Feedback

I have emailed everyone their feedback now, so you all have a whole week to make improvements. There were some points that a few of you need to work on so use this as an extra checklist. 

1. The layout of the blog must all be the same (see previous post). 

2. Incorporate links to the rest of the research and web links. 

3. Ensure all of your videos work.

4. Question 1: explain your understanding of codes and conventions and show which of those you have incorporated. 

5. Question 2: This is about branding, your product is a brand that you need to market and distrbiute to a specific target audience. Who is your audience? What is their demographic and what platforms would they engage with?

6. Question 3: This is not just about what the audience feedback was, it is about what you learned from it, so it can be part of your focus group feedback during the whole process, not just about the final outcomes. 

7. Question 4: This question was done well but many needed to use a lot more links to exemplify exactly what you had done. Use the technology you are writing about. You could also say what else you would use eg Facebook, twitter etc. 

when we return we will be focusing on the exam so I strongly suggest you finish these off properly before then. 

Terms for magazine analysis

Mini Glossary of Terms

• Mainstream: Standardised, conventional media representations – normally associated with commercial success rather than critical success.
• Independent: Media texts that are consumed by smaller, more niche audiences and not normally associated with large companies or organisations.
• Left Wing, Socialist Ideology: An overarching belief system (ideology) that champions the causes of the individual and minority groups against mainstream culture and big business.
• Tabloid: A smaller sixed newspaper format used by The Sun for example.
• Critical Success: Where success is measured by awards and reviews.
• Commercial Success: Where success is measured by how much money a piece of media makes.
• Rebrand: Where a new image is given to a media text.
• USP: Unique Selling Point – where a media text is sold to audiences on the strength of something specific.
• Multiculturalism: The positive foregrounding of the diversity of race and ethnicity.
• Iconic: Something that is well known and has established status.
• Masthead: Normally the top, or main strip or bar across a magazine.
• Conventions: The expected aspects of a media text, normally associated with genre.
• Signify: Where meaning is constructed though signs and symbols.
• Connotations: Similar to signifies, connotation is where something has an implied meaning from the denoted signs and symbols associated with it.
• Tagline: The saying or textual association of a magazine.
• Encodes: Media producers (or publishers) encode or put in meaning.
• Mythical: Something in the media that has the status of accepted truth but which in fact has been constructed to give this impression.
• Genre: Type or Sort.
• Cultural Capital: The pre existing knowledge, skills and experience an audience have that affect their reading or deconstruction of a media text.
• Oligopoly: Where four or more companies, e.g. magazine publishers like Bauer dominate the marketplace.
• Circulation: The amount of copies of a magazine that is sold or is given out.
• Cross Media Platforms: Where a media text or brand has a presence in a number of different media.
• Brand: The image or association of a named product.
• Demographic: An in depth analysis of the target audience covering a range of criteria.
• Advertising Spend: How much money is spent on advertising.
• Hybridised: Where the conventions of two or more genres are apparent.
• Framed for the Male Gaze: Where a subject is set within the frame (e.g. a magazine cover) and is sexualised for male audiences (from Laura Mulvey’s male gaze theory).
• Advertising Revenue: How much money a magazine, for example makes from advertising.
• Anchor: When something is ‘anchored’ it has a definite meaning.
• Stereotypical Connotations: Something that audiences expect but that is often based on limited information.
• Aspirational: Audiences look up to something or somebody.
• Foregrounded: Where an image or person is put at the front of audiences’ minds.
• Mode of Address: The way a media text speaks to its audience.
• Minimalistic: Lacking depth and detail.
• Pun: Use of double meaning.
• Colour Palette: An overall colour scheme.
• Leaderboard: The online equivalent of a masthead.
• Navigation: How audiences or users move around a website.
• House Style: A recognisable style e.g. from print magazine to online equivalent.
• Interactive: Where audiences take an active part in a media text and where communication is two way and not one way.
• Typography: An overall term used to describe the physical representation of text.
• Font: The style of the lettering.
• Hierarchy: An agreed status or chain of command/authority.
• Digital: New media/forms of technology across different media platforms.
• Retro Culture: Where audiences enjoy culture from years gone by.
• Above the Fold: The top half of a homepage.
• Below the Fold: The bottom half of a homepage.
• Convergent Links: Interactive links to other media.
• Merchandising: The spin off sale of associated goods and services.
• Synergy: Where two or more compatible forms sell each other.
• Juxtaposition: Where something is deliberately placed next to something to create a third meaning.
• Pluralistic:  A representation that is challenging, more contemporary and diverse and resists stereotyping.
• Post Feminist Icon: A female representation where the subject exhibits both stereotypical male and female characteristics.
• Line Extending: Where the authority of an existing brand is used to diversity into different products.
• Intertextuality: Where one media text makes reference to another.
• Rich Media: Links to a broad range of cross media platforms.
• Web 2.0: A more interactive layout on a web page commonly associated with social networking sites – less of a one way form of communication.
• Popular Culture: Media normally consumed by mainstream, mass audiences.

BBFC

Look a the BBFC site here to consider institutional issues of certificates and audience targeting.

Feedback on your blogs

1. Use the layout suggested on this previous post.

Codes and Conventions

• Split into sub genres (see below), often hybridised
• Primary target audience – male, 16-24, Mainstreamers
• 15 or 18 Certification (promises of pleasure) – debates on passive consumption
• Uses and Gratifications (active audiences) theory can apply
• Extensive use of Narrative enigmas
• Exploration of Narrative Themes
• Slow pace of Editing, builds tension. Long takes
• Three act narrative structure
• Predictable narrative content (follows format)
• Clear binary oppositions e.g. good v evil
• Use of low key lighting
• Use of CGI, FX
• High production values but many low budget horror films
• Dominant, hegemomic representation of gender: The Female Victim
• Extensive use of close up
• Incidental non-diegetic sound
• Distorted diegetic sound
• Extensive use of narrative off-screen space
• Young/teenage characters
• Use of hand-held camera: audience identification/realism
• Point of view shots
• Low angle shots

2. Change your settings so the whole blog, or as much of it as possible appears on the roll.

All blog posts to be prefixed with

Research/planning/audience/ evaluation/ product

You need annotated versions of all your products.

you need to consider audiences  formally  an audience for a short film is quite niche, consider psychographics of audiences

why did you use the format that you did? SIght and sound, empire, weekend supplements in newspapers

Cross platform marketing- what would be the benefit of these extra ideas that you have had?

3.       What have you learned from your audience feedback?

You need a summarising comment on the end of this to explain what you actually learnt and how it informed your understanding. Have they ‘read’ the text in the way that you intended? Would you change your product in the light of theircoments?

You must take a more academic tone and discuss psychographics and audience theory in this response.

Don’t include the HTML it must be embedded as a link

you could ask your focus group more about their leisure habits so you could target the cross platform marketing more effectively,

Feedback on construction main task/40

You need to have an annotated version of all of your products
4. What were the limitations to using technologies?

you must embed links to the research that you have done, there is always the possibility that the examiner may not scroll all the way down and great work that you have done may be missed. Try to incorporate it into your 4 evaluation questions.