EVALUATION 5: HOW DID YOU ATTRACT/ADDRESS

YOUR AUDIENCE?

Media language

I am going to look at the media language of my magazine and assess how it attracts the audience. I did have to change quite a lot of features of my magazine along the way so that it would attract my target audience.

Mise-en-scene Setting – As I was making a magazine, it wasn’t essential that I had a good

and appropriate setting, and it was more about the equipment I was using and the colour of the background in the photo shoot. I decided to use white as this is a neutral colour and it isn’t too over powering on the page. The young audience are likely to see the white of the background before the artist on the page more than if the background was brown for example. This is because a darker colour behind the artist may create negative connotations and my even divert the audiences attention from the artist.

Lighting – Similar to setting, the lighting is fairly bright and not dull as this is a pop magazine that wants to attract a young audience. The lighting also needs to be bright so that the image looks sharp and clear on the page. If the lighting isn’t bright enough, the artist could seem unhappier looking, which is the opposite of what a young audience wants to see in a pop magazine.

Costume – The costume I used was modern looking, but I also tried to make ‘Daniel Archibold’ look like a ‘Mainstreamer’ as this is what the audience will mostly be . If the artist is dressed in dark, tatty looking clothes, it wouldn’t look right in a pop magazine because the costume should have elements of brightness and energy to it, much like pop music itself.

Mise-en-scene Facial Expression/ Body Language – The artists in my magazines

are pulling quite relaxed facial expressions but they are mostly smiling so that it almost welcomes the audience to the magazine. I didn’t want the artists to seem like sexual toys by having them pulling very stereotypically sexy facial expressions. This may have put the audience off and it wouldn’t look appropriate on a magazine for such a young audience.

Props – We didn’t use any props for the photo shoo because I wanted the focus to be purely on the artist(s). Even though the magazine is for the pop genre and should have fun elements to it, it needs to look original and not tacky.

Hair/ Make-up – We haven’t used much styling as such for the photo shoots because we wanted to show the artists originality by not changing their fashion sense, hair style or make-up. In some way we subverted against the typical glammed up and ‘pampered up’ look of modern day pop artists, in an attempt to draw the audience to a slightly more normal looking artist – Daniel Archibold!

Representation

In general, I think that I have stuck to the usual stereotypes of a pop magazine. Firstly, I think the artist I have used, Daniel Archibold, has been represented as being quite a normal person with a normal background which is good to have in a pop magazine as the audience can relate to the artist well.

Secondly, the appearance of the magazine have been kept stereotypically ‘young’ and reasonably feminine looking which will ultimately attract my audience because the audience I am aiming the magazine at is older children and young teenagers. This helped by the colours I have used – they are mainly blues, purples and reds.

Camerawork

The camerawork used was important as I want to make ‘Daniel Archibold’ look authoritative in the page as he is the main focus of this issue of the magazine. This is typical to see on a pop magazine as they are traditionally quite ‘in your face’ and are bold in appearance. I chose to have medium close ups of ‘Daniel Archibold’ because this we want to be able to see his face as well as the top half of his body. This is because the body language of ‘Daniel’ needs to be relaxed looking and a medium close up allows the audience to see this.

Editing

I didn’t use much editing to modify my original images as I want the audience to see the natural features of Daniel but I wanted him to look attractive to what is mostly a female audience.

However, I did edit a lot in my magazine itself because at first, the colouring, was too dull and not vibrant enough so I needed to brighten that up. Some of the fonts I were using were almost too bold and blcok-like so I changed them to more Christmasy and Wintery fonts, which also helped to add an informal and fun side to the magazine. There were also small gaps around pictures that I thought should be filled which was why I included some snowflakes to make it more attractive for a young audience and the make it more Wintery again.