Media & Collective Identity Youth

1914-1945 (World War 1 & World War 2)

In 1904, Stanley Hall, the famous psychiatrist, described teenage life as “a time of storm and stress when ‘all’ young people go through some degree of emotional and behavioural upheaval, before establishing a more stable equilibrium at adulthood”. He also stated that the most common mood of teenagers is depressed and that criminal activity is likely to increase from the age of 12 – 24 and that this is because “Youth must have excitement and if this is not at hand in the form of moral intellectual enthusiasms it is more prone to be sought in sex or drink”.

It is obvious that it can be argued that not every young person fits in to this stereotype, the way youth has been portrayed in the media in the UK in the last 100 years does support Hall’s theory. This involves the way young people have been stereotyped in printed press, through film representation and most recently, through the internet.

One of the major time periods in history that disrupts Hall’s theory is the war period between 1914 – 1945. During this period of time there were 2 world wars which affected every person in the UK, old and young. Young people in this time were portrayed as “heroic” and “brave”. As a quote from the Daily Mail in 1939 says, “There were casualties perhaps inevitable for the remarkable view… These men laid down their lives for this country.” And talks about how they were killed heroically in action. Western Morning News talks of the young women who volunteered themselves as nurses in St Lawrence’s Hospital, “I should like to thank the nurses for the noble work they have done in preparing the hospital, the whole of the staff have volunteered for the work.” And as the Sunday Pictorial wrote in 1944, “Because victory is nearer, our men do not slacken in their efforts. Because they have had successes.” Which speaks of young people who are still working hard and have already been successful. Each of these articles were accompanied by images of young people looking heroic and brave.

In terms of British cinema, there was a large increase in the amount of people who paid to go and watch a film. This is because there was a large demand for British films as people did not want to watch films about American life but instead wanted to watch patriotic films that portrayed doctors, nurses and soldiers as heroic. Not only did people go to the cinema for fiction films, they also wanted to see news reels as most people at this time did not have televisions in their homes. A British film portraying war life was ‘Tell England’ (1931, written by Ernest Raymond). Starring Fay Compton, Tony Bruce, Carl Harbord and Dennis Hoey, it follows 2 young men joining the army.

1950's

Rebel Without A Cause (1955): This clip shows James Dean experiencing pressure from his peers. This is signified by James saying the line "You're tearing me apart". This relates to Stanley Hall's theory of youth which describes the teenage years as being full of storm and stress. However, even though we all know what this speech suggests, it is not definite that he means that he is being 'torn apart' because he is stressed.

The Wild Ones (1953): Hedbridge's theory that youth is trouble and that youth want to reject hegemony because it looks 'cool'. This is shown through the speech "Johnny, what are you rebelling against?" "What you got?". It is also connoted through mise-en-scene in the image as the male is wearing a leather jacket and has his arm around a woman who is looking at him in a seductive manner.

Jailhouse Rock (1956): A line in this film, "It's just the beast in me", conforms with Cohen's theory that the media create a moral panic about the youth of today which includes them being labelled at 'folk devils'.

1960's

1970's

"Punk was, and still is, a subculture, characterised as being part of youth rebellion, part artistic statement. Primarily manifested through music."

1976 - 1979 was the height of the punk movement

Working class credibility

Promotion of anarchy, anti-establishment

Hedbridge - Teenagers are fun and trouble

Newspaper:

Daily Mirror (2nd December 1976): "TV fury over rock cult filth" "Obnoxious" "Outrageous" "A pop group shocked millions of viewers last night with the filthiest language heard on British television" "Foul mouthed"

Guardian (10th November 1977): "Punk record is a load of legal trouble"

Daily Mail (2nd February 1979): "Drugs kill punk star Sid Vicious"

Sunday Mirror (January 1978): Cover made by fans - Replaces 'or' of mirror with 'a' - mirra. "The mirror goes on tour with Britain's most outrageous band" 

"Sniffin' Glue (January 1977): "And other rock 'n' roll habits" Newspaper cover in the background with the headline "Parents warned over glue sniffing" 

Quote from Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, "Be childish. Be irresponsible. Be disrespectful. Be everything this society hates"

Film:

Scum (1979): Originally made in 1966 by BBC but didn't like it and wasn't allowed to be shown on tv.

