Evaluation Activity 1

1) The first part of the question that I will evaluate and compare to a music magazine will be the masthead. This is my masthead of my music magazine it looks just like a real music magazines masthead because of the colours used. I have only used 3 colours for it, also up the left hand side of the masthead I have written soundboard.com going up vertically, this is very typical of some music magazines even if it may not be in the masthead it will still appear in the magazine as such. This is a real media text masthead as you may know. I think mine relates to this very well because the look very similar and I didn’t even base mine on this style of magazine. So this is a very typical music masthead and I think mine looks very similar to this one because of what I did with mine.

2) This is my pull quote of my double page spread. I think It looks very like similar to a real media text’s pull quote as its quite simple and looks just how it should. My one fits in very nicely with my style of magazine so that’s why I think it works very well. Whereas this is a real media texts Pull quote and this one has the same sort of style as mine. It has all capital letters and a very straight sans serif font to make it look bold and formal. It has a complete box around the outside of the text and looks very similar to mine. This is why I think my media product looks very similar to a real music magazine. Because I have looked at many real media texts and taken a lot of ideas from them and put them into my own media products.

3) This is my double page spread main picture, and for this picture I wanted to have someone doing something different than just standing in front of a white wall so I wanted to have a different mise-en-scene for my picture. So I decided to take a bird’s eye view picture of someone sitting down in a studio pretending to do something with the music. So it actually looked like he was doing something in the picture. Whereas in my other pictures I’ve taken pictures of people looking right at me or not doing anything. So I wanted to make this look like a real media text because in a lot of real magazines they have a lot of pictures of people actually doing something instead of just standing there looking into the camera. Take this picture for example, which was taken from a real media text. This is from DJ mag and in this picture they actually showed some people doing something. These two djs are live on a set and they have taken this picture and put it into a real media text. So this is where I think my media product was boosted because I had a good array of mise-en-scene images and pictures. I didn’t just have people standing there looked towards me in the camera.

4) The music genre for my magazine was quite obviously a dj magazine. Where it would encounter a lot of images and text that would all be focused on electronic music and the world around Djing. I think my media product suggests this very well because the use of the language that I used in the magazine. Very much suggests that it is a DJ mag. For example on the front page of the magazine all off the strap lines I have put on there are all about DJs and electronic artists. I haven’t mentioned anything about any other form of music other than electronic music. I think I’ve made mine very similar to a real media text in exactly this way because lots of music magazines have a very certain style of music and stick to it very well. For example NME has a musical genre set in stone. Here are a few examples from my media product and a real media text so you can understand how I demonstrated this well. So this is the NME front cover and from this you can quite clearly see that their style and genre of music is very rocky and quite indie. Where as

on my media text you can also clearly see how it is an electronic music magazine without even reading any of the strap lines.

5) The written style of my magazine is a very formal style of writing. With very little or in fact no slang, I wanted to make the writing of my music magazine very much like this. So when you opened it up on the first page you weren’t greeted with lots of slang and junk for words. I wanted it to give of the impression that this magazine was a music magazine yet at the same time it was a very formal magazine and did not display and use of slang. I think I achieved this very well as I wrote the article in the style I wanted it to be interpreted as and the style I wanted it to be read as. I think this is very much like a professional magazine that is trying to achieve the same style because in a real media text they would use little amounts of slang and would want to keep it very formal and up to date. So I think I achieved this very well.

6) The people I used in my media products where all male. I wanted to create the feeling not that the

magazine was completely sexist but that it was a very male magazine because the subject is quite male, not the style of music that can be any gender but the subject of lots of electronic

equipment, gadgets and computers is a very male subject so I wanted the reader to pick it up and understand that it is a very male subject but I wanted to do this but without scaring them away as such. As I have decided to do a very niche market for my media product I decided to not try and hide it by trying to widen the view of the target audience but by showing people that it is a very male subject but there is n problem with women. I think I did this very well by only using males but still attracting females to the magazine too. I have not found a real media text yet that has such a niche market apart from the DJ magazine, which is very similar to mine. Here are some examples

7) The font I used all the way through my media product was Century gothic, I used this style of font because I really like it and I think it is a very formal style of a font. And because my magazine is of course a very formal magazine. But still being a music magazine. I decided to use Century Gothic. I did edit the font slightly for a lot of it so it didn’t stand out as if it looked like I had just used the same one all the way through and I made it so it looked a lot better than just using a standard font. I thought this made it look very much like a real music magazine because even though they may use a lot of different fonts and styles they still have one main font and so did I.

