IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

• I checked other magazines and followed a similar layout to the genre I was doing for my media product. By doing this I was able to know what other magazines do to layout their product. This helped me because I was able to see the similarities between the same genres of magazine. This also helped because seeing the popular magazines I was able to see why they were so popular and what the look of the magazine helped with the sales.

• I have developed my pictures by re-doing my photo shoot because in my first shoot the lighting was making to many dark shadows behind the model, this affected the magazine because her dark hair was blending in to the background. This helped me because I was able to have a white background where the model stood out from rather than her blending in the background. I also developed the colours I had used for my magazine because I started out with black, white and blue but because my magazine was alternative rock genre I changed the colours to black, white and red. The red also stood out more from the page where as the blue wasn’t standing out much from the image. It also went with my image because the model was wearing a black and white dress. By changing the blues to red I came across a challenge, Photoshop doesn’t let you change the colour of a shape unless you re-draw it, this proved difficult because I was not able to get the exact shape I had draw in blue. I over came this by moving the shape away from everything on the page and drawing another one on top of it in blue I then moved the shape back and deleted the blue one I didn’t need.

• I then also changed the poses my model would do because of the genre of music I was doing I had to make sure she looked like she was an artist for that genre of music, so I got some more images from Google images and the front of the covers of the genre of magazine I want to do, I then got my model to copy them images as best as she could, this made it easier than asking her to pose in a way without showing her images of how to do it.

• I have challenged other magazines because I have used a different font style to what other magazines usually go for, which makes it stand out from other magazines when put next to them. This could reduce sales or increase them either way because it is quite a big change from what people are familiar to in other magazines.

• I also used boxes around images rather than just around my text to make it stand out from the back image I had used. This shows the other images included throughout the magazine and so I got the idea to make them stand out from the page without taking over the main image by adding smaller boxes around the images and some of the shapes and text. This helped improve the look of the magazine because it looked better but didn’t over take the main image in the background so that was the first thing you saw on the page as well as the big text to go with the images that’s why I put a white box around the name of the artist rather than a darker colour that would blend into the dress she is wearing.

• The colour I had used in my final magazine showed the genre because it showed a bright yet still for both genders so it appeals to a wider range of people. It also shows more of a punk rock feel to it rather than using the colour red, which would be for a pop magazine rather than alternative rock and it would show it was more for girls than boys or both genders like I am trying to get across to my audience.

• I used a magazine called ‘Kerrang!’ and looked at the sort of stories they used for their magazine’s front cover. I looked at the different stories they had which helped with making some stories up for my own magazine but using my own made up bands and artists in some of them.