• Directed by Alan Clarke
• Ray Winston played Carlin
• Mick Ford played Archer
• Julian Firth played Davis

A Clockwork Orange (1971): 

• Directed by Stanley Kubrick
• Malcolm McDowell played Alex
• Michael Tarn played Pete
• James Marcus played Georgie
• Warren Clarke played Dim. 
• Example of media influencing young people to behave like the film because of copycat killing. "There's no law and order anymore"

Obsgerby: 

"Representations of youth tell us little about the realities of life experiences by young people, yet are revealing about dominant social and political preoccupation.. Young people serve as a canvas on which debates about more general patterns of social change are elaborated"

Hedbridge: 

• Importance of style to youth sub cultures 
• Media representations of young people portrayed as; Youth as fun, Youth as trouble
• Youth sub cultures reject hegemony through application of style

Stanley Hall

• Storm and stress model - "Adolescence is inherently a time of storm and stress when all young people go through some degree of emotional and behavioural upheaval, before establishing a more stable equilibrium at adulthood"
• Difficulty of adolescence prevalent in:
• - Teenage depression
• - Criminal activity would increase at the ages of 12 - 24
• - "Youth must have excitement and if this is not at hand in the form of moral intellectual enthusiasms it is more prone to be sought in sex or drink"

The Punk era of 1970 was a time where young people were described as being "obnoxious", "outrageous" and "foul mouthed" by the Daily Mirror (2nd December 1976). This was because punk was a promotion of anarchy and anti-establishment. This was portrayed in films such as Scum (1979) and The Clockwork Orange (1971) and portrayed through real life by the Sex Pistols who influenced a large group of young people and strongly changed the way young people were viewed by society. This was reinforced by the bands manager stating "Be childish. Be irresponsible. Be disrespectful. Be everything this society hates". 

1980's

Gregory's Girl

Giroux's theory of reflection described representations of young people as reflecting adult views. This film shows the ideal child, sweet, naive, friendly and non threatening.

Made In Britain

This film represents Acland's theory that youth is anti social and need to be nannied. This film shows that young people are violent, racist, impossible to control and psychotic. Triggered a moral panic.

Meantime

This film shows that society is 'broken' and are trapped with no life or future. It shows the working class being rude, lazy, ignorant and that their children lack guidance. This relates to Giroux's theory that society reflects representations and also Osgerby's theory that teenagers present a mixed metaphor (they hate their family but love their family).

1990's

Trainspotting (1996)

Stanley Hall

Glamourised heroin through cool actors and cool music (who is it by, what is it called)

First speech in film is main character stating aspects of 'normal' life and that he chose not to choose that (choose life, choose a job, i chose not to choose this).

"why would you want to poison your body" - Tommy
characters around 18-29
Heroin

Trainspotting, produced by Film 4 and directed by Danny Boyle, is a strong example of how collective identity is shaped and stereotyped by media through film because of its glamorisation of drugs, alcohol, sex and violence. This means that it supports Hall's theory (1904) that stated that young people need sex, drugs, alcohol, criminal activity in their lives to excite them. The main narrative of Trainspotting is centred around protagonist Mark Renton (played by Ewan McGregor) and shows him injecting heroin into a young girl and having heroin injected in him as well as smoking a cigarette and using strong language throughout. This supports all aspects of Stanley Hall's theory because ...

This lifestyle is highly glamorised by the mise-en-scene, the camera work, the music, the "cool" personalities of the actors. It makes this lifestyle look cool and fun (heroin addiction rates increased dramatically after this film was released). This supports Osgerby and Hedbridge's theory because
- Talk a bit about main characters

Human Traffic (1999)

Jip - "prince of paranoia"
Koop -
Nina - works in fast food restaurant, "the most together out of all of us"
Lulu
Moff
Clubbing, drugs, sex, portrays what life was like in 90's but may be the case that people imitated the film
Ecstasy
Music - primal scream, fatboy slim - aids in the film appearing cool to the young generations that watched this film

Trainspotting was not the only film that featured the lives of young, rebellious drug takers, Human Traffic also portrays this. Directed by Justin Kerrigan, this film supports Hall's theory because it is based around the lives of a group of friends who are planning a big night out including a lot of drugs. (Talk about characters and plot)

Also links to Osgerby/Hedbridge because the behaviour portrayed in this film would appear fun to the audience. This may also be thanks to the mise-en-scene, cast choices and music choices add to the connotation of fun and excitement because _____.

