evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions.

My newspaper use conventions of which many local newspapers use such as the Bromley Metro. These conventions are things like a 5-column layout, which my newspaper uses making it similar to most local newspapers. I have used a 5 column layout because it is what my target audience is use to, and to change it would be to confuse them by putting more columns in or to make the paper look un-professional. Sporting newspaper like the Sun fill their pages with big pictures and short stories as this criteria fits their target audience, who are similar to my target audience. For my newspaper my target audience I think my chosen layout suits them well as it was similar to other sporting newspapers with conventions for more up market newspapers such as the Independent with a column layout of 7 or 8. This layout is for a small percentage of the public the higher educated so I feel that my 5-column layout suits my target audience.

The main headline for my newspaper is of a sporting achievement about boys at a school near where the reader lives. I believe that will help to draw in readers as it has relevance to them, because it is about people who live near them and encourages support for the team. My newspaper also contains similar aspects to other papers by using similar gutter spaces, by lines and jump lines. I did this because I feel that all papers should follow the same conventions.

The adverts in my newspaper have been edited by me so I could make them exactly how i wanted them to be. The most of them have the same theme of sports this is because it is relevant to my readers as the paper is about sport. They all are quite big this is because in many main local newspapers such as the metro use big advertising for funds so i decided to do the same it as it is conventional. One of my adverts is showing the franchise Nando's with the comedic value to it saying "eat mor chicken" with cow hooves, i used them as a one of my advertisements as this is a place where many young people go to eat and have fun with friends so this will also encourage people to read my paper to see what the advertisement is about. Another advert i used was nike as this is one of the most well known sporting brands which with this ad will reinforce the view of it being a serious sporting newspaper. The font used in my newspaper is different to that seen in all newspapers, it is a Sans Serrif font which is more appealing to the younger audience as it does not have any extra bits on the end of the letters. This is also more appealing to the younger audience as it does not seem to be fancy or to extravagant.

How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary tasks.

My ancillary tasks where for me to produce a radio advert and a poster to help advertise my Newspaper. These were aimed at my target audience, which was the younger generation.

When I started to design my poster I looked at different types of poster form different newspapers but they all did seem to follow similar conventions. I decided to use the conventions so that it didn't make my target audience go off my newspaper and look for different papers. I used such things as the same colouring with the fonts and with the background, with my main story picture on the front of it these are such conventions seen in newspaper advertising.

My poster consists of a picture of a rugby players competeing for the ball in a line out. I edited it using Photoshop to make cut out the unesscary parts of the photo such so i was left with the main part of it for my eye catching photo. I did this to try and show what my paper is about rather than show what it has in it.

Overall I feel that my Poster is successful in terms of being aesthetically pleasing with my targeted audience, the poster shows what the newspaper offers and is about just from one image. It was also beneficial as I used the same colour scheme that was in my newspaper as well as in my poster.

The making of my Radio Advert i believed to be the most difficult of all three task. I did some research on other newspaper radio adverts and i thought the best ones where the funny ones so i decide to put this aspect into my radio ad. For this I used GarageBand to produce the music for the backing track of my advert. I decided to produce an advert that had a charity type of feel to it but with a spoof type of aspect with this i believe that people will relate to this which also got straight to the point and made it sound pleasing so my target audience could remember it.

My newspaper named “Sport Bromley” took the most amount of time out of the all the tasks, but i think that this shows my newspaper was my best produced media product. I am happy with most aspects of my paper, including the theme, colours, layouts and photos. The photos used in newspaper where easy for me to take as it was a local game for me which was played just down the road from my school however i had taken a lot of photos which i had to get 25 photos to choose from to be my main story picture. I feel that the effort shows as the picture used shows clearly what the newspapers about and what the story is about.

The stories that I chose to write were targeted at my audience as my paper is all about people from the ages of 18-30. I feel that my stories where could have been a little bit better in terms of length by such as with my last story i wasnt able to write as much as i could about it as i did not have enough room with all my photos and advertising which was put into the paper. The language i used in my stories was not conventional of many local newspapers as i was not going for the same target audience as they are I found it difficult using language you would expect to read in a newspaper to write with than the normal style of text I would write. But I feel that I tackled this problem well by looking at other similar papers and studied how their types of text were worded.

In conclusion to this, I feel that my three tasks have linked well with each other. By this I mean that I am happy with in which the ways of my Radio Advert and my Poster have helped advertise my Newspaper. I do feel that if I had more time I could produce a much better and poster but i believe that my radio advert was was one of my best parts of my tasks.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

From my audience feedback I have had some very positive feedback with also a few negatives. I am please with my responses I received, and I will alter my newspaper to the ways in which I have been criticized for, i believe that this will make my newspaper better than what it was whilst also making the paper easier for my target audience to relate with. The positive feedback included comments about my layouts, colours, main title, photography and my adverts. The feedback I received on my stories is beneficial, as I know what to change now in terms of language. And I have now changed my newspapers language as I feel that doing this is for the best as my language that I used was too formal and did not suit my target audience correctly.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research planning and the evaluation stages?

Media Technologies is the way in which we can view different things using technology, for instance reading a newspaper on the internet Bromley Times, looking at images online Google images. The ways in which I used new media technologies to use in the construction and research and planning varies from using different online facilities. I researched other newspapers online to help decide what my paper i would base my newspaper on, in terms of conventions and layouts. I decided to look at the Bromley Times online as i was planning to base my newspaper in the Bromley area. This was a page to page newspaper that you could interactively use, you can flip the pages so you still have the original feeling of a paper in terms of turning the pages. This made me think about how I could make my paper seem more modern and technological but by using its original form.

I decided to use a Blackberry Barcode which Blackberry phone users can use by just scanning it. This will then connect you to the newspaper and will allow the newspaper to send news of what ever topic straight to your Blackberry smartphone. I added this feature as I know a large percentage of people of my age own a BlackBerry smart phone so they can interact with my paper.

Another form of using media technologies for my research and planning was the radio adverts on youtube. This helped me decide what type of radio advert I would produce. I listened to various adverts, with advertising different newspapers such as the daily sport the sun and many more. This helped me to decide what type of radio advert I had to make to get straight to the point in advertising my newspaper.

I also used Google images to help to look at past posters, which were advertising newspapers. I did this for my research to try and see what posters professional papers could produce. I feel that my poster is like conventional newspapers poster which i believe was key to advertise my newspaper. I tried to make it fit my target audience’s needs by making it aesthetically pleasing and by using colours and text that would draw in my audience.

The music that I used for my radio advert was found on GarageBand, after I recorded my advert using a peer doing a different voice, I had to decide what type of music would suit my advert perfectly, as I said I decided to make me newspaper a type of charity spoof i used sad music to get that charity feel across to my audience. I feel that this was the right choice, as I want my advert to attract viewers and not seem like another boring advert that you hear on the radios.