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

By Jack Breary

Introduction• In my magazine I wanted to use some of the

existing conventions of magazines such as NME and q as this is key to attracting buyers. However I also wanted to produce a magazine that was unique. This will be presented in the work I have done such as the layout, contents and images used to make my magazine.

Title• The title I have chosen has both developed and challenged

existing productions. It has challenged it in the way that most music magazines from the genre i chose have initials e.g Q and NME. I challenged this as I wanted to show readers what my magazine was really about by using the title I did ‘bass’ this gives an insight to the buyer that my magazine produces because if i used initials then buyer may not know what the magazine is about. However my magazine followed the conventions of existing productions as some indie magazines also have a longer name for example uncut and mojo.

Font and Style• I wanted to use a font that was fit into the magazine

throughout as well as being similar to NME. The fonts I chose elephant, gill sans MT condensed and berlins sans. By using these fonts it made my masthead bold and attractable to the audience.

• I also noticed that red is the colour used on many indie magazines as red has connotations of dominance. Red brings text and images to the foreground. As this is the reason I chose a dark red so that the reader could easily identify the genre as well as being a bit different and making my magazine stand out from the rest because when doing my research I never seen any others with dark red the majority were red.

Costume

•The most common buyers for music magazines are 13-25 and is male dominated. I wanted to appeal to the biggest audience so my model is wearing clothing that a male audience can associate to so that the magazine will sell more copy’s.

Lighting• I tried to create an artificial lighting that did not

produce shadows, but wanted to keep it as natural as possible so that it was true to existing magazines.

• Eye contact - I felt that it was very important to follow conventions and to make sure that my model had direct eye contact with the camera. This is important because in a music magazine, the eye contact creates a relationship between the reader and the artist.

Body Language• There is provocative action shown on my cover

which follows conventions which can be seen on some magazines e.g. Eminem on the front cover of NME

Props• I used a prop of an acoustic guitar, drum kit,

recording studio andpiano, I did as it would be common to use an acoustic guitar in an indie magazine as that’s the style of music my magazine is. As well as on my other image on my contents page my other model was sat speaking into a mic in a recording studio.

Contents Page• My magazine contents page is more of a more straight

forward lay out as this follows the conventions of magazines such as Q as these Layouts are more simplistic so that the reader can easily see what they are reading. My magazine has a more organised layout in comparison to magazines such as NME and Kerrang as I felt this will appeal more to a wider market that may have been 'put off' by hectic design of some music magazines.

• Like existing publications I had to make sure that there was same style throughout my magazine therefore I ensured that on my contents colour were the same. I used the same font style in the banner of the contents page as the front cover and the same font to ensure this.

Double Page Spread• As seen in other music magazine I did an interview with my artist

which I turned into an article about the artist so that it creates a more personalised relationship between the reader and the artist.

• Similarly to other double page spread I used a large quotation that was intended to be somewhat controversial as it encourages the audience to read the whole article.

• I also included a small summary at the top of the article to give the reader an insight into what the article is going to be about.

• However I went against conventions as I had no text on the left hand side of the page, usually the artist's name is featured here or the summary yet I wanted the left hand side to purely concentrate on the image.

• I developed existing conventions as the photographic image on the cover presents the artist as a strong, with lots of attitude.