Question 2: How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

Question 2: How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

Here is my response to CCR2:

Transcript

My magazine is called Aspire and reflects the values of my chosen genre of indie-pop perfectly.

Aspire offers a unique experience within the wider community, for those young aspirational individuals considering a potential career in the music industry. We strive to empower and motivate newly emerging artists and provide them with special opportunities that boost their confidence with their imagination, creativity, and originality. We are passionate about bringing ingenuity with our content to reflect our dedication to inspiring small artists, collaboration to drive the community feel of the readership, and allowing them to express their true selves artistically.

My audience are fun/atic individualists, aged 17 to 21 year old females who are particularly interested in fashion, art and have a love for indie-pop music. They desire independence and freedom, as well as value the importance of life.

Linking back to the Blumler&Katz theory, you need to be aware of the audience’s uses and gratifications. The audience of the media both actively seek pleasure and practical use out of the different media they consume. So as a designer, I made sure to engage my audience through Entertainment, Personal Identity, Social Interaction, and Information.

Entertainment – Within my magazine, my audience can acknowledge entertainment by reading the article featured on my double-page spread, it expresses the determination and courage of a young individual entering the Indie pop industry with a disability.  This allows the reader to escape from everyday life and focus on something completely inspirational. 

Personal Identity – Personal identity is presented in my double-page spread as it reflects my target audience’s personal values and beliefs. The positive message addressed throughout is that no matter what happens in life, never give up. This reinforces their values of life and its importance. It’ll help them grow as an individual and endeavor to achieve anything they make possible.

Social Interaction – Additionally, my magazine will be distributed online. This opens many opportunities for the readers to discuss and socially interact on various forums and Q&As. 

Information – My contents page contains a variety of headlines that provide information to the readers before they flick through the magazine to their desired page. For example, in the ‘regulars’ section of the contents, the headline ‘Outfits of the week’ summarises the details of the corresponding page. The subtext underneath ‘Style your wardrobe with …’ gives a broader range of fashion trends that an individual can spice up their life with, allowing them to feel better and more confident about themselves as well as improving their life on a practical and emotional level. 

AIDA is used in marketing to identify the stages an individual goes through during the process of purchasing a product. It stands for the four stages which are Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. 

Attention is made apparent through the strong direct eye contact with the main cover star image on my front cover. This enables my model to engage with the audience and show interest in picking up the product.

Interest is further stemmed by the informative catchy headlines and captivating cover lines displayed on the cover and contents. As well as this, by mentioning other well-known artists within the genre, I aimed to create more interest as the recognition of those familiar names would instantly attract the attention of my target audience. 

Desire is beckoned through having the chance to win exclusive tickets for various tours such as Tame Impalas. These would only be possible to win if you brought the magazine.

Furthermore, action is when the ideal target member closes the deal and purchases the product.

The ideal company that  I’d want to distribute and represent my magazine would be Hearst. Hearst portrays a forward-looking community that engages with positive people in positive environments. In addition, Hearst’s goal is to create premium, purposeful content that helps our audiences and partners strive, thrive, and get more out of life. This statement admirably aligns with my magazine’s outlook, creating the perfect opportunity for my magazine to work with a brand that follows the same beliefs and values as my own. As well, Hearst owns magazines that my target audience would also be interested in such as ELLE and Cosmopolitan. This would automatically grow my magazine’s interest as there’s a gap in their market for a new music magazine and create a unique selling point for Hearst even though they already have a strong adherent. 

Throughout the process of deciding on my chosen adverts, I referred back to my audience’s psychographics and demographics to have a clear understanding of their interests. 

For my first advert, I chose Doc Martens as I feel the overall attraction of the advert would be of interest to my desired audience. It also blends in with the vibrant color palette throughout my magazine. By looking back on previous background research made prior to my magazine, I identified my target audience’s interest in style and fashion trends. Since indie-pop is quite quirky with a grunge aspect to it, I feel as though Doc Martens are a great reflection of the genre due to their rebellious style and trendiness across various social media platforms, especially amongst the female audience. 

