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

Task:

A screencastify commentary on how your magazine engages audience and how it might survive in a digital media world.

You must address the following questions:  (There is a template in Classroom for you to use.)

1. Introduce your magazine, name, genre…
2. Describe your brand values / mission statement?
   • How will your magazine be distinct from or similar to others?
3. Who are your target audience?
   • Use Yougov, image and profile + other details FROM THE Young and Rubicam sheet below – tribewired etc.
4. Why would that audience buy your magazine?
   • Link to Uses and Gratification or AIDA…You should have @ 8 different specific elements that address B and K ideas and AIDA’s elements.
5. Who would you want to work with to distribute your magazine?
   • Which of the big magazine groups would you like to distribute your magazine?
   • How does your magazine fit with their existing publications?
6. What sort of advertiser would you hope to attract?
   • Link to your two selected ads & explain.
7. What strategies do you have for distribution? How will you link your print content with online content?
   • Refer to your Media Ecology essay where you have lots of ideas on how a traditional print version of your magazine would work and how a digital online version would work.

How can a print magazine survive in digital world?

• • Some answers & thoughts 
    1. Increasingly sensational celebrity gossip stories – Churnalism (cheap and easy)
    2. Freebies.
    3. Reduce cover price (free) & rely on ad sales.
    4. Link to enhanced digital content on website.
    5. Employ social media to promote our brand.
       • Audience participation & interaction (Uses and Gratification)
    6. Link digital content back to print, whet the audience’s appetite, require the audience to buy print version to get full details.
    7. Use a paywall for online content.

Making The CCR Presentation

Using your flipsnack magazine, record your voice over whilst flipping the pages as screencastify records your response.

• You will need to use your Laptop with a built in mic to record this.
• You should endeavor to ensure that you use the ‘pointer / pens tool’ when referring to elements of the magazine and ensure that you are turning the pages as and when appropriate.

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

There are a number of concepts that need to be addressed to answer this question fully.

1. Who is you audience?
2. How did you fulfil your audiences needs and expectations?
3. What is meant by distribution?
4. Who owns and controls magazine distribution
5. How are real media texts distributed in the online age?

Audience

You must define and describe your audience in these ways.

1. Demographics and Psychographics – audience segmentation
2. You should also use your Yougov findings to explain what other media texts they consume as well as other information.

Uses & Gratification

1. You should link specific elements of your magazine (contents, bands, representation, language, design (fonts / graphics) to specific uses and gratifications that you think your audience have.  Refer to Blumler and Katz’ ideas and also AIDA:
   1. Attention
   2. Interest
   3. Desire
   4. Action

Distribution

1. Complete this work sheet in order to explore magazine ownership & distribution.
2. Read the three articles below (also in the work sheet) in groups in order to research the business of magazine distribution and the challenges created by the internet & social media.

Research Articles

• Article from journalism trade rag on decline in magazine sales.
• How print is surviving in the digital age.
• Facebook & Google – a digital duopoly?

Institutional (Distribution) Issues

• Audiences expect to get their media for ‘free’
• The younger audience don’t like to read.
• Quality (factual) journalism is expensive and so is traditional print and distribution.
• However, it’s hard to make money out of online content.
  • Most of it goes to FB & Google, leaving everyone else scrabbling for the scraps.
• Exclusives remain ‘exclusive’ for about 10 seconds before it’s all over social media.
• How do you square this circle?

Task

Buzz words for your infographic…

You could copy and paste and then delete as you use them.

• Use: implemented, applied, engaged, used, tested, signed up, explored, investigated, analysed, planned, gauge, delegated, integrated
• Progression:  improve, extend, develop, enhanced, extenuate, analyse
• Create/creativity: develop, design, map out, collate, draft, experiment, aesthetics, design, layout, conventional, adapt, tweak, alter, amend
• Achieve: succeed, result, deliver, appropriate, win
• Use the term CONVERGED TECHNOLOGY – i.e. the idea that one device can provide multiple / integrated functions.

Continue reading →

How does my product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

This question is asking you to be a detective. There are two elements to this case:

1. What are the clues in my magazine?
   • The clues are the conventions
2. What meaning is suggested, implied or connoted through those clues?
   • The meaning is the representation.

