Media Music Magazine Evaluation

Nigel Russell

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media

products?• My contents page isn’t like many I have seen in shops and on the internet.

Unfortunately, I did not have time to attend the different gigs like leeds, reading and download and take my own pictures to use instead of the logos. Although that I have used logos instead of pictures, I am really pleased with how this has turned out. It doesn’t overwhelm the readers with too many pictures and make the page seem too congested. Lots of contents pages to me are congested with pictures and make it harder to read what is in the magazine.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

• My magazine is purely based around rock music genre, with inspiration from magazines like Kerrang! And HAMMER, I chose to base it around the rock music genre as I listen to rock more than any other genre and have attended more rock concerts. After deciding to base my magazine around rock, my ideas were just able to roll straight onto the page. My magazine appeals to a variety of social groups as I have mentioned Bullet For My Valentine (A heavy metal band) and Reading and Leeds festival with a headliner like Eminem (A famous rapper). Although the title of my magazine is House of Rock, mentioning Reading and Leeds may appeal to other social groups to purchase my magazine. The Double page spread will probably only appeal to rock fans as it is about a new up and coming rock band.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? • For distribution, I would hope that the publishing company

Bauer Media will publish my magazine as they have published over 280 magazines across 15 countries including Zoo, Kerrang and Empire. These three magazines are all different magazine genres which is why I am hoping they will be more willing to publish a rock magazine. The majority of Bauer’s magazine have a lot of publicity and are known all around the world.

Who would be the audience for your media product? • My target audience is mainly aimed at the

teenage generation of today but also some of the older generation because of older bands like Iron Maiden. This is because my magazine cover mentions festivals like Reading, Leeds and Download which involve artists from different corners of the music industry like rap and electro, including Eminem, Chase and Status and Skrillex , and also rock and heavy metal including Slipknot, Iron Maiden and System Of A Down.

How did you attract/address your audience?

• To attract and address my audience I would place new events, bands and news in the middle of the cover as the main story and pictures from recent gigs to show the audience what’s been happening in the past month and what’s going to happen later on in the year or next year. The magazine will be released on a monthly basis to give suspense as to what will be in the next magazine. I will also, in each issue, will state 50 greatest rock bands, 20 greatest festivals, 10 biggest successes etc.

• I used different fonts to exploit the bigger and more interesting stories like 50 greatest rock bands is in a stencil font and black colour. It contrasts against the brighter background to attract more people as to what this story might be from a distance.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

• While I have been creating my magazine I have been able to touch up on the new Photoshop and refresh my skills to edit pictures. By using Photoshop I was able to merge several pictures together, change fonts, delete backgrounds and copy backgrounds from picture over to another.

• This magazine has also shown me how much can actually be created by using Microsoft Publisher.

• I also discovered the difference between walking around the college campus on an unorganised Photo shoot with an iPad and a planned, professional photo shoot with a DSLR camera.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full

product? • Comparing my music magazine and my college magazine I used different

equipment, locations, programme and crew. • The college magazine I simply walked around the college campus taking

pictures of buildings and staff. To take the picture I used my iPad because it was to hand.

• For the music magazine I attended gigs and took pictures of the gig, I used real music equipment (two different guitars) and two friends helped me with the photoshoot. I used a professional DLSR camera (Nikon D3100)