Talk about how media portrays lifestyles of the 90's, people may have copied the film

This film implies that the connotation of young people in the 1990's were all rebelling and taking drugs, which supports Hall's theory. The printed press did very little to dispel this image, the majority of articles I found about young people in the 90's related to drug use such as _____.

Film was not the only media platform that portrayed young people in the 90's, newspapers were doing it too. The South London Press on the 17th of October 1995 had the headline "Raid on ravers" applying to young people in nightclubs who were taking part in the newest crave 'raving'. It then goes on to say "Cops have swooped on a top nightclub in a bid to smash drug dealers preying on youngsters in the rave scene" which insinuates that not only did young people want to go out at night and get involved in raving, but they also wanted to take drugs whilst doing it. However, the use of the quote "drug dealers preying on youngsters" implies that it was not the youngsters fault but they were targeted by drug dealers (who were presumably older than the youngsters enjoying the rave). This relates to Osgerby's theory that young people present a mixed metaphor of wanting to have fun and create danger but are also consumers of this lifestyle (and in this case, physical consumers of the drugs that are handed to them in nightclubs). A line in the main story of the Sun on the 13th of June 1991 contradicts this theory as they state that "Raving is all about good clean fun" with no danger involved.

South London Press (17th October 1995) - "Raid on ravers" "Cops have swooped on a top nightclub in a bid to smash drug dealers preying on youngsters in the rave scene"

The Sun (13th June 1991) - "Rave is all the fave" "Raving is the new dance crave sweeping Britain... But you can forget the shock and horror of Acid House" "Raving is all about good clean fun" "Drugs, booze, dance floor brawling"

The Sun (1st November 1992) - "Shoot these evil acid barons, mum in fury at girl's drug death"

The Sun (June 1992) - "Computer 'web' to change billions of lives (yeah, right)"

2000's

Osgerby - Representations of youth tells us little about the reality

Hedbridge - Youth is betrayed as fun and trouble, youth subcultures reject hegemony through application of style 

Stanley Hall - Storm and stress model - youth are obsessed with sex and alcohol, if they are not provided with excitement they are likely to sought it out through sex or drink. 

South London Press (October 8, 2007) - "Brave teen's fight to live" - Positive portrayal of youth

Daily Mirror (8th April 2013) - Teen appointed as a flagship youth police crime commissioner said yesterday that she was "very ashamed" after tweeting about sex, drugs, violence, immigrants and gay people. - Was a positive portrayal when appointed the role but then they found negative points to report on 

Guardian (24th January 2006) - An Old Bailey judge yesterday released CCTV film to highlight the "depressing and alarming" teenage cult of happy slapping as he named a 14 year old girl who was in the gang that beat a man to death 

Guardian (10th November 2010) - Student protest over fees turns violent. Protestors smash windows and get onto roof of Tory HQ as estimated 50000 attend London rally. Protestors smashed windows and waved anarchist flags from the roof of the building housing the Conservative party headquarters as the fringe of a vast rally against university funding cuts turned violent. - Positive as shows young people standing up for themselves and wanting to get an education. Negative because they turned to violence

Guardian (9th August 2011) - London riots - Buildings were torched, shops ransacked, and officers attacked with makeshift missiles and petrol bombs as gangs of hooded and masked youths laid waste to streets right across the city. 

10 reasons to cheer our teenagers youth article by the BBC - http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2008/07/10_reasons_to_cheer_our_teenag.html

Film

Kidulthood - Directed by Menaj Huda in 2006. Main characters: Trife played by Aml Ameen, Sam played by Noel Clarke, Alisha played by Red Madrell and Jay played by Adam Deacon. Negative portrayal of youth. 