For my second advert, I chose Doritos as I feel its simplicity and creativity of it will allure my ideal target audience. The simplicity won’t overwhelm my magazine and the way the product is incorporated into the design of the Mexican sombrero gives a sense of quirkiness and fun to the advertisement. Plus, Doritos are a popular worldwide food to snack on, tasty and very craveable so is ideal for any gender of any certain audience.

For the distribution of my magazine, I would want to have digital and print copies as they can focus on both the online users and the physical readers. Having digital copies allows my magazine to reach a younger target audience, plus they are cheap and easy to produce. Moreover, print copies are easily accessible to everyone and help grasp those who prefer to have a physical copy rather than it being all online. These two combinations would work well together to expand your audience and grow profits by publishing both versions, meaning you can reach a wider range of people and audiences. In addition, I’d also want to create online adverts to further advance my magazine. The significance of this is that online advertisers can give advertisers bespoke audiences, through micromarketing, this allows advertisers to target a specific group of people regarding their uses and gratifications, and products/services can be marketed directly to a certain group of customers.

To help my magazine survive in the digital world, I shall use social media to popularise and boost the magazine. Links to enhanced digital content like various forums and Q&As will be attached to provide a source of social interaction within the community. 

To further stimulate the sales of the printed copies, I think it would be beneficial to include freebies such as samples of new makeup products and perfumes, or vouchers for different health products or food.

 

Question 3: How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

Question 3: How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

Here is my response to CCR3:

Transcript

Dear Future A-Level Media Student,

Hi, I’m Lana, an A-Level media student, and I want to inform you of the wide range of opportunities A-level media has to offer. This letter will take you through the variety of skills you will gain from doing this course; some of these skills include technical production skills like using different software, creative production skills, and transferable skills that can be replicated through everyday life.

When taking the subject, it provides you with the chance to dive straight into the technical production side of media. There are many opportunities for you to learn and expand your knowledge of technical skills, giving you a better understanding of how different softwares operate. Media enables you to encode, create and design your own multi-media blog that helps with the organization of various posts which include embedding and linking documents relating to useful background research and planning for upcoming projects. Your blog helps you reflect on the decision-making process. Other exciting software that allows you to construct your media are Adobe Indesign and Photoshop, these teach you how to make text boxes which can lead you to manipulate text and images, add different types of effects to your designs such as an outer glow or drop shadow and put in backgrounds like a gradient. You also gain other skills like being able to operate studio lighting, editing, masking, airbrushing, aligning, and using precision tools. All of these decisions you make when designing will help communicate meaning and create a narrative for the genre. 

Technical skills have an impact on the star image you would like to represent for a particular genre or target audience. For example, with my main cover star image featured on the front cover of my magazine, I used different tools on photoshop to successfully enhance the colour of the glasses to make them more vibrant and brighten the eyeshadow in the inner corner of her eyes so that my main cover star would represent a young, idiosyncratic individual which created the star image of indie pop. Indesign had also come in useful when creating a layout for the text and images so that they integrated together excellently.

Within creative production skills, you will learn a lot about Mise-En-Scene and CLAMPS. This includes costume, lighting, acting (body language, poses, and facial expressions), makeup and hair, props, and setting. Mise-En-Scene is very useful when producing images to fit a certain genre as it really helps with the development of the character and communicating a story to a desired audience. Similarly, when using photography, composition, framing with the use of depth of field, lead space, rule of thirds, different angles, and distances, these all work collectively to convey mise-en-scene in an image. Along with this, media allows you to get creative with the design elements of a product. Branding is really important to successfully captivate your target audience. You learn how to identify what colour schemes and typefaces are significant to your chosen genre. Plus, manipulating the text, like the masthead, can be really effective as it adds an element of uniqueness and fun to your product. There are also various software’s that allow you to get artistically creative; you can explore the different features and tools that can assist you in creating graphic design patterns and arranging a suitable layout that integrates the text and images together with the use of wrap text.

