Annas AS Media Life

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

my magazine is associated with the genre of music rock. Due to the fact that some people may have previous perceptions of rock artists i tried to challenge the representation of women and rock stars in my magazine by attempting to contrast with a stereotypical woman and music artist by representing them in a positive way. I tried to portray the main subject of the magazine as a strong confident woman who has worked hard to get to where she is today, i hope to have projected the image of 'woman power'. i also tried to challenge the typical stereotypical representations of a rock star which are violent, angry and wear black clothing by showing how grateful and humble the subject 'Amber Starrs' is in the magazine interview on the double page spread. which is contrasted with a stereotypical music artist who may come across as a diva who gets what ever they want, where as she is a hard working music artist who fought to be in the position she is in now. i also tried to promote the image of the subject as a normal person and the only different between her and anyone else is the clothes she wears and the music the audience see another side to the girl on the front cover that people may have negative opinions about.

Teenagers

Front Cover

My magazine front cover features a young female as the main image of the page representing the social group of teenagers. She is portrayed as a well-presented, fashionable individual who does not fit the usual stereotype of an average teenager, although there are some stereotypical features such as being well presented. The pose she is striking creates a sense of seriousness and makes her look like she is committed to her profession. The fact that she is looking directly at the camera is to attempt to gain interest from the audience.

Contents Page & Double Page

Within the contents page i have used the same image that is featured on the right hand side of the double page. I did this to link the two pages together and try to build up on the image of the artist as being a strong independent female who is hard working in her profession. The young female presented on the front cover is portrayed in a completely different way. On the image on the left of the double page it shows the teenager sticking up her middle finger up at society and so called ‘haters’ of her music therefore linking with a different teenage representation. The image on the right of the double page represents the teenager as a confidant young woman, in the hope that it will project the image of ‘woman power’ and a successful female rock music artist.

Females

Front Cover
On the front cover of my magazine, the main subject is a young female who is seen to be a well presented, fashionable and confidant individual. She is striking a serious pose which suggests she is committed to her profession. However the head line which is related to the main image contrasts with the positive representation created by the main images as it states 'Romance, Alcohol and Addiction'.

Contents Page & Double Page
Within the contents page and double page, i have used the same image to try and link the two pages together and show a different side of the artist in the hope that it will engage with the audience. the same female featured on the front page is represented in a different way. Alternatively in the contents page, she is seen to be serious and confidant as well as giving an insight into her more daring side as you can see her body in a 'pin-up girl' style pose. By striking this pose, it projects her self confidence and shows she is comfortable with the person she is. The image on the left side of the double page however, represents females in a negative way as she is sticking her middle finger up, which is behaviour not commonly associated with females.

Rock stars

Front Cover
On the front cover of the magazine, the main image represents Rock Stars in a positive way as she is pulling a pose that is meant to give off the impression that she is committed to her profession. i have tried to challenge the typical stereotype of a rock star, that being an angry, violent, alcoholic, who wears black a lot) i did this by dressing the artist in light clothing and posing in a non-threatening way.

Contents Page & Double Page
Within the contents page and double page the same image that is used represents rock stars in a positive way as she is dressed and posing and in a way which does not fit the negative stereotype of a rock star, there for presenting the rock artist in a more positive way. however on the left hand side of the double page, the female gives some examples of a stereotypical rock star as she is pulling an angry pose and sticking up her middle finger.

what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
my magazine uses the masthead 'AMPLIFY' which is written in bold and caps lock to make it stand out on the page against the rest of the page. i made the masthead red and black to fit in with the house style colour pallet that i try to use throughout my magazine. in an attempt to make the magazine look an authentic music magazine, i used a strong main image on my front cover that suits the target audience of males aged 16-35 as they may find the woman appealing. the main image is suited to a real media production as it is a good quality image which has strong connotations. as with any other magazine the main headline is created to project a representation of the person that is featured. in my magazine, 'drugs alcohol and romance' suggest that the person featured is a bad person, which contrast with the innocent look on the main image. i looked at the magazine 'Kerrang!' for inspiration for my front cover, i found out that they always use a strong main image and often use a controversial headline. By looking at Kerrang! it helped me decide how i want my magazine to look like throughout, like kerrang i chose to create a house style that ran through all of my pages and tried to stick to the same colour pallet.

