1 a) Conventions

Examining the conventions and styles of existing media products is essential when trying to create a successful text under the same genre. I created a college magazine front cover, contents page followed by a music magazine; front cover, double page spread and contents page. Using the skills I acquired and developed I identified the conventions of existing product in order to produce my A2 coursework, where I created a fantasy film; poster, trailer and magazine front cover.

Analysing existing texts was essential when identifying the different conventions for my AS coursework. I looked in to many examples of college magazine covers and compared/contrasted them with each other. I Identified that on the front cover of the magazines there were very bright colours all creating a happy tone of the college, another feature was the use of photographs in the college environment also the use of the college logo. The contents pages had a basic discourse structure with one or two images and a contents list. When creating my own college magazine front cover I followed these conventions and took a medium close up of a sixth form student wearing colourful clothing. I then went on to produce the rest on Photoshop creating a basic font for the masthead and placing the college logo as a main feature. I used the logo from Bodmin College with the colours red, yellow and black, I found that this was effective and made the school genre recognisable which was something that I identified when looking in to the conventions. The contents page was created using Photoshop again and I used a basic white background and black simple headline with page numbers. I used simple imagery of a student working and the front of the college. These were all conventions I had previously identified. The font was very simplistic and the layout I chose was very boring and was perhaps as exciting as it could have been.

I found lots of examples of existing film magazine front covers to complete my convention analysis on. I asked my target audience what they thought would be the most important features of a front cover. I identified on the front of Empire that the masthead was a main focus, often having an effect on (such as shattering glass) the use of attractive models as the main image the camera angle often changed but a close up was used often. Very good quality photographs, which have been edited. I took my photograph on a SLR camera making the image look professional; I took a close up of the main protagonist as my main image. This fits the convention of a close up on the front cover. I used a more layered layout on the front cover to make the front cover more effective. I used golds, browns and reds as my colour palette to follow the fantasy genre through my magazine cover.