1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Conventions in media can be separated into three main types: technical - such as camera shots, angles and techniques. Symbolic – what clothing is seen, the colours used and written and audio conventions such as the music played or noises heard (diegetic or non – diegetic). Conventions exist in order to attract the target audience to fulfil their needs.
The magazine I have produced is based around the genre of pop music, I used magazines such as Top of the Pops and Smash Hits to give me a guideline on what to include in order to attract my target audience. Smash Hits is a well-known pop music magazine and it features some of the best pop stars so I thought this would be a good example for me to collect some ideas from as their audience appeal obviously worked. Top of the Pops includes the colours and conventions that are also aimed at my target audience so I studied its conventions and included some of these in my final piece.
Analysing my connotations
The title of the magazine ‘MicroFone’ is a word that is associated with music, I have spelt it in a different way to make my magazine unique and to give the cover a bit of style. The mise-en-scene of the magazine is very relaxed, I have spaced out all the images so it doesn’t look too busy and the cover image is placed in the centre third. The costumes featured in my magazine are vintage and calm colours so they don’t stand out above the set colour scheme, they also help to attract my target audience as these would be clothes they would wear. The long shot on the front cover of ‘Lily’ is very powerful the attitude portrayed through her neutral but moody facial expression pulls the reader in and recently more and more music magazines for my targeted age group feature neutral or moody facial expressions, her stance is also very powerful the position of her legs wide apart gives the impression of power and authority to represent her promotion to a higher class in society which supports the page spread story.
The masthead on the cover is placed at the top and spread across the whole width of the page, this then attracts the readers eye if the masthead stands out and as it is placed at the top of the page it will be the first the reader looks at. The font for my masthead is simple but bold it’s a classic font that looks professional and clear I choose this font as I didn’t want the masthead to look messy or so the reader could read it as it would be the first thing to attract their eye. The written content in my magazine is most frequent on the page spread as I included questions and answers I haven’t included any specific jargon as I wanted my magazine to stay professional. The genre of my magazine is pop music and it focuses on featuring artists that are in the top 40 charts, I feel that my magazine shows this as it doesn’t have any dark colours or sharp shapes to represent either rock music or rave, it has soft fonts, colours and images to represent pop music as its very simple, relaxing and casual.
The contents page has several images to give the reader a taster of what the magazine includes, I have included a main image to represent the fashion section to even out the information as I didn’t want it all focused on the story of Lily Davies. I wasn’t able to include a regular’s box as my magazine was a first issue but I have included typical music magazine features such as posters, interviews, song lyrics and gig reviews. For my double page spread layout I have put the image one side of the page and the questions the other as I thought I could include a full image to then write pull quotes on and titles to explain the story. The half with the questions on also include pull quotes to interest the reader into reading the full story, I’ve also included a picture at the bottom of the question half to even it out.