Andrew Harrisons A2 Media Blog D-Block: May 2009

My Evaluation has got images on it, but have not been able to be uploaded onto the blog yet, i will upload the text, until i can find out how to get the images on here.

Evaluation

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

For My Magazine I have chosen to make a niche magazine, called acid. Through examining and researching into magazine that are predominately mainstream, I have challenged generic features of them by creating my product.
The first area of my magazine I researched into, to help me with producing my own work was the masthead. Firstly I looked at several magazine covers, these which would influence my project
These where:
(4 Photo's)
From here I researched into the titles of magazines and their meaning, for example The title of the magazine “Q” is significant, as the letter “Q” has the same sound as the piece of musical terminology “Cue”, which in the sense music could mean cueing up a record, getting the record ready to play.
This title may also be relevant to the genre of music featured, which is generally Indie and older bands, a mixture of new upcoming bands which will be successful, and looking at those who are now successful but where once in a similar position to those up comers, due to this vast array of times regarding music lots of artists will probably be featured in the magazine, and therefore in relation to the Masthead, lots of these artists are Cued up.
Therefore from here I chose “Acid” to be my title, due to its connotations and meanings, these being Acid has a drug connotation to the narcotic substance LSD, a psychedelic drug which is heavily associated with the time period (1960's where these genre's emerged and still influence today) , and due to the genre's of music which feature strange irregular sounds and timings, this association would seem appropriate, and the drug connotation give a very underground feel hopefully establishing the magazine as niche.
Acid (in its literal form) also Distorts metals (Metal a genre of music too which can be combined with genre's featured i.e. acid metal), which also reflects how the new effects of the time period (such as distortion, and other distorting affects) where featured for the first time in this genre of music which still influences today.
After selecting my title and making it on Photoshop, the next stage was to look into cover images, and I challenged this by using my favourite elements found in the four magazine covers above, and applying rules which make a suitable magazine front cover image.
These rules where to be focused and unblurred, to not have too much background, to look comfortable and natural, to have to missing body parts and not to have a busy background.
Taking the picture of Matt Bellamy from Kerrang, I liked the pose and the fact his instrument was on the picture, but in contrast, I wanted to challenge this by using the style of photo for the image of Jarvis Cocker on “The Word”.
(2 Photo's)
I now took this image, which I have mediated to be appropriate.
(1 photo)
For the text I viewed several fonts on the website dafont.cpom
I looked at the fonts on the site, but due to difficulty importing the fonts and the website not featuring sufficient fonts which have a retro 60's/70's look I decided to use the font which is already on Quark.
The font I chose was BellBottom.Laser
excluding this one font I chose to list page numbers on the pictures featured on the contents page, all the other fonts used for the text where in Arial a sans Serif font.
This was for the contents page/double page spread, and by looking at fonts used in magazine contents such as “Metal Hammer”, and how they where appropriate to the genre, I thought that I would do the same, but for a rock/ psychedelic magazine
Here is an image of the contents page from “Metal Hammer”
(2 Photo's)
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The Images Used, Bands Chosen To feature, and article content Relies heavily on stereotypes and the way stereotypes are represented for them to recognised.
I have used a few stereotypes to help target the niche audience, as stereotypes are even more so important in niche magazines.
I have used two stereotypes for the audience, one being a middle aged progressive rock fan, who probably was in a youth subculture such as being a “Hippie” when he (or she, more likely he though) was younger, or another more modern association to the genre’s of music and the associations of it, being that of the “Stoner” a younger audience who would be associated with cannabis use, even if in some cases isn’t to do with it.
The features of this stereotype would be laid back, who would listen to the genres of music featured in the magazine and find interest in the hedonistic lifestyle of rock stars of this time period.
This links with mediation as the images I have used have been mediated to fit this preferred reading, for example the image used on my front cover is of someone who fits the age group of the first stereotype mentioned, and because of his status in the image (e.g. presenting the 50 best solo’s ever) the character also acts as either a archetype or a ideal self for the reader. The image has been mediated only to fit into being a good front cover image, e.g. background, clarity, lighting etc.
Other images featured in the contents page etc, also fall into the second stereotype.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
When looking at what type of company would distribute my magazine, I think due to the size of audience the magazine targets, the company would be an independent producer (unlike conglomerates such as IPC or Bauer, but this would not limit the circulation of the magazine.
When again looking at stereotypes of the readers, Internet access is associated with them, so I think that the magazine would be both promoted and distributed from the internet, this would allow a much larger circulation and ease of access (as the magazine is a niche, it may be hard to obtain in most newsagents).
The initial promotion would not be online though, as if a small independent media company are producing the magazine then it would be very difficult for them to afford large online advertising as it can be very expensive, I think using as many means of promotion would be the best way to set up advertising the magazine, and whilst doing so, heavily endorsing the magazine’s website would be very advantageous.