8) One last thing that I think made my media product very musical and very much like a real media product was the costumes and clothing I made my models wear for the photo-shoots. This is very much like a real music magazine because they all make them wear a certain type of clothing to suite their genre of music even if it may be very subtitle. They still look very similar to there style

of music. My genre of music I used for my magazine was of course electronic music so I made my models wear very relaxed and casual clothing. For example o the contents page the main model on there is wearing a hoodie with the hood up, This is very casual and relaxed of them and is very like DJs. Also I would put in some more subtle hints that’s it’s a DJ magazine by for example on the front cover I made the model wear some big headphones on around his neck so I could also give of the impression that it was a DJ magazine. I think I did this well in promoting the chosen style of music and did it very similar to how a real media text would do it.

Evaluation Activity 2My music magazine I made for media represents social groups very well, I identified a social group that I wanted and then styled my magazine around that one social group. My group was young dj’s and people interested in the electronic music scene.

For example my main image on my front cover of my magazine was this picture. I have photo shopped it slightly but this is still the same style of the picture. The picture fits in with my target audience well because the man in the image has a very casual look and feel to him. He is wearing some very fashionable clothing and fits in with today’s fashion trend. The appearance and facial expression of the man is also a very casual look and so this fits in well with the target audience and the social group I identified, it also fits the social audience because I have placed some headphones around him so it makes him look more like a DJ.

This is a real published magazine called DJ mag. As you can see the main image of the magazine is of the same style as the image I took of the man. They have the same very casual style, and they are both looking into the camera. This is why I think I

identified my target audience very well. Because I have not copied a magazine but identified an audience and stuck to it, Keeping the style correct and the use of language correct. But however I do think mine differs from some real media texts because there media pictures are quite a lot brighter than my original one. Also the positioning and background of my picture does not quite suite the real type of a media text. But other than that I think mine suites the style.

Evaluation Activity 3My music magazine is quite a niche market magazine and would not be bought by the general public; sales would be mainly down to a few members of the public and also subscription sales. I based my research for this kind of magazine on DJ mag. Which is very small niche magazine published by Thrust publishing and they also sell their magazine as an online magazine to boost more sales. I would like my magazine to be published by a small publisher like Thrust because if it was published by a very big publisher like IPC media then it would hit the shelves of WHSmith and would

never sell anything because it’s a niche market magazine. I would like my magazine to be mainly sold in few places and a lot my subscription order online from the website. This way the magazine would remain a niche market magazine but would still be easily accessible by the general public and whoever wanted it.

Evaluation Activity 4The audience for my media product would most certainly be Ravers because they are the people who listen to a lot of electronic music and have a good time a lot. My target audience would go out clubbing a lot and would spend quite a lot of money doing this every year. They would travel across the world clubbing. So my magazine would be ideal for this target audience because they would enjoy it and it would suite them. My target audience would listen to this sort of music and would shop a lot at places like Topshop, Abercrombie and Fitch, Jack Wills and Hollister. They would watch a lot of TV programs like the Inbetweeners, Scrubs and Sun, Sex and suspicious parents, they would watch these sorts of programs because they encounter this sort of life and they are around the same age as the people in the TV shows. The advertising I could use through my magazine would be advertising new shows and also advertising DJ equipment because a lot of people reading would be interested in doing DJing themselves.

Evaluation Activity 5It’s on Flickr.

Evaluation Activity 6On blogger.

Evaluation Activity 7

These are my first and final products of my media coursework. The one the right hand side is the very first piece of media I ever made in this course work and as you can see my level of photoshop skills for this one are not very developed yet. Then as you look at the one on the left you can see that this is my final piece of coursework I did for AS media and my photoshop skills have developed a lot over the course of the year. I have learnt how to use photoshop correctly and usefully. By being taught how to use certain aspects of photoshop for example using the ‘content aware’ function, which allows you to get rid of certain bits of the image and photoshop replaces it with what it thinks would be behind it. I have also learnt how to use other functions of photoshop like the adjustments section of photoshop so that you can adjust your image or photo carefully and correctly. So I think that throughout the course my

photoshop skills and photography skills have developed a lot as you can see from the final product.