What I Learnt from Other Students Work

Other Students Work

In class we evaluated and scrutinized other pupils work and entered our findings into a table showing what we liked and disliked about their work.

 

Media Studies Research Group- Facebook

Pop is clearly the most popular music genre which makes me feel confident that I have picked a popular genre in choosing teen pop. Although 1 person has chosen Indie, I feel that some indie types of music would probably mix into the genre of pop as well so am still happy with my decision. I am now aware that I must focus mainly on "pop stars" over different musicians.

This was an interesting question to ask and I am pleased to see that no-one said that they never buy/read a magazine. The most chosen answer was if the magazine contained an important or a big story. This has helped me to ensure that my main story is big and bold, making it appear important and exciting for the audience.

Reader Profile

Here is a profile for my ideal reader. It includes their age and their interests that I feel would benefit from my magazine and that I would like to pitch my product towards. As I fit within my own target audience age range, I can justify the likes/interests/activities that I have included as I, myself enjoy doing these things and have based the ideal reader on some of my own interests.

Institution Research

I have been researching into the brands and background of some big instituions in the media industry to see which institution would be most appropriate to produce my magazine. Here is my research:

I believe that IPC Media would be the most suited institution for my magazine. As my magazine is teen pop related, I need an institution that has knowledge of the target audience and can connect with their tastes and preferences. I chose IPC Media  because they already have a brand on the market called Teen Now. Although this magazine is targetted at my audience, it isn't a music magazine in function and is more of a gossip magazine with features of music. However, I want my product to be the opposite and feel that this institution has room on the market to publish my product that deals with the music tastes of teens as well as other teenage topics. The company is very successful with its other brands such as NME (another music magazine) which gives me the confidence that if I were to pitch my magazine to IPC, they would have the knowledge of how to successfully sell a music magazine.

On the other hand, Bauer Media have great brands in the music industry although no music magazine and was a possibility for me. As Bauer own many popular radio stations such as Smash Hits and other popular stations, their knowledge of music is key. Also, their magazine brands include Closer and Heat, two very popular gossip magazines. I intend on featuring gossip in my own product so their knowledge on this front could be key. However, they don't have any experience in selling music magazines and especially not teen magazines that require so many different things to attract an audience and overall, I feel a lot less confident with this institution than I do with IPC Media.

Photography Lesson

We used one Media lesson to focus on photographic techniques that we could apply to our own photography when we come to do it. We learnt the importance of the different techniques which is shown in my video. For example, having an eyeline match on the front cover of a magazine immediately draws the reader in as they feel that the model/figure is looking at them directly. After this lesson, I feel that I have gained knowledge on what is important in creating a quality image when photographing a model or a subject and intend to apply these techniques to my own work when the time comes.

Organizing Photos

In addition to my front cover photo, I have also found that after researching and analyzing different teen pop magazine contents pages, most contain a variety of other images to coincide with the other stories.

Here, you can see that I am starting to ask a few friends to get involved with my project via Facebook.

As you can probably see from the casual, friendly language used in my message, I have decided to ask my friends to get involved in helping me create the look that I want for my magazine. I have decided to choose close friends because I know that I can trust them to be reliable and cooperative with me.

Here, I have asked another friend, who has a camera of industry standard if she is willing to lend me her camera for these photos. As you can see, she has agreed and we are now just waiting on confirmation dates to continue the process.

Kevin Ho Photography

Kevin Ho is a friend of mine who works professionally as a nightclub photographer. I asked him to help out with use of his industry standard camera to take some photos of myself as a model for the front cover. I used social media, Facebook to contact him.

As you can see, Kevin agreed to help and we have been corresponding via Facebook to organise meeting and taking the photos. Once a RECCE has been completed I will post that too, featuring details of the photoshoot.

DPS Flat Plan & Rationale

This is my final flat plan and rationale for my double page spread. Completing these has given me a greater idea of how I want my product to look and has secured some ideas that I had previously. I will have these flat plans with me when creating my final product to refer back to for ideas and help.

Contents Page Flat Plan & Rationale

Inspirational Texts

Here I have shown some texts that have been inspiring me so far through the process of making my magazine. These magazines are targeted at my target audience and all cover music as their main feature.

These magazines have been successfully produced for many years and have large audience ratings. All three reach out to a similar age range that I have in mind, from 11-16, very similar to my 12-17 year olds. I chose these magazines as inspirational as they all capture a "pop" sense of house style with bold colours and fonts to capture the young audience's attention. The conventions that all three magazines use are conventions that I would use too in my magazine and from previous deconstructions, these conventions are what makes the magazine appealing to its demographic audience. Although the design of the magazine changes each week, the house style remains and this has obviously proved popular with the readers as they continue to purchase the product. I know from personal experience of reading these magazines, how important it is to have fun whilst reading them and for them not to be too serious as from a personal point of view, I chose to read them for a bit of light relief. These magazines continuously do this and I feel this is something that can help me when creating my product.