Attack The Block - Directed by Joe Cornish in 2011. Sam played by Jodie Whittaker, Moses played by John Boyega and Pest played by Alex Esmail. Different portrayal of youth, their motive is to 'save the day' - positive representation 

Inbetweeners - Directed by Ben Palmer in 2011, Will played by Simon Bird, Jay played by James Buckley, Neil played by Blake Harrison and Simon played by Joe Thomas. Completely different representation, features the young characters being obsessed with sex almost as if their lives revolve around it.

Youth representations in the 2000's are similar to those of other eras (especially 90's, 80's, 70's) as it shows teens being heavily involved in violence, profanity and sex. This relates to Stanley Hall's theory that young people seek excitement through sex, drugs, alcohol and danger. However, a film that shows a different portrayal of youth is Attack The Block as it shows the youthful main characters wanting to 'save the day'. This leads on to talk about the BBC's article "10 reasons to cheer our teenagers" which features 10 positive facts about teenagers. Another article that positively portrayed teenagers is the cover story of the South London Press on October 10th 2007 which featured the headline "brave teen 's fight to live". The connotation 'brave' is not one usually associated with youth as they are more likely to be seen as the opposite of this, 'cowards', because articles tend to focus on news where the youth have caused the problems and then fled the scene before they can be fixed, leaving adults to sort the issues out. Whilst the Inbetweeners still portrayed young people as being obsessed with sex and alcohol, they were not portrayed as being obsessed with violence or being in gangs. The film also shows that the characters are generally nice people and mean well. This is a different representation to that of the teenagers in Kidulthood as they are shown as being very nasty to each other using violence and swearing, as well as being obsessed with sex.

Q1B Genre Prep

John Friske describes genres as “attempts to structure some order into the wider range of texts and meanings that circulate in our culture for both the convenience of both producers and consumers.” (John Friske 1987).
‘Genre is not simply given by the culture: rather, it is in the constant process of negotiation and change’ (David Buckingham 1983)

Common conventions of magazines:

• All magazines are rectangle in shape and are mostly A4 but sometimes can be A5. They are no bigger than A4 because they are printed on glossy paper which is expensive, more expensive than normal paper that newspapers are printed on. They are also this size because they are made to be taken anywhere you would want to read it so they can not be too big or too heavy because this means they will not be portable. Also if they were too big (for example if they contained 900 pages) they would be too expensive to buy on a regular basis, or ever.
• All magazines are laid out so that they read from left to right from front cover to back cover so that it is the easiest it can be to read them and does not confuse any readers.
• All magazines start with a main image on the front cover and then proceed into an editors note or a contents page. 
• The language is friendly so that it has a more personal tone so that the reader can relate to it more and so that they feel like it is talking to them, as if they were talking to a friend.
• More and more magazines are becoming downloadable which means less and less people are going out and buying a paper magazine. Downloadable magazines are also cheaper than paper versions.
• Magazines always have a masthead which is usually at the top of the front cover. This is so that people know which magazine it is straight away when seeing it. The masthead also hints to what the magazine is about, for instance, Glamour magazine suggests that the magazine is for glamorous people and includes glamorous things in the magazine. The masthead also suggests what the target audience is as Glamorous is not usually a word used to describe straight males and is always a word to describe females and gay males which means that this is highly likely to be the target audience of the magazine.

Conventions of a fashion magazine:

• The people in the main images on the front of fashion magazines are always females, unless they are males who have been sexualised for the enjoyment of women. They are also highly likely to be models or celebrities because if they had a normal, every-day woman on the front readers would not feel the need to buy the magazine because they would not feel any need to become the woman on the front
• Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze suggests that even though fashion magazines are generally aimed at women and gay males, the model will still need to have a certain 'gaze' because the readers will look at the model on the cover and aspire to be like her because this gaze is very likely to attract males. This applies to the clothes she is wearing as well because it will aspire readers to want to wear the same clothes so that they will look like the model. 
• A common convention of mise-en-scene on a fashion magazine main image is that the model will be wearing designer clothes so that even if the words are in a different language, the audience will still be able to know what the genre of the magazine is because of what she is wearing. If the model wasn't wearing designer clothes she would not be as likely to be seen as stylish and fashionable, even if what she was wearing was in fashion. This also includes clothes that are not necessarily designer but are a bit unusual and unconventional because this means that the model has put thought into what she is wearing and is fashion conscious.
• A general convention of a fashion magazine is that there is text either side of the model in the main image. The masthead sometimes covers a slight part of the models head and the masthead also sometimes goes behind the model so that none of the model is covered up. 

