Evaluation: Question 7

Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
   
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Evaluation: Question 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing your product?  
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Evaluation: Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

My magazine’s USP is the actual genre; film score. This is such a rare type of magazine that if it ever would have been successful, then it would have been known as the film score magazine when people wouldn’t have been aware of its name. This would have meant a huge boost of awareness.

The language techniques I used were for a ranged audience. I used entirely colloquial and simple language to attract the younger readers that I was made of aware of in my survey, making it easier to read and more laid back. Taking into account my older audience, I did once question whether I should be using more formal language, but decided to ignore the stereotype of more mature people preferring more formal and proper language, because surely some of them must like to kick back and read something easy every now and again.

The font for my masthead was chosen for my genre, but does tie into my audience in a way. I chose it to reinforce the ‘classic’ theme of the issue (from the feature article on the double-page spread) and also used this theme to attract the older audience I had.

My models I chose to keep in touch with the key demographic I made note of from the survey: young adults. I chose young girls with instruments to keep said young adults interested and reinforce the musical genre, as young people are more likely to be interested in playing the guitar than they are in orchestras.

Evaluation: Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?  
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Evaluation: Question 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your product and why?

My magazine would have to be distributed in places that are likely to catch potential readers’ eyes. As my target audience are adults, the magazine would definitely be sold in traditional newsagents with other magazines for those who browse there. Considering the genre, it would also be sold in cinemas for those who are fans of films and frequent the cinema. There wouldn’t be an app, as I don’t feel that my audience would be large enough to benefit from the effort and cost it would take to create, but there would be QR codes on some of the covers that lead to the magazine’s website, where articles would be expanded on and polls would be available to take for those who are interested.

A new issue would come out in the first week of every month. When considering the age and habits of likely readers, my magazine would definitely be up for subscription, because some of the older audience may find it difficult to get out on a semi-regular basis.

According to research I have done, there was only one other significant film score magazine in print in the noughties: Film Score Monthly. This ceased publication in 2005 in order to further take advantage of the newly advanced web and multimedia opportunities online. The magazine’s website has an option for readers to download the latest issue for a cheaper price than it would have been on paper. There are also pages mentioning parts of latest general news to do with films. At one point, it was the most popular website of all time, with fifty billion views a day across the world.

SCORE’s website would have an online gallery of all previous front covers, and articles that are predicted to be the most popular will be available to read in further detail online in order to benefit the younger audience.

Evaluation: Question 2

How does your media product represent a particular social group?  
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Evaluation: Question 1

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

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Double-Page Spread: Final Double-Page Spread

With a few final finishing touches, like switching my name from the left to the right, cleaning up the picture a bit, and creating better spacing for my text, the double-page spread is complete. Here's the last page of my music magazine!

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Now for the evaluation...

Contents Page: Final Cover

The last finishing touch for my contents page was to tweak the page numbers. I've made the numbers go up to 89 now, which is (hopefully) a much more realistic number of pages for a small music magazine to have.
Here's my final contents page.

Double-Page Spread: Proposed Final Spread

My final piece of coursework for the task: a double-page spread. Mine is based on a silent film, in close relation to the film music genre.

Contents Page: Proposed Final Page

After a long week, I've finally come up with a new and improved contents page for my music magazine. Last year, my contents page didn't have a clear title, so I've kept that in mind as I've tried to improve this year's one.

Contents Page and Double-Page Spread: Construction

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Contents Page and Double-Page Spread: Photography

I took a lot of photos for my contents page and double-page spread because, because I wanted to use at least four shots over both of them: two for the spread, one for the background of the contents page, and one of my model for a feature shot. These were the photos that didn't make the cut for either page.

Front Cover: Final Cover

Some feedback from my teacher told me that my main sell-line didn't seem to be 'popping' enough. It was getting lost between the four other sell-lines, and the colours had been hard to make visible in front of the guitar. To combat this, I reduced the other sell-lines' font size and put a banner behind the lead sell-line to make it more visible.
This is my final music magazine front cover.

Front Cover: Proposed Final Cover

My first official piece of coursework! A film music magazine cover.

Front Cover: Construction

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Front Cover: Photography

I did my photoshoot this week in front of a grey sheet. I chose a simple guitar for mise-en-scene, as many film score composers choose one instrument to map out the first drafts of their songs with and move to larger orchestras later. I think that more audience members will be able to relate to a girl holding a guitar.

These two pictures had to be scrapped mostly because getting a best friend to be your model in a school project always spells disaster, as proven here by the inappropriate faces you see. They were also scrapped because the poses weren’t quite right—in the first, you can’t see the full guitar, and her hair is covering her eyes. I thought the second would be casual and interesting, but it holds no relation to the genre when she’s not using it properly. 

These were gotten rid of for the same reason, although the expression is much more acceptable. You can’t see the full guitar and the picture sends the wrong sort of message for my magazine. 

I finally settled on this picture, which has almost the full guitar in the shot as well as a nice smile and an accurate demonstration of how to play said guitar. The focus is perfect, there’s lots of space for a masthead, and I think it’ll be a great shot to use for my magazine cover.

Audience Research

For my audience research, I chose to do a quick and easy questionnaire with ten questions in order to get my results in as soon as possible so I could start planning properly. I allowed two weeks for my audience to answer my questionnaire and I got 21 responses. These were my results and what I've decided to do regarding them.

From these first questions, I can establish that the majority of my audience were males aged between 26 and 35. Almost every single person that answered my survey agreed that music was an important part of film, so this is most likely my target audience. However, almost as many people were females aged between 15 and 25, so my audience could also encompass young females. I will generalise my audience to adults of both genders.

These questions were to narrow down what my target audience would be drawn in by. The respondents' favourite genres seemed to be science-fiction and comedy, so I'll try and include those in my sell lines on the magazine, along with a popular composer. Eleven of the people who took my survey gave names of their favourite composer, and the most mentioned were Hans Zimmer and John Barry. I will try and feature those popular names on my cover, too.

Font Testing

Possibly the most important feature of a magazine cover is the masthead. It's what most audiences look at when they search for a magazine. My music magazine will be called 'SCORE', in relation to classical instruments and film score music, so it's important that I have a font that says traditional, but has the modern magazine twist.

These were the fonts I found.

For that all-important second opinion, I asked my sister (who also has experience in scored music) which font she thought was best for a music magazine based around film score. She suggested the first (which I'd been leaning towards originally), because it looked more regal with its bars.

With a bit of a recolouring to suit my magazine's theme, I ended up with this masthead:

Draft Sketches

As a vague guideline to how I want my pieces to end up, I've drawn a few rough sketches as first drafts for my front cover, contents page, and double page spread. These will help me with my photography for the pages and placement of text.

Analysis: Contents Page

The final pieces of analysis I've completed are four analyses of contents pages from other music magazines. These will help me in styling my own and making it look as realistic as possible.