured but the photos used in the contents page, double page spread and front cover are solely composed of youths. All of the models featured in this magazine are young, able bodied and British White. This is a convention of the genre for rock musicians to be young white and often with a distinctive dress style. Commonly most rock artists like most musicians do not have outstanding physical debilitations but thanks to the wide scope of the genre it is possible for such people to be involved with rock.

For example, the pop gene has a general requirement for high stage activity such as dancing which would prevent those with particular disabilities from playing. However, in rock there are fewer conventions and even those neither need nor be heeded so long as the music is correct. In rock it is one’s musical talent that matters most.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

My magazine would be distributed by a large-scale publishing company such as EMAP or IPC who distribute a myriad of titles aimed at numerous niche markets.

The Bauer Media Group publishes rival magazines to ‘The RG’ such as ‘Q’.

My magazine would simultaneous cover a variety of musical niche audiences thanks to the wide variety of sub genres in the rock genre and ‘The RGs’ support of indie music attracting an even further psychographic.

Who would be the audience for your media products?

Those who would buy my magazine are those of the younger generation ranging from 16 to 25 year olds with 30 being the absolute extreme as the music covered is composed mostly of young vogue bands and artists with a smattering of ‘old school’ artists such as the Rolling Stones who continue to remain active but are no longer within the public eye. They would be a decent mix of males and females although the ratio of men would be higher as they care more for the genre whereas women care more for the male artists themselves rather than the music.

My audience would use ‘The RG’ to satisfy their musical thirst by giving them interviews with performers to satisfy their want to know more about the artists which helps them to humanize and relate to the artists which in turn brings the audience closer to the people they admire and idolize. Reviews and specials on music to expand the audience’s knowledge and tell them what is good music and what is not. Furthermore the articles inside can simply serve as a pastime, where the reader simply sits down with something they like.

How did you attract/address your audience?

Audiences would be interested in my magazine because of the various ways in which it emulates popular magazines. The colour scheme on the cover is the red, black and white of the big names such as Q and NME but with blue as an addition to make it stand out more so than its big name competitors. The gender appeal of the cover image is varied with multiple artists of different sub-genres and genders presented. The presence of exclusives advertised on the cover attract those interested in the genre and performer covered by the article as they won’t be able to find that article elsewhere. My magazine featured monthly specials including top music picked by a professional musician, which allows the audience to find new tracks and bands to listen to and thus widen their knowledge; this is highly attractive to music fans. Additionally, ‘The RG’ heavily supports ‘indie’ bands and features work submitted by their readers each issue; this encourages those with small bands to read ‘The RG’ in order to obtain tips, see how other similar bands are faring and eventually submit their own music.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

I have learnt that there is a considerable gap between true magazine publishers and myself. This gap is both in skill and in resources; it seems that simply knowing what I intend on achieving is not enough to produce a authentic looking magazine even if that was the firmly predicted resulted on paper. Apparently there are arrays of subtle techniques that make the difference between professional and unprofessional results that can only be obtained through experience. I realized this by observing a sample of professional products and identifying all the techniques used in their production. While I could identify these techniques and have the knowledge to recreate them, it is not possible to emulate these results without experience.

I did however learn of a few new techniques including:

·      Shortcuts; as an IT student and computer user, I know of the massive difference the knowledge of shortcuts can make. They streamline work and provide a massive boost in speed and simplicity, allowing new techniques to be used thanks to commands with minor yet exceedingly helpful features. One of the most prominent of these being de-selection after selecting an object and choosing to apply transformations to an object. These are common operations that one simplified through shortcuts become far, far less hassling to do and thus all allowing these operations to be retried multiple times and thus give me more ability to tweak carefully before stopping due to frustration.

·      Spacing; having to carefully tweak minor text elements helped me realize their importance in the professionalism of a magazine. After all a magazine is most dependant on its text. I found that careful positioning of a word or letter can be vital and while the change may be subtle, one it has been applied to all text, then most of the magazine has been tweaked and this makes a massive difference.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

My preliminary work was naturally of a far more simple nature than its final edition. Whereas the preliminary had only three groups of cover lines, by the end there were a total of 15 cover lines grouped into five different blocks, this was to fill the large voids within the cover image. The masthead began fairly simply with a basic font and vector based dual underscore graphic but finished with a custom stylized font that melded in parts with the underscore and carefully altered spacing between words and letters to give maximum impact. With the addition of a cover image, every single element has had to be adjusted in order to accommodate for the most central aspect of a magazine cover. The cover lines were shifted and rearranged around in order to fill in the ‘dead space’ of the background and even the colour scheme required some mild tweaks in order to fit in better with the brightly coloured image. In reverse the cover image also had to be tweaked in order to better match it’s surrounding text and accommodate for the cover lines and masthead.

The changes to the contents page however were even more drastic. As before, the layout remained unchanged but a series a tweaks both major and minor completely transformed this page. The white background was abandoned for a softer blue that had made less of a stark difference between itself and the pictures. The images were altered in order to match with the colours of the contents page, a beige line stretched from each image and served as a background to the section headers. Each image was recoloured in order for in to blend with this streak of beige. The fonts were drastically altered in order to distinguish each section be it header article and sub header; each has its own font, size and effect applied in order to both individualize them all and present them with adequate precedence. In the same manner as the masthead, the header has been altered to more closely resemble the former.