Question 1

Emily Jones

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

When I was creating my magazine I mainly stuck to the conventions of real media products, for the from cover I used the rule of thirds where I put more cover-lines on the left hand side due to knowing that many magazines do this because when the magazine is placed on the shelf in the shop it shows the left side of the magazine, they put a lot of colourful interesting cover-lines to attract the audience into wanting to pick up the magazine. When taking the photo of the artist, I made sure that the artist gave direct address to the camera so it makes the audience feel connected with the artist which most magazines do because they believe that the audience should feel that connection with the person on the front cover. I used a masthead which was like a banner that took over the top of the magazine, it is large and bold to make sure it stands out to the audience. Another typical convention that many magazines use, the artist/model is usually in the middle of the magazine to show the importance of the artist/ band in this week’s magazine, with my magazine I put the image of Gabby in the middle of the front cover, with the cover lines etc around her to show she is important in this weeks magazine like many popular professional magazines do. Also I did the most conventional part of a magazine, the barcode, the date, issue number and price is on the corner of the magazine, usually at the bottom right corner, which I have put at the bottom right corner on my front cover, it is to show the audience the information they need about this magazine, they want to know that it is the up to date magazine that they wish to buy, the price which is always needed on anything to show the audience how much the magazine is. I don’t think with the front cover I did anything challenging or developed anything to the conventions of real media product.

For my content page I made a black rectangle shape to put the sub-headings/grouping titles of my pages like for example: bands, news etc. like many other magazines do to help out the audience when trying to find something in the magazine that they are looking for, it also gives a preview of what going to be in the magazine. I had two images on the right side to give a preview of what would be in the magazine, like some other real media products; they tend to have images on the content page to make the page more interesting and again the idea of giving a preview to the audience. I have again put the date at the top of the page so there is a link between the front cover date and the content page date to make sure they are the same date. Another conventional part is having the title of the magazine in the content page to show its importance and show its their content page which I did in my content page also having a sub heading “content” to show it is the content page, to show it is the content page. I don’t feel like I did anything again in this that was challenging or developing the conventions of real media products again like my front cover.

In my double page spread I did actually see a development, usually in double page spreads there is one page took up of the artist/band’s photo, they tend to be usually doing something to link to the article of the magazine, in mine Wilson, my friend who is modelling as a artist, is not doing anything really, he is just facing the camera, we cannot see if he is giving direct address due to the fact his sunglasses are too dark to see if he is looking at us or is not, also the text is put around him, it isn’t on a separate page also the background is just black there is no props or background its just black, this shows that in some ways I have developed forms of the conventions of real media products. I did put some conventional things into the double page spread like a heading and a sub heading, quotations to give the audience a taste of what’s said in the interview and also the credits, saying who took the photographs and who did the interview. So for my double page spread I did develop forms of the conventions of real media products but not by much.

In conclusion of this question, I feel I haven’t really challenged but I have slightly developed the conventions of real media products, mainly in the double page spread, but in the front cover and content page I didn’t want to really develop or challenge the conventions of real media products because I wanted the audience to feel comfortable with the front cover and the content page due to them being the two main front pages where the audience is going to look at.