Preliminary Evaluations

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

Our preliminary task was to create a magazine in which represented a school. Being interested in performing arts and dance, I wanted to create a magazine of a performing arts school. I started looking into school magazines at first, just to get a general layout for my magazine. I could not find any dance magazines in my research and so I researched photographs instead for the dance theme. Many magazines I researched showed group dancers/performers but I wanted to go for a slightly different approach. I used my friend, Tilly, as a model for she is a very good dancer and she was very good at all the poses. The font I used was quite basic because I wanted the magazine cover to look quite simple. The colours are all quite similar too. I dimmed the colour on the picture because I wanted it to look more black and white than full colour. From dimming the colour, I found that the best colours that went with the picture was blue, grey and purple. i stuck with these colours in the contents page too.


2) how does your media product represent particular social groups?


Obviously, seeing as my magazine is a dance magazine, it would be for people interested in performing arts. The magazine represents young people interested in performing arts through the photographs used, etc. The magazine would be available to students at 'The Morganville Academy' and also their parents and to anyone interested in coming to that school. I think the magazine addresses these social groups by the language used on the front of it. The photograph is also of a young dancer, appealing to young students at the academy because they would aspire to be like that.




3)What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?


There are two major media publishing institutions that I have researched. One of them is Bauer, which mostly involves quite a few of the major music industries including Q magazine and Kerrang magazine. Bauer is a very widely known institution which publishes quite widely known magazines and radio stations so therefore I don't think it would be the suitable distributor for my 'The Morganville Academy' magazine. The other distributor that I found in my research is IPC publishers, who publish magazines that are based more around lifestyle and hobbies. Because my magazine is about performing arts and that is a hobby, I think it more likely that IPC will publish my magazine. They are widely known and well-respected and will give 'The Morganville Prophet' a good reputation.


4) Who would be the audience of your media product?

The audience of my media product would be the students and parents of The Morganville Academy. The age range would probably be from about 16 to 20 in the school, but also for parents. I think that the magazine would attract girls more than boys but having said that I think a dance college would have equal amount of boys and girls. Obviously, the magazine would attract an audience of people interested in performing arts.

5) How did it attract/address your audience?


The photograph on the front of a student from the school is clearly used to address my target audience because she is a girl who belongs to that school. The text on the page is quite colourful, addressing the young audience that it's aimed at. I've also put text on the front page displaying what is new in the school and what can be found in the contents of the magazine. I think that this will make my audience intrigued to read the magazine, attracting their attention, especially as it is information on what is going on in their own school.

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


I have used programmes such as photoshop and indesign in making this product. I have learnt how to use tools in photoshop to amend my photos to get rid of any blemishes and change the colouring of the photo. I have also learnt how to use blogger in which I have been updating all of my developments of my products. In making my front page and contents I have also used my dad's canon eos 30D camera to take the photographs on my front page. I have learnt how to use it efficiently but hopefully in the main task I will be able to use it a lot better in order to take the best photographs for my music magazine.