2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
My music magazine represents particular music groups because it is based around a certain genre. That genre is metal/rock so there will be people from different social classes who want to purchase my magazine. The stereotype for my magazine are teenage ‘emo’s’ who listen to metalcore, groove metal, nu metal and so on. I have shown this by putting a t-shirt of a well-known metal band, he has wrist bands on from festivals and his hair is long and black which shows that he has this stereotype. This would be in the demographics of ages 15-24 and suited form both male and female audiences. The generic type for my music magazine is both inner and outer-directed. The socio economic group for my magazine is based around all the areas from A to C2 grade because the language it the article is simple and easy to understand. The audience can also relate to the article because the person being interviewed is a typical teenager who is into the same genre of music.
3. What kind of media institution might describe your media product and why?
I think that my magazine would be one of Kerrang’s and Metal Hammer’s competitors because it will be a magazine in the IPC media. This is because the majority of metal magazines are published this way and think that my magazine would be able to compete against major publishing companies such as Bauer Media and Conde Nast. NME, Kerrang! and Metal Hammer are all part of the major publishing companies and these magazines are similar to mine in the layout and the genre.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
The audience for my media product were originally aged 15-24 and they are SEG D grade. I didn’t change my age of my target audience because it suited my product but I changed the SEG grade from a D to a C. This is because I wanted a wider target audience and thought that my product could be read by anyone of any social class. Although I did stick with the idea that it would be read by the majority of C2 grade people because they could probably afford the monthly issue. When I finished my product, my target audience turned out to be 15-24 year olds, the gender was dominantly male because of the genre, the content such as the bands which featured in the magazine and the article seems rather masculine because of the questions the reporter asked and the responses to the questions were answered by a male celebrity. Although many girls are big fans of male celebrities in any type of genre of music because of the persons looks and personality rather than the music he has written.
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
I attracted my audience by making the price affordable of £3.00 per issue for my target SEG of mainly C2 because people in that area will have a job because they are semi-skilled manual workers. Since the issue is only out once a month, they are effectively only paying £3.00 a month, and sometimes some of the audience might not want one of the issues because it hasn’t got enough bands or information which they are interested in inside the issue. The look of the magazine is also appealing because of the different colours.
The audience feedback I got from my participant was positive and they thought it was good. I asked her four questions based on the look of my three products. The first question; ‘if you saw this magazine in a shop, would you buy it?’ was circled yes and she said ‘because I think it looks professional and it’s the type of genre many teenagers listen to’. The second question was ‘do you think this magazine is reasonably priced based on its contents?’ and she said ‘£3.00 is a reasonably priced magazine for a monthly issue and would be able to afford it’. The third question was ‘what magazine/magazine genre does this look similar too and why?’ and she said ‘It looks like a metal or rock magazine very similar to ‘Kerrang!’ magazine’. The fourth question was ‘would you make any improvements to any of the three products?’ and she answered ‘yes I would change the colour of the background behind the text on the double page spread and possibly put more text in the article to make it three columns instead of two’. This was positive audience feedbacks which I wanted to hear because I was aiming to make it look similar to ‘Kerrang!’, and present it as a metal/rock genre which I thought I have successfully achieved.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I have learnt how to use Photoshop more efficiently and understand how to cut a picture out of the background, use the blur tool, how to use the transform scale and rotation tool efficiently how to use the spot fix tool. The picture I used for my first three drafts of my music magazine had to be cut out of the background. I used the eraser tool and the quick selection tool to cut round the image I wanted and then once I’d finished cutting, I used the blur tool around the image to make it blend in with the background. I then put the image in a plain black and white background with the black in the centre of the image and fading out into white. I thought that this was a good idea at first, but it didn’t turn out to be 
as good as I imagined it to be. I then ignored the front cover image and concentrated on making the masthead, the skyline, the main coverline and the barcode. When I started on my second draft, I rearranged the price, issue number and date of the magazine under the barcode instead of in the skyline. I also changes the font of the masthead because it looked neater and wasn’t too thick. This made the magazine easier to read and more appealing to look at. I also started adding some teasing contents down the bottom left side of the page.
