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

The name of my music magazine is GRIME TIME. Me and my other group member chose this name as our masthead clearly states the main genres of the music that will be featured in the magazine. The name is short, straight to the point and it rhymes. We chose not to have a fixed colour scheme for the magazine because we wanted to adjust the colour to match the artist’s clothing in the dominant background image. This would give our magazine a unique style/flavour to differ from other magazines. This idea was inspired by our research of RWD magazine as this music magazine shares the genres of our magazine; Grime, Rap & R’n’b.

We decided to follow some of the regular conventions of music magazines when creating our product. The main conventions we have in our front cover includes a masthead, a price, a bar code, a issue number and a date.

Title and masthead

As you can see from our masthead this stands out from regular conventions of magazines as this particular title attracts my target audience of younger ages. Our group decided to choose the name of this title it is short making it easier for readers to remember and because we thought it would appeal to our audience link up with the genre of our magazine. The title "grimetime" suggests to the readers that it is time for a change in music, it also challenges regular magazines as this title has a bold effect which makes it look 3d whereas in a regular magazines you would have a 2d image of a masthead which is more informative than eye catching. For this title I used the website dafont.com to retrieve the image before editing the colour and style on fireworks to make it associated to the genre of grime and UK rap.

Mise en scene

I think the mise en scene of my images follow the code and conventions of how a grime or hip hop magazine would. This is because in my images I have made most of the people stand or pose in the middle of the frame to show that the storyline is all focused on them. I have followed similar conventions to what a grime magazine would, for example on the front cover I have one dominant image with other text around the image to show the focusing point

Costumes

The costumes and props used in my magazine "grimtime" are conventional. This is because the people in my magazine wore costumes which included baggy trousers, checkered shirts, wooly jackets and baseball hats. All of these items would be found in real music magazines. The props features are commonly used in existing 
magazines as main source of grime and hip hop, for example iconic microphone.

People

The people in my magazine are unconventional. The people in my magazine are all about the same age being college or sixth form students aged 16-19. This is unconventional because usually in grime and hip hop magazines you would see older images of people, particularly in their mid twenties. However one convention which I have kept the same would be the gender representation, using the males as the dominant sex rather than the female.

Title, font & style  

The fonts I used were from www.dafont.com. They had interesting graffiti fonts which I used to relate with the genre of grime and UK rap. As you can see in the image above I have focused on making a slight edge to each font by adding live filters and glow to make it appeal to my audiences. This would be unconventional as in regular grime magazines you wouldn't have bright colours and glow as they have a more wider target audience ranging from late teens to early 30 year olds. My font and style definantly appeals more to the younger audience as the glow and shadow effect draws their attention immediately.

Written content

The written content of my magazine follows the codes and conventions of a real magazine having the similar topics and information. For example I have an interview which asks about who their favourite artists are, what they think of the grime industry, how they developed into music and what they have in mind over the coming years. All of these topics could be found in a grime music magazine aimed at teenagers and young adults.

Music Genre

My magazine genre is based around grime, UK rap and hip hop. I have also listed some famous artist who are catergorised in grime, UK rap and hip hop. The genre of my magazine is quite clear throughout as the costumes and clothes shows what category they are classed in. Also the way the artist's in my magazine posed showed attitude which the grime scene has in this developed culture.

Layout

The layout of my front cover and double page spread are conventional as have all the things which a regular magazine would but my contents page however is uncoventional. One of the reasons being the way which my images are shown, making it noticeable and showing how important they are on the page. I did this because I wanted to add youth into the page which would be challenging and breaking the codes and conventions of a regular magazine, for example the numbers are scattered around the page because I feel that my target audience would prefer to have it unorthadoxed and this making it easier to read. This also relates to actual teenagers in real life, as they have been criticised for being lazy and unorganised which helps me explain why I chose to lay the contents out in this fashion.

Contents page

My contents page contains elements that follow the codes and conventions of existing music magazines. For example it featured two pages with subheadings stating the order of importance in this genre and this shows the audience how easy it is to find what type of topic they want to read. Another convention which I followed is the numbering of the sub headline with the image, this shows the reader who would feature in the story through the captions and giving them a little idea on what is inside the story.