Front Cover Flat Plan & Rationale

Here is the first flat plan and rationale for my front cover. This has been created so that I have an initial idea to resort back to when creating my final product, and allows my ideas to be seen on paper, rather than just in my head. From this, my ideas can grow which means that my final product may not be identical to this flat plan you see now.

Photography

I am aware that I will need to take photos for my front cover to attract an audience. Here is evidence that at the beginning of September I had already started to take this into consideration. I am waiting for a response as to when we can begin shooting.

Adrian is a professional photographer whom I have met through my theatre experience. He is a photographer that I can trust to help me work the camera as he is going to be my superviser whilst shooting. He has agreed to help me gain experience in working in front of and behind the camera.

Poses I Like

As I am doing a teen pop magazine, I think that the style of pose I will be using is "super smiler".

Personally, as a young teenage girl, I am most attracted to a magazine if I see someone with a beaming smile as it makes you too smile and want to buy the magazine.

I googled some images of different styles of magazines to scrutinize the poses the figures use on the front of them and these were my favourite:

I like this images because the outfit chosen is sexy yet not in an overt way. This would therefore be appropriate for my audience. Also, the smile supports this sexy and confident look that I think teenage girls would aspire to have.

Here, the figure's smile helps her to achieve a look of innocence. This connotation again is relevant to my target audience as they are only young and would find the figure to be cute and friendly. This might encourage them to buy the magazine if they feel the figure has young, childlike qualities like them.

This figure connotes a sense of care free happiness, as if every day is a party. Young teenage girls love to party this smile would be the smile of teenage girls dancing the night away. By using a mid shot, the audience are shown that you don't have to be "sexily dressed" to feel confident and have a good time. Here, the model is dressed quite casually, which again supports my connotation of a care free life.

Poses Presentation

Poses 

Here is a short presentation on the different poses that models on the front cover of magazines use. Doing research into this will ultimately help me by helping me decide which pose I choose to use for my front cover as each pose can influence the audience type as you will see here:

  

Videos

Type of Music featured in my magazine

Stooshe

This music is upbeat and younger teenagers would find this song to be fun. The artistes dress sense is quirky and individual which I believe the target audience would find interesting and might make them want to buy the magazine as they feel that they too can be individual like the band.

Olly Murs

My magazine would most definitely include an artist such as Olly Murs as the young girl audience would find him attractive and be inclined to buy the magazine if they believed a man such as Olly would be in the magazine. The music again, is, for me, catagorised as fun and is upbeat. You can dance along to both of these songs and ideal music choices for teenage girls who like a pop music genre.

Inspirational Magazines

I googled images of teen pop magazines to get ideas for what kind of layout/style I might like to go for with my own magazine. Here are some images I found interesting/useful.

I chose this image as I feel that the colour palette is ideal for my target audience of teenage girls. The front cover uses a well-known celebrity who uses a "super smiler" pose has connotations of friendliness and would influence the young audience to want to buy the magazine.

I chose this front cover because of the busy look of the overall front cover. This magazine uses bright colourd which contrast. However, I don't like the chosen colour palette as much as the other front cover. Although this magazine isn't just strictly music related, the image gives me ideas of what I could possibly include in my own. As previously mentioned, I like the "busy" look to this magazine which is something I might consider when creating my own magazine.   

Audience Research- Intro to Media Booklet

In lesson, we have been looking at how to specifically target your audience (Demographic Profile). I am now aware that a lot of research must go into finding out different things about the audience such as, age, gender, socio-economic group, sexcual orientation and consumption history. This is the page that I have been learning from and the different ways that a media text will research into it's audience and the importance of doing so.

Madonna Mauls Eminem's Critics

I have answered the questions on the Madonna Mauls Eminem's Critics article featured in the workbook. 

Below is the article and the questions to be answered:

Below are my answers.

8) Dear Editor,

I completely agree with Madonna and her supporting artists in claiming that Eminem deserves to be at this years’s Grammy Awards.. Jimmy Webb’s critique that the artist will “devalue the ceremony’s moral credibility”is preposterous. The Grammy awards were created to recognise and award achievements in the music industry, and Eminem’s instant popularity and record sale success are just as deserving of an award as any other artist is. Eminem inverts the traditional musician and challenges and stretches the boundaries that a musician can in his work, proving to be a brave performer. This bravery has clearly paid off, being nominated for three Grammys: album of the year, best rap album and best solo rap performance. The music industry has moved on a substantial amount, with new styles coming into the public eye. I believe that as “old school” artists such as Madonna and Elton John are supporting this new movement in the industry, it shows that all kinds of people are accepting the new music style and therefore feel everyone else should too. Whether or not you “like” the music that Eminem produces is another matter, but to reject him of three awards that he quite clearly deserves is not acceptable. I would be very appreciative if you could pass on this short message to the songwriter, Jimmy Webb, as I feel he needs to be aware that he is fighting a losing battle.