Who would be the audience for your media product?
The Target audience of my product would be predominately older, male audience. 35-65, but also be able to feature bands which could appeal to a younger audience as sub-genre's have emerged such as Neo-psychadelia which seems to be popular amongst younger people, which could also open the audience to people of all ages.
The audience would statistically look somewhat like this:
Male: 79% Female: 21%
Average Age: 35 (but only due to most readers being in the 45-65 range, and having a cult following of people at much younger ages, e.g. teens and university students)
Working: 75% Studying:25%
• Spend under £100 a year on clothing
• Over £500 On audio equipment per year
• Would not be followers of newer films, and would rarely if ever go to the cinema, they would probably spend about £50 a year on DVD’s which would have a cult following.
• 95% of the readers would have internet access and younger readers would be frequent users, older readers would be more likely to just use the internet for information they want quickly and not do much “surfing”.
• Pretty much no older readers would ever play any console or computer games, well over half of younger readers would be quite frequent players.
• The Type of people who would read “Acid” would agree that…
“Music in the charts is poor, mass produced rubbish” – 85%
“Designer clothing shows you are self obsessed” – 68%
“It would be worth paying over £100 to see a band they really liked” – 72%

How did you attract/address your audience?
The mode of address I have chosen is teacher to pupil, examples of this would be:
(1 Photo)
This is because the magazine is telling you what the 50 best solo’s are, and therefore informing the viewer of what they should listen to.
Another example of where I have used teacher to pupil is on the contents page where is says:
(1 Photo)
Again this is information, and telling you what is and isn’t good.
Again with the teacher to pupil mode of address, this is also enforced with having a section for the fans, allowing them their own set space where they can talk, similar to a teacher asking if there are any questions in a lesson.
(1 Photo)
Also with this fans section mentioned in the contents page there is also a juxtaposed image to show one of the pictures of the fans section, this tells the readers (in this case younger readers) what they are meant to look like.
(1 Photo)
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
When making my product I have also learned many skills which could be used in other areas.
The first technology I used was the blog system, where I learned how to a blog, upload my work/pictures/video’s onto the blog, and also follow other people’s so we could compare work, which helped me in my production.
Photoshop was the second piece of software I used, and was crucial to the production of my product, this allowed me to put my front cover together the first time in the draft, and then follow that up by having the draft saved and being able to make my actual product from the draft.
Photoshop also enabled me to edit photographs, so I could remove backgrounds so the picture was more suitable, e.g. front cover image, and it also allowed any problems with the picture to be removed, e.g. if there was any undesired logo’s on t shirts, lighting reflecting etc. I used a majority of the tools, I found the most useful tool I found when editing was the magic wand tool, which I used to separate my characters from the backgrounds, which allowed me to create not only my own backgrounds, but remove the character in the image to be put on another background, or a transparent background.
I felt that the strengths of using adobe Photoshop where
• It is very accurate and precise in the sense that anything can be zoomed up even if it is a lower resolution picture.
• It has a vast array of features which allow photo’s to be smoothly edited, and multiple filters which can be used to modify an image as much as can possibly be done on any software.
The weaknesses or problems I encountered with Photoshop where:
• Despite having the layer system allows specific things to be edited, I found it quite confusing, and sometimes possible to have two items on the same layer, which made moving one of the items very difficult.
• The magic wand or lasso tool can be remarkably hard to use if the background is similar to the subject, and in some cases can be frustrating if someone has cut around something very carefully and then the tool slips they would have to start again.
The last piece of software I used was Quark Express, this piece of software was used for my double page spread and contents page, and in this I used all of the standard tools to make both of the pieces of work.
The strengths of quark where:
• It is much more simple to use than Photoshop with making the actual product, e.g. making picture and juxtaposing text boxes was a very quick and easy task.
• The optional boarders, margins and measurements where very accurate, and allowed a very precise and accurate layout.
The weaknesses of Quark where:
• The layout was slightly confusing, and a lot of shortcuts did not follow the conventional straight forward scheme used by windows.
• Exporting the files to be a jpeg format was ok once I had learned how to do so, but for new users this would have taken a lot of time to work out how to do.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Since starting on the preliminary task, I feel I have learnt how to properly use the software needed to produce my product, I feel that initially I was unsure with some procedures I carried out, but through making the prelim task, and then a draft magazine afterwards I was able to learn how to properly use all aspects of Adobe Photoshop and Quark.
Not only did I find that my knowledge improved from making a draft, but I also feel that drafting allowed me to experiment and helped me into finding what would look good when it came to making my product, e.g. for my draft the person was not looking at the camera, but the picture was very good, so when I came to make my real product, I copied some elements of the draft, but remembered to ask the person in the photo to look at the camera.
Feedback from others was also very helpful, getting feedback from the draft allowed me to know where to improve when it came to making my own product, although it would have been more helpful if the feedback I got would have been posted onto the blog I used, instead of just asking people to look at my work.