Film | Media Industries

Film | 'The Jungle Book' - 1967 & 2016

Theorists and their Theories

TV Drama | Stranger Things Target Audience & Context

TV Drama | Cast Context

TV Drama | Stranger Things & Deutschland '83 Comparison

TV Drama | Exploring the Conventions of Science Fiction

Science Fiction: Fiction about a world which could be made possible with scientific breakthrough

TV Drama | Stranger Things Representations

TV Drama | Stranger Things Poster Analysis

Music Videos | Analyzing 'Where is the Love' - Black Eyed Peas

Music Videos | Analysis of a Music Video - 'Titanium' By David Guetta

TV Drama | Deustchland '83 Context

TV Drama | Todorov's Theory of Narratology

Music Videos | Context of 'Titanium' - David Guetta & 'Unfinished Sympathy' - Massive Attack

MAINSTREAM:

• Location in an urban, non rural place
• Diversity
• Artist performing as main feature (exposure)
• Narrative elements
• Element of hardship

ALTERNATIVE:

• No artist, focus on music
• Narrative & concept
• Suburban
• Limited representation
• Sinister element

Cohen's Theory -  Moral Panic
Idea that youths being reckless has been around for centuries, but today is still used for moral panic. Moral panics have been described as a condition, episode, person or group of persons which emerge to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests (1972)

Advertising | Old Spice

Advertising | Lucazade

Lucazade was originally known as Glucazade back in 1927 and was essentially meant to be an energy drink given to the the sick. In 1929 they renamed the brand Lucazade and re-branded it as a sports drink rather than a health drink. With this change many sport related sponsorship deals had been arranged which most recently ended the 21 year association with League in 2012. This allowed the brand to invest more into the research of nutritional impact on athlete's performance.

Lucazade started a campaign where over time it became the No.1 sports drink. The journey to this success involved a TV campaign called 'Last Man Standing' which launched in January 2013 on ITV during the FA cup matches. There were many scientific claims, one being that Lucazade Sport hydrates and fuels you better than water. This was tested in lab conditions with 24 athletes who went head-to-head in a performance challenge. Half of the athletes were fuelled by Lucazade whereas the remaining were fuelled by water. Whilst the athletes were monitored by GSK scientists, they would run until they reached a level of exhaustion. By the end of the experiment the remaining athletes were of those who were fuelled by Lucazade.

The Lucazade campaign was under the agency of Grey London, where they invested £4 million into it. GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare became the new owners of Lucazade, but later sold to Suntory in September 2013 for £1.35 billion. The new faces of Lucazade were ad stars Gareth Bale and Alex Oxlade Chamberland who represented the sports lifestyle. However, in January 2014, the campaign was banned by the ASA as it failed to show that it only had benefit during prolonged exercise.

Advertising | Shelter

Music Videos | Deconstructing a Music Video

Magazine Preliminary Task | Critical Evaluation

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

My magazine uses similar layouts to many music magazines with the idea that a feature artist is displayed on the cover who is also is the focus of the main story which in this instance is Asha. I also included the masthead at the top of the page like many other magazines as it is very traditional due to the fact it’s the first thing you look at thus making it effective. Another thing I had used from existing magazines is the idea of including the most important information on the left third which seems to be quite popular in the advertisement of magazines.

For my contents page I attempted to use ideas from magazines such as ‘Vibe’ who keep continuity throughout their magazine by including their logo as a watermark on their pages which is effective because it subconsciously plants the familiarity of the brand in the readers mind making it easily recognizable in the future.

I feel like these all worked well because they are, to me, default features that should be included on a magazine to make it successful against its competitors.

What I chose to develop in my magazine cover was the feature of highlighting important names which may grab the reader’s attention. It’s quite obvious that artists relate to certain genres of music and especially if an unknown or underdeveloped artist is displayed on the cover, I feel as though it’s important to have more established artists included to help boost her reputation as they will have names which can be associated with theirs. What I felt I did successfully in developing what magazines do already is the use of bar-codes. Towards the bottom of the page where the date and pricing bar-code is, I also chose to include a QR bar-code. The reason behind this choice is because this magazine is targeted to more of an urban and younger generation of which have access to phones and with the inclusion of this, they would have the ability to view the magazine online and purchase when most convenient to them.

As for the contents page, I developed traditional magazine styles by printing the artist on the front cover on this page also. This choice was to allow emphasis on the importance of this artist in the current issue. I believe that if people see repetition they will link it to importance and question as to why this magazine finds so different and special about this artist and her music and her style.
What I managed to develop in my magazine cover and contents page have impacted it positively because I the features included relate to the audience that I intended to reach. I think appealing to this audience through the thing they use the most: technology, has shown that I have responded to my feedback as well as given more. To add to this, I also feel like I have found a successful way of appealing to a younger audience by introducing new artists by emphasising their importance the magazine and dedicating more pages to them. Those who enjoy this type of music deserve to know what is upcoming and in some ways I may have challenged other magazines as I haven’t seen this form of publicity before and I’m glad I addressed this.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Although, personally, I feel my magazine is considerably strong alone and somewhat speaks for itself. My ancillary texts such as my shot list, flat plan, research and focus group really helped pave the way to the achievement of the outcome.

