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

​My indie rock music magazine Noize develops and challenges the forms and conventions of other media products available on the market in many different ways. Throughout my research, I analysed several other music magazines of the same genre (rock music), but I mainly focused on Kerrang! and NME as I felt these were most similar to what I wanted my finished product to be like. Analysing other real music magazines benefited my understanding and knowledge of conventional music magazines so that I could apply these conventions to my own product and therefore ensure it appealed to my target audience as much as possible.

​

Masthead and Typography

​

​

​

​

​

​The masthead on my front cover has a slight resemblance to NME, with its bold font and the whole of the letters in capital form, but my logo on this cover is in white, when in fact, the actual logo would be red, just like NME's and to keep with the house style of my magazine and the conventional rock music house style of red, black and white. The font used throughout my magazine is an unconventional one: Letter Gothic Std which is a Monospaced font. I chose this font as it gives off an informal impression which is what I wanted for my magazine and also looks aesthetically pleasing, so it therefore challenges conventions of real media products as magazines available on the market generally use Impact or Sans Serif fonts. However, Letter Gothic does look quite similar to the American Typewriter font which is a Sans Serif font, thus meaning I'm only bordering on challenging forms and conventions.

​

Mise-en-Scene and Costumes

My finished product follows the conventions of typical music magazines by way of the mise-en-scene of my images. I used back drops which I believe gave the best impression of a grunge-like feel, so I therefore assembled the photoshoot in my garden as it's quite large and at the back features quite an old shed and an old wooden swing which give connotations of rock, rebellion and mystery, just as most indie rock music related photos do. The poses, facial expressions and costumes of my model reflect the genre of my music magazine as well as the enivronment, as I dressed my model in convential 'indie/hipster' clothes which my target audience would likely wear. I also posed my model in ways which my target audience could relate to and asked her to potray a fierce, sulky attitude as this is what I wanted my cover star to come across like as this is the attitude most conventional of the rock genre. My model also adopted a 'direct gaze' in most of my photographs as this way she connected directly with the camera and therefore would potentially connect directly with the viewer which thus makes the magazine seem more personal and the viewer can hence more easily relate with the star. After researching various different music magazines of a similar genre - Kerrang!, Q and NME - I found that most female stars featured in their magazines wore heavy eye make-up and bright lipsticks, so I therefore did my model's make-up in a similar style to keep with conventions.

​

Layout

The layout throughout my finished product was kept as conventional as possible - in comparison to my preliminary task where I pushed the boundaries greatly - as I believed in doing so would keep my magazine feeling familiar and also ensure that it looked as professional as possible. Evidence of keeping the layout conventional comes from situating the masthead on the front cover in the top left-hand corner where they generally are located, I kept the contents page content in labelled columns and for the double-page spread I included a main image and a short introduction to the interview which is also following codes and conventions.

​

Contents Page

​My contents page is both conventional and unconventional, as I have kept the content in labelled columns which is typical of a contents page, but I have only used one main image which is unconventional, as generally, many different images are shown on this page, in order to hint at the contents inside. I believe by challenging this convention I have ensured that my contents page looks more organised and it could also potentially ensure that my viewers are more attracted to the overall finish. I also included content which related to the indie rock music genre, and arranged and worded the contents so that it was similar to NME magazine.