Kind Regards

Lauren.

In conclusion, I feel that I learnt how the audience you are reaching out to effects the way that you write. For example, the news article here, due to the language, structuring etc would be aimed at older people, possibly with an interest in the music industry. Due to the target audience, you must use language and literary devices that are appropriate for that audience to appeal to them.

AS Proposal Table

Here is my final proposal table that I have created before I start creating my product. This table is slightly more detailed than my original proposal table as I have had time to think certain elements over thoroughly. This will be used when making my product as these things listed need to be kept in mind.  

Potential Problems with My Coursework

I created this table to establish any potential problems that I may come across with my coursework. In the second column, I have highlighted how I will deal with the problem should I come across them. I have done this so that I am prepared for any obstacles that I may come across during my production and can easily overcome them with this planning.

Proposal Sheet

Proposal Form

Describe your idea for the brief: I aim to create a teen pop magazine that is bright and colourful to appeal to its target audience.

Genre/ sub genre: list similar texts which have inspired your thoughts I googled example of “teen pop” magazines and came across texts such as, “I <3 Pop Music” Magazine which inspired my idea to create a teen pop magazine as I feel I could be most creative with that genre.

Target audience: gender/ age/ characteristics/ behaviour My target audience will be for females aged between 12-17years old who are girly, young at heart and enjoy reading and seeing popular chart musicians.

Major conventions I will use I will use a strong main sell- line to attrack readers attention as well as a large main image of a “famous singer” that the audience would be inclined to buy the magazine for. I will also use sell-lines and sub headings.

Conventions I may subvert/ change/ not use I may change the text that I use for my sub-headings and sell-lines and may try to incorporate enigma codes into the magazine. I may also change the colour palette and main image.

Original images: what/ where/ what I will organise a photoshoot of a “pop star” (me) preferably in a studio (if possible) where bright lights and a white back drop can be used. I intend to use the “super smiler” pose.

Potential difficulties/ Plan B: As I intend to use myself as my model, it may be difficult to direct myself so I may have to use different models to ensure I get the perfect image for my magazine.

DPS Deconstruction #3

Here is my final deconstruction of a double page spread on a muic magazine featuring Dizzee Rascal, a famous urban artist.

This double page spread uses bright colours to attract's it audience immediately. The main image uses bright colours in the model's clothing that supports the bright colours of the mise en scene of the graffiti wall and bright green beer bottles. I think that the use of bright colours is vital, especially as my magazine is going to take on such a colourful house style but in particular, the double page spread needs to be bright and colourful enough to attract my young audience and make them feel comfortable with the text. Therefore, I will definitely be using the bright colour used in this dps. 

The language used in the headline reflects the mise en scene and is a play on the phrase "from RAGS to riches". By choosing this pun, the writer makes the article relatable to its audience by using a well known phrase, but also establishes an identity for the article as "tags" have connotations of street crime (graffiti) and an urban lifestyle. This is reflected in the mise en scene of the two pages as the page uses a graffiti wall as a background and establishes a "street" location for the article.  The language used is informal and, naturally colloquialisms such as "keeping it real" feature as Dizzee uses his own natural flow of speech when being interviewed. Also, from the look on the models photo, connotations of being anxious and secretive allude to what I previously mentioned about the article having connotations of street crime.  As the headline uses such large font and a natural font style, this suggests that it was written by someone such as the figure to make the page relatable for it's audience. The large font makes the title stand out and attracts this audience whilst giving the reader an insight into the content of the article. I will use this technique in my own product to entice my audience by perhaps incorporating a pun in my title to keep the dps exciting for my audience and also use a large font to attract the audience.

Four short columns are used in this dps which only takes up half of the page space, indicating that the article is image led rather than text led. The copy used regular copy font and doesn't appear overwhelming for the audience, which is something that I need to include in my product as my audience are younger and would, from research, prefer a double page spread that is image led over text led. 

DPS Deconstruction with table

I have been deconstructing a double page spread used in NME magazine. I decided to deconstruct this page as it was featured in a music magazine and used celebrity images which is something I look to create too. I have commented in my table on the features that I like and will take inspiration from, but also thigns the article doesn't feature that I hope to include in my double page spread.