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

The media institution that i believe might distribute my magazine is Bauer media institution as they already publish the magazine Kerrang! which is similar to my magazine as i took inspiration from Kerrang to create my magazine. As my magazine publishes sticks to the rock/metal genre of music it will feature similar artist which Kerrang feature in their magazines, because of this the two magazines will attract similar target audience. Kerrang produced by Bauer is a well known rock/metal media as it has expanded to Kerrang radio station and Kerrang tv. I believe that if Bauer are capable of producing such a big brand they would be able to promote another similar magazine as 'AMPLIFY' show all the positives about the rock stars featured and how they are fighting the typical stereotype of a rock star by doing good things for themselves and other people. Amplify also try to project an image of a good role model for young girls rather than the typical 'anorexic models' seen in fashion magazines that subliminally project the image of the 'perfect body'.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for my magazine would be people who like the rock/metal genre of music and who are interested in the artists they listen too and the things that they may do or the way they may dress. the target audience for my magazine would be persons ages 16-35 for both male and females, depending on the artist featured each issue may attract more of one sex than the other as they may find the featured artist appealing. if there was a female as the main feature for the magazine the primary audience would be males with the secondary audience being homosexual women. on the other hand if the main artist featured in the magazine was male then the primary audience would be females, with the secondary audience being homosexual males. The target audience would fit into the socio- economic group of B-E. This is because stereotypically you would not expect someone who is in the A category, for example doctors, to read a magazine like this. the audience would fit into E, people who are unemployed, because students are classed as unemployed and this sort of magazine would typically be bought by students.

How did you attract/address your audience?
To attract my target audience i featured a young female as the main subject on the main image and throughout the rest of the magazine. I did this because male readers may find the female appealing and may want to read more about them and females may look at the female and aspire to be like them. Within the magazine, on the contents page i featured an appealing image of the 'artist' that i created who is looking directly at the camera to engage with the audience. once again this is in attempt to make the artist seem appealing for the male viewers and inspiring for the female viewers of the magazine. i used the same image within the double page to link the two pages together with the same intentions i had with the contents page.

To address the audience i used a plug on the front cover that said 'subscribe and win free song' in attempt to get more subscribers for the magazine and give them a reward,in some senses, for subscribing. on the contents page i used a 'competition' in attempt to address the audience to try and get them involved with this new magazine and try to boost their name.

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

The two programs i have used while creating my magazine were microsoft publisher and Adobe Photoshop. By using these two programs i have self taught myself how to use most of the tools and edits i need to create my magazine front cover, contents page and double page.

Front Page

i did not use photoshop to create all of my front cover but I did use it to edit images like the main image and masthead. I used photoshop for the main image because it enabled me to crop the image out from the background to create a more professional outcome. I did this by using the 'lassoo' tool which let me cut out the parts that I wanted but drawing a shape round the image and pressing 'delete' to get rid of anything in the selected shape. I also used the paintbrush tool to colour in any parts I wasn't able to delete with the lassoo tool. i chose to use the colour white for my background as the image for the front cover has a person who has bright blue hair, so I decided to leave the background white so that the colours don't contrast with each other. i did not edit the hair of the person on the front image, the only edit I made to the hair was the photo effect that changed all of the image not just the hair.

To create my front cover I used Microsoft publisher. This is a software that allows you to design newspaper, magazines birthdays cards etc, without the confusing tools of photoshop. I chose not to use photoshop to design my front cover because I found it complicated and it took me a long time to achieve little. I used various tools using Microsoft Publisher. I used the colour transparent tool in order to make the white background of my main image disappear so I was easier for me to edit around it and meant that I didn't have to ‘send to back’ to put other images on top of it. This tool is found in the drop down box of the re-colour section of ‘picture formatting’. to create the text on the page i used text boxes which were easy for me to move about if needed, something which i found difficult to do on photoshop. The plug was created by simply going onto 'insert' then 'shape' then clicking on the circle shape and drawing it at the size you want, one again this was easy for me to resize and move if i needed to.

Double Page

In the process of creating my double page i used photohop to edit image for this page. To remove the background of the smaller image i used the 'Lasso' tool which enabled me to draw round the image and delete the background. firstly i drew round the area of the background that i wished to delete, this was then selected, then to remove the selected area i clicked 'delete'. This then left the background white. Another tool i used in this process of image editing was the 'Magic Wand tool'. With this tool i clicked on an area of the background i wanted to get rid of, this then cut out round the main image which i wanted to keep, then pressed delete to remove it. although this was a useful tool, it sometimes selected parts of the image that i wanted to keep. After this i used the eraser tool which let me get rid of any small parts of the background that hadn't been picked up the my 'Magic Wand Tool'.

