Question 1

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

We attempted to make our video similar to the real Be My Wife video, by using similar styles with clothing and attempted to replicate the different shots throughout the video. Our video is similar to the real video as we have used one actor playing David Bowie and instructed them on what shots were needed so they could act in the way Bowie does in the real video. We intended on making our video as similar to music videos as possible by following the conventions of multiple music videos. To make our video as good as possible we researched how to film certain shots effectively and attempted to imitate the skill. To plan our video we watched the real Be My Wife video and paused the video at each shot, this allowing us to storyboard each shot and write how long each shot lasts ensuring our video was past the 1 minute mark. When we edited our video, we ensured we had the beginning scene at the start of the real video at the start of ours to show how much we were replicating the video. Throughout the editing we had to ensure our actors lip sync matched the music therefore we had to cut some clips and move the music until it all matched.

Lip Sync Task

See Charlotte Clifford's blog

Preliminary Task

David Bowie - Be My Wife

David Bowie - Jack Horne
Director/Lighting - Tom Cooley
Camera - Jack Goodman
Stylist - Ollie Davison

Note to examiner

Dear Examiner,
during the process of constructing my product I have improved my skills and knowledge of the media business. I have used these skills to produce a product to the best of my ability. Throughout this process, I have enjoyed producing my magazine and hope you enjoy it too.

Final magazine

Magazine cover

Lutterworth College Exposed Contents

Flickr of media photos

Evaluation question 1

Evaluation question 1 from Jack Goodman

Evaluation question 2

How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups

Evaluation question 3

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

There are many distribution companies that distribute music magazines, these include Bauer Media Group, Time Inc., IPC and many others. I think that Bauer Media Group would distribute my magazine as they are a worldwide media empire offering over 300 magazines in 15 countries as well as online, TV and radio stations. Bauer Media is a multi-platform UK-based media Group consisting of many companies collected around two main divisions – Magazines and Radio - widely recognised and rewarded as being industry innovators. Bauer published magazine such as Q, Kerrang! and Heat. These magazines are all indie and associate their magazine around the same age group as I have. However, IPC could be a good distributor as they have a large range of experience within the publishing and distribution of many categorised magazines, also certainly the experience and knowledge of publishing a music magazine with related topics and genres to my magazine which would be entering the same market. These also distributed NME, which is a magazine based around the same style as my magazine. I was inspirited to use internal/external advertisement and promotion as a way to gain my production company funding by a large range of other magazine producers such as Loud and Quiet, Clash magazine, ID magazine, Dazed and Confused & Fader magazine. Looking at the type of magazines Bauer Media Group is associated with, I feel I would most likely make the publication of the magazine monthly, similar to Q as it is distributed through paid circulation and sold monthly via subscription or could be bought in specific music type stores. I would like my magazine to do the same as it could mean it becomes as big as Q magazine, which is a hit music magazine around the world.

The money for production and publishing of the RE-WIRED magazine would be funded from advertisement and promotion of other internal and external, such as advertisement for multiple gigs around the country and the ones that seem the most popular. This would benefit them as they are gaining potential customers through reading my magazine each month. This would also create a cycle as the money gained from promoting events could be spent on producing and distributing my magazine around the country.

I think I would like my magazine to be institutionally similar to Clash, Loud and Quiet and NME this is because they all started very small and now have a large sphere of influence, NME being the biggest. NME is the least I want my magazine to be like however, as it was a large prominent magazine which you have to had to buy however it is now it is free and the quality of the magazine has dropped massively. However Loud and Quiet is free but the quality is good so this is something to aspire to even though my magazine does have a cost of £5. I want my magazine to be institutionally similar as they do the whole thing themselves and don't have out of house designers so they have full creative freedom and can be 'out of the box'.

Overall with all of these things considered I think that I would want Bauer Media to distribute my magazine. I would want them to distribute it because of their massive sphere of influence. The magazines that they produce go from the mainstream like FHM and Grazia to much smaller magazines like Steam Railway and Your Horse. So they will definitely be able to get my magazine to the audience if they can still distribute small magazines like Steam Railway. Furthermore, I think they would be suitable at by distributing my magazine because they also have 5 music tv channels so they'd be able to advertise the magazine on one of these. Also that they don't fully focus in the indie music market specifically they have Q magazine for most genres, Kerrang for rock and Mojo for more upcoming music but not a magazine for indie/alternative music. So I mainly want Bauer media to distribute my magazine for these reasons and I think they would be the best at it.

