Question 1

NAME: LUCY GOSLING
TUTOR: 12DT
CANDIDATE NUMBER: 7128

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

The conventions of my genre, which is chart music/ modern music of today, are quite hard to really find and there are not many real life products out there that are specifically directed to music that is featured in the charts, charts such as the UK TOP40 charts. Although in my research I looked into many features of different genres giving me a basic idea of what I need to do and then what I needed to create myself for my own original genre.
The Key conventions of Chart Music Magazine would be the artists features on either the cover or the context inside. This clearly shows the reader what kind of music they are getting, as my genre is very vague with the concept of a specific music genre as many music types are included in the charts this could mean that my magazine is able to be targeted at anyone. But I have included the featured artists on my front cover to make it clear to readers, the artists are popular and well-known to be chart toppers. Another key convention would be the interview section, every magazine that is trying to give the latest on the newest chart topper needs to include an interview with that artist to get the latest gossip and highlights of their success. Learning this I clearly include a number of interviews in my magazine, but include an interview with the newest band and their new single that has taken the charts by storm!  Another convention would be the idea of having a variety of different texts to keep the readers intrigued and also include texts that may be recognisable when seen else where, doing this almost mentally promotes my magazine continuously. You can see in my images I kept the writing/ informative text simple to understand and have the ability to add effects such as bold and colouring to make a certain word stand out to the reader, catching their attention and focus.

I felt keeping to the conventions of the genre was important because my magazine relied heavily on the understand of the genre and the understanding of it being based around the modern music of today and the chart toppers. So keeping to the conventions meant the easy the readers would be able to grasp that.

Although, this doesn't mean that I haven't challenged the conventions of the genre and added my own 'twist' to the genre.

My main twist that I have created for my magazine would be the featured main image on the front.
On my front image I have kept with the theme of music magazines including a close up facial image of their most featured artist/singer/band of the magazine, and so for my magazine this is the main singer of the band Passion In America. To create my own touch on the genre I decided to delete the colouring and put the image in black and white. Then doing so I experimented on Photo Shop and soon came up with the idea of highlighting her eyes and mouth, creating this intense image that is simple but effective. The colour highlighting her mouth and her eyes create a sense of a story, sense of importance of why these features have been shown so bright. The magazine is Visual, so connects with the eyes and text is created with words that come from our mouths, therefore the connection with the mouth. A lot can be interpreted from this image and I like that it is not a simple 'Oh look that's nice' image, it is a 'Oh wow, look that's really cool' kind of image. This allows me to put my own personality and stamp on my magazine but still highly keeping with the key conventions and developing them by fitting them to the style of my magazine and my target audience of being a young generation age group.