in the making of this double page i also used Microsoft Publisher. i chose this program as it found it easy to work with and it was quicker and more effective way of creating my double page. Using Publisher also allowed me to get rid of the white backgrounds on my images quickly. I did this by using the 'set transparent colour' tool which is found in the 're-colour' section of formatting. this meant that i could place images or text in front or behind and you can still see that parts that aren't converted by the main image.

it was easy for me to add columns into the page as i just used a text box and reshaped it into the shape of a column, then i added the text and changed the colour of the questions and answers so it was clear to the reader which was which. To create the striped background i used the 'shape' tool and drew a square and elongated it to make the stripe then 'sent to back' so that i could put image over the top of them.

contents page

To create this contents page I used Microsoft Publisher as it is an easier program to use than photoshop and it was easy to get a good result without the complicated tools of photoshop. To create this page i used several uses of the shape drawing tool which allowed me to get a black and white stripe effect down the side column of the page, and it allowed me to split up the rest of the page into different sections like the feature in the magazine, competition winner and editors overview of the magazine.

To enter the images it was a simple and easy process, i just had to click 'insert' then 'image, from file' which let me put the image onto the page then i had to click on 'format' then wrap text' to allow me to move the image wherever i wanted too on the page. Then by changing the position of the image 'more to back' i was able to then write over the top of the image.

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

Looking back at the preliminary task it is visible of how much I have progressed. I have learnt how to make a magazine appealing towards the audience and how to make a good front cover, contents page and double page. I have learnt to use the rule of thirds where the page is split into 9 sections and the most important parts on the page are placed on certain lines where the audience would automatically look. I have learnt new skills using photoshop which i am now a more confident user of and I have even discovered new tools using microsoft publisher. I have learnt new terminology's that I have made use of throughout this media task, especially when annotation other magazines. I have learnt how magazines are ran by certain media institutions and not produced from just one company making one media product but from one media insinuation that produces a large amount of the media brands that are well known by the public, for example Bauer. This helped me learn that if my magazine was to be produced it would most likely be produced by a large media institution. I have learnt how to use photoshop and most of the tools that are featured within it, which allowed me to edit some on my image that I have used within my final piece which is something I could not do well during making the preliminary task.

Peer Opinions
i asked one of my peers to give me an overview of her opinion of my Front Cover, Contents Page and Double page to see if they thought the magazine had potential.
this is what she had to say:

Interviewee: Kelly Harrison

This is my contents page that i have created using only Microsoft Publisher.

Microsoft Publisher

To create this contents page i have used Microsoft Publisher as it is an easier program to use than photoshop and it was easy to get a good result without the complicated tools of photoshop. To create this page i used several uses of the shape drawing tool which allowed me to get a black and white stripe effect down the side column of the page, and it allowed me to split up the rest of the page into different sections like the feature in the magazine, competition winner and editors overview of the magazine.

Use of images
The image that i have used on the contents page are one image that is already on my double page so that the pages link in with each other, the other images i have used are a picture of me, the editor and the other is an image of a girl with the lead singer out of a band called 'YASHIN'. In the main page of 'Amber Starrs' i hope to make the person in the image seem inviting, this will hopefully appeal to the target audience of males aged 16-35. the secondary audience of this magazine would be females aged 16-35 who may find the artist inspiring and may aspire to be like them. in the sub image for 'editors overview' i will change as it is giving a negative representation f myself as my facial expression isn't very happy. when i change this image i will hopefully create a positive representation for myself as will use an image where i am smiling rather than an image where i have a straight face. the image of the competition gives off a positive connotation of the magazine as the person in the image is clearly happy that they have 'won the competition' which is down to Amplify magazine.

Use Of Text & Colours
The colour that i have used in the contents page stick to the house style that i set within the other pages of my magazine as it sticks to the same colour pallet of red black and white. i chose to write contents in the way that i did due to the fact if i had written in its normal format it would not fit the layout that i had created for the page. i chose to use the same text as the masthead of the magazine to link the pages together, although i chose not to use the same colour scheme for the text as the masthead as i wanted to the masthead to stand out as a brand for the magazine. i included an 'editors overview' to give and insight as to what the magazine had to offer as it is new on the scene and people don't know what to expect from the magazine. i chose to include the 'cometition winner' on the contents page to let the readers know about the competition and the brilliant prizes that are on offer if they win. i chose to use a simple text that was simple and easy to read for all of the page so that readers could understand exactly what is inside of the magazine and so that pages can be easy allocated. i tried to limit the amount of text on the page as i didn't want to reader to be overwhelmed by the amount of text and then not read it so i had to compensate for the fact that people may skim read the contents page.