Media Interview, Evaulation
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Transcript of Media Interview, Evaulation
Question 1: In what ways does your media product
use/develop or challenge forms and conventions?
Layout
Before starting my main task that was creating a
newspaper, I researched similar newspapers such
as, The Bromley Times and The Metro, which are
both free newspapers. I identified the conventions
that were used by both of these newspapers, to
give me an idea of how I could maybe challenge
some of the usual conventions but also follow
some to ensure my newspaper looked professional.
I established most newspapers but not all use a
simple five-column layout, I followed this
convention as it is a simple but an effective layout
when you have both text and images on your page,
as my newspaper is aimed at a younger audience I
attempted to avoid having long articles as I feel my
audience would be more likely to read shorter and
more interesting articles.
Measurement
To ensure my newspaper looked professional, I
took a number of measurements from The Metro
such as the measurements for; Gutter space,
column width, the length and width of the
masthead after doing this I entered the relevant
measurements into a programme on the Apple Mac
called Indesign where I designed my paper this
ensured all the measurements were correct such
as, the alignments of columns, advertisements and
masthead all fit effectively looking neat and clear.
As my measurements were taking from another
paper, I knew this would ensure my newspaper
looked professional.
Design
My images and adverts were also created with the
measurements I took from The Metro newspaper
this gave me the start I needed to make sure my
newspaper would look professional and sharp. I
understand how important it is to make sure
particular things are done in certain ways such as,
the use of fonts and colours because this would
help the audience identify a newspaper from a
magazine. I designed things in certain ways such
as, my masthead I wanted to create a logo which
suited my target audience so the colour pink for
the font. My newspaper is called ‘i-sport
Chislehurst’ for the font of ‘i-sport’ I used a
handwritten style and for the ‘Chislehurst’ I used a
more bold and simple font. I did this to represent
both youth and also, there parents as my
newspaper could possibly appeal to the parents of
the youths this also, shows the difference between
the two cultures and age groups. The font I used
for my front page was fairly simple and wasn’t very
eye catching however, the colour I used was a
bright pink this was to represent vibrant youth and
I also felt I needed a bright colour to catch my
audiences eye. Using this colour challenged the
stereotype that my newspaper would be aimed at
girls as pink is supposedly a typically female
orientated colour. Although, my newspaper is
aimed at both males and females it is
predominantly aimed at males as some of the
articles I produced may not appeal to a female
audience.
I feel I have challenged many conventions of a
typical local newspaper because all my stories are
sport centered which is unknown to do so by a
local newspaper as they usually have a minimal
sports section at the back and a sports story will
only make the front page if a team has won a
national trophy with the main stories being about
local important news. I also challenged the
conventions by targeting my paper at a younger
audience. Most local newspapers I researched in
targeted there paper at an older audiences, such
as parents aged 35 years and above. This meant
many components of my paper were different to
others, such as colours ad my use of photography.
Question 2: How effective is the combination of my
main product and the other ancillary tasks?
Firstly, My newspaper, radio advertisements and
poster were all created to appeal to younger
audiences who have a strong interest in sport.
Before constructing each text I had to research and
identify how I could interest my audience. I feel I
could have reflected my knowledge more
effectively through my work, the language I used
within my newspaper could have been more
persuasive and informal. However, I feel my poster
was an effective poster although it was a fairly
simple design I feel it was successful, as it was an
original idea.
Poster
When researching posters I realised I didn’t want to
follow the average conventions by having a large
picture of my newspaper, I wanted to design a
unique poster therefore, I used grass as my
background to represent a sports field and also,
the colour of the font in white to represent
markings on a sports pitch. However, when starting
out designing my poster I felt the need to follow
these simple conventions, as I didn’t have many
other ideas, but as the task went on my ideas
developed. As this was an original idea with some
eye catching detail I feel my target audience would
be drawn into reading the poster then going on to
picking up a copy of it. I used fairly vibrant colours,
which stand out to catch the eye of my audience
as my poster is design to be on billboards and on
the side of buses rather than in magazines. I feel
by poster was lacking detail, although it was
targeted to my audience through the connotations
of sport the poster is very male dominated
whereas, my poster is not only aimed at males. I
also feel my poster had the required amount of
flair to be amount to appeal to my specific
audience.
Radio Advert
I started my research and planning of a radio
advert by visiting rab.com and listening to the best
radio adverts of all time, this gave me many ideas
of what worked well in radio advertisement. I learnt
from this research that the best adverts were fairly
simple ideas but had a sense of comic to them, this
helped to build a relationship with their audience
and once a relationship is built with the audience
they would take much more interest in the advert
which often meant they would take away a lot
more from it and were more likely to consider
taking interest in the product that is being
advertised. Although, I had discovered all of this
information on radio advertisements, I feel my
radio advert could have gone better although the
advert I produced I felt was original and linked to
my target audiences interests it could have been a
lot more persuasive to engage my audience.
Newspaper
The newspaper task was the most time consuming
out of the three tasks but I felt this showed with
the final product. Although, I feel my newspaper
went well and did certain things well like engage
and specific target audience through my own
photography. However, there was a lot that I could
have done to improve my newspaper if there was
more time provided such as, my stories could have
been developed further I feel there is not enough
detail within the stories to draw the audience in
and allow them to feel emotive. There is still a fair
bit of blank space on the second page but I feel on
the front page I made good use of the space
provided by filling it with plugs and adverts.
In conclusion, I feel all three of my tasks linked
fairly well and supported the newspaper, which
was the main task. However, all of the task could
be improved with more time available but I feel I
have defined my target audience fairly well
throughout. I could have engaged my audience
better through the radio advert, by using more
persuasive language.