Evaluation question 4

Evaluation question 5

http://prezi.com/dx4d2bxk39fo/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Evaluation question 6

Evaluation question 7

http://pub.lucidpress.com/b07a442a-e3dc-482f-ab36-85d84ca8b552/

Different stages of the cover

Different stages of contents

Different stages of double page spread

Evaluation question 1 DRAFT

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of music magazines)

My magazine title ‘Re-Wired’ uses the font ‘Dolce Vita’ that I downloaded from the website ‘www.dafont.com’. This font was good for my magazine masthead as it is bold and stands out to grab the attention of the reader. This style of text is seen and used in the majority of music magazines, as they want to achieve the same eye-catching magazine. I chose the magazine title ‘Re-Wired’ as it is similar to the music magazine title ‘Wire’, also it appeals to my target audience as Kasabian have a song called ‘Re-Wired’. 

The front cover is very simple; I have used ‘Neou’ on my front cover using the different styles the font provides. I have used larger text, which is bolder for my band name, to make sure the band is known before the audience read the magazine. I have used different coloured fonts on my magazine but kept the monochrome style by using white text and coloured background and black text on white background to make the text revealing on a contradicting colour. I used black text for the price and issue, to make sure the audience can see how much the magazine will be before buying. I also used different artists featuring in the magazine, these are important for my magazine, as it is what will grab the audience’s attention, as they will want to see their favoured artists. I used the white text on the cover line, as it needed to stand out on a dark background; this is also the key topic/article in my magazine.

The white background is the most dominant colour to make the text more visible and stand out for the customers to notice the magazine. The sizing of my text depends on the importance, for example my masthead is the biggest text, as it will attract the customers to buy the magazine. The cover line is the second largest text as this will be the second text the customers will look for after noticing the magazine title/masthead. The layout and structure of my magazine was based around ‘Loud&Quiet’ magazine as this follows the simplistic style that I was going for. This was the magazine and structure I was going for at the start, although I gave my own perspective. I developed my own ideas after inserting a barcode and price which the ‘Loud&Quiet’ magazine does not follow as they gave their magazine out for free. I followed the usual convention of music magazines with my masthead being the main focus and largest part of the magazine and placing it on the top of the page as the main focus. I also wanted my magazine to be simple and basic with not much on the page, similar to ‘Clash’ or ‘Fantastic Man’.

The costumes and iconography I used will attract my target audience. This is because my target audience is ‘New Casuals’ so to fit their preferences I have my models wearing typical ‘casual’ clothing with brands such as Fred Perry, Pretty Green, and Ellesse. I found this from Clash magazine as they use fashion to style their magazine to fit and suit their target audience. My two models on the cover can be seen wearing Ellesse and Pretty Green to fit the style of my magazine. In the image I have used in my magazine, the models have city building in the background making the magazine seem street to attract different target audiences.

My models were styled in multiple different outfits to find the one that fit the audience the best. To ensure my magazine kept the fashion side, I ensured that my models were dressed appropriately for them to feature in my magazine. I am using the conventions of real media products as my artists fit the magazine style and genre of Indie, with the certain target audience. My models do not look out of place and they fit the genre of my magazine in my cover, contents and double page continuing the monotone layout throughout.

On my contents page, I continued the greyscale scheme with one image in colour. I did this as the two either side of the middle picture were black and white so this emphasised the colour of the trainers in the image. This is similar to the ideas of Loud&Quiet as although they use black and white, they use coloured images to add emphasis to the pictures and their detail. My contents page has a clear layout from the top left of the page, to the bottom left. There are images down the right side of the page leaving the text isolate along the left, this structure is similar to Clash magazine as they have a simple contents layout which is effective as it still includes the key details of the content of the music magazine. The contents page has significance as this is the page that the reader will visit to find the parts of the magazine they wish to read.

For my double page spread, I have adopted the structure of many magazines by having a page dedicated to a photo and one with text. The text follows the typical magazine structure of the use of columns to split the text apart, they fit across the page enforcing image text cohesion. The image I used was of one of my models, I chose to only use one as the article is very much interacting with one band member, with the image being the band member spoken to. I wanted to follow this structure of double page spread as it is very effective with the drop capital to start off the article. The article mainly focuses on interacting with the band and questioning them about their career. I have questioned them as an interview would but I have adopted a story-like structure to my writing to make the audience feel involved and can relate to it.