Once I got to my third draft, I started taking more images to replace the image I currently had. But, I ended up adding more features to my magazine and added an advertisement for a festival on the skyline and some features inside the magazine.
When I was making my fourth draft, I finally got another main image to replace the old one. But this time I only used one person instead of four people so that it would be either to cut out and I could use other tools to make my image look better. The person I used for my main image had a couple of spots on his face so I used the spot removal tool to get rid of them. When I was cutting out my model, I used the polygon lasso tool for the relatively straight parts around my model such as each side if his torso and parts of his arms, and the magnetic lasso tool for the curved parts such as his head, shoulders and hands. After I cut him out of the background full of different posters, I used the eraser to erase very small parts I missed around him and the blur tool to make my model blend into the background. I then changed the colours of the background I was putting my model in front of to a plain white background. I did this because the main image stood out more and it made the house styles of dark red, white and yellow to stand out as well. 
The final front cover or the fifth draft of my magazine now had teasing contents along the bottom of the page of famous metal bands which feature in that issue. I also changed the font and the colour of the text underneath the coverlines and changed the text in the speech marks underneath the main coverline. I made the main coverline stand out more as well by adding a drop shadow which made a significant difference and gave it a nice visual 3D effect. I found that there was also an empty space opposite the coverlines so I added a splash or puff to fill it in. I put a drop shadow on the splash as well to make it stand out and give it a nice 3D effect which I thought worked well. .jpg)
For my final front cover titled ‘Music Magazine Front Cover Final (Adjustments)’ I changed the quote underneath the main coverline again so that it was relevant to my article. I used the free transform tool on my model to move him slightly to the right and slightly upwards and made him bigger. This is because he looked too small and was going over part of the coverlines. I also used the free transform tool on the masthead to stretch it vertically so that it would look bigger on the magazine. I then make the skyline smaller because it was over-crowding the masthead and changed one of the band names in the teasing contents because I already had the same band in one of the coverlines. 
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For the contents page, I managed to know how to rotate images such as the middle image in my contents page. I changed my first draft into my final by adding yellow to it as part of the house style and moving and enlarging ‘The Contents’ to the left so that it is in the middle of the page. I changed my double page spread by putting it into publisher where I could then rearrange the text so that it looked more like an article. I also had to move the title of the article from the centre, to the right hand side because of the split running down the middle of the page. I used the same tool to cut my model on the front cover and the double page spread because it looked the neatest and the easiest way to cut him out of the busy background he was behind. 7. Look back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I feel as though I have progressed from my college magazine to my music magazine because I have been able to use more tools in Photoshop such as spot removal tool, magnetic lasso tool, polygonal lasso tool and the blur tool. This is one of the reasons why they are different. I also had little knowledge of terminology and the layout of a college magazine whereas I had an advantage of producing my music magazine because I purchase and read music magazines on a weekly or monthly basis depending on what magazine I buy and if I have the money to purchase the product. I used some of the features of the magazines I purchased on my front cover of my music magazine to make it look more realistic and appealing. These features included: a splash, a skyline, teasing contents at the bottom featuring well known bands, and coverlines. I also knew what to do and was more clear of how produce the product when working on my music magazine because I had already had experience of doing something similar, knew exactly what I was doing and planned ahead of what I was going to do and when I was going to complete it.
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I discovered things which I didn’t realise when doing my college magazine. These things included; time management, how to improve the quality of my image when taking the pictures of my model, and how to improve the quality of my pictures using Photoshop. When taking my images for the front cover and double page spread of my music magazine, I used overhead lighting to make my models face clear and to bring out what he is wearing in detail. But, I make a mistake taking the pictures on a busy background full of different posters which make it quite hard to cut my model out of the background. The magnetic lasso tool was sometimes useless in places when I had to cut around his legs. This is because my models jeans and the background were the same shade so I had to use the polygonal lasso tool and guess where the outline of his leg was. 
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