Question 3: What have you learnt from your
audience feedback?
Firstly for my feedback, I ask the other students
within my class to comment and give me the
feedback on the draft for my main product, the
newspaper. This involved people giving me both
positive and negative points of the product and
also offering an insight into what they thought
could be improved to make it a better product.
The next feedback exercise was for the whole
media department, we printed out all of the
newspapers and were giving post-it notes where
we could write our comments, both negative and
positive and stick it to each other’s products. This
was very useful, as it provided many different
ideas on how to develop my paper further. Many
positive points were brought up such as, the
quality of my images and the quality of my advert
on the front page. Also, the feedback given
provided some basic conventions that I had missed
out such as, page numbers. When comparing my
product to the other existing products within the
group I realised how I could make my newspaper
look more professional and less like a magazine by
having smaller font for the text, this would also fir
more with other conventional newspapers. The
main issues that were brought up about the second
page of my newspaper were that there was too
much blank space and also some of the alignments
of my photographs which were easily changed to
make the newspaper look more professional. This
feedback session provided valuable information
that helped me to develop the product and also,
add specific finishing touched that help with
making the product to excel with professionalism.
Some of my images were stretched and did not
look too appealing, after the feedback that I was
given I notice some of the faults such as the
stretched images, which I changed to make my
product more aesthetically appealing to my
audience. Although, this exercise was very useful
to me specifically it did have some faults within
this exercise, one being that because everybody
taking part in this feedback were young people not
everyone took it seriously therefore, I was left with
some useless comments such as ‘bold font’ this
didn’t help me to develop my paper. Also, it was
only aimed at the same audience so you are likely
to get the same sort of feedback whereas, if the
audience was more varied you would be left with
different types of feedback which could help to
develop my product it different ways. After, using
this feedback I was given after this session I
uploaded my paper onto a social networking site to
allow my peers to review it, this would also allow a
broader section of the audience to review it.
This next session provided me with more useful
feedback, containing a lot of positive feedback, this
shows me that my developments from the last
session have been useful and are leading my
product in the right direction. The front page
gained many positive comments, making me feel
confident in the changes I recently made from the
feedback I was given. I was given feedback about
the font size saying it looks too small on screen,
this could be due to the quality of the digital
version on the computer screen. However, the
printed version was easily readable and clear
which tells me making these alterations wouldn’t
improve my product as it is not an online paper
therefore if the quality is fine in the printed version
there is no need to change the font size. Slightly
more negative feedback was given to me about the
second page of my newspaper even though I did
make changes from the first feedback session I
was given. Some people commented saying the
design of my second page is too basic, but I felt
the need to follow the conventional design to add a
sense of professionalism to my newspaper.
However, I took the feedback into consideration
and decided to change where some of my adverts
were place to improve a consistent layout. I did not
receive any comments about the amount of blank
space was on the second page which is an
improvement because in the first feedback session
this was a major concern this means I have
developed my paper to make the improvements
needed. The feedback all in all was a success
although I couldn’t make vast changes because
many changes were made from the first feedback
session and many of the same people were
offering their advice and feedback, which meant
some of the feedback, was the same as before.
Question 4: How did you use new media
technologies in the construction and research,
planning and evaluation stages?
Throughout the development of my entire project
new media has played a massive part. To access
existing examples of local newspapers to aid my
research I mainly used the internet based editions
of the publication as this made it a lot easier to
access the correct information, it also made it a lot
easier to present to information I found digitally.
This is a relatively modern form of viewing print
online, this means people all over the world can
access local news which means the news is a lot
more accessible to a wider audience. The Internet
when researching for my ancillary task played a
vital role.
Newspapers using websites to present there news
is a major part of new media, so when designing
my webpage I researched in a varied amount of
newspaper and magazine websites allowing me to
analyse conventions which I could possible use
within my website. Features such as, e-editions
and news updates available for mobile phones are
also at the forefront of new media, this influenced
me massively when creating my newspaper as it
influenced the name I chose ‘i-sport Chislehurst’
the ‘i’ represents the interactivity the newspaper
will contain and also having a qr barcode on my
front page which is a quick response barcode.
When displaying my work new media was again
very important, I used a blog document for my
planning and also to show the development of my
product. Blogs are a form of new media that have
increased in popularity in recent years with
websites such as; www.blogger.com and
www.twitter.com become quickly dominant when
looking to receive up to date news on anything
from worldwide news to celebrity gossip. I used the
features of a blog effectively meaning I could
upload work from anywhere which could be
accessed by my teacher and peers giving me more
freedom for time management. This meant I can
make changes to my work from the feedback I was
given by my teacher from anywhere with an
Internet connection. I also used, Slide Share and
Scribd to upload slideshows of documents I had
produced as this allowed images and texts to be
viewed in different way that were provided while
using the blog website. This meant word
documents can be uploaded and posted straight to
my blog with the same original layout, meaning it
would be a lot easier to understand.
New media also helped with the feedback side of
things as I uploaded images of my products onto a
social networking site which allowed people to
offer both positive and negative feedback allowing
me to make vast improvements to my products
which made a lot of difference. This form of new
media allow me to target a much broader audience
for feedback than was possible with paper print
outs of my work also, targeting different audience
which allowed me to receive various different types
feedback. I feel I used the new media available
effectively to make my products as best as they
could be. Without the new media I used the
planning, creation and development of the tasks
would have been a lot more difficult meaning the
final products would not have been as successful.
New media also influenced me to include new
features such as, plugs for the website, phone
updates and online editions.
By Jack Brennan