We have done work on the conventions of magazine and you may need to revisit the lessons in the departmental blog blog and the important posts in your own. These will refresh you memory about the key concepts and terminology you need to use in the reflection.

The work we did on identifying conventions (clues) are in these posts:

• How the camera makes meaning
• Writing the article.
• Magazine Page Layout
• Your Analysis of the Front Page of a Magazine

The work we did on representation (values, attitudes & beliefs) are in these posts:

• Your Mission Statement
• Representation and The Star
• Mise-en-scene (Designing your star)
• Textual Analysis (Album or Tour Poster)

Task 1:

Identify all the (conventions) clues on your magazine pages by using the template in classroom.

You should complete this briefly and show to your teacher before completing the presentation to make sure you are on the right lines.

Task 2:

Present your ideas using EMAZE.

1. Sign up to a free account
2. Copy and rename this EMAZE template (see link below).
3.    https://www.emaze.com/@AOZFCWFCT/my-brand
4. Delete my instructions but keep in the headings and sub headings.

1. Insert images in the presentation with examples from your own magazine (use the snipping tool).
2. Annotate:
   1. The Convention usually applied, adopted, followed and did you use, develop and challenge it in your own production?
   2. Then describe the resulting representation using adjectives (find exciting ones!) for the impact that convention had on the product either in terms of how the artists or themes within the stories are represented.
3. Make the presentation your own and delete all the instructions/change the colours etc etc.

Sign up with google, open create…click on this link and then duplicate. You should have your own copy to individualise and make your own.

Some blog posts, which may help:

• Conventions of a music magazine
• The Paradox of the Star – Star Image – Metanarrative – Richard Dyer
• Star Building – the metanarrative – the big picture
• ADJECTIVES GALORE

How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

You have reflected on your skills , just like Napoleon Dynamite

You have thought about and evidenced your production journey in Cambridge International A Level Media Studies and all of the reflection is in your blog – in Creative Critical Reflections (all the green posts in the league), Print Preliminary Tasks and Music Magazine.

Most of the work for this question has already been done! So…Hooray & Hoorah!

This CCR will require you to reflect on how far you have come this year. In particular it will require you to reflect on the production skills you have acquired and how they have helped you become a more skilled (both technically and creatively) media producer – such as photographer, Photoshop(er), designer and journalist….

Moreover, you have also learnt some valuable production skills that are easily transferable to other parts of your life, education and ultimately career:

• Time management
• Directing and Management
• Communication & Collaboration
• Writing skills
• Research and Planning

TASK 1

You will write a letter to a future A Level Media Studies student in order to prepare them for what lies ahead. You need to advise them to learn from your experience and perhaps also your mistakes.  Your teacher will assist you in making a comprehensive list of what you might include.

TASK 2

Create a slideshow and create the following slides. Use the template one in classroom but make it your own!

• An Introduction – Dear Future A Level Media Student etc
• Technical Production Skills
• Creative Production Skills
• Transferable Skills
• A sign off and good luck.

TASK 3

Develop each slide with screen shots, logos, photos and captions that add visually to your letter by illustrating your points. Much of this work has already been done in your blog so you have the examples & screenshots already.  Use your OWN images as opposed to google ones.   Save it as a pdf.

TASK 4

Recording your letter.

• Open a Voicethread account voicethread.com/register
• Import your presentation as a pdf.
• Print out your letter notes/script.
• Record your letter over the slides so that the commentary coincides with the visuals.
• Save and embed on your blog.

THIS IS AN EXEMPLAR

Advice

You will need to use the comment box underneath each slide in order to make notes for your presentation.

Much of the content for this is already on your blog so just copy and paste it in initially and then edit to answer the question – which is the most important lesson learned in each moment of reflection.

Be sure not to make it a list – instead ensure each skill has an example attached to it and how that skill specifically impacted on the product – how it affected star image, or genre, or narrative, or the audience.  I need specific scenes, shots, frames, angles, fonts, colours etc and how that particular production skill impacted on them.  Remember, making the result ‘more professional’ is not enough – what do you mean by that? ALWAYS ADD IN A STORY, A FOR EXAMPLE, AN ANECDOTE.

Make it chatty, exciting and personal.  Submit to classroom for feedback before recording.

THIS DOCUMENT HAS A VARIETY OF IDEAS ON WHAT YOU SHOULD MENTION IN YOUR LETTER.