by Lauren

Question 1

laurenmcnamara3 — 2015-04-16 13:59:08 UTC

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

Indie Magazines

laurenmcnamara3 — 2015-04-16 13:59:28 UTC

When creating my magazine, I wanted to design one with the indie genre. I chose this as when it comes down to 'indie' magazine, it is all about the actual music. Other genres tend to expand further, for example, having the 'perfect' image in the public eye or venturing off into other career choices. I wanted the genre that I would use to be fully involved in the music process.

Like every genre, 'indie' music has specific conventions and characteristics. Some of these consist on the image of the artist. They tend to be seen as rugged and not having a 'clean' image. The whole focus of that type of artist tends to be the music, not necessarily their appearance. The look can sometimes be seen as 'retro' and dark colours which often reflect their type of sound. If there are indie bands, they often play their own instruments instead of having a separate band joint to them doing so. This shows that the artists are actually playing the music, and have full respect for their instruments.

My Own Magazine

laurenmcnamara3 — 2015-04-16 14:00:17 UTC

In my own magazine, I ventured off slightly with these typical conventions of the 'indie' genre. At first I wanted to stick as close as possible to these conventions, but further along into the process, I changed my mind. I have kept with the use of the artist using their own instruments, and a slight rugged look to the artist I chose, but with a twist. As 'indie' magazines tend to have dark colours in their design, I didn't want to follow this path exactly. The house style colours I chose where red, black and white. These colours can be dark if you use the contrast of the images in a similar way that I have, but there is still some slight bright colour towards it which is often not seen.

In a way, I have created a slight hybrid of the genre's I've used and created. Like I said before, when I first started I wanted to have it as close to 'indie' as possible, but decisions change. The front cover of my magazine has some rock elements with the dark contrast of the image of the feature article with the main girl. It doesn't show full conventions of rock as the layout isn't similar, and the overall look doesn't fit into that genre, it just shows slight similarities. The pop genre also shows slightly with the bright colour I chose; red. The bright shade goes with the attractive look of some pop magazines.

On a lot of music magazines, not just 'indie', their masthead is usually bold. As you can see to the right, Heroine and NME have a bold but simple font for their masthead. Even though it is quite eye catching, it doesn't take away the focus from the feature article photo which I want to be the main visual aspect.

Images/Examples

laurenmcnamara3 — 2015-04-16 14:01:14 UTC

To the right hand side, you can see a few examples of magazine front covers, contents pages and a double page spread. These are just a handful of real magazines that I used for inspiration. As I was creating a magazine, I wanted to look into some research so mine would be a replica of a real one and not look completely different. To the even far right, those three images are my own magazine pages. I didn't want to copy one example for each page as it would look like a copy straight away. By using a few different examples, I got a variety of various features and layouts that I could use.

laurenmcnamara3 — 2015-04-16 14:02:02 UTC

laurenmcnamara3 — 2015-04-16 14:02:14 UTC

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laurenmcnamara3 — 2015-04-16 14:03:12 UTC

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laurenmcnamara3 — 2015-04-16 14:03:18 UTC

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laurenmcnamara3 — 2015-04-16 14:03:24 UTC

Examples Of Magazines

laurenmcnamara3 — 2015-04-16 14:04:04 UTC

Codes and Conventions

laurenmcnamara3 — 2016-03-15 10:39:08 UTC

A lot of the codes and conventions of this alternative genre in the magazine tends to be limited colour, however one colour will stand out more from the rest. In Q magazine, they tend to use a lot of black and white with text and background images, yet use red as an accent colour to make it stand out from the rest. For my main product, I wanted to use red as I thought it would stand out with a plain background and be eye catching to the audience.

Even though I wanted to keep most of the codes and conventions similar, I did stray away from some of them. On the contents page and double page spread, I used more brighter colours than what my style models used due to wanting it to be eye-catching to the audience. I used asked the model to wear a blue checked shirt so that the shirt would be a substitute of colour without going over the top and not fitting the image that I wanted.

Micro Elements

laurenmcnamara3 — 2016-03-15 10:56:26 UTC

Throughout my coursework, I had to use a range of micro elements. However, as I created a music magazine, I couldn't use sound for this piece of coursework. Cinematography, mise en scene and editing are all very important aspects for me to create a professional magazine. In the photo-shoot, I used a range of types of shots from a close up to a long shot. By doing this, I could later on in the editing process determine what type of look I wanted. With editing, I simply focused on brightness and contrast to make certain features of the model to stand out. To do this editing, I used Adobe Photoshop as it had all the features that I needed as well as I had some previous experience before hand. The mise en scene of the model was important as I needed to get across that she was an indie artist. The background and location didn't matter whilst shooting as I was going to edit it out and have a plain background so I could add anything later on without any issues.

My Own Magazine

laurenmcnamara3 — 2016-03-18 08:26:09 UTC