‘the ‘ideal reader’ and attitudes about class,race,age and gender’. (Kress 1988)

How does your text genre choice encourage/attract its ideal reader?

• The ideal reader of fashion magazines are fairly wealthy females with a higher than middle class social status. People who are able to buy the designer clothes, handbags and make up that are featured in fashion magazines 
• Fashion magazines attract the ideal reader fairly easily because there are a lot of conventions that can be attractive to the ideal reader. These include the high price, the model on the front cover, the clothes she is wearing, the prestigious title that certain fashion magazines have (for example people will buy Vogue just because it is Vogue, not entirely because of what is advertised on the front cover). 

Starting Points Q1A

College magazine with front page (Bodmin College Post), contents page and double page spread
Music magazine (sidestage) with front page, contents page and double page spread
Video evaluation of AS work
Regional magazine (boutique) with front page, contents page, double page spread, website and billboard
Video evaluation of A2 work

Digital Technology

I used digital technology in many forms including using an Apple iMac computer, a canon DSLR to take photos and film videos, Photoshop to create all my magazine pages and to edit photos, Dreamweaver to create my website, iMovie to edit any videos I recorded, the internet to research, blog on blogger.com and create surveys on survey monkey.com. I also used a memory stick to save and transport my work from one computer to another and a SD card for the camera so that it saved my photos and so that it was easy to transport my photos from the camera to the computer.

During the construction of my A2 portfolio I used a range of different media technologies. This includes:

•       My whole coursework including planning and research being in the form of an Internet blog on blogger.com, which can be accessed by anyone so is useful for gaining feedback from my target audience and it meant I could include other media products in it such as images and videos. By using blogger I learnt how to create and keep a real blog which gave me skills that I will be able to use in the future to create a blog for other purposes. I used vimeo.com to watch examples of other evaluations in order for me to gain ideas of what to talk about in mine.
•       Using the Internet to research similar products in order to analyse them to find out the common conventions of the products in order to challenge or support them when creating my product
•      Using Word to write my evaluation and article for my double page feature spread.
•       Filming my evaluation and taking the images for my magazine, website and billboard on a 600D Canon DSLR camera. This meant that I learnt how to set it up and take high quality images.
•      Editing my evaluation in iMovie which meant I learnt how to use it and gained skills that I will be able to use in the future, using it meant I used tools such as bluescreening and cropping certain parts of film out to make it seem tidier and professional by selecting the parts I wanted to get rid of and using the ‘trim selection’ tool.
•       Creating my website on Dreamweaver, this was useful as it meant I could learn how real websites were made and I could learn how to make them. In order to change certain parts of my website such as the background and colours of the fonts I accessed the properties of each feature which allowed me to change things about them. I also added hyperlinks which sent the reader onto another page of my website.
•       I used InDesign to create the text side of my double page spread. This meant I could use the margins and columns tool to make the columns of text, which meant they would be the same size and width apart. A limitation of InDesign is that it does not let you add images so I had to do that part of my double page spread on Photoshop.
•       Creating my front cover, contents page, double page spread and billboard and editing images on Photoshop using various tools such as the text tool to add text to my products, adjustments to the images such as brightness, contrast, spot healing to get rid of any imperfections, the blur tool to blur out the background more and other various tools all to make my magazine pages seem more professional and appealing to the reader.

As well as this I used a wide range of websites in my planning and research including SurveyMonkey.Com to create my online survey, Blogger.Com for my blog, Pinterest.com for images used on my blog and also Vogue.Com and VisitCornwall.Com, which are the websites that I analysed.

I achieved all of this on an Apple iMac computer.