I tried my hardest to implement a majority of what I planned into my final piece as well as listening to what my audience actually wanted which I felt was very important or else I would have made many mistakes that I would have regretted during editing.

The research was the most insightful because this was where my inspiration would root from and I felt it was important to make them as varied as I could without straying from my genre and ideas. I looked at magazines from the 90’s to today from R&B to Hip Hop to Pop to Rap to Soul. They all had similar layouts but the style was changing. This helped me plan how I wanted my model to look like with the camo pants which are popular today, crop top to express confidence and natural hair to develop the change in society where we see natural hair a beautiful.

I loved the grainy filter they included in the older magazines and I wanted to bring it back within my magazine with also the intensity of the browns and the black and white and then used bold and bright colours to highlight the page.

I also looked at the roots of these genres of music and found that they originated from areas of minority and underprivileged people who tried to explain their life through music and this is why I wanted to emphasise the story by the upcoming artist on my cover, so the audience can know her and her music.

I moved on to my shot list, I suppose I had ideas of what I wanted my cover to look like. However, during the photoshoot period, I found it very difficult to get the style I wanted for any group photos and some of the candid photos seemed as though they may have made it look overly crowed, as I had to account for text. In the end, after more of an elimination process rather than what I preferred most, I went for the solo image with a black background and played with it. This resulted with the images of the front cover and contents page.

My flat plan was fairly difficult. I started with my image which had already been taken and so I drew them in where I wanted to place them. It then came to structuring the text and making sure I included what people wanted to see as well as what they don’t expect to see. I wanted them to have something that they could only read if they bought this magazine and would make them buy it again. My flat plan was my foundation for my final magazine as I structured everything as planned and rearranged as I editing, so I am glad that my plan was completed in depth as it allowed for easy adjustment.

Lastly, I don’t think my magazine would’ve looked like it would without my focus group. I started out the project unsure of what I wanted to include and how I could achieve a magazine that could be easily identified as R&B/Hip Hop. They told me what would make them buy a magazine and how it wasn’t just about the music, but the artists that make the music and what inspired them. Some of the participants in my focus group had aspirations of going into the music industry and they felt that it was important that the artists they looked up to expressed what inspired them and how they got to where they are. They also discussed with me the price they would pay for a magazine of such and at first the prices were unreasonably low with the type of content they wanted to receive, but they understood with ease as we came to a compromise due to the fact that less magazines would be printed on paper and people would purchase it online.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

What I learnt from my audience feedback is that you can’t please everybody. There are going to be people who want more and some who want less. I felt like it was better to have content that did exceptionally well in other magazines and include what the majority of what my audience agreed on.
The participants who had feedback that was considerably quick to answer knew exactly what they expected from a magazine of such, however they had more constructive criticisms than positive feedback which I, to me, was more helpful in editing and development. Participants who were slower at answering the questions weren’t really concerned about the detail but more of the colour scheme and how ‘professional’ it looked meaning that they only really cared for the aesthetics than the content.

I learnt from this though because in the end, both types of feedback were from my audience so I had to apply it somehow into my planning. I responded to the constructive criticism by acting on it immediately, because actually they were the factors I had slight doubts about and the fact they were easily picked out showed that they needed amendments. As for the aesthetics of the magazine; I had to recap on what I wanted for the magazine so that my style was still implemented. Although colour wasn’t something I intended to make very intense or be the focus of my magazine, I do agree with feedback regarding the theme and that more variety in colour wouldn’t have cause too much damage.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

For the construction of my magazine I had used Photoshop to edit and produce my final piece. This required me to look at YouTube tutorials as well as learning from my peers on some of the many features this programme includes. I found it quite tricky compared to my peers to get my head around the terminology and concept of the software due to some limitations. It did become easier when I had been using it outside of class and practising on separate files until I was able to achieve what I wanted on the real thing. I made my magazine with many layers for each detail I decided to include. I would have rasterize it often to condense the file and prevent any crashing. I played with filters and shapes, resizing and cropping to make my final piece look professional and well thought out.

I decided to use PowerPoint to organise my research as it was one of the easier software to make information around with ease. I would simply copy and paste information which best suited my ideas and annotated using text boxes and arrow shapes. For my font, I used a site call ‘Urban Fonts’ that consisted of my fonts that related and would work well with my style. It was very easy to get hold of, with the consent of the creator, I was able to contribute it into my magazine.

When I was planning, the only form of technology I used were ring lights and a camera to achieve the image for my magazine. As I had not properly used professional cameras before I had to ask and research the features such as focusing, flash, zoom and orientation which all helped make the shooting process easier.

As for my evaluation, I have used Microsoft word to type this interview and Blogger to display me answers to all the questions regarding my magazine. I have laid it out where the questions are on the left hand side in a larger font in bold and the answers are on the right, in a smaller font and typed in italics. This was to allow differentiation between the two.