How does your media product represent particular social groups?
My magazine represents a particular social group and that would be teenagers of both genders who feel a passion to be within the popular schemes of to date. This explains and gives a definition of the genre-Pop music. 'Pop' as in 'popular' is music that is most commonly always found in todays charts including 'The Top 40' and 'The Download Charts.' If they listen to this type of music they will know that the majority of people their age will be listening to the same songs, and therefore will have connections and more in common with their peers. I also think social groups involving older teenagers, are for those who regularly attend parties or clubs and want to dance to this music with their friends.
I also think the model I use is a good example of the representation of my social group, as it will reflect girls who aspire to be like the model, whilst reflecting males who aspire to be with somebody who is like this model.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
As media products have now used so many ideas and different ways of forming itself, it is now hard to create individuality in media forms so at this moment in time alot of products are now repeated. I do think that I develop a different taste in genre of music for the magazine and I also tried to mix in a little bit of fashion with the music and models, as this genre requires models and singers to constantley look their very best. I also challenged the film form, as on my front cover I used a film roll that included different pictures of the same model.
However my product does use many conventions of real media products e.g. (as annotated) Title, Barcode, Competitions, Wide Range of Articles, Main Image and Sub Images, Prices, Date and Buzz Words.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

There was a wide variety of equipment given to us to use for our product. This included a Nikon DSLR camera to take high quality photo's of our models that produced clear life-like images. We were given the opportunity to take these photos in a studio that provided a large amount of space an lighting that could be adjusted if we wanted to create shadowing or a different tone of light. I found this particularly useful as I was able adjust the tone of the light into more of a bright light to give the model a fresh look, and give off a bright look in her skin and emphisising her hair.

The system I used to create my media product was Photoshop. Photoshop allows users to do many different things to make images look better. I learned how to make the shadows created when photographing be erased and to get the perfect colours for my fonts. An example of when I used this is on my double page spread and I transfered colours from the models lipstick and her hair to the fonts for the title and shapes. I also used a correction/tick button frequently, so that when I enlarged images to make them visible on screen it wasn't pixalated and blurred.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I feel that I was able to progress since the preliminary task because I began to understand how to use Photoshop quickly and without as many mistakes. Within my piece I tried to make the magazine look simple with the phrase, 'less is more' without making it look as though no time or effort had gone into the task, whereas in the Preliminary task the front cover was very over-crowded and contained to many pictures and a clash of fonts. Also the main image on the cover was very unwelcoming as the model wasn't using direct address so it wasn't as inviting as my final piece. The prelim. task also was very overlly dark as the model had dark hair with a black t-shirt on, so the aim of the magazine which was to show a happy and succesful college wasn't really accomplished in the task.