Research and Planning

I gained research in many different ways including:

• An online survey on surveymonkey.com which was useful because it meant I could get a lot of opinions quickly and easily.
• Verbal feedback from peers which meant they could give me honest and unique opinions unlike surveymonkey.com where there are already set out questions and answers which people click on. This means it is not personal at all.
• The main way I gained research into similar products was by analysing magazines, websites and billboards in order to find out the common conventions of real life products that I was planning on creating. This meant I had to analyse school, music, fashion and regional magazines including the front cover, contents page and a double page spread. For my A2 research and planning I had to analyse all of these as well as a website of a regional and fashion genre and 3 billboards. 
• In order to find most products to analyse, I had to google them and find suitable ones
• I planned my products before creating them on the computer by sketching out flat plans of them.
• However even though I planned my products before creating them I still had to change some things about my products because I discovered that they did not work as effectively as I thought they would. Also I changed things because of the audience feedback I got on them.
• Throughout my media AS and A2 coursework I had choices to make which determined what I would create. The biggest of these choices I made was which brief to follow for my A2 practical coursework in which I chose to create a regional magazine, billboard and website instead of creating a music video or a video game or a short film. 
• In order to plan my evaluation I carried out several steps. The first step I did was to watch other evaluations in order to get an idea what to talk about it mine. I used Vimeo to do this. The next step I took was to type my evaluation up. I used Word to do this and I typed it in an essay style. I put each section in to small paragraphs in order for it to be easier for me to read when I recorded my evaluation. Also in this word document I wrote where I would put each image in my background. 

what did i reject/what looked bad
looked at peers work and bloggers
little chunks
background how did i choose

Creativity

In order to create every part of my AS and A2 coursework I had to be creative so I could come up with effective ideas. I also chose my ideas based on feedback I got on products I had already created as gaining criticism steered my to the right path and caused me to gain better ideas. In order to create a new idea that is unique and has not been done before, I challenged the generic conventions of existing products in order to come up with a new concept. I also tried combining conventions from different products in order to create a new product (this is shown by my A2 practical portfolio  magazine being fashion and regional). Another way I gained ideas was by researching the history of magazines (as seen in the timeline on my A2 coursework blog). This helped because it allowed me to see how magazines have changed over the years and allowed me take on ideas that were used a number of years ago that have not been used for a while so it would be interesting to bring them back into use. I could also take old ideas on and adapt/update them so that they are modern and conventions that will be appreciated and enjoyed now. One of the main ways I gained ideas was by analysing the most popular magazines of the same genre I was creating. This meant I had to analyse my school's own magazine, popular music magazines such as NME and Kerrang! and popular fashion magazines such as Vogue and Cosmo. By analysing their generic conventions I learnt what the public is likely to be interested in and what they want to see in a magazine. This also gave me ideas on what conventions I could challenge so I could create something that was the 'opposite' of popular to create a completely different product. The limitations of this idea are that there is likely to be a reason that they are the opposite of popular and it's because no one likes these conventions. When creating my flat plans for all my products I tried to come up with a completely new design that is unique and interesting so that it will excite the reader even before they have picked up the magazine to read what it is inside it.

discuss with others/research

Use of conventions from real media texts

I deliberately chose conventions that I had seen on existing media products because this made my products look more professional. Real media texts that I used were magazines such as College, NME, Rocksound, Cornwall Life, myCornwall, Vogue,  Marie Claire and various others. This was for both my AS and A2 coursework. Also for my A2 coursework I analysed websites including Vogue and Visit Cornwall and I also had to analyse existing billboards which was not beneficial to creating my own because most of the billboards I could find were stunt/unusual and this style would not suit my genre of a fashion/regional magazine. In order to make my magazine, website and billboard as professional as I could I made sure to use the same computer programs as real media products are made on. These include Photoshop, Dreamweaver, InDesign and iMovie.

In order to do this I made sure that all my media products followed the generic conventions of real, existing media products of the same style, for example for my front cover I made sure I followed conventions found on a real magazine front cover as this would not only make my magazine look more professional, but it would make my magazine look as if it was a real magazine on a shop shelf with other real magazines.

