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

My music magazine, like many other media products, follows the idea of using different things which fit into the genre. Many encoders often use specific things to create their media file in with their genre, i.e. in a romantic film the music, images and speech will all be anchored to ensure the genre is made clear. This is the same in magazines whereas music magazines are largely focused around music and fashion magazines focused on fashion.

My music magazine creates the idea of sexualised music. It has people in who would want to be with the girls or be the men. The magazine is set within a genre and I created this through:

 

     I ensured the images were within the theme. My main front cover photo is a highly sexual photo which is seen to be in line with my magazine. The photo shows immediately that the magazine is largely based around men, music and their desires. The images on the double page spread also show a guy who is not a typical strong, muscular guy but a man that relates to men who are simply normal. The images show how anyone can do something they aspire to do.

·         The written communication on the front cover is both aimed at music and guys who consider themselves ‘players’. The genre is a sexualised music magazine and captions such as “beats, boobs and booze- the party never stops” shows how both of the ideas are being combined to make the genre come through. The article on the double page spread is essentially about an artist who has a highly sexualised, ‘fun’ and in some cases young men’s fantasies. This helps anchor the genre and make the theme of sexualised music consistent.

·         The colour theme is also consistent and red is usually associated with a sexual theme in many cases. Throughout the magazine I had the distinctive colour theme of black, white and red which shows the consistency in my theme. 

As the encoder of ‘UP’ I was keen to keep the consistency of the sexualised music magazine and make it fit within the genre.

I looked at different magazines to ensure that some of the other magazines to see if my magazine had any of the same conventions that others did. I found that FHM had the same colour scheme as I did, with the red, black and white, and they also had the sexualisation of a women on their front cover to entice men to look at their magazine.


FHM front cover



The magazine front cover here is similar to mine, they have used a bold title just as I did. The title allows the magazine to stand out and ensuring it is bold means this is likely to happen. The colour red has been proven to entice men and is seen as a more sexual/attractive colour, therefore the use of red shows how my magazine and FHM is largely aimed at men.

I then looked at other magazines double page spread, I found one. I reallised my magazine was completely different, their double page spread was more aimed at a mixed gender I suppose. They had a completely different layout to myself, different colours and a different type of context. Originally this was worrying, however I had to consider that my magazine was aimed at a completely different audience to this one, therefore the forms and conventions would be completely different to eachother.


In some ways I challenged the forms and conventions of a typical music magazine by making it more sexual and fun. I used many different aspects of convey the message of sex and music, so that the reader would be fully aware of what the magazine was about. I ignored things such as using lots of different fonts as I wanted my magazine to have a certain consistancy so people could differentiate that font from others and possibly associate it with my magazine.