Evaluation Question 1

What ways does your media product use, develope or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I started by researching diferent music magazines and becoming familiar with what they look like and how they are set out. At first I was researching popular teenage magazines as the model I was going to use, Harry Painter had a 'Zac Efron' look about him. So i researched VIBE and Rollingstone magazines. I did a photoshoot with Harry, it went really well and I got some good starter shots but when I went to rearrange a second photo shoot I discovered that Harry was too unreliable. But I soon found three new models who were happy to model for me, three seventeen year old boys who are handsome and stylishy dressed this gave me the idea of photgraphing them as a band. I didn't want to do a pop, boy band I wanted them to be more indie and rock and roll something like 'The Artic Monkeys' or 'The Wombats'. By changing the theme of my magazine meant I had to re do all of my research. So I then went on to research magazines such as NME and Q as that was the genre of music that I wanted to use in my magazine. I then went on to study the pages in the magazines to get an idea of what they are like and how they are presented.

Once I had finished my music magazine research I began to edit and improve my photos that I had taken of my models in Photoshop. When I first started using Photoshop my work was quite weak as I had prior experience in using Photoshop and I didn't fully know how to use all the different tools provided. But the more and more I used the programme the greater my knowledge grew. When I became familiar with the programme I began to use tools such as the 'Burn Tool' 'Drop Shadow' 'Pen Tool' 'Text Wrapping' and many more.

Forms and Conventions

I believe that my music magazine follows the conventions of a real music magazine as I used fonts that I thought would produce a more professional look and make it look more like a music magaziine rather than just an average magazine. The magazines that I researched used mainly images and large text on their front cover, this is done to attract the public to pick it up and buy it for a read. A magazine needs to be eycathcing to stick out from the rest of the magazines on the shelf. I really wanted to mirror this effect as I think magazines are a lot more entertaining and interesting when presented in this way.

  For my music magazine I used a mixture of  NME and Q music magazines because they both follow the same gender that I am using and I like the layout of their magazines because they look extremely proffersional with a sharp finish but still remain to look cool and authentic. As I named my magazine Vmusic, my tittle layout is extremely similar to Qmusic but I think this works well. On my magazines front cover I used one large, main image and three smaller images to make it look like a realistic music magazine.

Masthead - Mise en Scene and Magazine Tittle

I named my magazine 'Vmusic' because I wanted my magazine to stick out from the rest of the magazines and look bold and out there! So I thought I could create a bold, excentric design with 'V' and just have 'music' in small print like this:

Vmusic

I think this is a good tittle as the V will attract people to come and look at the magazine and by having music next to it allows readers to autmoatically understand that its a music magazine.

  Q music helped me with this idea as they also only use one big letter as their magazine name. Before I researched more into Q music I wanted to make the V have a rough, shattered effect used in magazines like Kerrang, but after doing my tittle research I decided that the tittle has a greater effect when set out like Q music as I really like the crisp finish. I also feel that my masterhead is unique from the other desighns  had seen and I quite like the idea of my magazine being a bit different. The colours I used for my masterhead are conventional colours. I used a mainly used read and black in my tittle as they are bold, sharp colours. The position in which my masthead is in follows the conventions of other magazines.