As I put a genre slant of fashion on my products, I made sure I followed conventions of a real fashion magazine as well as a real regional magazine. One of the ways I achieved this was when choosing the font for my masthead, I made sure it was similar to fonts found on Vogue magazine (fashion) and Cornwall Life (regional), but also original so that I could make sure it did not look like it was copying an existing magazine.

Another convention of my masthead was the colour of it as this has to be a colour that will capture the attention of my target audience when on a shop shelf. I achieved this by making the masthead white as when placed against the main image of my magazine, gave a bold and clear effect. In order to add my own look to the masthead, I turned the opacity to 60% so that it blended in with the background image slightly, but not enough so that it is unnoticeable. I chose the name of my magazine, Boutique, by researching products that are similar to mine such as other fashion magazines and websites like Vogue, Marie Claire and Elle and taking into account what their names were.

Other options I considered were the Cornish word for fashion ‘Shapya’ and ‘Ribbon’ because this is something that is associated with making clothes and accessories. I settled with Boutique as I thought that it got straight to the point of what my magazine was based on (Cornish fashion which would generally be found in Cornish boutiques).

Another common convention that I portrayed on my front cover was the main image. I chose to feature a female as my model in my main image as this is a very common convention seen on fashion magazines. In order to make my image look as professional as a main image that would be found on a high-end fashion magazine, such as Vogue and Marie Claire, I edited it slightly using the spot healing tool on Photoshop to get rid of any flaws my model may have had and to make her seem more desirable so that women would look at her in my magazine and aspire to be like her therefore buying the magazine in hopes that they would find out how to become her. This follows conventions of real media products because “airbrushing” is something that the majority of magazines do to the models that feature in their magazines. Another reason I used Photoshop to edit my main image is to make the colours brighter so that they stand out more when on a shelf and to make the background slightly more blurred so that my model stood out more.

When selecting the model I would use for my main image I made sure I chose someone who has similar looks to what my target audience would generally look like and who the audience would aspire to look like, this includes the models clothing, hair styles and make up choices. When choosing my model I took into account Laura Mulvey’s theory of The Male Gaze, which essentially describes the way the audience look at women in the media and how they are portrayed. There are 3 ways this can be done: 1) How the female looks at herself 2) How women look at other women and 3) How men look at females. I felt I needed to challenge this theory and make my image with the thought in mind that it will be viewed by women, and not create it so that it will appeal to men because they are not my target audience. This meant that stereotypically I did not need to sexualise my model (this could be done by the clothes she wears, the poses she does or the location she is in) as this is typically not what women want to see.

This leads me on to the mise-en-scene used in my image. As my magazine has a strong fashion slant on it, I needed to make sure that the clothes my model is wearing were reasonably fashionable and stylish. This meant that I had to choose clothes that are popular, made my model look good and also looked fairly expensive as this is a generic convention of a high-end fashion magazine. In the main image my model is wearing a scarf that resembles the flag of America which was a risky idea because my magazine is a Cornish magazine so ideally I would’ve used a Cornish flag but I felt it was acceptable as this is what is fashionable at the moment and my target audience will understand this. As my magazine is also a regional magazine, I made sure there was a slight part of landscape or countryside in the background, which is portrayed as woodland in this image.

With my target audience in mind I made the price of my magazine fairly low at £2. This is because students are known for not having a lot of money and therefore are not likely spend money on luxuries such as magazines.

My colour scheme of black and white with the occasional colour such as purple was chosen by researching similar products as I noticed black and white were the 2 colours that Vogue stuck to whether it be in a feature spread, contents page or their website. After I noticed this I went on to research other high end fashion magazines such as Elle which also used a colour scheme of black and white. This gives a classy and sophisticated look as it is plain and not over the top.

Another thing I noticed when researching similar products was that not only is the colour scheme white but there is a lot of plain white space on the page such as the background and borders around images. This is something I took into account when creating my contents and double page feature spread pages. I feel by doing this it gives my magazine a modern feel to it and this is something that will appeal to my target audience of young students aged 16 – 24 and is also something that I did not see when researching and analysing magazines that had a target audience age of around 50 such as Cornwall Today, a regional magazine based on Cornwall.

