Evaluation Question One

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

The above image is a collage I created to provide a brief overview of the tone of the magazine that I made. Before I started I researched into numerous different genres of music magazines and attempted to incorporate elements of them into my own. I eventually decided on an Indie/Alternative genre therefore I decided to name my magazine “DRUMS”, as it is simple and easily remembered. I also used that particular word to hint at the field of music that would be included in it. For example, if I wanted to create a Popular music magazine I would have thought of something a little more mainstream and if it were a Folk music magazine I would have tried to relate the masthead to the genre. Also, my masthead has a similar font to magazines such as “NME” and has a similar colour scheme to the magazine “Q”. I did this on purpose to try and make it look more like a realistic music magazine. A picture that I included on my contents page was of someone in a recording studio. The model is standing by a microphone and has headphones on. There are also some amplifiers in the background adding to the mise-en-scene. The use of these adds to the impact of my magazine being about music as they make it appear more realistic. The costumes that my models wore were quite simple as I wanted to make them look like normal people to add friendliness and hopefully the make magazine look like an interesting read. As I chose to give my magazine a genre of Indie/Alternative I tried to use models that have originality to their style. My main model who posed as “Elle Garcia” has her own unique style of dressing and tends to shop at vintage shops to get one-of-kind garments that are different to the mainstream fashion stores. Another way that I attempted to make my magazine appear like a real magazine is through using technical vocabulary such as “verse”, “vocals” and “album” which all have the connotations of music attached to them. By using descriptive phrases like “ghostly image” and “haunting voice” I tried to subtly hint at the audience of the kind of music featured in my magazine.