Evaluation - Representation

"How does your media product represent particular social groups?"


I have represented the people in my magazine as people that the reader should appeal to. To achieve so, I have made them indie genre band members because those are the type of people that the readers would appeal to.

I've represented the genre of the indie magazine throughout by using words such as "parties, drink, sex and music", "festival" and "world tour", this emphasizes the genre of the magazine and is successful in attracting audience and is a constant reminder that the magazine is of an indie genre. The reader can relate to these words and make them feel as thought they are a part of it as well as creating the right atmosphere throughout the magazine. These words are all also very stereotypical of an indie genre magazine. 

The picture to the left is shot at a similar angle to the people in the photo, however they are standing as though they are crouching down to be at that angle, which gives the impression that it is a low angle, meaning that the people in the picture come across as powerful and dominant which represents their genre of music because their music would be quite powerful. They are giving a direct address by looking at the camera which attracts the audience. They are also both wearing black and white clothes with an ‘indie’ hair cut, which shows that they are both representing indie people. Their clothes are similar too, as are the necklaces they are both wearing, showing that they are both quite similar people and it also brings the band together as one. The serious look on their face gives a ‘moody’ and ‘cool’ look to their image which is quite typical to see in indie genre magazines because it gives a whole ‘I don’t care’ attitude.  

This picture is of one of the band mates on his own, I took separate pictures of them to give the idea that although they are a band, they are still individuals as well as that. The image gives a different effect to the photo above because as you can see, the ‘moody’ look that was coming across before has disappeared and I’ve pictured him as happy instead as he is messing around, which is also quite typical to see in pictures of an indie magazine. However, although we can see the expression in his face, the main focus of the picture is the prop I have used which is a rubix cube he is playing with. The person pictured in the image is focusing on the cube whilst looking ridiculously happy, which gives the impression that the person is easily pleased and very easy going which is a completely different personality to what we get from the first picture, suggesting that the artist isn’t the same as every other boy band you find within these kind of magazines. Another way we can see that he is easy going is the fact he is at the same level as the photographer, and not crouching, which represents that he doesn’t think himself as ‘higher’ than people and shows he is just another regular person. We can slightly see that he is wearing the same top as he was wearing in the previous photo, however the rubix cube is very colourful, showing that they don’t just put themselves in the indie and ‘moody’ category. The photo in general is very happy looking.

The image to the right follows conventions of an Indie artist. Her hair has been put up into a messy hairstyle to show that she isn't really that bothered and as well as this she is wearing quite a black dress to stick to the colour scheme. I have edited the photo so that it's in black and white as a way of creating variety between the different images i have taken.  The photo is a mid-shot so we can see the upper half of her showing that she is an indie artist. I have made the background plain but there are shadows which highlight the dark side and the light side of the indie genre. A direct address is made to the audience to entice them, and as the main target audience would be for boys, it would be likely that a female looking straight into the camera would be successful in attracting them and making them look further into the magazine to find the article about her. It could also attract more of a girl audience as well as girls could look up to her as a role model type figure.