Double Page Deconstruction #1

Here is my first, basic deconstruction of a double page spread taken from The Crack magazine. As my knowledge of what a double page spread grows, I will add further information onto my later deconstructions in later posts.

Deconstruction with table

Here is a detailed breakdown of the different codes that create a contents page. The table below shows this and the effect that these codes have on the audience:

How I'd apply these to my own product?

Masthead: The insertion of the front cover image cleverly engages the contents page to the front cover keeping everything connected. This is something that I would consider using in my magazine as from my research I can see that is a regular feature of some teen pop magazines. The font style too is something that I would definitely want to use in my magazine as I feel it connects with the target audience immediately as it connotes a young girl's handrwriting, making the text realistic. The colour palette chosen for the title of the page is within the colours that I intended to use anyway as they are bright and stereotypically girly and appropriate for the audience. As the title spreads across the top of the page, this ensures that the page is established as a contents page and I will use this in my own product to make sure everything is clear.
Necessary Info: The necessary information is positioned quite small and out of the way of the main information on the contents page. I will use this technique in my own product as they information is essential so must be included, yet I don't want this information to distract from my other elements so I will keep them quite small and positioned in a way that compliments the other conventions.
Text: I like that the text is split into sections and this has given me great inspiration for my own contents page. However, I feel that there is quite a lot of text on this page and I may want to make my page more image led than text led.
Font: I will definitely be taking inspiration from the font used on this contents page as I feel the font is relatable for the target audience and would attract the audience as it looks as if the magazine was "made by girls, for girls" which would indicate that the entirity of the magazine would be relatable for the target audience. I also like how the use of bold font contrasts against the background of the page to make certain things stand out more than others and this is something that I hope to apply to my contents page.
Images: As previously mentioned, included an image of the front cover and elaborating upon its contents might be something that I look to do as I feel it helps explain things featured on the front cover in greater detail for the audience. Also, something that I will be using from this magazine is the idea of including images that are related to the article to support the article and visualise it for the audience as I feel this would hook the target audience if it had these images included. I will include this in my own product.
Composition: I had initially intended to create a contents page that is very crowded. Although this is still an idea, I found it interesting to see this as quite a structureed page which is clear and easily readable. I am going to try and mix the both to create a page that appears cluttered yet has some structure so it can be easily read.
Linguistic Features: I will be using some examples of the language used on this contents page such as abbreviations of words to make the page more exciting and topical for the audience as I want to mirror as best as I can the language in which teenage girls frequently use.
Colour: I will definitely be using colours simialr to those in this contents page as they are bright and stereotypically girly including pinks and yellows etc. I think that these colours would attract my target audience and I will be taking inspiration from these colours when creating my own work.

Deconstruction #3

Here is another deconstruction that highlights different elements of a contents page. 

This magazine is much easier to read and appreciate and I would, ergo, intend of creating a contents page more similar to this than the other two deconstructions.

Here you can see my deconstruction of  the contents page of teen pop magazine, "We <3 Pop". After analysing different examples of contents pages, I have decided that this composition is the most appropriate to the overall look that I would like to create when designing my own product. The uses of images on the page keeps the young audience's attention and keep the page captivating for the audience. Also, I feel that by using images related to the text, this gives the audience an indication of what the other sell-lines are focused on. The main image use on the page is a mid shot of the models featured on the front cover of the magazine. By using the same or slightly different image as the front cover, this brings the reader's attention to the main story of the magazine that would encourage them to buy the magazine. The actual "contents" section of the page is clearly visible as the bold font and language, "Inside This Month" draws the reader to the page numbers and supporting sell-line. I find the title of the page an interesting variation of the masthead of the actual magazine and, as stated in my deconstruction, the enigma code "We Love This" is used to insight a similar feeling or generate a positive response from the reader.  

In addition, I find the personalised message from the editor a great device to hook the audience into buying the magazine continuously as it truly speaks to the reader, one to one.   This hooking device connotes a sense of friendly conversation, spoken to the reader in their  colloquial tone so that it is relatable and easily understandable. 

The use of the free gifts banner being placed again on the contents page emphasises its importance in the magazine and reminds it's audience about what they can gain for themselves by purchasing the magazine. This is something that I will definitely look into when designing my own page, as well as the placing of the website address linked to the magazine placed at the bottom of the frame; it can be seen but isn't the most important bit of information so doesn't distract from the other elements.

Overall, I prefer this composition to the others that I have looked at as the page is colourful, busy (not in an overwhelming sense!) and has the perfect balance between being image driven and text driven. My favourite part is the whole look- in the way that the frame connotes a sense of chaos yet due to placing etc, everything is organised and easily readable. I will use this layout as the main inspiration when designing my own contents page.