On my contents page I added 1 image that took up about a quarter of the page and left the rest of the background plain white. I decided to do this as I felt it was an original look and it was a look that was inspired by real magazines such as Cosmo. This goes against Stanley Hall’s theory that youth must have excitement in their lives at all times as if this was the case I would make sure that I added lots of images and colours to keep my target audience excited but after researching products with a target audience of the same age as mine I know that I do not need to do this to keep them entertained. I noticed that a common convention of a contents page in a fashion magazine was to have the name of the magazine in the same style as it is on the front cover. This was something I took in to account and made sure I did on mine.

Even though I feel my double page feature spread appeals to my target audience in terms of layout and the main image, I do not feel that the text in the article appeals to them as it talks about a topic that would stereotypically only appeal to an older generation. I attempted changing this article to something my target audience would relate to and find more interesting but it did not fit in with the layout of the page so I decided to make this article a feature on my website instead. I edited my main image in my double page feature spread in a way that I feel will appeal to my target audience as they will find it interesting and unique. I did this by putting an overlay over my image and turning the opacity down on it so that it was seen just slightly over my main image. I also continued my lay out theme of having a lot of white on the page by my image not taking up the whole of the page and the background of the text being white.

I found that creating my billboard was harder than creating my front cover, contents page and double page spread. However when I found billboards that related to my product such as ones created by fashion magazines including Glamour and Elle I analysed their common conventions and then challenged or used these in my billboard making it slightly easier to come up with ideas. One of the reasons I found creating a billboard harder to create than my magazine is because I found it difficult to carry on my black and white colour scheme because this looked extremely plain and as if I had made it in 2 minutes. This is where I decided to carry on my use of purple (I used this on my double page spread and later on my website) as I felt this was a better background colour than plain white. A feature that I did carry on with was the simplistic style, which is seen through the minimal text on the billboard and the lack of images.

The 2 images that are on the billboard are a small image of my magazine front cover to show the audience what it looks like so they can go and buy it and the other image I used was the main image on my magazine front cover but without the text around it. I feel this was a good idea because this means I would get more use out of my advert because I would be able to leave it up for longer as if I had just used the whole front cover as the main image, people would still be looking for that issue even when the new issue is out. The mise-en-scene of my main image has an Autumn tone to it which hints to the release date of the magazine.

Another task I had to complete was to create a website with one home page and 2 linked pages. I did this by using Dreamweaver. When creating my website I had to take in to account a lot of conventions that are used on other fashion websites because there are conventions on websites that are different to ones found in magazines. These include layout, language and font, images and linked pages. In order to understand what to put on my website I analysed 2 existing websites, Vogue and Visit Cornwall. When analysing these web pages I found that all websites have a header, a body and a footer and all include a large number of images which is something I made sure I included in mine, I also found that the most effective way to link each page together is to use the same layout, colour scheme and fonts on each page. This was found on the Vogue website as Visit Cornwall did not stick

to this convention because they changed the colour of the font and menu bars on each page.

Post-Production

Post-production of my products was in the form of editing images on iPhoto and Photoshop, adding text to my front cover, contents page and double page spread on Photoshop and InDesign and editing videos on iMovie.

• In iPhoto I edited images using the edit tool and then using various other tools such as the brightness tool, the contrast tool and the sharpness tool and the definition tool.

• In Photoshop I used more in-depth tools to edit my photos. These tools include the spot healing tool to cover up and get rid of any blemishes there may be on my images, the blur tool to blur the background because this is a convention that is common in real media texts and the opacity tool to create an original effect on the main image of my double page spread as well as various other parts of my magazine and billboard such as the masthead. 
• I used InDesign to type up my article. I used this program because it allowed me to change the margin and column sizes and made it look more professional than if I had just typed the article up on Photoshop as this could have meant that the sentences may not be in line with each other making it obvious that it was not a real magazine.
• I edited my video evaluation on iMovie after recording in order to cut out any bits that did not fit in with the overall video such as bits where I accidentally said the wrong word etc and order so I could blue screen the background in order to add images to the background behind me.