When organizing my photoshoot for my magazine, I made sure to incorporate props such as bright purple glasses. By doing this, my model achieved different poses and positions involving the glasses that fit the genre and I could potentially photograph, providing me with a variety of photos to choose from when shortlisting. This successfully conveyed a suitable narrative of a young, fun, and lively female. I also included a graphic design, which I created on adobe illustrator, in my page of contents. The buoyant and quirky patterned design signified the quirkiness of the indie pop genre brilliantly.

You will also come across distinct transferable skills which then can be applied to everyday life. Examples of these include; critical thinking, time management, software skills, organization skills, and collaboration skills. You will also develop effective communication skills by listening and responding back to feedback. You will also gain efficient researching skills that will expand when you undertake background research on certain target audiences, gathering information to create detailed moodboards. These will help impact your final products and make them of high quality.

I personally broadened my organization skills through creating a ‘Production Meeting Agenda’ which helped the process of a photoshoot run smoothly. It enabled me to understand what was necessary to bring, like costume, hair & makeup, and props, and identify the things in which I had to plan prior to it. As well, booking a time slot for a photography studio requires a lot of organization as it means you have to find an appropriate time when both you and your model are available to shoot. Planning and organizing a photoshoot also further developed my communication skills as I expressed the plan to my model so that she was fully aware of what was going to happen in advance, this allowed for no time to be wasted in our allocated time slot. I also directed my model throughout the shoot, asking for a variety of poses, which made me gain confidence in communicating. Since we both had a clear understanding of what we needed to happen, it resulted in us having a successful stress free photo shoot.

Media Studies is a fantastic subject to consider if you are a creative individual who is willing to develop and expand their current knowledge of different skills. I would highly recommend taking the subject if any of the previous things mentioned above come of interest to you.

Best Wishes,

Lana De Garis

 

Media Ecology

Media Ecology

Here are our class posters on different aspects of Media Ecology:

Reflection

Media Ecology is the study of Media, Technology, and Communication and how they affect human environments.

Each aspect collectively creates the Media Ecology. Since they are dependent on each other if one of them disappears, the entire system would collapse.

The system is composed of the Government, Creators, Money, Technology, Distribution, Institution, Social Media, and Audience.

3 Questions I find most interesting:

  • What satisfies an audience?
  • Should Governments control Distribution?
  • How does technology change social interaction?

 

My Media Diet

My Media Diet

Reflection

Blumler and Katz’s (1974) theory came to describes that ‘different people can use the same communication message for very different purposes’.  The audience of the media both actively seek pleasure and practical use out of the different media they consume.

In my everyday life, I use a variety of platforms.

Personal Identity: I listen to podcasts, i.e the Emma Chamberlain podcast, and different genres of music on Spotify. I love shopping brands I like such as ASOS, Urban, and Zara to keep on improving and expressing myself through fashion in my wardrobe and keep up to date with the latest trends.

Social Interaction: I have Social Interaction on Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram to communicate and interact with my friends and family everyday. This has a connection with Personal Identity because Instagram allows me to post about my life to my friends and family and express myself freely.

Information: Everyday I find myself on Google, searching for Information whether that be practical things which are somewhat useful to know or absolutely ridiculous stuff. Google can also be a source of Entertainment as you can access several different media like Youtube or Disney+. It can as well be used for Social Interaction because it has Gmail, which is able to send emails from a school account or a personal one.

Entertainment: As a source of Entertainment, I use Netflix to watch series’ like Skins and Outer Banks as a good way of passing time and keeping an eye out for upcoming shows/movies. As well as Tv shows like F.R.I.E.N.D.S and Gogglebox. I also scroll through TikTok when I’m bored and occasionally send some to my friends so that we can have a laugh together, this links in with Social Interaction as I’m interacting with my friends by showing them videos I’ve found.