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.

Question 2

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Question 3

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

When looking into organisations in which I felt were right to produce/ or distribute my magazine I struggled to find the right sort of company. With in my search for research on institutions I did find Hearst Magazines UK, I thought it was a good company with a variety of magazine in which were popular and well known, also my mixed gender target audience fitted in nicely as the magazine produced were from house keeping, to men's health. But it was mostly targeted at women and I did think that my magazine, although targeted at both genders, would find to be more understandable and attractive to women, so I felt the target audience gender range was spot on with this institution. But I felt there was a lack in the age range of my target audience as well as the genre of music.

So continuing on with my search I came across an America site called NAMM. The site clearly showed me that there was keen hunger for others to love music and to introduce music to young ages such as my young adult target audience and feed them the knowledge to make decisions and work hard to maybe achieve music talents. Now, I know that my magazine isn't a 'how to do' guide on becoming a famous singer but my morals of the magazine was still to inspire, and even looking at the logo for NAMM you can see they aim to inspire. NAMM's mission is to strengthen the music products industry and promote the pleasures and benefits of making music. I would like to think that my magazine would count as the product industry. Having an organisation that has such high levels of hope would mean that my magazine would fall into the success of it all.

But obviously, you also want an organisation in which you feel can be more relateable to your music choice and artists and chart music. Especially as my magazine is mainly targeted at the UK audience, NAMM would not connect well with that. But I thought the research and ideas from the organisation can develop and give me a better perspective of what I would like for my magazine.

Although in itself BBC Radio 1 is not a industry looking to produce and invest in music magazine, I would still like to hope that BBC Radio1 would like to be apart of my magazine and maybe in the future, develop to a partnership. Radio 1 is a huge influence over me and the creation of my music magazine, looking at the chart hits and the latest chart toppers and who's new and who's old etc. BBC Radio 1 is known for 'the new music' and that is exactly how I am trying to represent my music magazine, as being the music magazine that is up to date with all the latest and greatest on ' the new music'.

With a magazine you need to keep with in a set of rules and these are the regulation rules. While creating my magazine I keep in with the regulations rules by keeping to major rules in which I could of broken if unaware of the regulations. Such as, Harassment: Journalists must not engage in intimidation, harassment or persistent pursuit. They must not persist in questioning, telephoning, pursuing or photographing individuals. Editors must ensure these principles are observed by those working for them and to not use information from other sources around them.

When interviewing my featured artists I could of harassed them, by putting pressure on them for answering the question as well as a persisting with question as well as not allowing them there own privacy if asked a question they were not happy to answer. This also links in with the regulation rule of Harassment: Journalists must not engage in intimidation, harassment or persistent pursuit. They must not persist in questioning, telephoning, pursuing or photographing individuals. Editors must ensure these principles are observed by those working for them and to not use information from other sources around them.

With both privacy and harassment regulations I made sure that when questioning and photographing my models and featured artists that I had full permission from them as well as being aware of their own private life while interviewing and allowing a space of comfort and a space of feeling welcome and not too forward or too much for those who were photographed and interviewed. This was very important for me when I was producing and creating my music magazine.

Question 4

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Question 5

5. What elements of your text would attract the target audience?

Question 6

6. What have you learn about technologies from the process of making this product?

Question 7

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